James T. Cleland - "The Unattractiveness of Jesus" (July 9, 1972)

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-	Matched by our own performance.	0:05
	We have expected to find goodness in our environment	0:10
	without being good ourselves.	0:14
	We have taken for granted	0:17
	that the fruits of labor should be ours	0:19
	without our laboring.	0:22
	We have sought a reap where we have not sowed.	0:24
	We have tried to extract the outward symbols of an	0:29
	education from our schools without a thorough	0:32
	dedication to learning.	0:35
	We have sometimes been unwilling to pay	0:38
	the price of what we demand.	0:41
	We have expected to receive friendship without giving it.	0:44
	We have whined when we did not receive kindness.	0:49
	We have often been unkind to ourselves.	0:53
	Even now we expect political conventions to manufacturer	0:57
	national leaders who can solve all the nation's problems,	1:01
	but we have not done all the things which can only be done	1:06
	by us in solving the country's ills.	1:10
	We have complained about your church, oh God.	1:15
	And have declared that it was irrelevant that we have stayed	1:17
	away from its services and have failed to volunteer	1:22
	to do what we could and should have done to help the church	1:25
	do its job and be faithful to its master.	1:29
	We have pretended that we don't live in a moral universe	1:34
	where we get what we give,	1:38
	but as we think about it now, Lord,	1:42
	it seems pretty stupid	1:45
	and really quite wrong.	1:47
	Forgive us, take away our sin,	1:50
	give us a fresh start and better intelligence.	1:55
	Give us a sense of fairness and the grace to live by it	2:00
	for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.	2:05
	Why is it that we pray to God confessing our sins	2:14
	and asking for forgiveness.	2:19
	As Christians, we do this because he has asked us to do it,	2:22
	and has held out for us a very tantalizing	2:30
	and wonderful promise.	2:33
	God so loved the world, the scriptures say,	2:37
	that he gave his only begotten son that	2:41
	whoever believes on him should not perish,	2:45
	but have everlasting life.	2:50
	This is indeed good news, and we call it by a word	2:54
	that used to mean good news, the gospel.	2:57
	And because of this good news, we are grateful.	3:03
	Let us express our gratitude to God by turning to number 609	3:08
	in the Salter section of our hymnal.	3:13
	Act of praise number 609, which is entitled,	3:18
	"Blessed, be the Lord, God of Israel."	3:21
	We will pray together responsively.	3:26
	Blessed be the Lord, God of Israel	3:31
	for he has visited and redeemed his people.	3:34
	And hath the raised up a mighty salvation for us	3:39
	in the house of his servant, David.	3:43
	As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets,	3:46
	which have been since the world began	3:49
	that we should be saved from our enemies.	3:53
	And from the hand of all that hate us,	3:57
	to perform the mercy promised to our forefathers	4:00
	and to remember his holy covenant,	4:04
	to perform the oath which he swear	4:07
	to our forefather Abraham that he would give us	4:09
	that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies.	4:14
	I'd serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness	4:18
	before him all the days of our life.	4:23
	And thou child shall be called the prophet of the highest	4:28
	or the how shall go before the face of the Lord	4:31
	to prepare his ways to give knowledge of salvation	4:35
	unto his people for the remission of their sins.	4:40
	Through the tender mercy of our God	4:44
	whereby the day spring from on high have visited us.	4:48
	To give light to them that sit in darkness	4:52
	and in the shadow of death	4:55
	and to guide our feet into the way of peace.	4:57
	(calm organ music begins)	5:04
	(choir begins singing)	6:01
	(choir continues singing in Latin)	7:44
	Let us hear the word of God.	8:23
	First, in the old Testament.	8:27
	The book of the prophet Isaiah,	8:30
	the 53rd chapter at the beginning.	8:33
	Who has believed what we have heard	8:41
	and to whom has the arm of the lord been revealed?	8:45
	But he grew up before him like a young plant	8:50
	and like a root out of dry ground.	8:54
	He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him.	8:59
	And no beauty that we should desire him.	9:06
	He was despised and rejected by men,	9:12
	a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.	9:16
	And as one from whom men hide their faces,	9:22
	he was despised	9:26
	and we esteemed him not.	9:29
	Surely he has borne	9:34
	our griefs	9:37
	and carried	9:39
	our sorrows.	9:41
	Yet we esteemed him stricken	9:43
	smitten by God	9:47
	and afflicted,	9:49
	but he was wounded for our transgressions.	9:52
	He was bruised for our iniquities	9:56
	upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,	10:01
	and with his stripes,	10:07
	we are healed.	10:09
	All we like sheep have gone astray.	10:12
	We have turned every one to his own way.	10:14
	And the Lord has laid on him, the iniquity of us all.	10:18
	He was oppressed and he was afflicted,	10:24
	yet he opened not his mouth,	10:28
	like a lamb that is led to the slaughter	10:31
	and like a sheep that before it shearers is dumb.	10:34
	So he opened not his mouth.	10:37
	By oppression and judgment, he was taken away	10:42
	and as for his generation,	10:46
	who consider that he was	10:50
	caught off out of the land of the living	10:52
	stricken for the transgression of my people.	10:55
	And they made his grave with the wicked	10:59
	and with a rich man in his death.	11:02
	Although he had done no violence	11:07
	and there was no deceit in his mouth.	11:11
	And in the new Testament,	11:17
	in the gospel according to Saint Matthew,	11:19
	the 18th chapter at verse 15,	11:23
	Jesus is speaking.	11:26
	If your brother sins against you,	11:30
	go and tell him his fault	11:34
	between you and him alone.	11:38
	If he listens to you, you have gained your proper.	11:43
	But if he does not listen,	11:50
	take one or two others along with you that every word may be	11:52
	confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.	11:57
	If he refuses to listen to them,	12:03
	tell it to the church.	12:08
	And if he refuses to listen, even to the church,	12:11
	let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.	12:17
	And Peter came up and said to Jesus,	12:24
	"Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me,	12:27
	and I forgive him,	12:33
	as many as seven times?"	12:36
	Jesus said to Peter,	12:42
	"I do not say to you seven times,	12:44
	but 70 times seven."	12:50
	amen.	12:56
	Here, end the morning lesson.	12:57
	(organ music begins)	13:02
	(choir begins singing in Latin)	13:10
	The Lord be with you	13:47
-	(congregation) And also with you.	13:49
-	(Pastor) Let us pray.	13:52
	Almighty God, our heavenly father.	14:03
	We come before your throne of mercy and grace and gifts	14:07
	to ask for blessings, which we need in our lives.	14:13
	We need the routine customary blessings of air to breathe	14:19
	food to eat, rest when we are weary,	14:23
	enlightenment for our minds, friendship for our hearts.	14:28
	We need blessings for unusual experiences	14:35
	that we do not encounter every day,	14:38
	but which we do encounter sometime in our lives.	14:41
	We pray that unusually bright accomplishments	14:46
	may not make us vain.	14:51
	That unexpected disappointments may not break our spirits.	14:54
	That unexpected and even unwanted new truth	15:00
	found in the laboratory, or the library, or the classroom	15:05
	may not too greatly confuse us.	15:10
	We pray that broken human relationships may not discourage	15:15
	us, nor make us forget our relationship to Jesus Christ.	15:19
	In our times of testing, may we not only be faithful,	15:26
	but may we learn what those times have to teach us.	15:31
	Keep us, oh God, from ever assuming that	15:38
	this is just another day,	15:41
	that this is just another hour, just another year.	15:45
	Keep us from presuming that our teachers	15:53
	are supposed to do for us what we should do for ourselves.	15:56
	Keep us as a university from presuming that a national	16:02
	reputation is as important as teaching individual students.	16:07
	Oh God, we come also to pray for our fellows,	16:16
	to pray for our friends,	16:21
	pray for our enemies.	16:24
	We come asking for grace	16:27
	to be given to those who have lost	16:31
	their sense of self-respect.	16:33
	Who do not respect themselves.	16:37
	May they be given the grace, which they need.	16:42
	We come praying for those who are so sick	16:47
	that they oppose all change in society.	16:51
	We intercede for those	16:57
	who are so sick	17:01
	that they feel they must destroy	17:04
	all order and all institutions.	17:06
	We pray for those who have not yet found anything to worship	17:11
	greater than themselves.	17:15
	We pray for those who could not join in our prayer of	17:20
	Thanksgiving a while ago because they are not grateful	17:24
	for the blessings which they have.	17:28
	We ask that they may learn the extent of their dependence	17:33
	upon their fellow man and upon you	17:36
	for everything which they have and enjoy.	17:41
	Oh God, we pray for all of the people	17:46
	now quiet before you here in this chapel	17:51
	for all of the people who are worshiping	17:56
	in other churches or chapels.	17:59
	And for all of the people who deny that you even exist,	18:03
	for we all need you in some special way.	18:09
	And we pray that we all may find you even more than we find	18:13
	your blessings.	18:18
	But most of all	18:21
	we pray that we may have the spirit of prayer	18:22
	which was given to us by your son,	18:27
	Jesus, when he taught us.	18:29
	And we pray to say our father who art in heaven,	18:32
	hallowed, be thy name, thy kingdom come,	18:36
	thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.	18:40
	Give us this day, our daily bread	18:45
	and forgive us, our trespasses.	18:48
	As we forgive those who trespass against us.	18:51
	And lead us not into temptation,	18:55
	but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom	18:57
	and the power and the glory forever,	19:01
	Amen.	19:05
	The grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ be with us all.	19:29
	When I was a boy in Glasgow,	19:38
	long, long ago,	19:42
	there hung in our living room	19:47
	a large print of a painting by Sigismund Goetze	19:49
	entitled, "Despised and Rejected".	19:56
	I know nothing about the artist.	20:02
	I know nothing about the merits of the painting.	20:07
	But I have never forgotten its subject.	20:13
	In the center was Jesus the Christ	20:19
	bound to a Roman altar,	20:23
	overshadowed by an angel	20:27
	with the Goetzemini Cup.	20:30
	On each side of the altar, there streamed by	20:35
	a procession of men and women	20:38
	in modern dress.	20:42
	Here was a political agitator and there a common laborer.	20:45
	Here a sportsman with the latest edition of the	20:52
	newspaper, and there a scientists with his test tube.	20:55
	A newsboy shouted the latest society scandal,	21:02
	and a woman went by in widow's weeds.	21:07
	A soldier in uniform	21:12
	and a clergyman,	21:15
	replete with clerical color,	21:18
	stalked along in unconscious company.	21:22
	Only one person had stopped	21:27
	with any look of surprise	21:32
	or wonder	21:36
	or sympathy for the Christ,	21:39
	a nurse,	21:43
	a nurse.	21:46
	Now, what is the picture say?	21:48
	Is it not that for the artist	21:53
	Christ is still despised	21:55
	and rejected	21:58
	by most folk	22:01
	in the every day workaday world?	22:03
	Now that's a little hard to believe.	22:08
	For example, think of the church named for him.	22:12
	Church membership in the United States is still the concern	22:17
	of millions of people.	22:22
	Congregations love such hymns and anthems as	22:26
	"Ferris Lord Jesus", "Jesus Shall Reign",	22:30
	"All Hail the Power of Jesus Name".	22:35
	Books on Jesus are legion	22:40
	and often bestsellers,	22:43
	and think of the Jesus movement among teenagers	22:48
	on our own campus	22:54
	and Explo'72 in Dallas	22:57
	last month.	23:01
	The Jesus generation,	23:03
	the Jesus kids,	23:06
	the Jesus people.	23:09
	And we thank God for the congregations and the hymns	23:12
	and the books and the youngsters.	23:16
	Yet the artist's viewpoint is also true.	23:22
	He was despised and rejected of men,	23:27
	a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.	23:31
	He was despised and we esteemed him not.	23:36
	Now, these words were not penned originally	23:40
	to describe Jesus,	23:45
	but it was a wise elderly Christian,	23:48
	maybe Peter, who applied them to Jesus.	23:53
	It may have been an illegitimate use of scripture,	23:58
	but it was effective and long lasting.	24:02
	For many Christians, Jesus does fulfill Isaiah 53.	24:07
	The unattractiveness of Jesus was, and is a fact.	24:14
	It may be a deplorable fact, but it is an authentic fact.	24:20
	That was driven home to me one day, some years ago,	24:26
	with some American friends I had taken refuge from the	24:30
	inevitable and relentless Scottish reign	24:35
	in the Episcopal Cathedral	24:40
	on the island of Cumbria in Scotland.	24:42
	Noticing a crucifix on the altar instead of a cross,	24:46
	one low churchman began to complain	24:51
	volubly and vigorously.	24:56
	He was silenced by the remark of another.	25:00
	The crucifix is the symbol	25:06
	of our modern civilization,	25:10
	not an empty cross.	25:14
	That may be the symbol of the church's resurrection faith.	25:16
	But a crucifix, the symbol of what the world did	25:22
	and does to Jesus.	25:27
	Despised and rejected, a man of sorrows	25:31
	acquainted with grief,	25:36
	so very unattractive.	25:38
	Now, why?	25:43
	Well, one reason is familiarity.	25:46
	That is a danger besetting folk like us	25:50
	church goers.	25:55
	It's the temptation that threatens the average Christian.	25:58
	Familiarity does not always breed contempt,	26:03
	but it may beget indifference.	26:08
	That is the risk that Jesus runs with us	26:13
	who come to divine worship.	26:17
	We hear about him so much, that our appreciative sense	26:21
	may be dulled, atrophied.	26:26
	We may become numb and insensitive to the things that	26:30
	pertain to the Christ.	26:34
	He's a name,	26:36
	a religious name,	26:39
	a Sunday name.	26:42
	The routine of church lulls us into an apathy.	26:44
	Now that is partly the fault of the pulpit	26:49
	as can be seen in this instance, related in one of the Yale	26:53
	lectures on preaching,	26:57
	a minister recognizes	27:01
	the most regular attendant at the worship service,	27:02
	a hard working washer woman,	27:07
	who Sunday after Sunday was observed in her pew.	27:11
	He wanted to find the reason for such fidelity,	27:17
	and so asked, "Is it that you enjoy the beautiful music?"	27:21
	And she answered "No, it's not that."	27:28
	Then he tried, "Perhaps you enjoy my sermons."	27:35
	And she answered, "No, it's not that."	27:39
	Stupid question and a worthy answer.	27:45
	"Then what brings you here every week?"	27:50
	She said, "Well, it's like this.	27:54
	I work hard all week	27:57
	and it's no often I get such a comfortable seat	28:01
	with so little to think about."	28:05
	That's partly the cause.	28:10
	The pulpit often gives the pew so little to think about,	28:13
	but it's partly the fault of the pew.	28:18
	You don't expect anything unusual.	28:21
	Therefore you settle down to thole the sermon.	28:26
	Now thole is a Scott's word that means	28:31
	to endure quietly, but steadily.	28:34
	Or you plan next week's affairs.	28:40
	I knew a headmaster's wife who commented to me once,	28:43
	"I love our preacher."	28:47
	Well I said, "Listen, he isn't any good."	28:49
	She said, "Oh, that doesn't worry me,	28:50
	but he preaches for 30 minutes.	28:52
	And in those 30 minutes I can plan the entire work	28:54
	of the school for the next week.	28:56
	I never miss church."	28:58
	Just an old, old story.	29:01
	You weren't particularly excited about what a six year old	29:03
	called this Jesus stuff.	29:06
	Oh, of course we wouldn't kill him	29:10
	as the Roman and Jewish authorities did.	29:13
	We must accept him indifferently or semis eria.	29:16
	Studdert Kennedy, the English propheteer,	29:22
	was worried by that fact and he wrote some verses on it.	29:24
	"When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged him on a tree.	29:30
	They drove the nails through hands and feet	29:36
	and made a Calvary.	29:39
	They crowned him with a crown of thorns	29:42
	red where his wounds went deep	29:45
	for these were crude and cruel days	29:49
	and human life was cheap.	29:53
	When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed him by.	29:58
	They never hurt a hair of him.	30:04
	They only let him die.	30:07
	For men had grown more tender	30:09
	and they would not give him pain.	30:11
	They only just passed out in the street	30:14
	and left him in the rain.	30:17
	Still, Jesus cried, forgive them,	30:20
	for they know not what they do.	30:24
	And still it rained the wintry rain	30:28
	that drenched him through and through.	30:31
	The crowds went home and left the streets	30:34
	without a soul to see.	30:37
	And Jesus crouched against a wall	30:40
	and cried	30:45
	for Calvary."	30:47
	What can we do about it?	30:50
	What's the remedy for this indifferent familiarity?	30:52
	To state it simple, get to know him.	30:56
	Read the gospels, but forget about the king James version.	31:03
	Read modern translations.	31:08
	Read the New Testament in a foreign language.	31:11
	You will be shocked and shaken	31:15
	by the pungency of much that we never really heard before.	31:19
	Read the lives of Jesus, there are all kinds.	31:26
	Orthodox and heretical, literary and historical,	31:29
	fictitious and critical, Jewish and Christian,	31:34
	psychological studies and environmental studies.	31:39
	There must be one which will interest you.	31:45
	And that will lead you to another.	31:49
	There will be a chain reaction.	31:51
	Read the plays about him.	31:54
	Family Portrait, Good Friday,	31:57
	The Trial of Jesus,	32:01
	The Man Born to be King,	32:04
	Jesus Christ Superstar.	32:07
	They may replace casual familiarity with appreciation	32:11
	and a sense of wonder because Jesus	32:16
	was full of surprising moments.	32:19
	There's another reason for the unattractiveness of Jesus,	32:25
	the intellectual problems that are interwoven with the	32:29
	church's estimate of him.	32:34
	This is an inevitable difficulty for thinking young people.	32:37
	It's probably due to their, to your mental age,	32:44
	especially here in college, where the intellect is,	32:48
	at least in theory, given primacy.	32:52
	A university community is expected to think.	32:57
	We're even trained to think.	33:01
	Life is an intellectual puzzle to be solved by reason.	33:04
	Therefore we doubt,	33:08
	we doubt.	33:12
	That's one of the privileges of being a matriculated student	33:13
	or a faculty member.	33:17
	And the first result of thought is destruction.	33:20
	Plato described the young philosopher as a puppy dog,	33:25
	tearing things to pieces.	33:30
	Now usually religion stands the major	33:33
	shock of the onslaught,	33:38
	and it does not always withstand.	33:41
	And this attitude is aided and abetted by the critical	33:45
	scholarly approach to the Bible.	33:49
	To the books of which it's composed	33:52
	to the history in which it is set	33:54
	to the characters of its men and women,	33:57
	and Jesus does not escape.	34:00
	Moreover, the language of the creeds,	34:04
	in endeavoring to interpret him is, for many of us,	34:07
	out of date, incomprehensible,	34:10
	self-contradictory, and unintelligible.	34:14
	That's a common estimate and it's not altogether wrong.	34:20
	Listen to this comment on the Chalcedonian Formula	34:24
	of 451 AD.	34:29
	The formula in which a council of the church	34:32
	sought to express its reasoned opinion	34:36
	of Jesus the Christ	34:41
	and his relation to God.	34:43
	This is the comment,	34:46
	"It mirrors with accuracy	34:49
	what the church wanted to say.	34:51
	Though in terms which could not	34:55
	successfully embody its fate.	34:58
	To the logical mind, it sounds like distilled nonsense.	35:01
	There the phrases stand side by side in all their	35:08
	seeming contradiction and glorious incredibility.	35:12
	Perfect in deity and perfect in humanity,	35:17
	acknowledged in two natures without confusion,	35:21
	without change, without division, without separation.	35:24
	Not divided or separated into two persons,	35:28
	but one in the same son and only begotten god log us	35:31
	Lord Jesus Christ.	35:35
	It's as though the fathers were determined to affirm	35:38
	their certainties at whatever humiliation to reason.	35:41
	One begins to understand why a French philosopher is	35:48
	reported to have said	35:51
	that metaphysics is the art	35:53
	of bewildering yourself logically.	35:56
	Now the remedy here is to bring understanding to bear on the	36:02
	language of the creeds.	36:06
	We need to know the Greek philosophic vocabulary in which	36:08
	the church tried to clothe the Testament of Jesus.	36:12
	Moreover, we should try to discover why the church	36:17
	said such seemingly contradictory things about him.	36:22
	Perhaps it was because	36:28
	he was apprehended	36:31
	spiritually by them,	36:34
	but not comprehended intellectually by them.	36:38
	The creeds are symbol of the churches	36:44
	wandering gratitude before the fact of Jesus,	36:48
	who seemed to be too great to be measured	36:53
	in terms less than divine.	36:57
	And yet was certainly human.	37:00
	We grasp that, we will begin to understand	37:04
	and even allow for the confusion of statement.	37:06
	I think the creeds of the church are like frozen foot.	37:09
	They are neither palatable, nor digestible	37:16
	'til they're thawed out.	37:20
	So we must bring warmth to our analysis.	37:23
	The warmth of sympathy, of insight,	37:28
	of a willing effort to understand with humbleness.	37:32
	Then we may begin to appreciate the kind of person	37:38
	Jesus Christ was.	37:42
	Who caused such elevated confusion of statement	37:46
	to be made about him	37:50
	because he was such an unusual fact.	37:53
	But there's a third, and the last reason for	37:59
	the unattractiveness of Jesus.	38:01
	The ethical difficulties that confront his followers,	38:04
	or would be disciples.	38:11
	There are some folk who are afraid to	38:14
	admit that they cannot understand Jesus ethical teaching.	38:15
	Do you know why?	38:21
	They miss a legalism.	38:22
	They object to the amount of interpretation left to them.	38:26
	Do you know how Saint Agustin summed up Christian ethics?	38:32
	Love God and do what you like.	38:37
	Now that's just a source of bewilderment	38:42
	to the average person.	38:44
	They much prefer thou shalt not,	38:46
	with heavy emphasis on the negative.	38:51
	What would Jesus do?	38:55
	That's not easy of answer because on the lowest estimate,	38:58
	he showed marks of genius and genius is hard to take down.	39:03
	There are others who understand the teaching,	39:10
	but don't know how to follow it.	39:14
	As the world is set up,	39:19
	there's a clash of loyalties, both good.	39:21
	I talked about this two weeks ago.	39:24
	In a debate in the house of Lords,	39:27
	regarding a divorce bill,	39:30
	an Archbishop of Canterbury is reported to have said,	39:33
	"As a Christian, I'm against it.	39:38
	As an Englishman, I'm for it.	39:44
	Therefore I shall not vote."	39:48
	Now that is the raw material of tragedy.	39:52
	When two rights, both beloved,	39:57
	are in conflict.	40:01
	Sensitively and honestly the Archbishop realized	40:03
	that Christian and Englishman are not necessarily synonyms.	40:07
	The remedy is to admit the truth in the criticisms,	40:14
	but to go beyond them.	40:17
	Course, Jesus' ethical teaching is hard to understand.	40:19
	That's because he doesn't begin by instructing the reason,	40:24
	he begins by converting the soul.	40:29
	We must be in sympathy with these insights about the	40:35
	fatherhood of God, sonship of the believer,	40:37
	the possible brotherhood of man,	40:42
	the control of the indwelling spirit,	40:45
	before we begin to understand the attitudes	40:49
	or the rest of the Sermon on the Mount,	40:53
	which someone has described as	40:57
	a post graduate course in ethics.	40:58
	It is in theory through faith that one comes	41:04
	to understand and exemplify love.	41:08
	In theory, doctrine is prior to ethical action.	41:12
	Of course Jesus ethical teaching is hard to follow,	41:18
	it's led in the past to crucifixion, beheading, hanging.	41:24
	Now that's not a pleasant pot.	41:29
	That's a basic conflict between the church and the world	41:33
	that you and I live in both at the same time,	41:37
	partly in this, partly in that.	41:42
	Therefore like the Archbishop we compromise,	41:45
	but let us admit that we compromise	41:48
	and not pretend that our acts, any act,	41:53
	are in basic harmony with the ethical demands of our muster.	41:58
	We've just got to go on studying him and learning from him.	42:05
	Isn't that the meaning behind Jesus' answer	42:09
	to Peter's question?	42:13
	"Lord, how often does my brother to sin against me	42:15
	and be forgiven, up to seven times?"	42:20
	Now that's quite a lot.	42:24
	You try to forgive your roommate up to seven times.	42:27
	You'll probably change your roommate unless you're married.	42:29
	Even then you may.	42:33
	I used to think that Peter was niggardly on this point,	42:37
	but now I'm not so sure.	42:40
	What did Jesus answer, seven times?	42:42
	I say 70 times seven.	42:45
	Now Jesus is not advising that we forgive 490 times	42:49
	and then get down to business on the 491st.	42:54
	What he's suggesting is the need for that spontaneity of	43:00
	action which comes from cultivation.	43:06
	That spontaneity of action which comes from cultivation	43:11
	until the spirit of Christ is formed in us.	43:17
	And we almost automatically act as he would.	43:22
	Do you see what all this comes out?	43:24
	The reason for the unattractiveness of Jesus	43:28
	is not primarily found in him,	43:32
	but in his followers.	43:36
	And his interpreters.	43:38
	It's we who bear the name of Christ who are in the main	43:41
	responsible for his rejection.	43:45
	Jesus can still attract hope.	43:49
	Listen to George Bernard Shaw, of all people,	43:52
	talking about Jesus.	43:56
	This man has not been a failure yet,	43:59
	for nobody has ever been sane enough to try his way	44:05
	But he has had one quaint triumph.	44:11
	We've always had a curious feeling that	44:16
	though we've crucified Christ on a stick.	44:20
	He somehow managed to get hold of the right end of it.	44:25
	And that if we were better men, we might try his plan.	44:30
	If we were better men, there's the rub.	44:37
	If we weren't so extraordinarily ordinary	44:41
	about the things of Christ,	44:44
	if we weren't so vaguely inaccurate about	44:47
	what we believe concerning him,	44:50
	if we went so consistently ambiguous	44:54
	about our following him,	44:57
	if we were better men and women.	45:00
	He is despised and rejected chiefly because of us.	45:04
	His avowed followers.	45:10
	That need not be.	45:14
	He could be honored and accepted in part because of us.	45:16
	If we would allow him to reveal himself in us,	45:25
	through our careful knowledge of him,	45:30
	our intelligent understanding of him,	45:33
	and our devoted following of him.	45:38
	Let us pray.	45:44
	Almighty God who has called us through Jesus Christ to be	45:47
	thy sons and daughters.	45:51
	Give us so to know Christ in his life	45:54
	at the same mind which was in him,	45:58
	may be in us also,	46:01
	through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord,	46:04
	Amen.	46:10
	(organ music begins)	46:13
	(congregation begins singing)	46:40
	(organ continues playing)	48:23
	(choir begins singing in Latin)	49:14
	(organ continues playing)	54:01
	(congregation begins singing)	54:51
-	(congregation) ♪ Hallelujah, Hallelujah	55:03
	♪ Hallelujah, Hallelujah ♪	55:23
	♪ Hallelujah, Hallelujah ♪	55:29
	♪ Amen ♪	55:45
-	(Pastor) All mighty God, we present ourselves	55:56
	and these offerings before your altar,	55:58
	praying that together,	56:02
	they might make a witness for Jesus that will be winsome and	56:04
	effective in this needy hour in which we live by your grace.	56:10
	Amen.	56:17
	Now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with us all.	56:22
-	(choir) ♪ Amen	56:32
	♪ Amen ♪	56:37
	♪ Amen ♪	56:40
	♪ Amen ♪	56:44
	♪ Amen ♪	56:54
	♪ Amen ♪	57:02
	♪ Amen ♪	57:15
	(church bell begins ringing)	57:29
	(organ begins playing)	57:50

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "The Unattractiveness of Jesus" (July 9, 1972)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4xw4cx31

Date:

July 9, 1972

Speaker:

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

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0625
ref6453_gxi
uachapelsermaud
duke:627990
dcrau002610
ark:/87924/r4xw4cx31
038513be-c22d-469d-b9f6-39efb4b35f15

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

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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:

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In Copyright

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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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James T. Cleland - "The Unattractiveness of Jesus" (July 9, 1972)

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1. James T. Cleland - "The Unattractiveness of Jesus" (July 9, 1972)

Duke University Archives

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James T. Cleland - "The Unattractiveness of Jesus" (July 9, 1972)

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Duke University Archives

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