Transcript
Colleague and friend, one who is a member of the staff here at Princeton Theological Seminary and one who in previous years was himself a director of the Institute of Theology, David Crawford. He is the director of student relations here at Princeton Theological Seminary, and I've asked him if he would introduce the speaker and to lead us in our evening prayer. David? Thank you. It is presumptive to introduce Reverend Clarence Davis to an Institute of Theology. Even
if this is your first year here, you will, if you have not, soon come to know him because he is a man who gives himself. Indeed, if, like so many of you I see here tonight, you didn't come, I think Dr. Cooper would consider canceling the Institute. There was one time that for two days the Reverend Clarence Davis was not here and the Institute had begun, and I phoned his wife in California and I found out
that he was supposed to be here. But there is one other thing that brings him from that other ocean, I think it's called Pacific, to the Atlantic, and it's fishing, and he was out fishing. Now Clarence Davis and I, well I'm grateful and privileged to say, are almost always on the same wavelength, but I mystify him because I'm not a fisherman, and he comes up to me and he says, David, I don't understand how anybody who
loves Jesus can't be a fisherman. Well I'm proud that Clarence Davis has in so many ways, apart from fishing, proved to me that he loves Jesus. I don't need to tell you much about him because if you don't know him you will. He's a graduate of Princeton Seminary for which we're powerfully proud, and uniquely so, not that he was the first Baptist by any means to come to Princeton Seminary. We have quality Baptists, we even teach
polity in two different Baptist traditions, and we're ready to teach it in nine others. And it's not that he came to Princeton Seminary after other careers and work, there are many people that come here who have had real experiences in the world, but there's something about this man that is so unique to us, and this is the vitality of his appreciation. He not just inhales, he receives and admires and encourages. I once went to a lecture
here that was a complete dud, and I spoke to our preacher of the evening afterward and I said, how'd it go, and he said, I got three vistas for sermons, I couldn't even see a keyhole and he had three vistas, but that's who he is, he receives, he appreciates. Well I think I was asked to introduce him not just because we're friends but because somewhere along the line, Jack Cooper has heard that the parish of which
he's pastor is, and I say this with no hyperbole but on clear target, is my favorite congregation in the United States of America, Calvary Baptist Church in Santa Monica, California. And instead of saying something then further about Clarence Davis, I just want to tell you, when you go into that church, you're embraced. First time I ever preached there, I heard singing at quarter of 11 for an 11 o'clock service and I ran up the steps,
thought I was late, and the pastor met me, he said, what's the matter, calm down, I said, did you move the service up, no, he said, when these people come, they're not going to waste their time, they're going to sing. And then the next clue to the leadership of this man, we formed a circle of prayer with the deacons before worship, and I sensed somebody was leaving that circle, and I thought well maybe somebody has to
pick up his wife, you know, to bring her to worship or maybe has other duties, ushering or so forth, no, it was one of the deacons tiptoeing over to the desk to turn over the bulletin of the morning to find out who this man was that was preaching so that when he prayed for me in the circle he could pray for me by name. And that was typical of what I found at the door after worship.
You don't get the usual, enjoy your sermon, Reverend. God bless you and your work, we'll be thinking of you back there in Princeton, do come back and see us. Anybody here in the congregation, not on the platform, anybody here in the congregation bring with them to this institute a member of their parish? He did, good. So Princeton and Calvary Baptist Church in Santa Monica are adjuncts of each other. One of our preachers, beloved professors, sainted memory,
Paul Shearer, used to say I feel sorry for the person who is not in ministry. Now he didn't mean in the professional ministry, he meant somebody that has no vocation beyond their profession, no task beyond. This man inspires a vocation beyond the profession. And when you leave that church, I mean, I know they do not like at Calvary in Santa Monica J.B. Phillips rendering of Romans 1616 which in, as you know, as God intended it
says greet the brethren with a holy kiss and J.B. Phillips renders it shake hands all round. No, the holy kiss is there and the holy hug. It's a great experience to worship there. I warn you though, if you're going to go to Calvary Church, go after the service begins because if the pastor sees you, he'll grab you to come up with him and share in the leadership of worship and that's a great privilege. But, when
you go down the aisle with Clarence Davis, you don't just saunter into the presence of the eternal, you don't just waddle or ooze, you stride in celebration. And my daughters are embarrassed that my stride is not with the right rhythm, but I'm learning. Clarence Davis has represented his denomination in ecumenical gatherings both in this country and overseas. He comes back east because he has two parishes also of his heart in Philadelphia and Camden. He comes to
us as a man who has to preach because he's got a task and he's got a gospel. And if you don't think so, starting next Sunday, he'll be preaching six or seven successive nights. I guess he preached twice yesterday. We're privileged to have such a friend. We're grateful to hear the word from such a person and we're just so happy tonight that in the congregation is not only an officer of his church, but Mrs. Davis, Thelma
Davis is here from Santa Monica and also our preacher's brother. So this is a happy night for us at Princeton to welcome to the pulpit of Miller Chapel the Reverend Clarence Davis, pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church in Santa Monica, California. You love to sing and in the hymn book there's a hymn. Maybe it's wedded to a tune that's difficult because I don't recall ever seeing it. As our prayer tonight, I'll just share it with you.
I sought the Lord and afterward I knew he moved my soul to seek him seeking me. It was not I who found, O Savior, true. No, I was found of thee. Thou didst stretch forth thy hand and mine enfold. I walked and sank not on a storm-tossed sea. It was not so much that I on thee took hold as thou, dear Lord, on me. I think, I walk, I love, but, O, the whole of love
is but my answer, Lord, to thee. For thou wert long beforehand with my soul. Always thou lovest me. And because this is true, there are so many others now whom we must love and so many others we think of tonight on whose love we count and yet on whose love we do not wish to presume. In a moment of silence, will you pray for them? Let us pray. Amen. The other night when Brian Kirkland preached, he
noted that at a certain juncture there were no amens. At the end of the sermon there was one, and I think it came from the preacher of the evening. Would you, before you rise to sing hymn 236, Spirit of God, descend upon my heart, welcome Clarence Davis with a loud amen. Amen.
[music]
Thou hast brought us to this place, O God of life, by all our several ways, ever keeping faith with us, for all our unfaithfulness. Go before us still. We beseech thee by thy word and spirit, leading us from this day forth, that it shall please thee through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. My unswervingly faithful and warm friend, David Crawford, thank you for leading me to believe that I am a whole lot more than I really am. Dr. Cooper, who so faithfully and wonderfully directs this increasingly
indispensable part of our experience as fellow laborers in the Spirit, to all of those who are responsible for a moment in history for me that shall always live, and for the witness of this institution along with those companies of Christians and seekers after the good life across the world, I offer sincerely an unworthy thanksgiving. Impoverished language can never catch even the hymn of these moments which are ineffable and non-recurrent. They have their own eloquence in
silence, and they stand with an erect posture before life. I simply want to say to all of the members of the staff of this great seminary, the President, Dr. McCord, and all of the members of the staff, I'm very grateful to both God and you that it has been mine to come this way. I do, without hesitation, give accord to the beauty and the devotion of my lovely wife who has suffered much and has been patient
long since. I shall remember when I finally got through, and they gave us the gown and the board, and we stood on the moment waiting. Her words were, all right, let's go get our degree. I cannot tell you what it means to be blessed with a good family. I think many of you know this, and especially when it includes the romance of minister and congregation in three different cities and sections of the country. And to have
a wife still say, I'm coming, it is more than we can ever merit. And I want to thank her and thank all of you for your friendship, for the warm way you accept me even, as Jack Killinger put it, when I break down. Most of you have pardoned my breaking down, and I appreciate that. Now, I think I'm supposed to preach tonight, is that so? And since I've spoken in terms of so many accolades for friends,
I know a friend would not put that kind of awesome task on a poor Baptist preacher after having passed through the week of excellence we have shared. Dr. Kirkland and Dr. Killinger have set the tone and the pace, which cadence is faster than I can go and much more lucid and incisive. So I'm simply going to give a prayer and take my seat. Is that all right? I want to talk tonight a few minutes about mission
and odyssey. Those of us who are ministers and who are pastors and preachers know something of what my topic would imply. Ministry and odyssey. And I think you will do service to yourself and to all of us to look at the words found in the Gospel of John, chapter one, verse four. I think all of us are familiar with the passage. It's not a new one. You've read it many times. And yet it is so important
to say again and again, in him was life. And the life was the light of man. And then Jesus again in the eighth chapter and the 12th verse speaking in the Treasury reminded those of his learners saying, I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness. But shall have the light of life. Now there are too many of you here who know what the rules and proprieties are about homiletics.
So that immediately I want to confess the audacity to break all the rules. I want to begin with what may seem a strange impartial and go to the notes of Mersey Eliade and remind you of a word of his. He says every exile is a Ulysses traveling toward Ithaca. And every human existence is a reproduction of that Odyssey. That path toward Ithaca, toward the center is analogous to the struggle and the experiences of those of us
who in ministry find ourselves seeking to return to the heart, to the center, to consummate the haunting experiences that will not let us alone, bringing us, impelling us, drawing us, creating for us strange kinds of restlessnesses until our homing is complete. This is the kind of look into beneath the surface readings that has to do with the ministry as I see it. And I like this word Odyssey because it's definitively a word which pictures our true
circumstances, the indisputable location of our life situation. Or we try to cushion it with other words, we call ourselves pilgrims, we say we're travelers and sojourners, but the truth is we're exiles. All of us have been put out by authority. And we're a long distance from the country that makes for us the peace of home. We have been by reason of the determining and elections of God himself put into the darkness in response to the strange
interpretation that we've made of his love and of his authority and of his absolutism. And so we struggle, we seek to find in our wonderings ways back to Ithaca, to the center, to homeland, to the heart from whence we've come. And without any deliberation, just a perfunctory reading of our location gives us to understand that it is not the kind of place where we work in ministry that we can refer to as having our courses charted.
There are no clear lines by which we can go of ourselves. Our way, as Amos has put it, is not in us. We are plunged into a labyrinth, into a darkness, if you please, without eyes of our own to see so that we are dependent as wanderers. We are responsible, yes, but we have no way of finding the right places for our footsteps. We cannot see through the night and through the darkness. There must be light
in our darkness. Someone must come from out of history into history and give us place in terms of painful and yet patient stepping. Someone must help us to interpret and to find hidden meaning in our wonderings. There is a need for light in our darkness, and thanks be to God. This great word comes saying to us, you're not cosmic fragments, you're not alone. Your wonderings are overshadowed and undergirded and surrounded by a caring, loving God who
is the light by which your darkness can be penetrated and through which you may read meaning into all of the experiences of your wonderings. There is no hopelessness left convenient for us, but this challenge is here in this word of God, for the word is light. In this word, we can have light for our stepping and for our peaceful sojourn in terms of moving. As the psalmist put it, your word is a lamp for my footstep
and a light on my pathway. And you are the world's light, and by you we see, for your light gives us eyes. Your light flashes in our darkness. Your light is the hope that makes possible the springing in our hearts eternally of receiving and of knowing sufficiently to run this race, if you please, to make our wonderings and to finally come again to homeland. One of the things that we are confident in about the love of
God through this word of his is that he intends for us to know what the excellence is of the dream that he holds over our lives, that no man need fail nor lose hope or heart in spite of the strange topography of the land through which he must make his wonderings. Oh, I speak of topography, for each of us has a different geographical place, a different place in terms of, if you use the analogy, shifting scenes,
weather as it changes and the kinds of seasons as they successfully bid themselves and as they succeedingly bring us rain and storm and sun and winter. And so the seasons that we experience and the topography through which we traverse all makes for this matter of interpreting and seeing hidden meaning in all of our wonderings, even in the seasons of depression and in the dry places and on all of the sufferings that we must know as exiles
rather than pilgrims, as men and women who seek because of the necessity to come again to the place for which God has made us without knowing can have no peace, no real sense of success or measure of accomplishment that's meaningful and is true. And so this matter of seeing in the darkness, of reading signs even though they aren't there is a matter of knowing only out of the life of Christ Jesus our Lord who is the
light because out of his strength and power, out of the domination and the perpetual eternal power of his word comes light by which we can see though flashes as brief as they may be as in the matter of Newman's words in this encircling gloom just one step enough but it's his light that makes possible the hope remaining, the assurance and certitude given the possibility of the impossible and the hope making us know that all things are
possible with God. And then there's something else, not only must we see in the darkness, not only are we challenged to make our ways where the ways are not clear except for the light of his love and the seeing he furnishes by his power and by his life. We also set upon with the challenge as George Buttrick puts it, under the sentence of life we must not only see meaning in these strange experiences through the dark
but we must take them, these meanings, this interpretation of life that the light of God gives us and build for us structures and meanings which make possible the translation incarnatedly in our lives of the truth and the hope and the strength and the power of God for others for every exile makes his own mark as he passes in the wonderings from place to place and everyone must know with responsibility that your tracks are left for others
to follow for your movements, your role playing, your impact on history, your movement in the lives of others will always be read either negatively or positively so that you must take by the light of God's life and word and light these meanings and these interpretations of your particular wonderings in such a way as to build structures and fashion meaning and incarnatingly set before the generations that follow for as Olive Schreiner puts it, there is in the
darkness a way, go out into the night go out into the darkness said another who stood at the gate of the year and give me a light whereby I might see my way in the darkness then he said to me, go out into the darkness and place your hand in the hand of God and that will be better than a light and safer than a known way for others must have an opportunity to read in your
steps the movements of life the direction of the light of God when it comes to interpreting the meaning of what it's all about when we engage in the romance of ministry and finally I want to remind you that all of this is going somewhere when you take ministry seriously when you look at the opportunity to live and to be a part of an endless host of men and women across the ages and across the world when
you think of what is being done and transpires in this brief life God gives you is it not sobering to realize that there's so many dreams we dream that we cannot complete and yet there are some things we can do there are those things that God would give us to share in which we need not ever forget are a part of what he has for us none of us can know what ministry is without the debilitations
of the long march we need rations for that long march and it is in this moment that the word comes again to bolster our going and our coming with the assurance that I am the bread of life that he that eats my flesh and drinks my blood shall abide in me and I in him and although there are those things that we cannot change let me read to you this position that Olive Schreiner takes she undertakes
to establish the grounds of her position as her own fact she makes clear that it is her total personal response to the existential circumstances of her own life and so it's helpful in our understanding of her to enter into the explanation or rationalization of the way she saw her world and what in her terms were her responses to that world her responses became a way of looking out upon the total landscape of her life for the
garnering of meaning which has been passed on to us it is with these elements she deals in this past of her discussion or in this part of her discussion she says that she had grown up in a land in which wars were common she had seen during the most formative period of her life how white men fought white men and how white men had used black men as beasts of burdens with no thought of their good
or happiness on three occasions she had seen an ox trying to pull a heavy load up a hill the blood and the foam streaming from its mouth and nostrils until it fell dead under the lash she had seen animals killed just for the sport of it always there were convicts with chains, prisoners in irons around their waists which passed beneath their legs to their feet she ached to give them succor and to let them know that
somebody loved them that somebody cared again and again she asked herself why do the strong always crush the weak? why do we hate and kill and torture? why was it all as it was? why had the world ever been made? oh, why had I ever been born? and what then is her answer? it's in terms of a vivid sense of personal responsibility that from one point of view seems melodramatic, sentimental, and perhaps even neurotic but who
is it to say and by what canon of judgment we will hear what Olive Schreiner says listen to her you cannot by willing it alter the vast world one side or the other outside of yourself you cannot perhaps cut the lash from one whip you cannot perhaps strike the handcuffs from one chain hand you cannot even remake your own soul so that there shall be no tendency to evil in it the great world rolls on and
you cannot reshape it but this one thing you can do in that one small minute almost infinitesimal spot in the universe where your will rules there where alone you are as God himself strive to make what you hunger for a reality in your own heart strive to kill out all hate all desire to see evil come even to those who have injured you or another what is weaker than yourself try to help whatever is in pain
or unjustly treated and cries out say I am here I little weak feeble but I will do what I can for you this is all you can do but do it it is not nothing and then this feeling came to me a feeling it is not easy to put into words but it was like this you also are part of the great universe what you strive for something strives for and nothing in the universe is quite
alone you are moving on towards something great and so I believe with all my heart tonight that this vision of olive shriner carries with it the invitation to join hands with her and others of the heroes of the faith through all the years of her living this was her dream that which was for the young child a vision a flash of almost blinding light which it could hardly even to itself translate as in the course of
a long life's experience become a hope which I think the cool reason can find grounds to justify and which a growing knowledge of human nature and human life does endorse somehow, somewhere, some place even on this earth these dreams will come true oh it will take brave spirit it will take valorous heart it will take total commitment to the absolutism of God which opens the door with the hazard of having him come in and rearrange all
of the furniture this is the chance we take with God but for God's sake let me go to my seat reminding you that we cannot finish the course as could Paul say I finish my course we cannot finish our wonderings with any hope of homeland's reward unless we know what the psalmist was saying when he put together in one capsule phrase what I would remind you tonight the Lord is not my mind, my spirit not my
strength in terms of life's goods for this is vanity of vanity but the Lord is my strength and my salvation the Lord is my light the strength of my life of whom then shall I fear when my enemies mounting more than the number of the hairs on my head come against me to eat up my flesh they stumble and fall though in host in camps against me yet will I not fear no phobias in the darkness
for the Lord is my strength and my life and even if my mother and my father put me down the Lord will take me up wait I say wait on the Lord for he will give you the desire of your heart wait I say wait on the Lord let us pray grant us now O God to serve thee with our lives holy and gladly that the patient faith in us may never be betrayed nor thy brave
and stubborn hopes defeated through Jesus Christ our Lord Amen