Sunday Sermon; 11/26/67

it's b since its direction this church has had a commanding eminence on the skyline of manhattan as one who spent the first eighteen years of his life within sight and sound of this church i should like to publicly acknowledge the towering impact that this church is head upon my life believing in this statute of limitations raps i can confess to you something that will never be found in the formal chronicles of this church the street between riverside drive and clermont at a hundred and twenty years

was in our younger years a prime place for the playing of hockey on roller skates this was all because of the way through the strait and because all the smallness of the surface and when we decided we waste of play somehow mysteriously we could find those plays street signs rim of them from where the police had placed them and very neatly block off all traffic that would go from riverside to claremont on a hundred and twenty years straight the game always ended however when the police cars came and the players were forced to disperse back in the summer of nineteen forty four i had the unforgettable experience of working at willow run for dosing be twenty four hours the operation there was so massive in every

way and the work so finely distributed but once not in danger of losing sight of the encarta which he worked and so frequently at the end of an eight hour shift we would walk what seemed like miles to the place where the final product stood assemble this site justified our work and nerve gas or even greater effort well what is history's final product and where is it a symbol and those math or utopia or theory of history as it unveiled for eyes to see there's it's no idle question forman unlike the lower orders of creation

cannot live without a vision of the end is on or someone else's real or imagined or tying middle goals may do one thinks of the early linebacker in the southwest conference who i played his last game was asked by a reporter what are your future plans that would see athlete responded i plan to get my car once this afternoon and take my girl to a drive in movie tonight no goals will hold us and serve us for a while lots of the next promotion or advancement victory on the football field the coming of the next grandchild a passing of the next examination the way of the war whether cold or hot but

sonar or later our humanity asserts itself and we find ourselves asking what our wars and our grandchildren are promotions and now raises our examinations and our dreams all bad up to an all preoccupation with means can permanently repress this question what is the end tarp which we move jesus did not dodge the issue many times and in many places by word by attitude by act he asserted his conviction that at the end the kingdom of god and would prevail what i get at the specter of the day look all long records were sending out of the seven day the number seventy suggests

universality of the gospel and look who was a traveling companion to sign all the missionary to the gentiles would have large interest here and so he gave that report and seventy went out on their own wondering whether their words and their actions would be effective they were and they returned a jesus hilariously happy crying out bar even the demons are subject under us in your name having gone out expecting little they were surprised that they had it so much what jesus exhilaration was even greater than there is already met their surprise and their excitement with this amazing statement i saw satan fall like lightning from heaven there is no

media to get sidetracked on the question of satan as to whether jesus believe in a personal battle or whether he was accommodating himself to an idea that the jews had imported from persian days the truth is startlingly cleared cities as well that we've all had been overcome in this sending out of the seven day in the effectiveness of the gospel way of them acted upon it's quite clear that his vision coincided with the going out of the seventy or the imperfect tense of the verb as yours this he does not say i saw a satan fallen or following what i saw satan fall like lightning from heaven the reasoning from the part of the whole from the beginning to the

end something had been achieved for the listener jesus and his disciples and that which is just begun must go on through its inevitable end and the complete subjection of the forces of evil and the final manifestation of the sovereignty of god i saw sir paul i like being we have never got a believing this odd way to the evidences no to put it mildly the evidence was not overpowering in jesus' day either on that occasion when he saw side and fought like lightning publicans were still keeping

crooked tax records my beer is still lined the road between jerusalem to jericho slaves were still a property of their masters and roll had an iron hand on history the evidence is hardly more convincing for us today there is a dark road a pessimism that has swept the church parishioners have all been suggested to me that modern preaching is not somewhere enough for the times they want to see history colorado mournful black at anyone has fallen from heaven and is not citing what god our own belief year would be less

called for if we kept certain throws in mind if we remembered for example that the kingdom of god is for the most part i didn't condemn it is more like eleven and a lot of men in army on the march it works more often from within rather than from without and it proceeds generally without fanfare or celebration or if we remembered that in an age of instant news that which is negative and contradictory of the kingdom will gone up on our consciousness quicker than the fact but the kingdom itself and thus it's all simply because bad news circulates more quickly and more widely than good news a thousand planes take off from all of their

field no news one plane goes down in the world is aware of that instantly a thousand men keep faith with their marriage vows all have full do not and the story of their defection is heralded wide and far delinquencies seems more newsworthy than obedience the bizarre than the normal irregular them a quarterly i'm not suggesting year that our journalists are the ones who caused the evil of the world it is a common mistake for us to assume that those who can pay the story of a problem all the cause of the problem i am suggesting however that there is an inevitable distortion that reaches us because bad news sells better than good news

h g wells in one of his whimsical moment talk about an aeroplane became lol or of herd of cattle in africa causing a stampede there was says wells fortunately no journalists among them so they settled down very quickly it is a fact of life that abel is mark on the ball and visible in this world and the kingdom of god but more importantly are doubts would not be so strong if we could remember that in an active agent history god is more likely to mold and work and you know alarming startling and exciting ways there are

people who read the handwriting on the war for the church because there is no longer a viable christina never society for young people because more and more churches are abandoning their evening service because the us is becoming part of a vanishing breed forgetting that however serviceable these forms may have been in the past they have no final an inevitable lease on life but the farm changes does not mean that the essence is gone god is not limited to what we are accustomed to and so in our world in ways that are startling to us and often deeply distressing to us this kingdom was

all carlile manet knew is one of the most perceptive critics of our time goes even further than this and bears to believe that we are on the living dead jenna christian take although pointing to the belief in intelligence in history the belief that we can build a better future the sense of responsibility that locks light in the western world and i believe in the worth of individuals and other words what the church's rates than what the kingdom represents anderson's has spilled over into the light outside for god works not only within but also about his church manet comes to this startling

conclusion only once he says since the forty year pastor of augusta in nepal as paganism been samira collapse and christian it is so near to permeate the ideological fabric of our culture mcclendon as a large stake in freedom was there ever a time in history when so many struggled to be free witness the civil rights movement in our own country and the neo nationalism of the african states became known as a stake in a honest confrontation of real problems was that ever a time certainly in our memory not one problem after problem was met head on an open confrontation i find it a tonic demise sold a visit with elderly people

i called a while ago on a couple a general was in the ninth decade of life lady leaned back and said you know people often refer to the nine days as the good old days when i was there then she said and we had our troubles too and those days however we didn't face our problems we swept them under the rug and pretended they weren't there now if a priest has a grievance against his budget is more likely to talk about it at a press conference than in the confessional both people are caught in an impossible marriage are not selling any longer to play the charade of a framed happiness

but in some kind of honesty will seek divorce minorities inquests of freedom and justice will no longer simply discuss the matter among themselves what will take their case to the courts and to the streets teachers do feel that they are underpaid in an affluent society will not simply buzz about this matter and the faculty lounge what will organize and again make their case public surely it is part of the kenyans hope that in just as well be confronted however painful it may be for us during these years of confrontation the dissemination of the gospel belongs to and while it is true that there are many

countries in which the white missionary is no longer welcome let it also be remembered that in many of those same countries there are strong national churches farai on the work and being singularly blast an enraged by the holy spirit while it is true that christians have not kept pace with population growth it is also true i feel the christian people are more carefully placed and more widely dispersed in our world than at any other time in human story it belongs to the kingdom that men should be delivered from oppressive drudgery and thanks to the advent of technology more and more people are learning now that they can make a light as well as make a living but the world's cell be united in one family

and again thanks to travel and communication what was once a far flung world has become now the latest planet with a growing sense of interdependence it belongs to the hope of the kingdom that there'd be a more equitable sharing all this world's goods and services so the golf great way not have is a mountain arts may not stand so wired however we may criticize our country for its domestic targets foreign policy but no one refused to acknowledge that no nation that history has ever spawn has been so intent upon sharing its bounty with the world as these united

states i'm not as causing ear a pollyanna view of history or short sailing on some dubious principle of inevitable social progress i'm merely suggesting that or the man of faith there is evidence and that god is not dead and that the kingdom is very much a factor in the ongoing life of the world but away from ourselves and our half believing and back to jesus i saw satan all white lightning it's strange when you come to figure that that jesus never involves two friends a desolate place and to get men and women charged up with a sense of mission

he never had what we might call a pep rally he never brought his salesman in from the field though tried to give them by overwhelming throws a great version of their job jesus will motivate people by helping them to establish their work within the invincible kingdom of god i'm impressed that he relied almost entirely on the recitation of the indignities of faith or the imperatives are there all right the imperatives that way preachers enjoy so much though to each goat to go he'll go reconcile bowl let's bowl forgive

what these imperatives draw the air force from the indicators there a sell come from easton low as and the north and the south and sit down in the kingdom of god the knowledge of god shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea then come at the end when he shall i put down all real enough art and all power or he must brain and tally up what all enemies under his fate i saw satan no white lightning the kingdom of god is they all made a point of history

and this kingdom operate hands us in the person of jesus christ this is why paul tillich wrote that jesus as the crisis is the central manifestation of the kingdom of god in history faith he says as the currents that there's such an extra ordinary assertion and it takes the risk of error but without the courage and went out to risk it would not be fe robert browning was communicating this sense of race and bearing and his poem bishop programs apology where the oldest up and arguing with the young and somewhat brash agnostic goes on to say this good god what it could do if they would want if they could then must've done long

since and so when where and how some way must be ones feel about the insane or like you have some sense in which it might be after all why not the way the truth for life i saw a sight and fall like lightning from heaven can you say it above a lawful haze of vietnam of all the distressing deneuve intercity of all the fact of no clear extinction manny's morrow

above all our lands and humanity to man can you say it if you can do use those words are for you lesson are the eyes that see what do you see well i tell you that many profits and king's desired to say what you'll see and did not see it and to hear what you hear and did not here was barry they get in us all got a stubborn confidence in by purposes give us to see that they and towards which we will rise and by hands in this whole let us labor

and emmett take all rests through christ our living lauren if you would like a copy of dr campbell sermon the end torque which we move writer w rv our new york one double o to separate that's w rv our new york one or two seconds the recession of him is number four hundred and twenty six the voice of god is paula it's b