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[silence] The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is the sixth and final in the Broadway series. Today's sermon is entitled "Macbeth."

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[silence] When you say Broadway to most people, they think of Ziegfeld, of George M. Cohen, of Rodgers and Hammerstein,

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or of Andrew Lloyd Webber. But they might just as well think of some of the great classic playwrights, of Ibsen and Chekhov and Aeschylus and Moliere, and of course the greatest playwright of them all, Shakespeare.

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William Shakespeare's plays are the greatest plays ever written because he had the gift of understanding human nature and explaining it in such a way that those who view his plays find themselves therein.

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Now this morning I ask you to forget all about the tired theatrics of "The Phantom of the Opera," and instead to listen with me to a far more chilling tale. It is a dark story which has in it only the most eerie of lights. There's the flame of torches, the fire of candles,

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and the kindled blaze beneath a witch's cauldron. And wherever the flickering gleam of these lights falls, one color is in evidence. It is the color of blood.

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For this is a play written in crimson and in black. Shakespeare said of it, "It is written in the fog and filthy air." Let's sketch the story. Macbeth and his friend Banquo are just returning from a successful military engagement.

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They meet three witches. Now in those days they believed in witches. The witches tell Macbeth that he is going to ascend to the chief seat in the kingdom. But they also tell him that his children will not follow him to the throne,

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but rather the children of his friend Banquo. They will succeed Macbeth. And they tell Macbeth one other thing. They tell him that he can be killed only by one not of women born.

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Having seen this experience, Macbeth writes a letter about it to his wife. And when he returns to his castle, he finds that the king has chosen to honor him for his military victory by spending the night there. And Lady Macbeth suggests to her husband, "If we slay him while he is here, then you will be one step closer to the throne." Macbeth falls into the plot immediately, and he murders Duncan.

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A moment ago you heard the scene about the dagger, as he prepares to go following that dagger to do his king to death. But there is some suspicion in the castle about who has murdered the king. And shortly afterwards, Macbeth, concerned about this suspicion, and also concerned about what he has done, remembers that the witches prophesied that not his children, but Banquo's children, would eventually sit upon the throne.

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So he decides he must eliminate Banquo and his children. And he sends a group of murderers to kill Banquo and his son Fleance. Fleance escapes, but Banquo is killed. Now that night, there is a banquet in the castle.

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Banquo's seat is empty because he is dead, but no one yet knows that he is dead. And as Macbeth is sitting there, knowing that Banquo is dead, he alone at the table understood this. He sees the ghost of Banquo sitting in the chair, a gory ghost covered with blood. And he is so struck in conscience that he rises up and he begins to speak.

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And as he speaks, he reveals what he and his wife have done. Now, when the word is out that he is the one who in fact has killed the king, Macbeth realizes he must move even more aggressively to hold on to the throne. And so he has the wife of one of those close to the throne and all of her children killed,

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just to hang on to what was now his. But seeing these things, his friends turn away from him. Lady Macbeth is so overcome with inner guilt that she loses her mind and dies. Now armies gather outside the castle, ready to take the throne away from Macbeth.

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Macbeth decides to try to defeat them with a sudden surprise attack. And in that attack, he comes face to face with a man named Macduff, who was his arch enemy. And he sneers at Macduff. Remembering what the witches had said to him, he sneers at Macduff and says, "Only one not of woman born can slay me."

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And Macbeth replies, "I was from my mother's womb untimely ripped." In other words, he was born by Caesarean section, not a regular birth. Realizing then that he is confronting a man not regularly from a woman born, he is overcome by weakness, Macbeth. His conscience attacks him with even greater power than it had before.

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He abandons all hope. He knows that his friends will no longer have anything to do with him. So he curses the witches who gave him the prophecy in the beginning and lays into the fight with Macduff, who kills him and beheads him. And the play is done.

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It is a story of blood, of darkness, of deceit, of the occult, of murder, of a ghost, of revenge, of witches, and of insanity. Beth, you see, is the classic example of the overly zealous man who, because of his excessive zeal, comes to a tragic end. Shakespeare describes his character flaw with these words, "He had a vaulting ambition which o'erleaped itself." Now, the Christian faith praises and admires ambition. You remember in Jesus' parable the talents. He compliments those who use the talents they have to gain more, and he criticizes those who do not use what is at their disposal in order to gain more. He criticizes those who have no ambition. You remember when two of his disciples come to him and ask for the seats, one at his right and one at his left. He does not rebuke them for this. He does not criticize them because of their ambition. He warns them what this will cost, but there is no criticism of their desire to occupy these places.

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I think this morning of a woman who came into this country from Mexico with her husband and two young children. Her husband almost immediately abandoned her. To support herself and her two children, she worked in a taco shop from 12 o'clock midnight till 6 o'clock in the morning. She managed to put a little money aside each week and to keep her kids in school. Those were her two great goals. And with that little bit of money that she saved, she eventually started her own taco store. And because of her ambition, directed always by her faith because she was an eminently Christian woman, this store soon became two stores and then four stores and then six stores until you had the Taco Bell chain of shops all across the United States. Meanwhile, her children worked in the business, thus gaining the character which only hard work can give, and at the same time completed their education.

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PepsiCo came along and bought Taco Bell for tens of millions of dollars. But by that time, this woman had gone on to be the owner of the largest producer of Mexican foods in all of America. And the President of the United States, who at that time was Richard Nixon, looking upon her and admiring her ambition, her zeal, and her dedication, proceeded to appoint Ramona Manalo treasurer of the United States of America. Now here you see is an ambition that is rightly controlled all the time by the strength of her faith. And it is a beautiful thing to see. And the Christian faith encourages this kind of thing. Now, Macbeth's folly was that he allowed his ambitions to fall prey to external temptations. First, there was the temptation of his military success. He was flying high after the battle.

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You remember what it says in Proverbs, "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Secondly, there were the prophecies of the witches. These appealed to his ego. They promised him glory. In the end, it led to his dusty death, but they promised him glory, and he wanted to hear words like that. Let anyone be careful who has people saying to them words that dazzle and promise, but have behind them no substance but instead treachery and destruction. And then also from the outside came to Macbeth the encouragement of his wife. She says to him, "Screw your courage to the sticking point, and go and slay the king." And Macbeth does so. Eventually, this woman, hard as she is, is overcome by her guilt. She cannot stand to be in the darkness, and she goes about all the time washing her hands because she believes them to be covered with blood.

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And that's where she utters that line which you've heard quoted so many times, "Out, damned spot! Out, I say!" Cold-blooded avarice motivated her at the beginning, but she ends a very tragic figure, as does her husband. And I testify to you this morning that I have seen wives and mothers, and I have seen husbands and fathers push the ones they claim they love on the campus or in the office or in the social world into those things which do not bless but curse. Ambition in itself is not evil. Jesus commends it. Temptation in itself is not evil. Jesus himself was tempted. There is nothing sinful in being tempted. Where the folly comes is when the ambition yields to the temptation. The result of that is evil.

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We need to beware when outside temptations yield us and lead us and promise us all those kinds of things which flatter our ambition but lead ultimately to our agony. But temptations can not only come from the outside, they can come from the inside as well. And in Macbeth we see both. Macbeth himself admits in the play that all of these temptations that came to him from the outside were welcomed by his inner attitude. For example, when he sees that image of the dagger in front of him, he says, "Thou martialest me," martialist means to lead, "Thou leadest me," how? "Thou leadest me in the way that I was going."

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You see, he was ready for the temptation because the lust for the office was already upon him. The witches made their prophecies to him. He surrenders to the occult. Within 24 hours, his mind is so given over to the pursuit of his criminal goals that he cries out, "Stars, hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires." And when his wife comes and suggests that they plot against the king, does he rebuke her? Does he put her away?

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Does he curse her for the things that she is thinking and proposing that he do? No. He says to her, "We will speak more of this later." There's an old Chinese proverb that says, "One third of what we choose to see is in front of our eyes, but two thirds is behind our eyes." We can be attacked, you see, by our own inner attitudes and desires. For that reason, the Bible never says that we are destroyed by external circumstances, situation, or environment.

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It does not say that the evil things of life come out of such things. Instead, the Bible says, "Out of the heart are the issues of life." Or at another point, "Out of the heart come evil thoughts, licentiousness," and it goes on to list a host of other evil things. Death collapses when the evil within him shakes hands with the evil outside of him. And from that moment on, his conscience stings him like a scorpion until his life is done.

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He reminds me very much of George Armstrong Custer. You know, George Custer was a graduate of West Point. His first military duty was seen in the Civil War. His first conflict was the First Battle of Bull Run. He was promoted very rapidly in the service, not only because he was a brilliant military tactician, but also because he was incredibly brave.

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On eleven different occasions, the horse that he was riding was shot out from under him. He served with very distinguished military men like McClellan and Sheridan. He was the one, Custer, who kept pursuing Lee until Lee finally bent the knee in surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. He was somewhat of a dandy. He wore his hair in long, golden curls.

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He made his own uniforms, or had them made, out of black velveteen with gold braid. And he boasted about the soldierly skills which were his. In 1875, he was assigned to the Kansas Territory, there to put down the Cheyenne. And once again, this one who was known all across America by that time as the Boy General, a general at age 25.

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Once again, he was victorious. He wrote a book about his experiences called "My Life on the Plains," and it became a bestseller back in the East, where the vast majority of our American population still lived. And then he was ordered to go against the Sioux, who were in rebellion, led by a medicine man named Sitting Bull and a chief named Crazy Horse. The plan was for a two-pronged attack. Custer was to lead one of these prongs, and General Terry was to lead the other prong.

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But Terry was the overall commander of the operation. And because he was farther away from the little bighorn where the Sioux were camped, he ordered Custer to stop and to wait two days until he caught up with him. And then they would exercise this two-pronged attack and defeat the Sioux. And George Armstrong Custer refused to wait the two days.

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He disobeyed his specific orders. And on June 25, 1876, leading the very center of his small company, 267 soldiers, five civilians, and three Indian guides, he attacked the Sioux encampment. And in 90 minutes, every one of them was dead. The only thing to get out alive was a horse named Comanche.

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Now, more has been written about this battle than any other battle in American military history, with the exception of the Battle of Gettysburg. And the question that is always being asked is, "Why is it that Custer specifically disobeyed orders and put himself and his troops in such a dangerous situation?" We know the answer now. George Custer wanted to be the President of the United States.

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Just at this time, the political conventions were being held back in the East, and his name was being mentioned as a possible candidate. He was a military hero. He had an astounding career. He was a flashing romantic figure wherever he was seen because of his dress and his style and his flair. He would make an outstanding candidate, and he saw himself as having that chance.

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He only needed one thing. He needed some immediate, overwhelming victory that news of could be wired back to the East, and that would get the whole population behind him, and the nomination and the election would be his. You see, he wanted that message to get back there by July 4th, which was just eight days later. July 4th, 1876, that was the 100th birthday of America.

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It was a time of great celebration. And what could be better, he thought, than in the time of this celebration, word would come of another great American victory led by the boy general. And so, he attacked two days early, and that was his fatal error. What did it to him, and to all those who marched to their deaths with him?

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His ambition. You see, Custer was Macbeth in velveteen and gold braid. It could be said of him that he was full of vaulting ambition which or leaped itself. He was the master of the battlefield, but he was not the master of himself.

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And so, his tale becomes one of stark and unrelieved tragedy. My brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, let us never forget that we are the children of the King of Kings. Paul calls us co-heirs with Christ. And this means, if we will hold fast to this truth, that we will never be defeated by temptations toward ambition, whether they come from without or within or both places at the same time.

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Why? Because if you know yourself to be a child of the King of Kings, what greater honor can you have than that one? All you have to do is obey your father. Live royally, and the kingdom and the power and the glory will be yours. It will belong to all of us who believe.

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But Macbeth didn't grasp this, and so he goes down to defeat, muttering the words, "Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing." Cursed by his uncontrolled ambition, he commits his evil deeds, and from that moment on, he didn't know a single minute of satisfaction or love. He got exactly what he lusted for, and lost everything that he really needed.

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What more awesome example can be brought to any pulpit anywhere to illustrate the perfect truth of the words of Jesus? What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Let us pray. Our Father, we thank Thee that Thou hast across the years gifted those so talented in the arts,

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who can write or sing or act, who can play instruments, who can march upon the stage, who can do all kinds of things, and bring before us a view of ourselves that we might not otherwise ever begin to see. We pray that in these moments the Holy Spirit will lead us to see ourselves, and if we find within us any vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself, to drive it from us by reminding us that when you are a child of the King of Kings, there is no honor that can come from anyone or anywhere to match the honor which is already ours.

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We pray our prayer in the name of our Elder Brother, Jesus. Amen. [Bell tolls]