00:00:00.000 - 00:00:53.000

[Music] One day old Presbyterian church people moving power brings you Dr. Bruce W. Thielman with a message, "Epitaph for a Clown." [Music] This scripture reading of the evening is taken from the Old Testament and the New Testament.

00:00:53.000 - 00:01:20.000

I will ask you to be up standing for the reading of the word of God. I shall read first the 150th Psalm. Praise the Lord. Praise God in His sanctuary. Praise Him in His mighty firmament. Praise Him for His mighty deed.

00:01:20.000 - 00:01:47.000

Praise Him according to His exceeding greatness. Praise Him with trumpet sounds. Praise Him with lute and harp. Praise Him with timbrel and dance. Praise Him with strings and pipe. Praise Him with sounding cymbals. Praise Him with loud clashing cymbals.

00:01:47.000 - 00:02:21.000

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. And then reading from the pages of the New Testament, Paul's second letter to the Christians in Corinth, the second chapter, beginning the reading at the 14th verse. But thank thee to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph,

00:02:21.000 - 00:02:49.000

and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?

00:02:49.000 - 00:03:28.000

For we are not like so many peddlers of God's words, but men of sincerity, commissioned by God and in the sight of God, we speak in Christ. And may the same God who inspired these words incline our hearts to their understanding. Please be seated.

00:03:28.000 - 00:04:01.000

Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, and one of the highlights of the observance, I am sure, in many homes, will be watching the parade on television.

00:04:01.000 - 00:04:34.000

I checked my TV guide this morning and discovered that no less than four of them are to be presented. There will be the great Philadelphia parade, which specializes in things musical. There will be the great Detroit parade, which specializes in magnificent floats and light spectacles. There will be the granddaddy of all Thanksgiving Day parades, the Macy's parade in New York City, with its blockbuster balloons.

00:04:34.000 - 00:05:09.000

And then, for the 69th consecutive year, Mr. F. Claus will arrive in Toronto, Canada, and that parade will be televised also. I suppose there are few days in America now on which there are as many parades as Thanksgiving. And this has special meaning to me this year, for it speaks very relevantly to the passage from God's word, which I would ask us to consider tonight.

00:05:09.000 - 00:05:51.000

A single verse, a single sentence addressed by the greatest of the apostles to the Christians who were in Corinth. He says to them, "I thank God my life is part of the pageant of Christ's triumph." Now that word "triumph" is a very particular word, as Paul uses it. You see, a triumph in those days, in the Roman Empire of which Paul was a citizen, a triumph was a great celebration and festival.

00:05:51.000 - 00:06:29.000

It was granted only to those military commanders who had been victorious in some foreign war, who had brought all of their troops home safely, who had killed no less than 5,000 of the enemy in a single battle, who had acquired new territory for the empire, and who had fought on the field of conflict themselves. When a general had done all of those things, he was granted a triumph.

00:06:29.000 - 00:06:58.000

And a triumph was a parade, a parade which we know all about from ancient documents, and a parade which has some interesting similarities to the Thanksgiving Day parade we'll be seeing tomorrow. First, in the parade there came the officials. You know how they always ride in automobiles right out there in the front. Then came the trumpeters. They would of course correspond to the brass bands we'll be seeing tomorrow.

00:06:58.000 - 00:07:24.000

Then came the floats. The floats in an ancient Roman triumph depicted scenes from the battles which had been won. Our floats will be different tomorrow, but there will be floats still. Then the spoils that had been captured in the conflict would be displayed, and after that a white sacrificial bull which was to be offered on the altar of Jupiter, the god of war.

00:07:24.000 - 00:07:48.000

We might say that would correspond with the horse troops and the elephants that will be on parade. Then came the captives who had been taken prisoner in the battle, followed by the lictors, who were the policemen of their day. Of course, every parade today has motorcycle escorts. Then came the priests, swinging great censers and perfuming the air.

00:07:48.000 - 00:08:20.000

Paul makes reference to that perfume in the very next verse after the verse we're considering. Then came the victorious general himself, riding in a chariot, wearing a purple toga and a golden wreath upon his head, holding in his hand an ivory scepter. And behind him, in additional chariots, came the members of his family and finally his whole army. And as they marched, they would cry out, "Eo Triumphi! Eo Triumphi! Eo Triumphi!"

00:08:20.000 - 00:09:01.000

It was a great spectacle. It would make any of the parades which we will see tomorrow nothing in comparison. And what Paul is saying to these Corinthians is this, that Jesus Christ is having a triumph like that, a parade, a pageant, if you will, that goes all through history and that will end in one great day of acclamation, in which every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is the Christ, that he is the only begotten Son of God.

00:09:01.000 - 00:09:41.000

And Paul, after speaking of this magnificent pageant and triumph that Jesus is to know, says, "And I thank God that I am part of it. I, Paul, am part of Christ's parade." Now, as you look at the life of Paul, you might be prone to say that there really wasn't a great deal in his life for which he would be apparently thankful. He was without a family. He had either been disowned or else they had died. He never makes mention of them specifically.

00:09:41.000 - 00:10:26.000

He had no home. He was a wanderer upon the face of the earth. He was afflicted with ill health, a thorn in the flesh to which he often made reference. He was shipwrecked, imprisoned, beaten, stoned, abused, debased, ridiculed, and humiliated. We have a saying which goes, "Count your blessings one by one," and if Paul, by our standards, were to have seated himself and begun to count his blessings, it wouldn't have taken him very long. But Paul rejected that kind of system out of hand, you see.

00:10:26.000 - 00:10:55.000

For Paul understood that it's very difficult for you to count your blessings since you never know what they really are. What comes to you as an apparent difficulty later turns out to have been a blessing in disguise. And what you look upon when it comes as a blessing may turn out later to be much more of a problem than it is a privilege. So Paul never based his thanksgiving on the things that were happening to him in any given moment or circumstance.

00:10:55.000 - 00:11:30.000

Instead, Paul said, "I thank God that no matter what comes to me in life, I am part of my Master's praise. I am part of the eternal cosmic victory of Jesus Christ. And so no matter what hardship or difficulty confronts me, no matter what tragedy or triumph is mine in any given moment, it all fades into relative significance when I consider this, that Jesus, my General, my Commander-in-Chief,

00:11:30.000 - 00:11:59.000

is marching through the corridors of time as victor, and he has let me be a part of his parade." You know how it is when you're standing by the side of the street waiting for the parade to come, and then off in the distance somewhere you hear the first sound of the trumpet and the drums, and there's a stir of excitement that moves through the crowd as you look waiting for the sights of the first flag?

00:11:59.000 - 00:12:25.000

Well that's what Paul is feeling. He hears the drums, distant but still rolling. He hears the trumpets, distant but still trumpeting. And he sees the first glimmer of the flag as the victory of Jesus Christ begins to unfold in history. And he sings out, "I thank God that I'm part of his triumph, part of his parade."

00:12:25.000 - 00:12:49.000

Those words of Paul sing across the centuries and find a home right in my heart tonight. Because as I look out at the world this evening, I see a world that is in turmoil, a world that is hungry and diseased and crying. And as I look out at my nation, I see a nation which is distraught and upset

00:12:49.000 - 00:13:25.000

because of scandals and scandals within scandals and troubled about energy crises and things of that kind. And as I look at my religious denominations, I find my church plagued by not order but disorder. I find my church ripped apart by the tensions and distensions which right now are besetting our United Presbyterian Church on every hand. And when I look even into my own life, I find there distresses and anxieties, troubling decisions that must be made,

00:13:25.000 - 00:13:55.000

choices one would like to make and choices one is not able to make. I see all of that, and if I had to build my thanksgiving on that, then there wouldn't be much thanksgiving. But the fact of the matter is that I can say with Paul what each one of you who knows Jesus Christ as Lord can say with him. In spite of any circumstance within the world or the nation or the church or even within our own hearts,

00:13:55.000 - 00:14:22.000

if we're part of Him, we're part of His triumph. And that means that in the end, victory is ours. And for that we can give thanks. That leads me to be able to say tonight that I thank God for all the causes and the battles that we can undertake for our Savior.

00:14:22.000 - 00:14:59.000

Not for the battles or the causes themselves, but for the fact that we can undertake them for Him. That we can strive to live lives not in which we seek so much to be blessed as to be a blessing for others. I think the night of the General Assembly of our church held in Omaha, Nebraska, last May, I was called upon while there to appear before the committee which was debating the question of whether we as a church should remain in the consultation on church union or not.

00:14:59.000 - 00:15:30.000

I did not hesitate to appear before this committee. I had been invited to debate the issue with the president of Princeton Seminary on the pages of our denomination's major periodical some two months before that. And just the night before this appearance, I had been in another debate with him on television in a Midwestern station beamed out over the state in and around Nebraska. But when I came to that committee, I found that the deck had been carefully stacked.

00:15:30.000 - 00:16:09.000

The chairman of the committee refused to recognize anyone who would speak against our returning to the consultation on church union. And all the conversations about our involvement which had been conducted to that point had been conducted with decency and with dignity until that night. And I had something happen that night which I shall never forget, though I live to be a thousand. I had to sit while the stated clerk of our denomination, the man who was charged with keeping the order and the dignity of the denomination always to the fore,

00:16:09.000 - 00:16:32.000

attacked me, accused me, debased me, ridiculed me, and humiliated me as has never been done to me in similar fashion in all of my life. And I could not say a word. And it was untrue. And it was unfair.

00:16:32.000 - 00:17:19.000

And it must seem so much that I went out of the room vomiting. I would have given that night anything I had to have been somewhere else. But as I look back upon it now, I say to you, and I say it honestly, in this world there are some things that are right and there are some things that are wrong. I would rather be fighting for what is right at that kind of cost than to be fighting for what is wrong or to not be fighting at all.

00:17:19.000 - 00:17:56.000

And that, it seems to me, is the affirmation of every Christian that we can maintain, like the saints of old, that we thank God when we can carry a flag on behalf of our Savior. As I consider the great names of Scripture, I find them again and again in their greatest moments, battling for Him. Abraham going out he knew not where. Elijah in contest on Mount Carmel.

00:17:56.000 - 00:18:09.000

Jeremiah standing for the truth in the courtyards of the temple. Daniel in a den with lions. David before Goliath. Peter bearing testimony before the Sanhedrin.

00:18:09.000 - 00:18:39.000

Paul speaking before Helix and Testus and eventually before the Emperor. Stephen preaching as the stones pelt at his body. Don't you join me in thanking God tonight that we don't have to give ourselves to petty living, to a sissified pursuit of the pusillanimous. That we don't have to go through life as Norman Nothing, chickening out on the moral responsibilities which are ours as Christians.

00:18:39.000 - 00:19:13.000

That we don't have to live the kind of lives in which the very meaning of our being creeps away so that eventually we do not even miss it. That we because of Christ understand why we weren't made chairs but free creatures. That we can confront all the wild possibilities of life and go into them for His sake. That we can punch the world in the mouth when it needs to be punched in the mouth.

00:19:13.000 - 00:19:29.000

And say what needs to be said. Because we're part of the triumph. We're part of the parade. We can thank God for that.

00:19:29.000 - 00:20:00.000

For the freedom and courage which are ours because of that. And I find myself thanking God tonight for the suffering and the hardship that we sometimes encounter in life. But which rings out in us the fibers of strength in our souls. The outline of what I'm sharing with you tonight was mostly developed on a plane flying back here a couple of weeks ago.

00:20:00.000 - 00:20:24.000

And as I was flying here I thought to myself, what I am doing in two hours took the pioneers a year. But they were better for their journey than I was for mine. For at the end of it they had been tested and tried. But they stood stronger.

00:20:24.000 - 00:20:46.000

Life is like that you see. Like a Rembrandt painting there has to be darkness that the light may show forth. Like a Beethoven symphony there must be discord so that the harmony is as radiant as it's supposed to be. I was interested to learn this last week a little bit more about Squanto.

00:20:46.000 - 00:21:08.000

Squanto you will remember was the Indian who helped the pilgrims. He was captured by English discoverers and explorers here in the United States and taken to England as a curiosity. There he was taught English so that he came to speak it fluently. He was subsequently sold into slavery in Spain.

00:21:08.000 - 00:21:35.000

There he was sold later to a monk who immediately gave him his freedom and converted him to Christianity. Getting enough money he earned his way back to England and then earned his passage back to the United States. And here in the New World he returned to the village from which he had been taken only to find that the entire village had been wiped out with plague. That was in 1619.

00:21:35.000 - 00:21:52.000

It was two years later that the pilgrims came. And when they came they were astonished to find one amongst the Indians who spoke such perfect English. He taught them how to hunt and trap. He taught them how to sow the seed and to harvest it.

00:21:52.000 - 00:22:15.000

He was what the Indians called the "white man's tongue." And the pilgrims described him as their saint and the best good gift which God has given us. He was the one who negotiated the great peace treaty with Massasoit which protected the pilgrims. Now why was it that Squanto did these things?

00:22:15.000 - 00:22:35.000

Why was it that there was in him this tenderness and sensitivity? I'll tell you why. He knew what it had been to be a slave so he was helping those who were seeking to be free. He knew what it was to have been hungry so he was ready to fill the hungry.

00:22:35.000 - 00:23:00.000

He knew what it was to be afraid so he gave himself to the fearful. He knew what it was to be alone so he gave himself to that little bayonet so alone on that rocky New England shore. His sensitivity and tenderness had come out of the crucible of his own experience. Suffering and hardship strengthened the fibers of his soul.

00:23:00.000 - 00:23:15.000

And what of those pilgrims themselves? Why do we remember them? William Bradford described their journey here on the Mayflower by saying, "We were encountered many times with crosswinds,

00:23:15.000 - 00:23:34.000

and we met many fierce storms with which our ship was soundly shaken, and her upper works were made very leaky, and one of the main beams in the midships was bowed and cracked, which put all of us in fear that the ship would not be able to perform the voyage."

00:23:34.000 - 00:23:57.000

And then the entry concludes with this sentence, "So we committed ourselves to the will of God and resolved to proceed." And when they got here in the cold of the year, in the next month's depth visited every home in their colony except one.

00:23:57.000 - 00:24:18.000

Fully 50% of those who completed the journey were buried before the year was out on the place they called Burial Hill. And at that first Thanksgiving feast, there were only five women who were strong enough to stand up to prepare that food.

00:24:18.000 - 00:24:35.000

Only five. And still they gave thanks. And we remember them with affection and with respect and regard tonight, precisely because they went through all the suffering and the hardness

00:24:35.000 - 00:25:00.000

and they came out of it still magnificently oriented to God, still giving thanks, still part of Christ's triumph and of his parade. I have noted that those who complain most about their lot in life seem most frequently to have the least to do with life as it really is.

00:25:00.000 - 00:25:16.000

I have found that those who do not plunge themselves into the center, the vortex of human experience, are those who are most ready to complain about what goes on in their lives. But it is not so for Christians.

00:25:16.000 - 00:25:35.000

Christians understand that their heredity is this. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with a sword, they were destitute, afflicted, tormented, they wandered in deserts, in mountains, in dens, and in the caves of the earth.

00:25:35.000 - 00:25:49.000

That is what Hebrews says of our spiritual ancestors. They were toughened. The fibers of their soul strengthened. This was true of Jesus himself, for we read in Hebrews,

00:25:49.000 - 00:26:17.000

"Son though he was, yet learned he by what he suffered." So tonight, I thank God for every hardship and suffering we can know that makes us more like him, the cost of being part of the parade.

00:26:17.000 - 00:26:39.000

And finally, I thank him tonight for the sure and certain testimony that the cross is in the midst of life, and that life is in the midst of the cross. I fell asleep, and I dreamed a dream,

00:26:39.000 - 00:26:58.000

and I saw a preacher, robed in all his finest garments, step into his pulpit. And he put a sweet lozenger upon his tongue, that his words might be sweet to all who heard them. And he looked out upon a congregation of a hundred,

00:26:58.000 - 00:27:17.000

but within that one hundred I saw three billion eyes. And he said to them, "Brethren, let us give thanks." And they said, "Amen." But there was no joy in their saying it.

00:27:17.000 - 00:27:43.000

"Let us give thanks," he said, "for wholeness, for the completeness which we know." And a blind man got up and left, and two cripples went behind him, and lepers stumbled out as well, until ten had gone. But the preacher did not seem to notice.

00:27:43.000 - 00:28:08.000

"And brethren, let us thank God for our health, for our complexion, for the fact that we are well fed and satisfied." And some who were seated in the rear, with tuberculosis and malnutrition, some who could eat only milk and found even swallowing that to be painful,

00:28:08.000 - 00:28:25.000

they slipped out the door. But the preacher did not notice. "And my brothers and sisters, let us lift thanksgiving to God for all of our earthly benefits, for the wealth and the abundance which he has given to us."

00:28:25.000 - 00:29:01.000

And some mothers, with dead babies in their laps who had starved to death, stumbled toward the door. "And let us thank God for our homes, and for the warmth and the love that is there." And some shy people, and some old men who ate dinner every night in little corner restaurants where no one spoke to them, and some odd people who had never learned the graces of society, quietly slipped away from the group.

00:29:01.000 - 00:29:33.000

"And let us thank God for our friends, for those who gather about us in time of need, and refugees excuse themselves, and those who had been dispossessed, crawled into the shadows." "For the beauty of life, let us thank God." And Sally, who was plain, and George, who was scarred, and Louise, who had ugly legs,

00:29:33.000 - 00:30:22.000

and Fred, who was cross-eyed, they walked from the group. "And for the gifts of our minds, arts, music, drama, science, let us thank God for these." And the average in the congregation blushed, and the morons shamered, and the imbeciles gazed as they all left the room. But the preacher did not seem to notice. "We thank thee, Lord," he said, "for all our virtues and our moral strength."

00:30:22.000 - 00:30:47.000

And those who could not control their temperance, and those who were beset with lust, and those who knew what it was to be jealous and envious and fallen, they left the room. "For justice, God, we praise thee." And an Arab who lived in Jerusalem left, and a black who lived in Mississippi left,

00:30:47.000 - 00:31:16.000

and a poor man who couldn't find justice in a ghetto courtroom left. "And above all, God, for peace, we thank thee for peace." And the victims of unnamed and unnoticed wars left, too. And then the preacher looked down at the hundreds, only to find that they were gone,

00:31:16.000 - 00:31:45.000

and that at a precise moment the lozenger in his mouth dissolved at last. And his voice cracked as he cried out, "Lord, where is my congregation?" And then a still small voice was heard to say, "Thy people have gone apart from thee, for thou hast put into their mouths a bitter taste, for thou hast told them what I have not said.

00:31:45.000 - 00:32:09.000

When did I promise that everyone would be whole? When did I promise that everyone would be healthy and have all earthly benefits? Where in my word does it say that all will have a home and friends and be beautiful? Where is it promised that all will have minds that are sharp, virtues that are strong, and justice on every hand?

00:32:09.000 - 00:32:37.000

Where is the promise that there will be for all and all in all in this life peace? Remember my servant Job, think of my servant Jeremiah, think of my son Jesus. Did they know these things?" And the preacher said, "Well, Lord, if you don't give these things, then what do you give?"

00:32:37.000 - 00:33:07.000

And the still small voice said, "I give myself on a cross." And the preacher stumbled down from his pulpit, and he hurried outside, and he found the people who had been in the room gathered in the shadows of the great pillars we see. And he said to them, "I have deceived you.

00:33:07.000 - 00:33:31.000

For some of these things of which I have spoken we will have, and some we will not have. And because God is no respecter of persons, it is not determined as to who will have them and who will not. But understand this, that God has given us infinitely more. God has given us himself.

00:33:31.000 - 00:33:54.000

Think of the words of Job, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." Think of the words of his son, "Father, from a cross into thy hands I commit my spirit." And all the people listened, and the blind man wept, and the man without a friend reached out and took the hand of another,

00:33:54.000 - 00:34:18.000

and the black man from Mississippi decided it was worth fighting after all. And they came back into the church, and the preacher stepped into the pulpit and threw away his lozenger, and he proclaimed to all the people there, "God is with us. On a cross let us give thanks."

00:34:18.000 - 00:34:43.000

And all the people said, "Amen." And it was a great affirmation. And it was said by those who were listening that it was echoed even in heaven. And what Paul writes to the Corinthians and says to us this night is this,

00:34:43.000 - 00:35:10.000

"Thank God for glories, if you will, and thank him for blessings beautiful. But you will not always have glories or blessings beautiful. Thank him, if you will, for causes and battles worth fighting. But remember that sometimes you will lose half of the pilgrims' lives.

00:35:10.000 - 00:35:33.000

And thank him, if you want to, for those sufferings and hardships which will bring out the strong fibers in your souls, but understand, too, sometimes those sufferings and those hardships will break your heart. And in the moment when you think that there is nothing left for you to give thanks,

00:35:33.000 - 00:36:04.000

then remember a love-laden cross, a cross that stands in the midst of life, a cross which was, in fact, the very beginning of the parade. And thank God with me that you can be part of that cross and part of the final victory that that cross will make.

00:36:04.000 - 00:36:39.000

So tomorrow, watch all the parades, one after another. But sometime in the day, take some time to think about your part in the triumph of your Lord Jesus. For myself, I could not say a compass for what I herald is bleak and indistinct.

00:36:39.000 - 00:37:13.000

I could not ride on any float because no victories I've won are that significant. I could not be a lictor, a policeman in the parade, for I break God's law more often than I keep it. Not only could I not ride in a chariot, I wouldn't even be able to be close to it.

00:37:13.000 - 00:37:54.000

But it seems to me that in most parades there are clowns, awkward people, graceless people, stumbling, foolish people. So I will try to be a clown. And if nobody else is amused, then perhaps at least he will be.

00:37:54.000 - 00:38:18.000

And that's all right. For you see, it's his parade. Ed Wynn was called the King of Clowns. And for his epitaph, he wrote, and these words now appear upon his throne,

00:38:18.000 - 00:39:11.000

"Dear God, thanks, Ed Wynn." That seems good to me, to be able to say, if nothing else, "Dear God, thanks for the parade. Kind, a clown." But there is something in the Bible, isn't there,

00:39:11.000 - 00:40:04.000

about being a fool for Christ's sake? Let us pray. Our Father, we pray tonight for all those spectators who have not yet become a part of the parade.

00:40:04.000 - 00:40:41.000

And we pray too for those who are spending their days peddling peanuts in the crowd. Capture them for thy triumph. For Jesus' sake.

00:40:41.000 - 00:41:13.000

And God, hear the gratitude and mercifully accept the appreciation of all clients.

00:41:13.000 - 00:44:48.000

Amen. [music] [music] [music]

00:44:48.000 - 00:45:02.000

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you and all those whom you love his peace.

00:45:02.000 - 00:45:12.000

[BLANK_AUDIO]