James T. Cleland - "Grace Abounding; Grace Demanding" (January 18, 1970)

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	(organ music playing)	0:03
	(organ music continues)	1:00
	(organ music continues)	3:00
-	Because of our need of being at fellowship	3:53
	with God through Christ	3:57
	and of having no barriers between us,	4:01
	it is needful that we should cleanse our hearts	4:04
	by a whole hearted and sincere acknowledgement of our sin	4:08
	before God and in the presence of one another,	4:15
	in order that we may be restored to fellowship	4:19
	and cleansed of our sin.	4:22
	Accordingly, let us unite our hearts and our voices	4:25
	in our prayer of confession and for pardon, let us pray.	4:29
	Oh, Lord thou has searched us and known us,	4:33
	thou understand us our thoughts a far of.	4:37
	And art acquainted with all our ways,	4:41
	there is not a word in our tongues,	4:43
	but, Lo, O Lord, thou knowest it all together.	4:46
	Take from us all hardness and impenitence	4:50
	that we admitting our sins	4:54
	and honestly facing our faults before thee,	4:56
	may obtain pardon for all our guilt.	5:00
	Absolve us, O God, from every kind of sin.	5:03
	Forgive us for trying to be clever,	5:07
	when we should have sought wisdom.	5:10
	Heal us from the disease	5:12
	of trying to make names for ourselves.	5:14
	When we should've been seeking to glorify thy name.	5:17
	Enable us, O Lord, to find pardon now,	5:21
	and to attain everlasting redemption in the world to come	5:24
	through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	5:28
	Amen.	5:31
	Now let us hear the comforting and assuring words	5:34
	of scripture taken from the sixth chapter of Isaiah.	5:37
	Then flew one of the seraphim unto me,	5:42
	having a live coal in his hand,	5:45
	which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar.	5:48
	And he laid it upon my mouth and said,	5:52
	"Lo, this has touched thy lips,	5:55
	"and thine iniquity is taken away	5:59
	"and thy sin purged."	6:03
	Amen.	6:06
	(faint organ music playing)	6:12
	(bright organ music)	7:15
	(choir singing hymnal music)	7:34
	(choir singing hymnal music)	9:29
	(choir singing hymnal music)	11:32
	(choir singing hymnal music)	14:10
	(choir singing hymnal music)	17:42
	The Lord be with you.	18:10
-	And with your spirit.	18:12
-	Let us pray.	18:14
	Almighty God, our Heavenly Father,	18:21
	in the inspiration and the quietness of this moment,	18:26
	we offer unto thee our hearts and thanksgiving.	18:30
	For every good and perfect gift,	18:34
	which has come down from thee.	18:36
	We are grateful for here and there,	18:40
	the sign of peace budding across the world.	18:43
	We are thankful for those courses	18:48
	which no assassin can kill.	18:50
	We are thankful that though the body may be killed,	18:55
	the spirit lives on with God.	18:58
	We thank thee four flowers,	19:03
	which at a wedding can add joy	19:05
	to an already joyous occasion.	19:07
	Or flowers which at a funeral, temper, sorrow and bitterness	19:11
	with reminders of new life and the return of beauty.	19:16
	We thank thee for righteous indignation against evil	19:22
	or non-violent goodwill.	19:27
	For open-minded inquiry.	19:32
	For the willingness to listen to another point of view.	19:36
	For the final resolution of a person's will.	19:42
	For unexpected grace here and there.	19:48
	And for the faith that in Jesus Christ,	19:53
	the world has a great hope.	19:58
	O, Lord, we intercede for all sorts and conditions of men	20:03
	or others and ourselves.	20:10
	We pray for those who now find themselves overworked,	20:15
	for those who have more responsibility on their shoulders	20:22
	than can be discharged between now	20:25
	and the time of their exams.	20:28
	But who are expected	20:31
	to fulfill those responsibilities regardless.	20:32
	Give them grace to endure and the strength	20:37
	to do the best that they can.	20:40
	As we are examined on the work of the year,	20:45
	keep us from all deceit and from fraud.	20:50
	Make us humble when success comes,	20:55
	and keep us patient and open-minded in disappointment.	20:58
	Grant that ill will and envy may find no room in our hearts.	21:03
	Give us grace to discipline ourselves inwardly	21:11
	and to persevere in the vocation of learning.	21:14
	And at the final accounting of all men before thee,	21:19
	may we by thy grace be able to give a good return	21:22
	on the talents which thou has given unto us.	21:26
	O Lord, we pray for those who are pushed aside	21:32
	because they are not campus leaders,	21:37
	because they are not outstanding athletes,	21:41
	because they are not in Phi Beta Kappa.	21:44
	But who are precious in thy site	21:48
	and who have great strength and potentiality.	21:51
	We pray for those in society as a whole	21:56
	that are pushed aside because they are poor.	21:59
	Whose ideas are not listened to	22:04
	because their financial weight is not impressive.	22:05
	Whose personalities are blighted	22:10
	because they are regarded as inferior	22:11
	on account of their poverty.	22:14
	We pray for those who are discriminated against	22:18
	because they are wealthy.	22:21
	Who's dedicated labor,	22:24
	whose sacrificial devotion to their fellow men	22:26
	are seldom appreciated because of our blind prejudice	22:30
	against anybody who has more of this world's goods	22:34
	than we have.	22:37
	Grant them grace to forgive,	22:40
	the patience to continue their dedicated labors	22:44
	and the strength to achieve well.	22:48
	O Lord, help us all to be less critical of each other.	22:52
	More critical of ourselves,	22:56
	less prone to generalize,	22:59
	more inclined to be helpful.	23:02
	Now, our father we pray for our former colleague,	23:08
	Professor Charles Vale, whose mother has died.	23:11
	For our choir member, Dr. Calvin Smith,	23:16
	whose father has died.	23:19
	Grant that these may find the kind of divine	23:23
	and human friendship,	23:26
	which shall deliver them from falling victims	23:27
	to bitterness or loneliness or unrelieved guilt or anxiety.	23:30
	May all of us who survive these death experiences learn	23:36
	what lessons death should teach us,	23:40
	and then resolve that these lessons will be put	23:44
	into practice now in our lives.	23:48
	God of the nations,	23:53
	we offer our prayers for the people of Nigeria.	23:55
	Especially for the starving and bruised in Biafra,	24:00
	that food medicine and love may come to them.	24:04
	Grant that they may have peace as well as surrender.	24:10
	Grant brotherhood and happiness to that nation.	24:15
	And along with this prayer,	24:25
	we offer our intersessions	24:26
	for the troubled and oppressed people of all the earth.	24:28
	We make our prayer in the name of Jesus Christ,	24:32
	who has taught us the perfect prayer to say,	24:35
	our father who art in heaven,	24:39
	hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come,	24:42
	thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.	24:46
	Give us this day, our daily bread.	24:50
	And forgive us our trespasses	24:53
	as we forgive those who trespass against us.	24:55
	And lead us not into temptation,	24:59
	but deliver us from evil.	25:02
	For thine is the kingdom and the power	25:04
	and the glory forever.	25:06
	Amen.	25:08
-	The peace of God be with you all.	25:27
	Talking over today's service with the director of the choir,	25:34
	we came to a conclusion in which the chaplain	25:39
	and the chapel organist concurred.	25:44
	The anthem for today, just one anthem,	25:48
	since exams right now command and demand	25:54
	the waking hours of the choir.	25:59
	The Anthem was as you heard David McKay Williams,	26:03
	in the year that King Uzziah died.	26:07
	That passage is often referred to as the call of Isaiah.	26:11
	For We agreed that the sermon	26:18
	should be based upon these verses	26:20
	and that the choir should be the lector.	26:24
	Thus the ministry of music,	26:31
	shared liturgically in the ministry of the word,	26:34
	the reading of the lesson.	26:40
	And so now in prosaic sentences and paragraphs,	26:44
	let me seek to explicate what was so gloriously sung	26:50
	as the scripture of the morning.	26:55
	The words as you have noticed are printed	26:59
	in the order of the service.	27:02
	Now here is recorded Isaiah's picturesque description,	27:05
	how he consciously entered God's service as a prophet.	27:11
	He probably penned it years later,	27:17
	looking back on what happened in the year 740 BC	27:21
	in the temple which Solomon had built 200 years before that.	27:30
	This young Jerusalemite,	27:39
	20 years old, about your average age in the student body,	27:42
	had gone into the temple and gazed toward the room,	27:48
	which was named The Holy of Holies.	27:55
	Because there ark The Ark of the Covenant,	28:00
	the symbol of God's presence in the midst of his people.	28:06
	Above there, were two huge seraphim,	28:13
	15 feet high,	28:18
	carved of gold trimmed olive wood.	28:21
	Each with six wings,	28:25
	representative of those who attend God's throne.	28:28
	They symbolized lightning,	28:35
	the purifying divine fire.	28:38
	Now Isaiah must have seen all this hundreds of times,	28:42
	but on this visit,	28:47
	something out of the ordinary happened to him.	28:50
	The carved seraphim seemed to come to life	28:55
	and sing the Tersanctus.	29:00
	The smoke of incense filled the whole inner chamber	29:04
	with a cloud of glory	29:09
	and the threshold of the door shook, vibrated.	29:11
	Isaiah evidently shook too.	29:17
	Now what was his response?	29:21
	He tells us, he expected to die.	29:24
	This was the end for him.	29:29
	(mumbles)	29:33
	Why?	29:34
	Listen to him.	29:35
	Goodbye.	29:37
	I'm done for.	29:40
	I'm a man of unclean lips.	29:42
	I dare not sing the holy holy holy.	29:45
	I live among a people of unclean lips.	29:51
	They dare not sing, holy holy, holy.	29:55
	And I have actually looked upon the Lord of hosts.	30:01
	There's nothing to do, but die.	30:07
	Isaiah had been brought up to believe	30:12
	that no man could look upon God and live.	30:15
	Doesn't say so in the law?	30:20
	Isaiah offered no prayer of confession.	30:25
	He spoke no plea for pardon.	30:30
	He asked for no forgiveness.	30:35
	He just described the situation	30:39
	and the awaited the carrying out of the death penalty.	30:43
	His number was up.	30:49
	And at that crisis moment,	30:54
	as he contrasted God's eternal glory and moral perfection	30:58
	with man's transient creatureliness	31:04
	and unoriginal hypocrisy,	31:09
	as he was scared to death by the awful holiness of God,	31:12
	that high and uplifted God off his own bat,	31:20
	of his own free will, gave this over odd shiverer,	31:27
	a dramatic sign of forgiveness and acceptance.	31:34
	One of the seraphim in Isaiah's mind's eye or ratio,	31:40
	one of the seraphim flew to him with a hot coal	31:47
	from the altar and touched his unclean lips with it.	31:52
	This cauterized his lips,	31:58
	so as to destroy the infection of sin.	32:02
	Now remember, for this is a primary importance,	32:07
	this was not in any way Isaiah's doing.	32:11
	He had literally done nothing, nothing at all	32:17
	to make God accepted him.	32:22
	God did it all.	32:24
	This is a pictorial way of describing	32:29
	the theological word, grace.	32:32
	God moved.	32:37
	God acted.	32:40
	God sent the seraphim.	32:42
	Isaiah was on the receiving end	32:46
	of the whole transaction free, gratis and for nothing.	32:48
	I think of the peace which must've come to him,	32:56
	reprieved from death.	33:00
	When he heard the words, look, this has touched your lips.	33:03
	your guilt is gone,	33:10
	your sin forgiven.	33:13
	Now there's one more verse, which we must look at.	33:20
	God speaks again and Isaiah answers.	33:25
	God does not address Isaiah directly.	33:30
	He asks his recurring question.	33:36
	"Whom shall I send as my spokesman?	33:41
	"Who would go for us as my representative?"	33:46
	And Isaiah wasted no words in answering,	33:52
	"I'm ready, send me."	33:58
	He meant it.	34:03
	He didn't become a priest.	34:06
	He became God's spokesman for 40 years in secular affairs,	34:09
	as unofficial Secretary of State for Judah	34:18
	with the slogan, No Entangling Alliances.	34:24
	About 2,500 years	34:31
	before Thomas Jefferson almost coined the phrase.	34:34
	Now that experience of Isaiah was not so utterly unique	34:42
	that it befell no one other than Isaiah.	34:50
	The experience of the living God	34:57
	who acts to make himself known to man	35:00
	is a recurring phenomenon.	35:05
	Prior to Isaiah and ever after,	35:08
	think of the names which can be linked	35:13
	with God who reveals himself.	35:16
	Adam in the garden.	35:20
	Abraham at the alter when he was about to sacrifice his son.	35:22
	Moses at the burning bush.	35:28
	Paul on the Damascus road.	35:31
	Grenfell of Labrador in a revival meeting in London.	35:35
	And Schweitzer of Africa in his bedroom in Alsace-Lorraine.	35:41
	Meister Eckhart, the German mystic around 1300 AD.	35:49
	Know then that God is bound to act.	35:56
	To pour himself out into thee,	36:02
	as soon as ever, he shall find thee ready.	36:05
	Finding thee ready, he is obliged to act.	36:09
	To overflow into thee.	36:14
	Finding thee ready he is obliged to act.	36:18
	To overflow into thee.	36:24
	Now Isaiah might modify that.	36:25
	God will even catch you when you don't expect it,	36:30
	For he is full of surprising moments.	36:39
	When God does manifest himself,	36:48
	a sensitive person may well react like Isaiah	36:52
	for he also realizes that God is holy	36:56
	in two senses of the word.	37:01
	He knows that man is the creature of time and of a day	37:04
	as contrasted with the eternal creator	37:10
	and he doesn't enjoy the contrast.	37:14
	He may be almost literally scared to death.	37:19
	F B Myers, the great Baptist preacher of London,	37:23
	once told a Western Glasgow congregation,	37:27
	"You want to come into the presence of God?	37:31
	"Don't be ridiculous.	37:35
	"In two minutes, you would be crying to get out.	37:38
	"You couldn't stand his glory."	37:43
	I was in my early teens,	37:48
	when I heard him say that.	37:51
	I've never forgotten it.	37:55
	It's not necessarily an enjoyable encounter	37:59
	to come face to face with the Living God.	38:02
	One has have to feel spiritually woozy.	38:07
	He may well wish to pass out, if not to die.	38:12
	At least he would call God, Sir.	38:17
	But there's a second sense of holy.	38:22
	It is a model perfection,	38:26
	which is hardly a man's normal state.	38:28
	Man is a sinner as well as a creature.	38:33
	So much of his life has been in rebellion against God	38:38
	or sometimes of his own free will.	38:42
	Sometimes because of misunderstanding,	38:46
	sometimes due to social pressure, cultural circumstances	38:50
	and political demand.	38:58
	He's aware in God's presence that that are dark places	39:00
	in his private and corporate existence,	39:05
	which are condemned in the focus gaze of God's perfection.	39:09
	The biographies of the saints are filled with this fact.	39:17
	And not always in a modeling fashion	39:22
	or in a self abusive fashion.	39:25
	And then in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye,	39:29
	the practice revealed,	39:34
	which so few of us accept willingly or believe seriously,	39:36
	that is we are on good terms with God	39:41
	if we genuinely want to be.	39:49
	Because that is what God wants.	39:54
	The dramatic self changing moment comes	40:01
	when a person discovers that to be right with God	40:05
	is not a matter of proving himself righteous,	40:09
	but of accepting as a sinner,	40:15
	the abounding grace of God.	40:19
	Martin Luther confirms this.	40:23
	He struggled to be right with God	40:26
	by fasting and self denial.	40:31
	He even wrote,	40:34
	if any man could have been saved by his monkery,	40:35
	I was that man.	40:42
	But he never felt saved.	40:45
	That is spiritually healthy.	40:48
	And then you read in St. Paul, that a man is saved by faith.	40:52
	Meaning what?	40:59
	By assenting to the almost unbelievable truth	41:02
	that God accepts a person just as he is.	41:07
	Why?	41:15
	Because that's God's nature.	41:18
	Ordinary Christians don't believe this.	41:22
	That's why they never become extraordinary Christian.	41:27
	This is grace.	41:34
	Grace abounding pressed down and running over.	41:36
	This is the good news of both testaments,	41:42
	of the Old as well as of the New.	41:46
	Now, if only the good news had stopped there,	41:51
	but it didn't.	41:56
	To grace abounding there has to be added grace demanding.	41:59
	It's not a matter of conscription	42:05
	of being drafted into some heavenly task for on earth,	42:08
	but there is a call for volunteers.	42:14
	Relaxation is not the culmination of the religious life.	42:19
	And man is not supposed to be at ease in Zion	42:26
	while he's still on this planet.	42:31
	One, doesn't go through such an experience as Isaiah's	42:34
	or Paul or Luther's in order to lugh	42:39
	Grace abounding is also grace which needs adherence	42:46
	to make it abound the more, here, there, everywhere.	42:50
	Overseas, amidst the down and out at home,	42:54
	in the legislatures,	42:58
	in a hospital ward,	43:00
	whom do we find there?	43:02
	Francis of Assisi, Santa Teresa, Lord Shaftesbury,	43:03
	Florence Nightingale, Albert Schweitzer, Alan Payton,	43:08
	and their disciples.	43:13
	Each of them found grace abounding and demanding.	43:15
	And perhaps Gladstone spoke for all of them,	43:22
	when he said the supreme task of statesmanship	43:26
	is to find out which way God is going	43:32
	during the next 50 years.	43:38
	The Supreme task of statesmanship is to find out	43:42
	which way God is going during the next 50 years.	43:48
	Now, these men and women found out	43:53
	and then went along.	43:58
	Do we need to spell out what Isaiah's vision	44:01
	in the temple means for us, or to us?	44:03
	God may reveal himself here	44:09
	for someone worshiping in this place.	44:13
	He may do it at the Sunday service of worship,	44:16
	through an anthem or a hymn,	44:20
	through a prayer or a lesson.	44:24
	Even through a sermon.	44:28
	He may do it through the sacrament of the Lord's Supper,	44:32
	which John Wesley described as converting ordinance,	44:36
	as well as a confirming ordinance.	44:43
	He may do it on any weekday	44:46
	when one of us is alone in the chapel gazing at the windows	44:49
	or the rear doors	44:54
	or the alter table.	44:57
	Should not surprise us	44:59
	that God may reveal himself in his house.	45:01
	It does suggest though,	45:07
	that we shouldn't be on tip toe with the expectation,	45:09
	ready for him.	45:14
	And yet, are we as honest as Isaiah	45:17
	about the kind of folk we are?	45:20
	About the kind of community in which we live?	45:23
	Or is the sin which doth so easily beset us,	45:28
	which makes us people of unclean lips.	45:32
	Anger, arrogant, carelessness,	45:36
	the unkind word.	45:43
	Or is it pride of past, racial clannishness,	45:46
	denominational tribalism, my country right or wrong?	45:54
	Let's turn over slowly in our minds every word	46:02
	of that phrase,	46:06
	the sin which doth so easily beset us.	46:08
	I'll place it under the eye of God.	46:24
	What's the result?	46:31
	We're lost.	46:34
	Fini.	46:37
	But thanks be to God, fini is not the last word	46:40
	in the encounter.	46:45
	The word we need in the first word he speaks is relax.	46:47
	Relax,	46:53
	yes, relax.	46:55
	Let us lay honest hold on the promise that God forgives,	46:58
	not because it's his job as the cynic said,	47:04
	but because it's his nature.	47:09
	He forgives, we accept.	47:12
	We take a long breath and say, thank you, sir.	47:16
	Then we unwind.	47:23
	We let the tension go out of it.	47:25
	We exhale, we smile	47:28
	and that's that.	47:32
	And this is the gospel,	47:35
	which most religious folk believe is too good to be true.	47:37
	Are you willing to risk it	47:45
	as Isaiah and Paul and Luther and Wesley did?	47:48
	A year from now an occasional person will rediscover it	47:56
	and then your life will be changed and fulfilled.	48:03
	What next?	48:09
	You know, a place of service.	48:10
	It should be determined by three things.	48:15
	First, the willingness to behave as God does.	48:19
	To forgive others.	48:26
	An awareness of a crying need.	48:29
	And an honest appraisal of our own abilities.	48:35
	God doesn't expect poets to be lab technicians	48:40
	or plumbers to be actors	48:46
	or nurses to be agricultural experts.	48:50
	He uses us with our own skills	48:54
	for service follows and forgiveness,	48:57
	if forgiveness is really understood.	49:01
	We know we are forgiven, how then should we answer?	49:06
	Here am I, thank God, send him.	49:11
	Or, here am I, thank you sir, send me.	49:17
	Grace abounding, grace demanding,	49:26
	this I think is what Isaiah was trying	49:30
	to tell his readers in the language	49:33
	of his pictorial imagination.	49:37
	This is the scripture	49:41
	which the choir sang to us two and a half millennia later.	49:42
	How do we respond?	49:50
	Does hymn 200, which we're about to sing,	49:53
	does that help us?	49:59
	John Haynes Hommes,	50:02
	one of new York's great ministers,	50:04
	in some ways the 20th century Isaiah,	50:07
	wrote this hymn as his contemporary understanding	50:14
	of here am I, send me.	50:20
	Let it be our sung prayer after the sermon.	50:27
	Hymn 200, stanzas one, three and four	50:33
	(organ music playing)	50:42
	(choir singing hymnal music)	51:22
	(faint organ music playing)	54:02
	(bright organ music playing)	56:36
	(faint organ music playing)	57:19
	(bright organ music playing)	58:23
-	Almighty God,	59:38
	we have heard thy voice saying,	59:40
	"Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"	59:42
	And we stand here facing the altar,	59:47
	the symbol of thy presence,	59:49
	and we answer here is our body, send it.	59:52
	We also say, here are we send us.	59:56
	Now give us grace to mean it,	1:00:03
	through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	1:00:05
	O God, we are here at the end of this service of worship,	1:00:13
	and at the beginning of going out	1:00:18
	for a service of witnessing again,	1:00:21
	grant us thy piece as we go to witness,	1:00:24
	through Jesus Christ our Lord.	1:00:27
	(choir singing)	1:00:32
	(choir singing faintly)	1:01:17
	(church bell tolling)	1:01:39
	(organ music playing)	1:01:55

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "Grace Abounding; Grace Demanding" (January 18, 1970)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4t14zq87

Date:

January 18, 1970

Speaker:

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

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0506
ref6217_y5s
uachapelsermaud
duke:628006
dcrau002496
ark:/87924/r4t14zq87
58e12ca8-c028-42f8-a95b-08d2ec302811

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

See below

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.

Sponsor:

Sponsor this Digital Collection

James T. Cleland - "Grace Abounding; Grace Demanding" (January 18, 1970)

Transcript

Item Info

1. James T. Cleland - "Grace Abounding; Grace Demanding" (January 18, 1970)

Duke University Archives

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James T. Cleland - "Grace Abounding; Grace Demanding" (January 18, 1970)

Transcript

Item Info

Related Item

Duke University Archives

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