William H. Willimon - "Redeem the Time" (December 3, 1989)
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
| (reverent organ music) | 0:00 | |
| (reverent choral music) | 1:51 | |
| (reverent organ music) | 3:34 | |
| (reverent choral music) | 3:58 | |
| (reverent organ music) | 5:58 | |
| (reverent choral music) | 7:47 | |
| - | Oh wisdom, breath of the most high, | 8:24 |
| pervading and permeating all creation. | 8:27 | |
| (congregation responds) | 8:30 | |
| Oh lord of lords and leader of the house of Israel | 8:34 | |
| who appeared to Moses and the burning bush | 8:38 | |
| and gave him your law on Sinai. | 8:41 | |
| (congregation responds) | 8:44 | |
| Oh root of Jesse, standing as a signal | 8:48 | |
| to the nations before whom | 8:51 | |
| all kinds are mute to whom | 8:53 | |
| the nations will do homage. | 8:55 | |
| (congregation responds) | 8:58 | |
| Oh key of David and ruler of the house of Israel, | 9:02 | |
| when you open nobody can close, | 9:06 | |
| when you close nobody can open. | 9:09 | |
| (congregation responds) | 9:13 | |
| Oh radiant dawn, splendor of eternal light | 9:18 | |
| and son of justice. | 9:21 | |
| (congregation responds) | 9:24 | |
| Oh king of the nations the ruler they long for | 9:29 | |
| the cornerstone binding all together. | 9:33 | |
| (congregation responds) | 9:37 | |
| Oh Emmanuel, our king and our law giver | 9:41 | |
| the anointed of the nations and their savior. | 9:45 | |
| (congregation responds) | 9:49 | |
| The spirit and the bride say come. | 9:52 | |
| (congregation responds) | 9:56 | |
| - | Let us pray. | 10:15 |
| Open our hearts and minds oh God | 10:19 | |
| by the power of your holy spirit | 10:22 | |
| so that as the word is read and proclaimed | 10:24 | |
| we might be prepared for the advent of our savior, amen. | 10:28 | |
| The first lesson is taken from the book of Isaiah. | 10:35 | |
| The word which Isaiah the son of Amos | 10:40 | |
| saw concerning Judaea and Jerusalem. | 10:43 | |
| It shall come to pass in the latter days | 10:48 | |
| that the mountain of the house of the Lord | 10:51 | |
| shall be established as the highest of the mountains | 10:54 | |
| and shall be raised above the hills, | 10:58 | |
| and all nations shall flow to it. | 11:01 | |
| And many peoples shall come and say, | 11:05 | |
| Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, | 11:09 | |
| to the house of the God of Jacob, | 11:13 | |
| that we may be taught the ways of God | 11:16 | |
| and of the God of Jacob. | 11:19 | |
| For out of Zion shall come forth instruction, | 11:23 | |
| and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. | 11:27 | |
| God shall judge between the nations | 11:30 | |
| and shall decide for many people | 11:33 | |
| and they shall beat their swords into plowshares | 11:36 | |
| and their spears into pruning hooks. | 11:40 | |
| Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, | 11:43 | |
| neither shall they learn war any more. | 11:47 | |
| Oh house of Jacob, come. | 11:50 | |
| Let us walk in the light of the lord. | 11:53 | |
| This ends the reading of the first lesson. | 11:57 | |
| (joyous organ music) | 12:04 | |
| (joyous choral music) | 12:25 | |
| The second lesson is taken from Paul's letter to the Romans. | 14:22 | |
| Besides this you know what hour it is, | 14:27 | |
| how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. | 14:31 | |
| For salvation is nearer to us | 14:35 | |
| now than when we first believed. | 14:38 | |
| The night is far gone, the day is at hand. | 14:42 | |
| Let us then cast off the works of the night | 14:45 | |
| and put on the armor of the day. | 14:49 | |
| Let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, | 14:52 | |
| not in reveling and drunkenness, | 14:57 | |
| not in debauchery and licentiousness, | 15:00 | |
| not in quarreling and jealousy. | 15:03 | |
| But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, | 15:05 | |
| and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. | 15:08 | |
| This ends the reading of the second lesson. | 15:14 | |
| - | Paul says in the epistle, you know what time it is. | 15:26 |
| And the gospel speaks | 15:33 | |
| of the time in which we live. | 15:36 | |
| The gospel is from Matthew. | 15:40 | |
| Jesus said, but of that day and hour no one knows, | 15:44 | |
| not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, | 15:48 | |
| but the Father only. | 15:51 | |
| As were the days of Noah, and so will be | 15:54 | |
| the coming of the son of man. | 15:58 | |
| For as in those days before the flood | 16:00 | |
| they were eating and drinking, marrying | 16:02 | |
| and giving in marriage, until the day | 16:04 | |
| when Noah entered the ark, | 16:06 | |
| and they did not know until the flood came | 16:08 | |
| and swept them all away, so will the coming | 16:10 | |
| of the Son of Man. | 16:13 | |
| Then, two men will be in the field, one is taken, | 16:15 | |
| one is left, two women will be grinding at the mill | 16:18 | |
| and one is taken, one is left, watch therefore. | 16:21 | |
| For you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. | 16:25 | |
| But know this, if the house holder had known | 16:29 | |
| in what part of the night the thief was coming, | 16:33 | |
| he would have watched and would not have let | 16:37 | |
| his house to be broken into. | 16:39 | |
| Therefore you must be ready for the Son of Man | 16:42 | |
| is coming at an hour you do not expect. | 16:45 | |
| Who then is the faithful and wise servant | 16:49 | |
| whom his master is set over his household | 16:52 | |
| to give them their food at the proper time? | 16:54 | |
| Blessed is the servant whom his master when he comes | 16:57 | |
| will find so doing. | 17:01 | |
| Truly I say to you, he will set him | 17:03 | |
| over all his possessions. | 17:05 | |
| A man I know, a professor at a nearby university | 17:13 | |
| has said that he will no longer | 17:18 | |
| do any speaking publicly or writing or reading | 17:19 | |
| until we get a nuclear arms freeze. | 17:24 | |
| The way he sees it, | 17:30 | |
| the bomb is so awful, the dangers | 17:33 | |
| that the bomb poses to human existence | 17:37 | |
| is so terrible that pursuit of normal | 17:40 | |
| academic activities is pointless | 17:45 | |
| until we do something about the most determinative | 17:49 | |
| factor in the modern world. | 17:52 | |
| The bomb has rendered pointless | 17:55 | |
| every aspect of human life | 17:57 | |
| other than that given over to the destruction of the bomb. | 18:01 | |
| Now at first glance this single mindedness | 18:07 | |
| of my nuclear professor appears to be a faithful | 18:10 | |
| response to today's gospel lesson. | 18:14 | |
| But of that hour no one knows, | 18:18 | |
| says Jesus, not even me. | 18:21 | |
| The world shall end in cataclysmic destruction. | 18:23 | |
| Now there is no reason to believe that | 18:27 | |
| Jesus had nuclear destruction in mind | 18:29 | |
| but the possibility of nuclear destruction | 18:32 | |
| does have a way of making these | 18:35 | |
| ancient, apocalyptic passages of scripture sound modern. | 18:38 | |
| Matthew, when he talks about the | 18:44 | |
| end of the world sounds vaguely like Carl Sagan | 18:47 | |
| when he talks about nuclear winter. | 18:50 | |
| Think about the bomb before it's too late | 18:53 | |
| of that day and hour nobody knows, | 18:55 | |
| the doomsday clock is ticking. | 18:58 | |
| As Jesus says, in the days of Noah | 19:02 | |
| lots of folk went right on eating and drinking, | 19:06 | |
| marrying and giving in marriage until | 19:09 | |
| the flood came and just swept them all away. | 19:11 | |
| In the days of Noah there were a lot of people | 19:15 | |
| that just went right on as business as usual. | 19:16 | |
| Studying in the library for exams, | 19:20 | |
| eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. | 19:23 | |
| They went right on until that flood | 19:29 | |
| came and swept them away like a thief in the night. | 19:31 | |
| How trivial. | 19:37 | |
| How trivial all that lovemaking and drinking | 19:40 | |
| and eating and childbearing and dissertation | 19:42 | |
| writing and exam taking appeared after that great flood. | 19:45 | |
| Is that the point of my nuclear professor? | 19:51 | |
| That manuscript on which you've been working, | 19:55 | |
| those children that you have been raising, | 19:59 | |
| that wedding you've been planning, | 20:02 | |
| all of that is just going to seem trivial | 20:05 | |
| when in a moment all of our present | 20:08 | |
| is shot through with neutrons. | 20:11 | |
| If those primitive people had known | 20:14 | |
| the great flood was coming in the days of Noah. | 20:16 | |
| If they had known that all of their exam notes | 20:20 | |
| would be swept out of the library in the great deluge | 20:22 | |
| do you think they would've allowed their lives | 20:25 | |
| be caught in such triviality? | 20:27 | |
| No, they would've forsaken their trivial pursuit | 20:32 | |
| and they would've done something significant | 20:35 | |
| like working for a water conservation project. | 20:37 | |
| It's all rather scary | 20:41 | |
| this talk about the end, the end. | 20:44 | |
| Jesus says two men will be working | 20:49 | |
| in the field, one is taken, one is left. | 20:50 | |
| Two women will be grinding at the mill | 20:53 | |
| and one is taken and one is left | 20:57 | |
| and you should watch therefore | 20:59 | |
| because the day of the Lord is coming | 21:02 | |
| at an hour you do not expect like a thief in the night. | 21:04 | |
| Watch. | 21:07 | |
| And it is right there that I think | 21:12 | |
| we see the vast difference between | 21:14 | |
| the urgency of this nuclear determined professor | 21:18 | |
| and Jesus. | 21:23 | |
| Our professor has commended that we | 21:26 | |
| have our whole lives determined | 21:30 | |
| every waking moment by the bomb. | 21:32 | |
| A great bomb. | 21:36 | |
| The advent for which he is preparing | 21:40 | |
| is not the advent of a savior, judge, | 21:43 | |
| and reconciler of the world | 21:45 | |
| but rather the advent of the bomb, | 21:48 | |
| the great almighty bomb. | 21:51 | |
| And his argument is unless we do something | 21:54 | |
| about the bomb, then nothing we do has meaning. | 21:57 | |
| Since the bomb threatens everything we do | 22:03 | |
| with utter destruction. | 22:06 | |
| All that anxiety that you're feeling | 22:10 | |
| now about your organic exam, | 22:12 | |
| or whether or not your children | 22:15 | |
| will get in Duke, or if your Sunday | 22:17 | |
| roast will be overdone by the time you get home, | 22:19 | |
| all that is going to look rather silly, | 22:23 | |
| rather pointless, if by the time | 22:24 | |
| you get home somebody somewhere has pushed | 22:27 | |
| the wrong button and the roast that is overdone is you. | 22:30 | |
| And I can still remember | 22:36 | |
| I can still remember how guilty | 22:38 | |
| I felt as a student in New Haven | 22:40 | |
| when one Saturday we were on our way | 22:43 | |
| to the Harvard Yale football game | 22:45 | |
| and we passed a group of our fellow students | 22:47 | |
| who were protesting the Vietnam War. | 22:50 | |
| I mean what was I doing going to a fall football game | 22:54 | |
| when there was a war on. | 22:58 | |
| As they said back then | 23:01 | |
| if you're not working for a solution, | 23:03 | |
| you're part off the problem. | 23:04 | |
| My attendance at that football game | 23:07 | |
| was not just moral insensitivity to the greatest | 23:09 | |
| ethical issue of the day, it was downright complicity. | 23:12 | |
| Had a miserable time at the game. | 23:17 | |
| Suddenly it just seemed to be the wrong thing | 23:20 | |
| to be doing at the time. | 23:22 | |
| And yet as Duke's Stanley Hauerwas has noted | 23:26 | |
| such totally absorbed moral earnestness, | 23:29 | |
| though it appears to be the height | 23:32 | |
| of morality on the surface, is totalitarian. | 23:33 | |
| For isn't it the nature of all totalitarian | 23:41 | |
| regimes to reduce everything you do in life, | 23:43 | |
| even the very smallest things you do | 23:47 | |
| as a matter of loyalty or disloyalty | 23:52 | |
| to the totalitarian regime. | 23:56 | |
| We were in east Germany a couple of years ago | 23:59 | |
| and I noted that East Germany, the government | 24:02 | |
| has signs telling you that breaking | 24:05 | |
| in line at a bus stop or dropping | 24:07 | |
| a pice of paper on the sidewalk, or snipping a flower | 24:09 | |
| in the Marx Rose Garden is not just | 24:12 | |
| a matter of churlishness, it's a matter of treason | 24:14 | |
| to the regime, to the socialist paradise. | 24:17 | |
| Just as in South Africa, a joke about apartheid | 24:22 | |
| can be considered treasonous because | 24:26 | |
| everything is supposed to be subservient | 24:28 | |
| to the biggest issue of the day, race. | 24:30 | |
| In other words, to let the bomb determine | 24:35 | |
| every breath we take and move we make | 24:40 | |
| is to cast ourselves into a totalitarian situation | 24:43 | |
| where the bomb is now bigger than God. | 24:48 | |
| And I think that such nuclear thinking | 24:53 | |
| collides with Matthew 24 | 24:55 | |
| because there Jesus warns us not on the basis | 24:58 | |
| of human catastrophe but of divine advent. | 25:01 | |
| You must be ready. | 25:06 | |
| The son of man is coming at an hour you don't expect. | 25:10 | |
| Christians are those who have been schooled | 25:16 | |
| to fear not that the bomb will be dropped | 25:21 | |
| and we won't have done anything to stop it | 25:25 | |
| but that God will come | 25:29 | |
| and we'll be caught wasting our time | 25:31 | |
| doing that which is insignificant to God. | 25:34 | |
| The flood we fear, the thief for whom | 25:39 | |
| we await, the night visitor whose advent | 25:44 | |
| wakes us is God, not the bomb. | 25:48 | |
| Here I think is the whole subflooring | 25:55 | |
| for Christian ethics, fear of God. | 25:57 | |
| Not fear of destruction. | 26:02 | |
| I mean as Christians we can't fear destruction. | 26:05 | |
| Since God has told us in many passages of scripture | 26:09 | |
| like Matthew 24, if not just observation | 26:14 | |
| of life itself that none of us | 26:18 | |
| is gonna make it out of here alive anyway. | 26:20 | |
| The basis for our behavior therefore | 26:24 | |
| cannot be to do that which will enable us | 26:26 | |
| to hold on to what we've got, | 26:29 | |
| since in Matthew 24 Jesus clearly tells us | 26:32 | |
| that God is the thief who has come | 26:35 | |
| to take everything we've got. | 26:38 | |
| The basis for our ethics is our determination | 26:42 | |
| so to live that God might come and find us | 26:45 | |
| engaged in lives which are pleasing to God | 26:48 | |
| rather than to ourselves. | 26:54 | |
| I think if you listen, you heard this in today's epistle. | 26:57 | |
| First you heard poor old stuffed shirt, St. Paul | 27:02 | |
| saying, let us conduct ourselves becomingly, | 27:05 | |
| not reveling in drunkenness nor in debauchery | 27:09 | |
| and licentiousness, not in quarreling or jealousy. | 27:12 | |
| A rather conventional attack among life among the SAEs | 27:15 | |
| but the main reason that Paul is down | 27:20 | |
| on alcohol abuse and the main thing | 27:23 | |
| he's got against sexual promiscuity | 27:25 | |
| is that if we really knew what time it was | 27:27 | |
| we would wake up and stop wasting our time | 27:31 | |
| and get with it and be ready for that old thief. | 27:33 | |
| That's not a very nice thing to say about God | 27:37 | |
| but that thief who comes to break in | 27:39 | |
| to our little house and steal everything | 27:42 | |
| that we have so feverishly worked | 27:45 | |
| to accumulate and which we will so murderously defend. | 27:46 | |
| Christians are those who call God by names | 27:52 | |
| not only as redeemer, and sustainer, and creator but thief. | 27:55 | |
| And therefore Christians are those who are peculiar people, | 28:02 | |
| who know something that even Carl Sagan doesn't know. | 28:05 | |
| Namely that in Jesus Christ, | 28:09 | |
| the world has ended. | 28:11 | |
| All those old conventional values are destroyed. | 28:14 | |
| Everything that we thought had enduring value | 28:19 | |
| just crumbles to dust. | 28:23 | |
| All to which we so ruthlessly cling, | 28:27 | |
| money, human potential, aspirations to run | 28:30 | |
| the world on our own, all of that | 28:34 | |
| just gets ripped off by that old thief, God. | 28:38 | |
| Therefore because we know something | 28:44 | |
| that the world does not know, namely | 28:48 | |
| that our end and our beginning | 28:49 | |
| is hid with God in Christ | 28:51 | |
| that the endurance and significance | 28:56 | |
| of our lives is not a matter | 28:58 | |
| of our achievement but of Gods' grace. | 29:01 | |
| That tends to put things in a different focus. | 29:04 | |
| And when it's put in different focus | 29:09 | |
| suddenly the things that the world considers so trivial, | 29:11 | |
| become important. | 29:15 | |
| What do we do in the mean time? | 29:17 | |
| Seemingly trivial human past times | 29:21 | |
| like getting ready for an exam | 29:24 | |
| and going to class and raising children | 29:28 | |
| and washing dishes and celebrating | 29:31 | |
| communion with friends. | 29:34 | |
| These seemingly trivial unimportant acts | 29:36 | |
| become meaningful because we are told | 29:40 | |
| they have meaning to God. | 29:42 | |
| We are told that they are fitting human responses | 29:46 | |
| to what God wants us to do in the mean time | 29:49 | |
| between God's first advent in the babe | 29:52 | |
| at Bethlehem and God's second advent | 29:54 | |
| as the thief in the night | 29:57 | |
| when the trumpet sounds on that awesome morning | 29:59 | |
| when the stars begin to fall. | 30:01 | |
| Because the ironic thing | 30:05 | |
| is that people often build bombs | 30:08 | |
| and sometimes people work | 30:11 | |
| to destroy bombs for the same idolatrous reasons. | 30:13 | |
| Namely our innate human presumption | 30:18 | |
| that our fate and the future of the world | 30:21 | |
| is solely in our hands, that it is | 30:24 | |
| left up to us to save ourselves | 30:27 | |
| or we won't be saved. | 30:29 | |
| For nearly 50 years now we've been building atomic bombs | 30:32 | |
| to ensure our survival but now | 30:35 | |
| many feel that this is an unworkable national strategy. | 30:38 | |
| So now we ought to dismantle our bombs, why | 30:43 | |
| to ensure our survival. | 30:46 | |
| But look at us, here we are stuck | 30:49 | |
| on the first Sunday of Advent | 30:51 | |
| with a scripture text that clearly | 30:53 | |
| asserts that God is unwilling for us | 30:55 | |
| to survive as we are anyway. | 30:57 | |
| Left to our own devices as Jesus says, | 31:01 | |
| we will blissfully go right on | 31:04 | |
| eating and drinking, marrying, and giving marriage | 31:05 | |
| building bombs, working to destroy bombs | 31:07 | |
| until that old God thief in the night | 31:10 | |
| sweeps in in this great flood of divine judgment. | 31:12 | |
| But my point here is not to argue you out of working | 31:18 | |
| against the bomb, I mean what rational | 31:23 | |
| person would argue that. | 31:25 | |
| Rather my point is derived, I hope, from scripture. | 31:28 | |
| The source of Christians thinking, | 31:32 | |
| the point that when we live | 31:35 | |
| as if the bomb made all the difference, | 31:38 | |
| we've ascribed to yet another human creation, | 31:43 | |
| this time the bomb that which Christians | 31:46 | |
| ascribe only to God. | 31:49 | |
| And when we do that we Christians | 31:53 | |
| have blown and forfeited the only | 31:55 | |
| means that we know of living both truthfully and peacefully. | 31:58 | |
| Because you see we believe that peace | 32:04 | |
| is not the result of energetic response | 32:07 | |
| to human fear, not something that we create | 32:10 | |
| as a means of self defense and survival | 32:15 | |
| and holding on to what we've got | 32:18 | |
| the way we built the bomb. | 32:21 | |
| Peace, the peace that passes all understanding | 32:24 | |
| is the result of our refusal to order | 32:28 | |
| our lives on any other basis than fear of God. | 32:32 | |
| The assigned homework is to go home | 32:39 | |
| and read the interview in Time magazine | 32:41 | |
| with Mother Teresa this week. | 32:43 | |
| And there you find a revolutionary old lady | 32:46 | |
| who just thinks that in our world | 32:50 | |
| that there's nothing more important | 32:54 | |
| particularly in the kind of world that we live in | 32:55 | |
| than to spend tie caring for dying people. | 32:57 | |
| And the reporter wants to know, | 33:01 | |
| well what good does that do? | 33:03 | |
| She doesn't know, she just knows | 33:05 | |
| that's the kind of God that's created this world. | 33:08 | |
| And when you think about it it's really | 33:12 | |
| amazing in the world we live in | 33:13 | |
| that there's still people running around loose | 33:15 | |
| who take the time to | 33:18 | |
| raise children, because what takes more time than children | 33:20 | |
| or dying people. | 33:25 | |
| How dare we bring children into a nuclear world? | 33:28 | |
| How dare with the world in the shape it's in | 33:33 | |
| people still waste their time caring | 33:34 | |
| for people who are dying? | 33:37 | |
| Because we believe as Christians | 33:41 | |
| that little everyday acts that the world | 33:43 | |
| does not value, acts like getting married | 33:45 | |
| and having babies and spending all afternoon | 33:49 | |
| today in the library studying for exams | 33:52 | |
| or all afternoon here in the chapel making | 33:54 | |
| music in Messiah, such seemingly trivial past times | 33:56 | |
| take on new significance when seen | 34:01 | |
| as Christian clench fisted protest as faithful | 34:04 | |
| refusal to have our lives determined by anything | 34:09 | |
| as insidious and evil as the bomb. | 34:13 | |
| The anti nuclear professor is right. | 34:18 | |
| And his claim that with the world in the shape that it is | 34:22 | |
| it makes a real difference how you spend your time, | 34:24 | |
| what you do with your money and what you do | 34:27 | |
| this afternoon, but he's wrong | 34:30 | |
| in his claim that it is the bomb | 34:34 | |
| which determines the value of how you spend your life. | 34:36 | |
| One way you can work for peace is by doing | 34:41 | |
| things that are peaceful, like making babies, | 34:44 | |
| getting married, and singing hymns, | 34:48 | |
| and studying for exams. | 34:51 | |
| Because such seemingly trivial, insignificant acts | 34:53 | |
| become significant as living courageously | 34:57 | |
| and peacefully today in the light | 35:00 | |
| of what you know about tomorrow. | 35:03 | |
| How dare we Christians in a fearful world | 35:05 | |
| cower under the shadow of the bomb | 35:09 | |
| and waste our time in such silly | 35:12 | |
| diversions as drunkenness and promiscuity | 35:14 | |
| when it is our privilege by what we do | 35:17 | |
| this afternoon to witness to the world | 35:20 | |
| that God not the bomb is the most important | 35:23 | |
| thing in the world. | 35:26 | |
| That the supreme event which has occurred | 35:28 | |
| in our history is not the advent | 35:31 | |
| of the atomic age but the advent of the gospel age. | 35:34 | |
| With something so significant as a baby | 35:40 | |
| being born in an out of the way place like Bethlehem | 35:42 | |
| whose significance for our lives we are still | 35:46 | |
| struggling to grasp. | 35:49 | |
| What time is it? | 35:53 | |
| Now when St. Augustine was the age of many of you | 35:57 | |
| he lived a pretty wild life. | 35:59 | |
| He had a mistress, he fathered a child | 36:02 | |
| outside of marriage, but when he got | 36:04 | |
| to the age of many of the rest of us | 36:07 | |
| he was sitting in his garden | 36:11 | |
| one day not doing anything in particular | 36:12 | |
| and he heard this little child | 36:15 | |
| in another garden singing a little children's song. | 36:16 | |
| Take up and read, take up and read | 36:18 | |
| and right in front of him there | 36:21 | |
| was a copy of Paul's letters and he just | 36:22 | |
| picked it up and he flopped it open | 36:25 | |
| and the book flopped open to today's epistle lesson. | 36:27 | |
| Romans 13:13, let us conduct ourselves not in reveling | 36:32 | |
| and drunkenness, not in debauchery | 36:38 | |
| and licentiousness but you put on the Lord Jesus Christ. | 36:41 | |
| He read that verse, and in a moment | 36:49 | |
| his whole life got into focus. | 36:52 | |
| Shortly after that he and his now teenage son | 36:55 | |
| were baptized, well it's Advent. | 36:59 | |
| And all over the world the days are growing shorter | 37:05 | |
| and so are the days in your life. | 37:10 | |
| Night comes, | 37:13 | |
| well what time is it? | 37:17 | |
| - | Christ invites to his table all who love him | 37:34 |
| and who desire to live in peace with one another. | 37:37 | |
| Let us stand and offer each other | 37:40 | |
| signs of God's peace and love. | 37:42 | |
| As a forgiven and reconciled people | 38:06 | |
| let us offer our gifts and ourselves unto God | 38:09 | |
| with thanksgiving. | 38:12 | |
| (gentle organ music) | 38:28 | |
| (upbeat music) | 39:07 | |
| (joyful music) | 41:52 | |
| (reverent choral music) | 45:19 | |
| - | Let us pray, the lord be with you. | 46:15 |
| (congregation responds) | 46:19 | |
| Lift up your hearts. | 46:20 | |
| (congregation responds) | 46:22 | |
| Let us give thanks to the lord our God. | 46:23 | |
| (congregation responds) | 46:26 | |
| It is right in a good and joyful thing always | 46:27 | |
| to give thanks to you almighty father | 46:30 | |
| creator of heaven and Earth, | 46:33 | |
| you formed us in your image and breathed | 46:35 | |
| into us a breath of life when | 46:36 | |
| we turned away your love never failed, | 46:39 | |
| you delivered us from captivity | 46:42 | |
| you spoke to us through your prophets | 46:44 | |
| who look forward to that day | 46:46 | |
| when justice shall roll down like waters in righteousness | 46:47 | |
| as an ever flowing stream, | 46:50 | |
| when nations shall not lift up sword against nation | 46:53 | |
| neither shall they learn war anymore | 46:56 | |
| and so with your people on Earth | 46:59 | |
| and all the company of heaven | 47:01 | |
| we praise your name and join | 47:02 | |
| their unending hymn. | 47:04 | |
| (joyful choral music) | 47:08 | |
| Holy are you and blessed is your son Jesus Christ | 48:20 | |
| whom you sent in the fullness of time | 48:22 | |
| to be light for the nations. | 48:25 | |
| To scatter the proud and the imagination | 48:27 | |
| of their hearts and have mercy on those | 48:29 | |
| who fear you, you put down the mighty from their thrones | 48:32 | |
| and exalted those of low degree. | 48:35 | |
| You fill the hungry with good things. | 48:37 | |
| And the rich you sent empty away. | 48:40 | |
| Your own son came among us as a servant | 48:42 | |
| to be Emmanuel, your presence among us. | 48:45 | |
| On the night he gave himself up for us | 48:48 | |
| he took bread, gave thanks to you, | 48:50 | |
| broke the bread, gave it to his disciples | 48:53 | |
| and said take, eat, this is my body given for you. | 48:55 | |
| Do this in remembrance of me. | 48:59 | |
| And when the supper was over he took the cup, | 49:02 | |
| he gave thanks to you and gave it to his disciples | 49:04 | |
| and said drink from this all of you. | 49:07 | |
| This is my blood and the new covenant | 49:10 | |
| poured out for you and many for the forgiveness of sins. | 49:12 | |
| Do this as often as you drink it | 49:15 | |
| in remembrance of me, in remembrance | 49:18 | |
| of these your mighty acts of Jesus Christ | 49:21 | |
| we offer ourselves in praise and thanksgiving | 49:24 | |
| as holy and living sacrifice | 49:26 | |
| in union with Christ offering for us | 49:28 | |
| and reclaim the mystery of faith. | 49:31 | |
| (reverent music) | 49:34 | |
| Pour out your holy spirit on us | 49:55 | |
| gathered here and on these gifts of bread and wine, | 49:57 | |
| make them to be for us the body and blood of Christ. | 50:00 | |
| By your spirit make us one with Christ | 50:03 | |
| and one with each other and one | 50:05 | |
| in ministry to all the world through | 50:08 | |
| your son Jesus Christ with the holy spirit | 50:10 | |
| in your holy church glory and honor is yours | 50:12 | |
| almighty God now and forever. | 50:15 | |
| (reverent music) | 50:18 | |
| For the confidence of children let us pray. | 50:40 | |
| Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name. | 50:43 | |
| Your Kingdom come, your will be done on Earth | 50:47 | |
| as it is in Heaven. | 50:51 | |
| Give us this day our daily bread | 50:52 | |
| and forgive us our trespasses | 50:55 | |
| as we forgive those who trespass against us | 50:57 | |
| and lead us not into temptation, | 51:00 | |
| but deliver us from evil | 51:03 | |
| for thine is a kingdom, the power, | 51:05 | |
| and the glory forever and ever, amen. | 51:08 | |
| Bread that we break is it not a means | 51:11 | |
| of participating in the body of Christ. | 51:14 | |
| The cup which we bless is it not a means | 51:18 | |
| of participating in the blood of Christ. | 51:20 | |
| Come to the lord's table. | 51:24 | |
| (solemn music) | 51:40 | |
| (reverent music) | 57:14 | |
| Go in peace to serve God and your neighbor | 1:04:00 | |
| in all that you do. | 1:04:02 | |
| The grace of the lord Jesus Christ | 1:04:06 | |
| and the love of God in the communion of the holy spirit | 1:04:08 | |
| be with you all. | 1:04:11 | |
| (reverent choral music) | 1:04:14 | |
| (joyful music) | 1:04:47 | |
| (reverent organ music) | 1:07:55 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund
