Sermon of Worship; 1970-01-04, Sermon

a christian lonely lives by faith needs as much as any other man a strategy for coping with the times we made in response to the gospel but we also live in response to the claims and climate of the age many christians software frustrates and needlessly because they do not combine their trust in god with a lifestyle that is appropriate to their era this failure of the faithful may have prompted the observation of jesus that the children of this world are wiser in their generation paul light on this first sunday of a million and a new decade i should like to propose but some eyelids life in the seventies we will have to learn to travel

light i say this out of a conviction that we are passing through an exodus experience through our exodus is not the geographical exodus mccabe rose knew when they went out of egypt or the promised land and yet the ap exodus of the old testament community can be instructive for us and perhaps provide for us amano for as that exodus took place that birthed the hebrew nation those people were passing from the familiar to you they were loading from the fairly comfortable with it ever got they were moving from security the risk

and write to start but larry that that they would have to travel light let your imagination play with that seen a lively events and played head finally convinced farrow and saw that was made for a base less this tyrant should change his mind again also the lion gabriel families had to decide what to leave and want to take your order of the day was we must travel light it is out of this experience of joyous and paste that we find the words in the narrative saw the tabletop weirdo before it was leavened then leading polls being bound up in their mantle us on their shoulders they learn what was portable and what was not portable

what they could carry on the journey and what they would have the looters and till this day that and lavender and i it's been a reminder to the truth of the circumstances under which they moved out into an open future it takes ongoing to master the art of traveling light any man who has ever tried to pack the family car for a trip will recall the pressures to amazing how for women's hat boxes and crowd even the largest drug but there's always the glove compartment years ago when the domestic airlines were limiting us to forty pounds a

passenger some of us learn how to get along with us really thought we could the seven days will demand especially of white american christians that they developed the mac on travelling light over time we will be called up on i believe to hold our material possessions with a light touch we have been far too serious and too intense regarding are tangible wealth the generation gap that we hear so much about these days is not simply a crisis and conduct and behavior it isn't data crisis and values somehow our young people in growing numbers

though not sarah's as highly as julie the importance of security and tangible well the assumption that the gross national product and that grows personal product must go up each year or else the basin or the individual is a failure is an assumption that i believe will soon be challenge too why send a man whose salary does not go up each year regard himself as any kind of a failure in the light of the gospel and how long will this may soon be allowed to increase its gross national product taking resources from all around the world aldo expect the upper income and nations

to sit back quietly and applauded us while they're landis stripped that our high standard of life might be maintained our employees raises some very serious moral questions years ago a sarin gifted i said a man who is genuinely christie would not apply a second coat for himself if he knew of someone who had none well i think we would agree and i better moments that get her daughter's right and there's a question of what we do if we say we're christians when we have more than we actually need is a question that age of us has had to deal with and we had built up very cleverly our rationale for getting

around the acknowledgment of wrong at this point after all only spear in which we operate we need more than other people or sometimes we can reach back and actually tell us so that we deserve all we have that somehow god has favored us because we are good or latino or dc every one of us sharing in this worst of experience has made a determination of what he has a right to expand on himself as opposed to what it will make available to the needs of the world at large i'm suggesting that in the seventies that question will have to be reopened and the rationale that we have euros to

justify our high standard of living in a world of depravity and aid will have to be reconsidered if this be heresy then let it but there is something that radically wrong with the system that allows a man to make more in one hour and a wall street speculation and a husband and wife working full time can make a nominee for their family it's b we will be called upon to divest ourselves of it justified advantage we will go this by what we give we will do it why how we are taxed and we will do it please god flow by settling for a lower standard of living

so that others like come up and all of this not because the material is bad but because these are good so good in fact that they are vital to our life it's b we will be called upon to travel light that is we will be called upon to wear whatever authority we carry with a light hot parents an hour of cardio were children teachers and their authority over their students place in their party our citizens elected officials and there are far below where the populace and the church perhaps most especially in itself our audio woes it

claims to lead the bylaws under which we operate are not that they confused with the law of god and robert's rules awarded for all of their value and helpful as i'm not one of the sixty six books of the bible our ways and procedures our style of leadership has been historically conditioned and therefore it can't be revised and review the seventies i believe will be a decade of the consumer which means that all of us who are connected with institutions whether in business or education or religion will have to begin to think not so much of how what we do looks to us what how it looks to those who are

on the receiving end whose names we are here to serve i think most men when they go shopping for a pair of cancers soon but the ordeal off until the very and then rush in at one hour them suggested the court that they'd like to wear a whole i recall an experience in michigan where i did meet a pair of trousers walk into a store with an established reputation and it struck my fancy and i ask women whether he might have a tough time for me to take home at night it went on to tell me that this company had a very fine plan

for taking care of things like this i didn't know any of these or a prayer is locally and the finest taylor's down and it's right and there was a truck that came by every other day in the military all down and then in a very concentrated way where all the experts were get the repair work was done and the result was that i wouldn't be able to find those plants in my possession until at least a week i confess that i told them and stumbling language that while his plan was obviously last of all they demand his company but as a lawmaker and some are i would have preferred our humble taylor in the back room who know it using the loop road quickly it's amazing how an

institutional structures we think of how we are going out to the people in a way that is most convenient to last and part of the law is and our society is the somber people who always to participate and the decisions that affect their lives this will be you know decade for a man who likes to think of his victims and remind himself what is a fighting it will be a a decade for the man who can take as a thought it lightly otis has appointed him finally the seventies we will be called upon to be less

rigid and moral victories that we hold james white sided for me when he said that what we need are fewer delays and more belief we will be called upon as a christian is to lighten the load of that which we carry in the name of god so that we may concentrate on so on three or four considerations that matter in a time of exodus there are some crows that afraid and so they are elements one life has become a struggle for survival it's not that those foods are wrong in them

so it's one am worthy of our beliefs it is some way that in a time of exodus urgency we must be done with subtle refinements an intramural disputes we ought to be able to hand out some metals to people i've been able to negotiate the sidewalks are here over this past week it seems to me that there's always a lovely me whistling up one hundred and one is streaked toward riverside for a dozen pentecost and when that will is strong and the sidewalks are all ice it's all men can do the little block i remember the other morning just looking across the street watching one man fighting is way carefully towards broadway

it would be hard to imagine a keener instance a total concentration i submit that there was nothing that man's mind at the moment other than to surviving the ice it wasn't concerned about the israeli arab question it wasn't concerned about the thirty cents there it wasn't even concerned about the condition of john nemeth's knees he simply wanted to survive now it's that kind of a time conviction wires and some of the refinements that our prices to us and normal days take on the cast of irrelevance we will have to be a little like an art auction roland leighton says that back in the sixteenth century

erasmus had a contention with a car who's in mount by the name of soldier it was sort of that if well if in one point of old age were in our entire authority of holy scripture would collapse love and faith would be extinguished or a seasoned says those one abound a blasphemy would be committed again slowly scripture the authority of theologians would be shaken and indeed the catholic church would collapse from the foundations well some minor mistakes i've been found in the holiday and the roman church is still strong let's not get uptight about what we think is necessary to the survival of our faith or so some of us can remember when it was considered right to be

antagonistic toward row who would've thought that in the sixties we would be thinking in terms of rome when christians and protestant christians and turning our backs on that mindless war there is good news on the horizon that in the seventies we will be entering upon a deeper and more meaningful dialogue with judaism the dialogue by the vatican in just a week or so ago we may even find ourselves entering into an unprecedented dialogue in depth with communism well i know how much we need the communists there is vital to our defenses as the villain is in the all

melodrama but one f in this time of universal exodus we should find some common ground we lost last week one of our most perceptive re form theologians in the passing of joe's of harmonica ramadi or had it made in this country he could've stayed at his post at princeton seminary he chose to go back so that they might live on the frontier where east was meeting last not only geographically but ideologically he was trying to find some common ground on both sides of the curve someone asked him one time how long he thought it would take to

crystallize communism answered with a twinkle in his eye not in a longer than it will take you to christianize capitalism what i've just so from audio was right that atheism is not part of the essence of communism it was his you know that they had a religious character of communism was not inherent in marxism what was rather the result of historical circumstances communism he said fell back on the shallow atheistic outlook of nineteenth century rationalism because religion had been closely identified with the forces against the socialist revolution i'm simply suggesting that if we

close our rigidity and maintain us stands up openness less beliefs but more daily we will be better equipped for the exodus and to which we pass what beliefs are important i can only tell you what the important ones would be may first the conviction that creation is good second the man for all of his radical evil is the crowning glory of creation and most important of all that is jesus christ wi fi parallel the non repeatable way god's will for his creation and men and women in it in

times of doubt we returned to have a certainty at the center of our faith as to the eye of the hurricane so the people took weird though before it was leavened then eating balls being bound up and they're manned else on that show with the exodus is upon us and we are being called upon the trouble like the whole our possession use with a light touch to where our authority with a lighter heart and delight in the number of our convictions so that we might believe more intensely in a few we travel light as the day he wrote children

and like while there is a presence with us a saving presence would broaden the exodus the god of the wilderness and the god the pope