Dr. Eugene Laubach Preaching

it's been it's b one of the symbols of my aunts accomplishment in these days is the figure of an astronaut walking in outer space we have every right to have this be a symbol of which we're proud or what man has achieved is almost like a dream the impossible things in so many areas of light of laughter

that happen but money wise men are calling to our attention the fact that while man has made bold and spectacular achievement in outer space he has failed to make it as significant progress another equally important area the area of man the interstates we have not yet begun to explore the resources of the human spirit to learn how they can be used no expiration anywhere will be of more importance to man in the future i want to talk with you for a while this morning about the inner space of man and a series of interconnected relationships that make up when i'm calling his bundle of like my basically says i hope is simple enough to be understood by everyone here even across the generation gap it is simply that we have been placed in a world whose most important

characteristic is that it is made up of a network of relationships that says something that we are trying to get out when we call this a spiritual universe even visible strands a relationship not only marry flight but they determined the nature of it for most of us we are in this network and this bundle of life who are lifelong informs us it can be for most health reform and again we participate in this process through the many relationships we have with persons with groups and with institutions i wanna talk about three of those relationships with morning it's one of them answer some of the questions about our identity i wanna talk about it and bow and finally about us it was not a casual choice to lead me to use these themes as the

basis for the sermon this morning i know that something that most of you don't know but which is going to be revealed to you in the weeks to come namely that those important pronouns i bow we they and us are going to be the basic study themes of the first unit of church school this year and you will be hearing about them or i hope you will be hearing about them on your children and young people as they begin to cope with the meaning of a person in space let me begin by probably where most of us are comfortable about it one of the oldest stories i suppose in all other creatures illustration barrels of the one about the contest that withheld one time to try to find the shortest possible poll the contest was very nearly won by an entry called please the poem about what he's simply said adam adam the winning home however in this competition was not only

much shorter but it touched more deeply into the main problems about the bundle of life it why now i suppose there really are none of us here who have not asked this question at one time or another in life a lot of explosions that are happening on campuses around the world are coming from young people who are asking that question and frustrated because they cannot find answers to it they are no longer sure of their meaning in a world like this particular identity threatened they keep asking who am i and what am i doing here but they keep out finding all only the echoes of their question coming back to them we used to suppose that this question of who am i with a question which people dealt with in their adolescence what we know now is that there is no point throughout the light in which people do not have to answer nobody is immune because every one of us has times in life when

life is so pressure is in upon us that we are forced to ask who we are and what we mean by our life in a way the question of what it means to be a person is probably the existential question of our time who am i this is the question the pre teenager asks twenty years that there may not be a world for him to grow up in or that it'll be a world that's so different that nothing he's learning now will have any relevance who will he be in tomorrow's world and how we cope with it well my visit the question that as like a teenager who is forced to make decisions which his home and his family can no longer help him cope with where does he find his standards for sex and drugs and vocation when his parents' experience no longer has ability in the kind of world in which he lives well i this is a question everyone of us asked or should've asked when we thought about getting married sharing our world with someone else who embodies the question every

parent asks as he seeks to understand how he raises his children or how he and his wife to it together when their own interpersonal relationships may not be fully established who am i and one i going to do with my light this is the question for the thirties and forties looking at their vocational choices and saying am i really doing now what i want to do for the rest of my vocational life or how do i find personal fulfillment when my job doesn't do this for me anymore well my oh my now this is the question that is being avoided by persons as they fight retirement years because they have not thought what those years could do for them refuse to plan the remainder of their lives and who grows frustrated and bitter because of what they think life is done to them who am i the question we face as death approaches we see it in our family or in others of

our own age who death becomes a threat for every one of us when we have no sense about the meaning or the purpose of like who am i this is really the existential question for every single one of us but whether we can answer that existential question depends on several things some people think that we can answer it only by affirming a rugged kind of individualism that says i'm on my own nobody can teach me anything i have no connections with anybody else time for individuals and i'm delighted that clothing is coming once more to express individuality that people are having confidence in wearing would've easy and natural i don't get sad and when i see some people who every ball against the conformity of gray flannel suits taking on instead the conformity of even though bottoms the mahdi uniform you know can be just as restricting as the establishment one to be an individual does not mean cutting yourself off from other people

be free to do your own thing totally independent of others this kind of isolation only build a prison of the self that is more frightening than ever but some people do try it and think it is a fact i was working on a straight through greenwich village last summer and i came on a young man lying on the sidewalk moaning and crying and writing about he was in wants to this lemon pie at least seemed to be in a state or drug withdrawal my first impulse was to see what was needed and what could be done and i stopped and so did the man in front of me you know down and reached out to touch avoid another young man standing nearest documents and let him a lone man let him do his own saying it's none of your business well i confess to you i am not ready to live in this kind of an individualistic world his own thing was telling this boy and he needed not to be alone in it he needed that

help in it we're seeing too many people trying to talk out of this life because they think that's the best way to find themselves and rebellion they cut themselves off from their history and they cut themselves off from the person who could give their lives meaning and continuity and significance but there is really no way to find yourself alone we always live in a relationship with somebody our lives were made for a relationship and if we don't have that we'd dive person's the real question is what can the person's about me teach me about the meaning of life in general and the meaning of my life in particular it is why a church has an educational program this is why a church constitutes ownership groups no matter what we're talking about in this church a matter what we're doing in a part of this is the central thing that underlies it all how can we help people find the meaning of life and the meaning of life for them

how people answer this question of why it depends on what they have learned from people with whom they have established relationships that low and trust what we refer to as the eyeball relationship where we are persons together every person have to have relationships of this kind in his life if he is to be a whole person just as food and clothing and shelter are necessary for physical existence so the nourishment of love and the security of social connectedness are necessary for our spiritual existence longer is the basic ingredient we can never do about it and we can never find anything that is the substitute for what it does for us all of us need to know that we are cared about and loved by someone if we're ever to open ourselves to other people to give love we must experience at my having been lullaby somebody outside ourselves

if we are to have trust we must have had experiences of the trust for the relationships in our lives so david the hunger for this in the human personality that we cannot begin to talk about god without first year farming his love toward us we understand his love to us and i love writing in response to what we can say and we know that we love because he first love dies we can say this about other person's to we love because they loved us the question of identity of our meeting in light is only answered in the context of relationships of significance i and our relationships relationships with god and with significant persons in our lives who love us but whose love does not have to control us oliver first sutter relationships in the bundle of like a violin bow the second one is we end date and this describes the fact that person's

tend to cluster together in groups frequently groups like themselves and that sometimes groups can become distrust or or destructive of each other jargon word that describes this in our time is polarization that has to do with the spaces which to some of us seem to be getting wider and wider between groups rather than closer and closer if i am about deals with the questions of personal identity and we have a relationship is the problem of our group identities and it reminds us that every group faces the problem of how we can maintain itself without putting down other groups in the process you know what happens we want and esprit de corps a sense of our own worth so we tell ourselves how great it is to belong to this group how well we're doing what good fellows we really are but as we're firm that sometimes we make negative judgments about other groups how they are not quite so good how they are not exactly and goodfellows

as we are sometimes we do these two groups even who were striving for the same objective as we are every group sacred our secular know the importance of drawing tight lines that separate them from contaminating and forth that sometimes enters the hill it looks as if the lines are drawn more to say what they're against and what they are for some of you grew up in a culture where one's religious piety was measured by the fact that he did not drink or smoke or a dance or play cards or have won on sunday or even chew tobacco sound rather quaint when we lay it out like that now but airlines always being drawn between groups and there are feelings thank god that i am not like other man that are always arriving we have talked long and often in his church about the meaning of a black confrontation last may but to me one of the most profound consequences was that it exposed the black congregation of this church and the white congregation were seeing the

world in totally different perspectives and a question of cost for it is whether we wish to pay the price of becoming an integrated church or whether were willing to go on continuing to be at the segregated one the price you see is whether we shall come to truly understand each other i think if i heard once i must have heard a hundred times the statement i can't understand how they could feel that way it applies to almost anybody who is not of your opinion and it is precisely the point you see the weave do not have to agree with the eyes but they do have to hear them they do have to understand them they do have to support them as persons who have a right to their feelings it makes all the difference in the world when people say we understand your point of view we hear you we are concerned about you but we simply can't go along with where you're going

so that's kind of a stance means that we questioned until we know what's really hurting people and pressuring them to do something rather than acting in relation to what it is they do to relieve that pressure but almost any group you can think of that is currently disturbing the fabric of our society and you will find that behind there was some high purpose that they feel has been bypassed or ignored or rejected and they're saying they hurt there was once a high purpose about making america's public schools to reopen ones or the children of all our people would have an equal opportunity can you understand or even share the frustration of those who had hoped many years ago that something now would happen levitt's early years and years of procrastinating and ally and now here that the delays are officially sanctioned and publicly support it the news sent something of the frustration and the anger when we seem to be going

back on everything we said about justice and equality yeah we'd be open enough to be for the people and their purposes even though we may not like or approve the outburst which may result from those purposes if your household budget is pinch these days you know how prices have escalated but can you understand how much more of a threat it would be to a person that the poverty level it is incredible that we can cross the spaces to the moon but not bridge the gap between the haves and i have not in our society how can we become about they concerned about day about the people who are hopeless and who need something done with them and for them this is the path of reconciliation and the wheaties need to be concerned about it all week and left many many other areas of concern without being for campus riots we can understand the demand for relevance in education we can also have the integrity to question student take over the areas where they don't have

copied and her expertise i don't know how to fall the problem of vietnam but i do believe that war is not the way and i do believe that all who oppose war are not wicked or on patriotic the christian task is to see beyond the immediate things that are happening a higher level of righteousness and to keep people's attention focused on it supreme court justice william o douglas was in india and was invited to sit in a fashionable local court the poverty stricken families have been unable to pay their taxes and they were being prosecuted and i was asked a local judge one of the law the one job in such cases he said the squatters must be ejected is that what you're going to do to them inject them there was a long pause them the official replied no one will be ejected you are a judge and you know that law is law but the law is not always just this one thing that will be

demanded of us in the days to come out of this is that we recognize there is upon all of us a single demand for justice and righteousness profits at it like justice rolled down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream the gaps between wade and they wave are privileges are preferred treatment must be closed until we recognize there is one humanity of which both we and they are a part the christians work in this kind of reconciliation because he believes in the highlight of snow thunder whose judgment we all stand well it's a great issue of how we end they can come together when we invade do they of course become us and ice for you and me is at the moment this church people of god and opposes the question of institutional identity who are we as an institution and perhaps most importantly is rockin some kind of unity be a cave in spite of diversity

it seems to me that this is the experience where embark on your church what is our essential unity it is certainly not our famous there is not a party line i got up there ever can be won it is however a purpose which has at its center what happened in the lives of boys and girls and the men and women of persons impaled by god we can find our purpose is seeking to help people celebrate the glory and the meaning of their humanity in a time when so much of it seems to be being taken away from them we're trying to help persons understand the meaning of their finite nurse to help them know they will always be incomplete until they reach beyond themselves to be in for night we're trying to help persons celebrate the amazing and wonderful powers that they have been given which they do not know how to use for themselves or for the good of other people we're trying to help her to understand the meaning of being alive and human in a society that inhibits them and a personalized of them and so

many different ways very briefly let me suggest three things that i think we can do if this is the goal to which we are things we can do as persons and as groups and as an institution the first is that we can affirm that human values are more important and institutional by hughes and are certainly more important than all the holes divisions that separate people from each other i've earned rave up and tells a story about a jew by the name of saul steinberg was wife and children were put to death in a nazi concentration camp when the nazis invaded poland steinberg escaped to russia and eventually there he married a christian girl after the war he went back to poland but anti semitism was still strong they're and so with two sons of their own the family migrated to israel and their five year old boy died they want to the local rabbi to arrange a funeral for their lab

but he refused to bury the boy because he was the son of a non jewish mother and was therefore not himself a jew so they want to a catholic priest but he refused to bury the boy because the child had not been baptized at long last after days of fighting with the authorities they got permission to lead the body to rest in a jury summit early on condition that no prayers will be said and that a special friends were directed to separate his grave from the others in the cemetery and as with dirt was being shown on the small coffee and the mother sobbed in poland they discriminate against us as jews in israel they discriminate against us is kristian there is a time to build up and a time to break down and we are in a time when part of our purpose ought to be to eliminate every kind of falls division that separates people from each other and keeps them from affirming their essential humanity the second thing i think we can do is to really mean it when we say we are part of all of

humanity that means we are one bundle of life with them to say one world and comedic wit is what this church has tried to say but we have not always met it as no one has it is said we were children of one father a daughter is made of one blood all the peoples of the earth we've said this a promise of the week and that in the words of that all un song were in the same boat brother and if you took one and your bonnet to the other but yeah we always meant that what is it we most want for ourselves it is to be loved it has to be treated as human beings what is it that is demanded of us to give to others to all other person's the same treatment norman cousins writing about our international relations with this way it would help to he says if we just accepted it as a fact that all men are capable of feeling pain and be revealed that no one is

proof proof and at the most fundamental form of persuasion is not political or ideological but more all that is the failure to record a man for dignity is calamitous conversely the acceptance of that dignity is the precondition of any discourse for any exchange this is the minimum demand on us as people of god whose daughter has said he has made all men his children and then there's a third thing the power to do this comes when we really begin to learn to love the world because god loves it and they didn't call them creative risk taking on our part julie about what we say and communities to take some risks for the sake of persons there are a lot of people hurting these days a lot of people who are trying to tell us in many many different ways what hurts them and that they need help badly a lot of the ways they do it turn it off but we

need to listen to them and to know them one of the unforgettable things for me in neil simon's plays sweet charity was one of the very opening charity is walking by late with her boyfriend and she is telling him how much he loved him and what he means to her it's perfectly obvious that he doesn't care at all for her at least the way she cares about him in fact suddenly he grabs her and sinatra's her purse pushes her in a lake and runs off with chinese laundering there in the water a number of people go by a couple years ago while down there and really floundering walter says don't look here and she says well walter he says don't look i tell you don't get involved it's none of our business a football player comes up and he says there's a girl in there i think she's drowning about this time an ice cream vendor comes up and says what's going on and the woman says that attractive girl down there is drowning

another man comes on the scene and says what did you say in football player they she's drowning she's gone down to maybe three times already vendors beginning to get your ice cream and he had some customers the football players getting excited he says he's i don't think you can even when i'm in the moment it sure doesn't look like a ratio you should've taken swimming lessons now it's too late for you hey i'll get my kid brother he's never seen a drowning the ice cream vendor continue to yell slow down i got sober and then yet another customer a man with a dog on a leash and he says what's going on what's happened the mann center of a drama like it looks like she's drowning a man with a dog that drowning their the ground running and you are just standing around my god why doesn't somebody do something a woman indignantly says to me well why don't you and he was hardly i can't i'm walking my dog

in our time there are a lot of us who are walking our dogs as people are drowning and as the world in which we live there has been a more and more things which are pushing people down and being indifferent to their cries for help the question the bundle of like whoa this is who am i do i have a responsibility who are we if there something we should be doing what does it mean to be in a world like that these are the questions that come to us from the bundle of life as we think to answer them let us pray oh lord god in the

presence of so much pressure upon us we can only humbly ask forgiveness for all that has happened help us to amend what we are going to become what we can be help us to be moved to serve the world for which your son gave his life in his name we pray amen fb