Carlyle Marney - "As Fools Die" (October 14, 1973)

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	(choir sings)	0:05
	(bright organ-pipe music)	1:23
	(choir sings)	1:58
-	Our Lord has said,	6:01
	if anyone comes to me,	6:05
	I will in no way cast him or her out.	6:09
	Created in the image of God we have often failed	6:17
	to live up to our potential.	6:21
	In the presence of others like us,	6:25
	in the company of this supportive fellowship of worshipers,	6:30
	Let us now confess our sins to God, and to one another,	6:36
	Let us pray.	6:43
	Oh Lord, we come before you in the knowledge	6:46
	that we do not love you above all things.	6:49
	We do not cherish the beauty of your world,	6:53
	but literate with ugliness.	6:57
	We do not use the power you gave us over your creation	7:00
	to preserve and protect it,	7:04
	but to pave it over with monuments,	7:07
	to our own selfish achievements.	7:09
	You have given us the will to shape our lives	7:13
	and our institutions to serve all peoples.	7:17
	But we have advocated the power and greed.	7:21
	We turn to you now away from our mistakes and seek mercy	7:25
	for not knowing and for knowing what we do.	7:31
	We implore you whose nature and whose name is love	7:37
	to forgive us, us and in forgiving to heal us,	7:42
	so that in our lives, something will finally be changed.	7:46
	Amen.	7:51
	Let us continue with our personal prayers of confession.	7:53
	I say to you,	8:19
	by the witness of the Word and the church through the ages,	8:22
	you are accepted as you are.	8:25
	Your life does have some ultimate significance	8:29
	in this world.	8:34
	Your life is good as it is given.	8:37
	Your future is open.	8:42
	Receive every moment of it	8:45
	as God's good gift to you.	8:48
	Let us pray now as you find it in the bulletin.	8:55
	The prayer our Lord has given us praying,	8:59
All	Our Father who is in heaven,	9:03
	may all men come to respect and love you.	9:07
	May you rule in every heart and in all of life.	9:11
	Give us us day by day the things of life we need,	9:15
	forgive us, our sins like we forgive everyone	9:20
	who has done us wrong.	9:24
	Let nothing test us beyond our strength.	9:26
	Save us from our weaknesses,	9:30
	for yours is the authority, the power and the glory forever,	9:33
	Amen.	9:39
	(Soft organ-pipe music)	9:42
	♪ Holy, holy ♪	10:30
	♪ Holy ♪	10:37
	♪ Holy is the Lord ♪	10:44
	♪ Holy, holy ♪	10:58
	♪ Holy ♪	11:04
	♪ Holy is the Lord ♪	11:11
	♪ He is holy ♪	11:25
	♪ Forever more ♪	11:37
	♪ I will my praise ♪	11:50
	♪ Him more ♪	11:55
	♪ I will praise ♪	12:01
	♪ His name ♪	12:06
	♪ Holy, holy ♪	12:14
	♪ Holy ♪	12:20
	♪ Holy is the Lord ♪	12:28
	♪ Holy, holy ♪	12:42
	♪ Holy ♪	12:48
	♪ Holy is ♪	12:56
	♪ The Lord ♪	13:01
	♪ Lord I will praise ♪	13:10
	♪ Him more ♪	13:14
	♪ Holy, holy ♪	13:32
	♪ Holy ♪	13:38
	♪ Holy is the Lord ♪	13:46
-	Let us open our hearts and minds to the Word of God.	14:21
	The scripture this morning is taken from	14:26
	the third chapter of second Samuel versus 31 through 34.	14:29
	And the second chapter of first Kings.	14:35
	"Then David said to Joab and to all people	14:42
	who were with him,	14:47
	rend your clothes and gird on sack cloth,	14:49
	and mourn before Abner.	14:55
	And king David followed the bier.	14:58
	They buried Abner at Hebron,	15:03
	and the king lifted up his voice	15:06
	and wept at the grave of Abner, and all the people wept.	15:10
	And the king lamented for Abner saying,	15:18
	'should Abner die as a fool dies?	15:22
	Your hands were not bound.	15:27
	Your feet were not fettered.	15:31
	As one falls before the wicked you have fallen.'	15:35
	And all the people wept again over him."	15:40
	"When David's time drew near,	15:49
	he charged Solomon, his son saying,	15:52
	I am about to go the way of all the earth.	15:57
	You know, also what Joab the son of Zeruiah did to me,	16:03
	how he dealt with the two commanders	16:10
	of the armies of Israel.	16:13
	Abner, the son of Ner,	16:15
	and Amasa the son of Jether,	16:18
	whom he murdered avenging in time of peace,	16:22
	blood which had been shed in war,	16:27
	and putting innocent blood	16:31
	upon the girdle about my loins,	16:34
	and upon the sandals on my feet.	16:37
	Act therefore according to your wisdom,	16:41
	but do not let his head go down to sheal in peace."	16:45
	Here ends the morning lesson.	16:53
	(bright organ-pipe music)	16:56
	(choir sings)	17:05
-	Together, let us affirm our faith.	17:37
All	We are not alone, we live in God's world.	17:42
	We believe in God who has created and is creating,	17:47
	who has come in the true man, Jesus,	17:52
	to reconcile and make new,	17:55
	who works in us and others by His spirit.	17:58
	We trust Him.	18:02
	He calls us to be in his church	18:03
	to celebrate his presence, to love and serve others,	18:06
	to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus crucified	18:11
	and risen, our judge and our hope,	18:17
	in life, in death, in life beyond death,	18:21
	God is with us, we are not alone,	18:25
	we believe in God, thanks be to God.	18:29
-	The Lord be with you.	18:36
Congregation	And with the spirit.	18:37
-	Let us pray.	18:39
	Oh God, our father, we thank and praise you for a new day.	18:51
	And a new time of worship in this place of beauty,	18:58
	of inspiration and of fellowship.	19:01
	We thank you for the life that stirs within each of us.	19:06
	For this beautiful world into which we go and in which move.	19:12
	For the work and the study you have given us to do	19:18
	for our friends and families.	19:25
	For music and books and good company,	19:29
	and all the good pleasures in life.	19:34
	Here our prayer we offer for others.	19:40
	We pray, oh God,	19:45
	for those in whom the pulse of life grows weak.	19:50
	For the sick, who miss the brightness of the day,	19:56
	and the moon light of the night.	20:02
	For the overworked, who take no time to relax	20:08
	and have no joy in leisure.	20:13
	For the unemployed, who have no labor,	20:18
	who have no joy of labor.	20:23
	In particular in this moment, oh God,	20:28
	We raise our prayers for peace in the Middle East.	20:34
	We do not understand all the complexities	20:41
	which cause war to be waged there.	20:44
	But we do understand that war is hell.	20:49
	That war brings death pain, brokenness,	20:54
	widows, and orphans.	21:01
	Help us to cry peace, peace,	21:06
	and someday, oh, God defined that there is peace.	21:10
	Also, oh God,	21:18
	in the confusion of leadership which has become our country,	21:23
	may your will of truth and justice	21:31
	and righteousness become clear	21:36
	to our leaders.	21:42
	And may they follow your will.	21:46
	Hear oh, God our prayer, which we offer for our needs.	21:53
	Oh God, keep us from over indulgent, self-centeredness.	21:59
	From careless destruction of life and beauty.	22:08
	From intentional harm to this good earth,	22:13
	which you have given us.	22:17
	We realize we are human, oh, God.	22:24
	And we need not only our own power,	22:28
	but strength that comes from beyond us.	22:31
	Help us to grow in grace and in concern.	22:36
	As our minds grow wiser, make us kinder of heart.	22:41
	As our arms grow stronger, make our hearts deeper.	22:48
	As our world grows smaller, make our hearts larger.	22:54
	As our neighbor grows colder, make our hearts warmer.	23:01
	May we or God be persons who meet and fulfill	23:10
	our responsibilities in life with songs of joy and love	23:15
	and real caring as Jesus, our Lord came caring.	23:20
	May our lives also reflect his loving concern	23:26
	through Jesus Christ, our Lord,	23:34
	these words are offered as our prayer	23:37
	for this moment, Amen.	23:43
	Our preacher for this morning	23:52
	is Dr. Karl Earl Magni.	23:56
	Theologian, philosopher,	24:01
	writer, interpreter of life,	24:07
	to a countless number of persons.	24:13
	Preacher of preachers.	24:18
	But above all, a warm human being,	24:24
	who knows we're on the path of life he is traveling	24:30
	And tries constantly to help others of us on that same road,	24:38
	to find meaning and assurance.	24:46
	It is a personal joy and a privilege for those of us	24:51
	who worship in this chapel to hear him,	24:55
	Dr. Magni.	25:01
-	The Chaperone, I would be a delict to myself,	25:11
	if I did not begin by expressing my infinite regard	25:17
	for this place and this people.	25:22
	I think I'd rather go to church here than any place	25:27
	I know now in this country.	25:32
	And if I did not express	25:36
	my tremendous personal satisfaction	25:38
	that working with the persons with whom I'm privileged	25:43
	to work briefly part of each week, one semester	25:47
	as a visiting guru of some sort.	25:50
	I have infinite regard for this place.	25:56
	Consequently, I'll do the latest thing I know.	26:00
	And the best thing I know anytime I come.	26:04
	And I'm grateful for the privilege of worshiping with you.	26:09
	I suppose the title as fools die seems stupid.	26:14
	It could read all fools die.	26:19
	Or it could read everybody dies.	26:24
	Or it could read all fools die.	26:28
	All fools in the day of rath.	26:32
	For what I am concerned to get across	26:36
	is the inescapable morality of politics.	26:39
	Anybody whose way of life is political gets it.	26:48
	Long years ago now Paul Sherason said,	26:56
	that four kinds of American religion ought to die	27:00
	and they ought die, for they cannot help us.	27:04
	The merely intellectual, the merely emotional,	27:10
	the merely therapeutic with its medicine kit under its arm,	27:15
	and the merely moral.	27:19
	We had a birth of all of it lately.	27:23
	and especially as Meneger has put it,	27:26
	pastors aren't very good chief psychiatrists,	27:29
	we really aren't, and there's a great deal more	27:34
	for us to be.	27:38
	But who wouldn't wish for the death	27:40
	of all mere religion anyhow.	27:43
	Real religion is intellectual.	27:47
	It is emotional.	27:51
	It is always therapeutic.	27:53
	And as others have said here also,	27:57
	basically irrefragably religion is moral, really moral.	28:00
	And so is politics always moral.	28:09
	That is to say life as religious and life as political	28:14
	has something to do with character.	28:19
	All of the great novels in plays.	28:26
	All of the histories of dynasties in power are memories	28:29
	of the violation of a basic moral expectation.	28:34
	In particular, the pageant of the Kings of Israel in Judah	28:41
	is an epitome displayed against a backdrop	28:46
	of moral expectation.	28:50
	The violation of which is death.	28:55
	Now, if I were a Jacob Blue Vic Mendelson Bartore,	28:59
	I do with the rest of my life,	29:03
	a set of auditorials about this.	29:06
	I do a king Hezekiah for Woodrow Wilson.	29:10
	I do a Nebuchadnezzar for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.	29:17
	I do a Tiglef Palizer III for Harry Truman.	29:23
	I do a sort of Midwestern Kansas Solomon	29:29
	for General Azin Howard.	29:34
	I do a tragic unrealized Jonathan,	29:38
	for John Kennedy.	29:43
	I do a gaunt dark but giant sow	29:46
	for Lyndon Johnson.	29:52
	And in the last of my auditorials,	29:55
	I'd leave king David in a office For Richard Nixon,	29:59
	With Abner and Joab in the front office.	30:06
	Indeed, I think in minor key now,	30:13
	I'd had a subset interlude on Ish Bashef for Spiral Agnew.	30:18
	But if you think, I mean to compliment by ascribing	30:25
	by David as I did, you simply do not know David	30:29
	or Abner, or Joab.	30:34
	The morale of the politician	30:39
	and the morals of the king are most safe	30:42
	when Abner and Joab occupy the front office.	30:48
	With Abner and Joab in the front office,	30:54
	the king doesn't have to know anything.	30:58
	He is safe, his morals are safe.	31:02
	King David can play his harp, sing his songs,	31:06
	dance before the altar, preach at the funerals,	31:10
	issue press releases, wait for his friends	31:13
	while Abner and Joab make his wheels go round.	31:16
	The morality of it is is,	31:24
	David saw Abner die by knife	31:27
	as a fool dies he said.	31:31
	And his last word to Solomon condemned his Joab	31:34
	to the acts of Beniah.	31:40
	Until here of late, where was there ever a pair	31:46
	of administrators like Abner and Joab,	31:50
	nephews of Kings, 30 year career men of highest rank,	31:54
	one dispatched by his service of two small a principal,	32:01
	the other act by putting functions so high,	32:08
	he lived on manipulated relation.	32:13
	Both days are utterly moral.	32:18
	Abner was a man of war.	32:23
	He had lived as a man of war and as a politician.	32:27
	He mixed his political techniques with war tactics	32:32
	at the Watergate in Gibeon where 12 against 12,	32:36
	they had fought with knives.	32:42
	And then he commanding general was maneuvered into killing	32:45
	a sub turn Lieutenant, insult of insults	32:51
	with the butt end of his spear.	32:56
	But the dead man was Asahel, little brother to Joab,	33:00
	his opposite number in politics.	33:06
	Now back to the merely political,	33:10
	having lived by sword and chicanery,	33:13
	Abner now wishes to live only on chicanery.	33:17
	So he took off his sword, he didn't wear his knife,	33:20
	he forgot his basic principle, his opposite number Joab,	33:26
	David's nephew, chief of staff.	33:33
	And he died with a knife of Joab in his belly	33:35
	at the gate, at his funeral David wept.	33:39
	For he needed Israel's Abner, and he said, Abner,	33:44
	you died as a fool dies from the morality of politics.	33:48
	And Joab, son of the David's sister,	33:57
	crew, chief, commando leader, top banana	34:02
	in David's bandit days long since army commander,	34:06
	trusted advisor, chief of staff to the king.	34:11
	He became willingly the servant of the back end	34:16
	of somebody else's virtue.	34:20
	Here David incubates King Louis 14,	34:26
	by some centuries for Louis to knew	34:30
	what one needs in the front office.	34:36
	And would say, I, my chancellor is a scandaler,	34:40
	but I cannot do without him.	34:46
	What if David is acting when he says in public,	34:52
	that Joab is too hard for him?	34:55
	What if Joab is not an independent operator,	34:59
	but is organically and functionally the backside	35:03
	of David's public virtue?	35:07
	What if the David-Joab relation is such that Joab will do	35:11
	what David wants, regardless of what David says he wants.	35:16
	What if Joab knew David needed Abner dead?	35:22
	In spite of David's tears at the funeral,	35:28
	See Joab grinning In the wings.	35:32
	What if in spite of David's gentle terms for Rayma,	35:39
	Joab knew David wanted no more threat	35:43
	from that troublesome quarter.	35:46
	So he Joab would destroy all evidence of David's complicity	35:49
	in the death of Uriah, by making seemed to have been	35:53
	so vicious a fight, that the cry no quarter	35:57
	was justified.	36:03
	What if Joab is so near as David's backside	36:06
	that he knew that Absalom had to die.	36:11
	Even while the king weeping on the rooftop at Mahanaim,	36:15
	had ordered, don't you hurt that young man.	36:21
	See Joab slither out the limb of the Terrabens.	36:26
	And with his hand, no bull, just with his hand,	36:30
	first, an arrow into the throat, to the rioting Absalom.	36:35
	That was never until lately a front man,	36:41
	like Joab, it worked.	36:45
	Never shall trusted and administrator.	36:50
	Never so fear, sidekick so faithful as steward	36:54
	until I after 30 chapters or so.	36:59
	The X,	37:03
	the morality of politics,	37:07
	King David on his deathbed sings for Solomon,	37:11
	I am about to go the way of all the earth.	37:15
	You what Joab did to me,	37:19
	how he used the tools of war in my front office	37:24
	in a time of peace.	37:29
	How he put innocent blood on my girdle.	37:33
	Don't let his head go down to the grave in peace.	37:38
	Last shot, Joab clinging	37:44
	to the horns of the altar	37:49
	in the tent of the Lord,	37:52
	before Beniah sent to axe him in the head	37:54
	and succeed him as commander.	38:02
	For politics like religion	38:05
	is moral when it's real.	38:09
	(speaks foreign language)	38:13
	Is it all really so moral, reverend?	38:16
	Can you really expect a modern audience in such a center	38:21
	to be receptive to such a dictum as that.	38:25
	Politics is immoral, unmoral, non-moral,	38:30
	beyond morals and unmoral,	38:34
	but it's hardly ever moral long.	38:36
	Of course, and everything dies	38:40
	not just us fools I know that.	38:44
	But it all adds up to a moral set of moral alternatives	38:48
	for life and living for of politics like religion	38:52
	is always moral in its nature.	38:56
	So it simply means that politics and religion	38:59
	are dimensions of human life, so much a like	39:03
	that each is a medium through which and within	39:07
	which mans real nature	39:11
	is always crippled or blessed.	39:14
	And the moral effect aspect is that he man,	39:20
	has choices and is responsible.	39:27
	Then if Abner and Joab political supreme to say to us,	39:36
	"Are you trying to say that we should live like characters	39:43
	in gun smoke, that we should watch out for our enemies,	39:45
	that we should throw away all pocket knives	39:52
	and search all our house guests, not at all."	39:54
	I mean, only to say that life itself is moral	39:59
	and that neither in religion nor politics,	40:03
	can a man expect more than life from life	40:06
	than his basic principle can deliver.	40:12
	He works most everywhere.	40:18
	Those who see marriage as a mere meeting of emotional needs	40:21
	must prepared for changing needs to over spill the relation	40:25
	and dissolve the marriage,	40:29
	for marriage is a moral commitment.	40:30
	Those who live utterly on material principles	40:34
	ought not to expect spiritual rewards.	40:37
	Those whose creed put self at center must be prepared	40:42
	to endure a life that finds its limit at that center.	40:46
	Those whose principle is psychological behaviorism need	40:50
	to expect little from unconditioned love.	40:54
	Those who bet on a naturalistic determinism	41:00
	should not require themselves to do free acts of decision.	41:03
	If you limit me to optimistic humanism, forget immortality.	41:10
	If your origins are really contained	41:17
	in scientific materialism,	41:20
	quit bothering these gurus about the inner life.	41:24
	What is your basic principle?	41:30
	It will determine as it did with Abner, what you get.	41:32
	In political religion it means,	41:39
	that those who model their church	41:43
	on the American business community must not look	41:45
	for the new Jerusalem to come down or of it isn't coming,	41:48
	it's already here.	41:52
	In the religion of politics,	41:55
	it means that if my basic principle,	41:59
	my wearing of the sword is loyalty.	42:02
	If loyalty is my virtue,	42:07
	I better hope that the object of my loyalty stays in power.	42:10
	If I live for control, I must not expect love for it.	42:18
	If my character is conformity,	42:26
	I must not expect creativity of me.	42:30
	If my God is always deemed right,	42:35
	I should not look for any much good out of it.	42:40
	Is innocence my prime virtue?	42:46
	I'd better not look for accomplishment to.	42:50
	Is the political God of the country power?	42:55
	Then forget peace as a prospect.	43:01
	No country has ever had both dominance and loving neighbors.	43:05
	If it's Caesars, Jesus, has said to have said,	43:13
	give it to him.	43:18
	But it meant no separation of state and church,	43:21
	politics and religion have done.	43:25
	The two kingdoms represent all categories used by Augustine,	43:29
	the Roman church, and not abandoned the even by Luther,	43:35
	our present day, political protestants.	43:40
	None of that two kingdoms business really holds	43:44
	for politics or religion.	43:46
	Calvin made no such mistake,	43:50
	one kingdom, and he knew who should rule	43:55
	and where his oracle could be heard,	43:59
	Though Jonathan Swift would later characterize	44:04
	the Scottish version as the emission	44:06
	of oracular belches delivered before panting disciples.	44:10
	But the real point here is that my basic principle	44:18
	had better be broad enough to contain what I have ordered	44:22
	from politics, for that base will determine the nature	44:26
	of my gathering in.	44:31
	Jesus illustrates this with his least understood parable,	44:34
	about a manager that got it in the nick.	44:38
	And to which the object of the parable was,	44:42
	if I live by the book, I had better be the book keeper.	44:45
	For the man out front is dispensable, disposable	44:52
	and vulnerable, especially in the religion of politics.	44:56
	And the religiopolitics of life and living,	45:03
	it's all the same.	45:09
	If you goal is to be harmless as a dove,	45:11
	you really will need the wisdom of a snake as a base,	45:14
	for politics gets rough.	45:19
	And if you are going to live on grace,	45:23
	you had better come to terms with responsible guilt.	45:27
	It's too late to be innocent.	45:32
	Better take a look at the morality	45:36
	of religiopolitical life.	45:38
	A childhood vow too narrow, really constricts.	45:41
	A man who models himself on a warped and twisted leader	45:49
	will be himself warped and twisted.	45:53
	A person whose cultural values are local and regional,	45:57
	Harvard Yard, or Southwest Texas Teachers College,	46:03
	both are too local, you may count on it.	46:09
	For the business of your living will end up by reflecting	46:16
	what you have really treasured.	46:19
	Poor Abner, he thought Joab had become civilized.	46:23
	He thought the ground rules had changed.	46:30
	He forgot to wear his basic principle,	46:34
	This as Paul Tilik knew and said really is your life.	46:39
	The shape of your ultimate concern is that shape	46:45
	you really live by and for this indeed is faith,	46:49
	your ultimate care.	46:55
	At this point in time,	47:01
	when I was writing yesterday, this piece.	47:05
	Through my window at Carolina Inn,	47:09
	I could see old man Sam Irwin, loading a thin suit bag	47:12
	in the back end of an old blue Chrysler,	47:18
	headed up the Hills to Morganton, I suppose.	47:23
	In spite of his voting record on the social issues	47:29
	I have supported and he didn't.	47:32
	He reminds me that there's a different kind of politics	47:36
	and political living.	47:41
	He would not change places within any chief in Washington.	47:45
	For there's a different way to be political.	47:52
	Two Yankee visitors passed my open window at the same time,	47:57
	one stretched and said,	48:03
	"The air is really different down here in the south."	48:07
	So mode it be.	48:14
	But we've a lot to face as religio-political persons	48:18
	now alive who are moral and there is a higher way.	48:23
	In the realm of political public religion,	48:29
	whether civic or folk religion,	48:32
	there's simply no way that the institutional church can talk	48:35
	its way out of the fix into which we've come in the sixth	48:39
	and seventh decades of the 20th century.	48:44
	And the issue really lies where Jesus put it,	48:48
	God or mammon translated.	48:53
	It means humanity or security,	48:56
	people or property,	49:00
	and the awful fact remains the only institutional church,	49:03
	more helpless than the church without people,	49:07
	but property is the church without property,	49:12
	which has lots of people.	49:16
	There's really not much room to play around with this.	49:20
	And of all the religious,	49:24
	the pastor is in the middle tempted	49:28
	toward the lower politics.	49:31
	It covers him with a virtual necessity,	49:35
	to use relations in such a manipulative way as to guarantee	49:39
	the function that supports the total enterprise.	49:44
	The threat here of the lower joy of politics	49:49
	is that I may very well anywhere I work,	49:54
	become the backside of somebody's virtue.	49:58
	I may have been hired to make somebody look good	50:05
	or somebody's class look good,	50:09
	and that's rough to live with	50:12
	unless you happen to like this sort of thing,	50:15
	the higher politics.	50:20
	Only those religious institutions which have changed	50:23
	neither theology, their ecclesiology,	50:26
	their social ideas, nor their customs.	50:30
	Only those that have really served their bunch,	50:33
	their class only these have stayed solvent,	50:36
	Some even prosper.	50:41
	And what kind of backside of virtue is that?	50:43
	It's as if to opt for mammon breeds mammon.	50:48
	It's as if money is only worth its power.	50:53
	And believe me, it has been used for power,	50:58
	the awful power of withholding life.	51:01
	The iniquitous, ubiquitous temptation for all relig youth	51:06
	is to get with it, to throw your weight on the side	51:11
	of the power.	51:15
	To pick up one skirt and tiptoe gingerly across	51:17
	this long muddy flat, until some catastrophe changes	51:21
	the political mind of the churches and puts us out	51:26
	in the streets where we belong.	51:29
	But the temptation of the lower politics is still to go	51:32
	for the support of the buggy, and let others choose, turned,	51:37
	and drive the horses to death.	51:43
	There must be a better way to be.	51:47
	The old Senator was backing out now,	51:53
	to head across the Piedmont, another week done.	51:56
	In my heart, I wished him out my window	52:03
	a safe journey.	52:07
	And I didn't call out the open window	52:10
	as I really wanted to do,	52:12
	bravo! Bravo!	52:15
	But his late example presses me to offer	52:19
	an alternative prospect to the knife	52:23
	and the axe of Abner and Joab.	52:28
	It's for all of us, it's in the Book.	52:33
	What if your eye, your self regard and confidence,	52:38
	whoever you are is so high that you really do not have	52:43
	to stay as and where you are.	52:49
	What if God really does have other folks,	52:55
	other villages, where you can work?	52:58
	What if Caesar's share of things really is just a penny.	53:04
	What if there really is no secular holy dichotomy,	53:14
	and God Almighty has access to whatever he might want.	53:20
	What if your real worth is in your being	53:26
	and your having been, and your will be,	53:30
	more than it's in what you have or what you do.	53:35
	What if your prime gift is a of relations	53:41
	with brothers, sisters, fellows,	53:46
	and there is no thing you must be.	53:50
	What if your life really is a personal affair,	53:56
	not a professional thing at all?	54:02
	What if no rank or place or station	54:07
	can give me anything to keep?	54:11
	What if dear A.C. Reed was right when he says,	54:19
	in the Duke lectures years ago,	54:24
	"whatever you earn nature will collect."	54:27
	What if a life lived is my only word	54:35
	and that is moral.	54:40
	What if the issue really is God or Mammon,	54:45
	humanity or security people, or property,	54:48
	and God has got all the artillery.	54:52
	What if money is really means of loving or not loving?	54:57
	And what if really not one stone shall be left on top	55:03
	of another of any house we have built to God.	55:06
	What if God's flock all did have and always	55:12
	will have more lambs than it has rams,	55:17
	and there's only a few old rams	55:25
	a man has to share by hand in his lifetime.	55:27
	That's to say, what if he did say to Simon Peter,	55:33
	that third time feed the lambs,	55:37
	meaning that power does not matter much,	55:42
	the rams are old and will die.	55:45
	What if my real political life is of the same stuff	55:51
	as all the fellows I work with and for,	55:56
	and that I am expected to understand this is moral	55:59
	and cannot evade it by my mere bookkeeping.	56:03
	What if God Almighty won't marry mammon because	56:08
	He doesn't like or need mammon.	56:12
	And I can't pull it together.	56:16
	And my in house church roof really does fall in out of it.	56:19
	It's happened before.	56:28
	What if true politics requires me to opt for people	56:31
	where they could be instead of where	56:35
	our frozen institutions have kept them.	56:38
	What if gospel really is political, and is too tough,	56:44
	and too expensive, and too liberal, to be lightly taken.	56:49
	And what if I really do have	56:55
	to choose Joab, Abner, axe or knife,	56:57
	or is there not a higher way?	57:04
	What if the politics of life is inescapably moral?	57:08
	There's a life one way,	57:16
	and the horns of Joab's alter the other way.	57:20
	For hey, hey you,	57:25
	we are a people who really do know better.	57:29
	We know a way toward an ultimate earth	57:36
	and we are responsible,	57:42
	and politics is moral,	57:46
	just like life and living.	57:53
	Amen.	57:59
	(Bright organ-pipe music)	58:18
	(choir sings)	59:09
-	Let me say just a word about an announcement	1:02:06
	you find in the bulletin this morning	1:02:09
	concerning the friends of the chapel.	1:02:15
	A number of people have talked with me	1:02:20
	about this item.	1:02:25
	(speaking indistinctively)	1:02:29

Item Info

Title:

Carlyle Marney - "As Fools Die" (October 14, 1973)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4280905k

Date:

October 14, 1973

Speaker:

Marney, Carlyle, 1916-1978

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0673
ref6548_99h
uachapelsermaud
duke:627934
dcrau002651
ark:/87924/r4280905k
2172b3b6-6f27-47d8-996a-5b7cb2855f7f

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.

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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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Carlyle Marney - "As Fools Die" (October 14, 1973)

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1. Carlyle Marney - "As Fools Die" (October 14, 1973)

Duke University Archives

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Carlyle Marney - "As Fools Die" (October 14, 1973)

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Duke University Archives

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