Читать книгу Luminescence, Volume 2 - C. K. Barrett - Страница 25

[Preached twice, once on 10/1/67 at St. Oswalds in Durham and once 10/14/80 at York University]

I hope I do not over-dramatize the situation, or over-glamorize Durham, but I suggest some of you may be feeling like that today. Indeed, I hope you are; I should be sorry if you were not. You can afford not to be blase today. All things are ours. It may have been a secret, but I have put up the necessary A levels; we have done it, we are in, we are away from the manners of home, the restriction and discipline of school. We are embarking on a life we are looking forward to, in a privileged society, in the world of men and women, a world in which we are, more or less, our own masters and can do what we please. The world is my oyster and I mean to find the pearls.

This is a legitimate attitude, it is a proper attitude. Perhaps you feel it just in relationship to personal freedom and in the field of personal relationships. You can do, within wide limits, what you like. No society can afford to dispense altogether with regulations, but they are tightly drawn. You do not even have to do much work, and there are plenty of opportunities for the irresponsible to waste their own time, and the money that others have contributed to support them here. Among 3,000 of your contemporaries you are bound to find congenial companions; whatever your tastes you will have opportunity to indulge and develop them. And no don worth his salt comes to be regarded as a schoolmaster, and there is older society as well as younger.

Some of you may look further ahead and see the university as the gateway to the professions, to careers of every sort. This too is true. It becomes harder, year by year, to enter fields of worthwhile activity if you do not have a degree as a passport. The passport is not exactly handed to you, in the Fresher’s Conference, but it is within your reach. Some of you at least will look at this in the way that the setting and nature of the university truly suggests. In the world of scholarship, all things are yours, that is the whole world lies open at your feet, and it is yours to explain and make your own. There are no limits, except your own limitations. All the history there is, all the physics there is, all the mathematics, whatever it is you choose, it is there.

And let me add this explicitly; being a Christian imposes no limits on your curiosity. Rather it should stimulate it. Some people seem to think that for Christians there are doors marked “Danger: No Admittance.” You mustn’t examine this or that lest it imperil your faith. There are no such restrictions. For one thing, a faith that won’t stand up to investigation and truth is a faith not worth having, and for another a Christian who believes that he lives in his Father’s house has every reason for exploration and none for inhibition. His faith is in truth the foundation of the scientific method, for unlike most people, he has good reason to believe that the universe makes sense, and that ultimately reason and order will prevail within it. But it is true, and this provides the opportunity, to take another step. Having told his readers “all things belong to you,” he adds, “and you belong to Christ.”

AND YOU BELONG TO CHRIST

This is not a limitation of human freedom and sovereignty, it is a condition of it. I can best explain this by going back to what I was saying a moment ago. All things belong to you, all history, all mathematics, for example. So they do—potentially. But you will only make them yours if you belong to them. I mean if you are prepared to give yourself up to the discipline of the historical or mathematical method. I should not like to be misunderstood. I have not been put up by the Vice-Chancellor to tell you all to be good girls and boys and to work hard. This is not an exhortation, it is a simple fact. You can pass examinations without that kind of dedication. But without it, you will not become a really educated, still less a really learned, person. The world of scholarship is at your disposal, it can belong to you, but only if you belong to it.

Take an example from another field, that of personal relations. I chose my example deliberately in the hope that one or two people may find it worth reflecting on, not only as an illustration but in itself. One of the features of modern university life is that, for good or ill, men and women are thrown into fairly close association with one another, a fact that is not without its problems and tensions. The point that I am making can be put in a sentence. No woman ever belongs to you, unless equally and exclusively you belong to her. And no man ever belongs to you, unless equally and exclusively you belong to him. Again this is not exhortation, it is a fact. And if it saves one of you from making a fool of yourself in the next three years, then the last two minutes will have been well spent.

But the point is this: All things are yours, yes, but this involves a condition. All things belong to you and you belong to Christ. This is not simply a religious proposition though I could put it in those terms. Paul has said that all the apostles, himself, Peter, Apollos, belong to you; and (without trying to sort out the apostles between the churches) it would be right in this united service to say that all the churches Church of England (like St. Oswald’s) Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, Presbyterian, and so on—all are yours in that all offer you their fellowship and their chaplaincies and their services, but that this ecclesiastical circus achieves reality for you so long as you belong to Christ.

But as I say, this is not simply a religious or ecclesiastical proposition. Whatever else Christ is, he is representative humanity, and if the whole field of human enterprise, human relationship is yours (and it is), you enter into possession of it as you belong to Christ, who is representative humanity. You may well say—What does that mean? Is it more than a pious phrase? Can you explain it? I think so, but if we are to do it, I must go on to Paul’s next words, “and Christ belongs to God.”

AND CHRIST BELONGS TO GOD

There is a parallel between our belonging to Christ and Christ belonging to God. But what the latter means, anyone who reads the Gospels can very clearly see. It was expressed in obedience. Jesus knew that the two supreme requirements of God were ‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ These being practiced without limitations or reserve through the practice of them led him straight to crucifixion. It is one thing, and a good thing, to heal the sick, feed the hungry and so on at no particular cost to yourself. It is another to do so when you know that every action you take is leading you to death. But this was what belonging to God meant. It sometimes did and often did not take the shape of conventional religion. The important thing was that it always took the shape of complete self-giving to God and to humankind.

From this we learn what it means to belong to Christ. I should not, if I were you, despise the offerings of organized religion. Jesus did not, and college chapels and S.C.O.T. and D.I.C.C.U. and denominational societies and city churches all have something to offer. But incomparably more important is that you personally belong to Christ and express that belonging in the service of God in faith, and in service of your fellow human beings in love. “All things are yours, and you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.”

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