You Tube Theology

A service of worship in Duke University Chapel. The Reverend Dr Samuel Wells delivers a sermon entitled "Solidarity." Opening excerpt from the sermon: (36:07) "When I was 19 I spent a summer living in an intentional Christian community. We would rise at 5.30 for an hour of silence, share Morning Prayer and the Eucharist together, and then have breakfast. There would be community prayers at midday before lunch for those who were around and not out at work, and evening prayers before supper at 6.30. At 9 o'clock there'd be night prayers and then most days we'd keep silence till the morning. My favorite moments were the times when after supper and before night prayers one of the community members would pick up a guitar and play some Joni Mitchell or Neil Diamond or Carly Simon songs. Whenever I hear the words "I've looked at life from both sides now" it takes me straight back to those precious evenings. Several times during those vibrant back-porch moments I found myself possessed by an overwhelming need to walk away, to go to my room and write up the experience in my journal rather than keep on living it. I recall that urge to withdraw almost more intensely than the music and laughter themselves. Why on earth would anyone leave the room when it felt so warm, so accepting, as earthy and affirming as a great big group hug? I now look back and see that what I was confronting was a microcosm of the predicament facing every human being: what we might call the essence of the human condition." Closing excerpt from the sermon: (56:23) "So this is how Jesus addresses the human predicament. Not through preserving life. Think of Jerzy Popieuszko: preserving the life of the Polish people would have simply condemned them to continued oppression. It was no different for Jesus. And not through escape. Think again of Fr. Popieuszko: there was nowhere that the Polish people could escape to, that wouldn't leave them right back where they started. Jesus addresses the human predicament through solidarity. He is with us in our struggle, our suffering, our searching, our striving. As the Polish government so vividly discovered, that's a solidarity that sin and death can no longer break. And in the process, Jesus redefines our predicament. It turns out our real problem, as human beings, is not the prospect of death, or the reality of sin: it's our alienation from God and one another. It's the fact that our links with God and one another are so intangible, so invisible, so thin, so ... practically nonexistent. That's what changes in Jesus. Jesus is the solidarity between us and God that makes those links tangible and visible and permanent and unbreakable. Jesus is God saying, "I've looked at life from both sides now." Jesus is God saying to us,"I'm totally immersed in you." When we're baptized, God says to us, "Will you be totally immersed in me?" Sermon begins at 36:07. Mark 1:4-11 Bulletin: http://bit.ly/xt4ui9 Sermon: http://bit.ly/zHtVZI