You Tube Theology

A service of worship in Duke University Chapel. The Reverend Dr Samuel Wells delivers a sermon entitled Mystic Sweet Communion. Opening excerpt from the sermon:(41:40) "I might believe in the Redeemer if his followers looked more Redeemed." So said the nineteenth-century atheist philosopher Fredrick Nietzsche. And it remains one of the most damaging criticisms of Christianity. Most of us have had moments, seasons, or even decades of being so ashamed of what has been done in the name of Christ and the church that we wonder if we can still truly belong to Christ, and still belong to the church. Many of us have felt profoundly let down by a person we looked up to or disillusioned by a form of Christian witness or horrified by the way a movement or culture has turned the faith into an excuse for manipulation, extortion, oppression or exploitation." Closing excerpt from the sermon: (1:00:52) "So this is what it means to be fully alive. Not to live without limitations, without pain, suffering or death. Not even to live without sin, either our own or other people's, for it always lurks at the door. But to live in communion, united with and yet still fully present to God, united with and yet still fully present to one another. Communion doesn't take away pain and, in this life, it doesn't take away sin. But it embraces you with the only power that's stronger than both of them, and puts them in their place, until every tear is wiped away from every eye.--Live your life united with and fully in the presence of God. Live your baptism. Live a Eucharistic life. Live in communion with God, with one another, and with the created world. That's being fully alive. That's being a saint. There's only one sadness, the sadness of not being a saint. And there's only one gladness. The gladness of communion. The gladness of the communion of saints." Sermon begins at 41:40. Revelation 7:9-17. Bulletin: http://bit.ly/u3PP3K Sermon: http://bit.ly/v8SrJX