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[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [ Music ] "Have you ever anticipated something,

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"wanted it to happen and thought "it just never will come?" That's the way I have felt about the coming of Dr. Charles Adams to First Baptist Church of Austin.

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And I thought that it would never happen and I'm delighted that today is here. Charles Adams is a native of Detroit, was born into the church that he now serves as pastor.

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Did his university work at the University of Michigan, was graduated with honors. His graduate theological work at Harvard Divinity School was graduated with honors.

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He since has been awarded doctorates by a number of universities. He's one of the more doctored men that I know. [laughter]

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He serves as pastor now of the Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit, a large church with extensive opportunities for worship and for Christian ministry. I'm just glad that Charles is here, and I am looking forward to finally hearing some preaching for a change.

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Charles, come let me introduce the finest people in all of the world, the congregation of the First Baptist Church of Austin, and congregation, my friend, Charles Adams. Thank you very much.

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Glory be to God our Father. Being here today in Austin and in First Baptist Church gives me fresh appreciation for what it means

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to be saved by grace. Despite the media hype that preceded my arrival, I am not here because of anything that I have done to deserve it, but only

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because of the graciousness of our God and the kind and loving and human spirit of Dr. Browning Ware. During the experience that we shared as Merrill Fellows

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at Harvard Divinity School last term, we expected to find the scholarly intellectual competence that was manifested in Browning Ware. We expected to hear from him evidences

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of his peerless professional work, but we were not prepared for the genuine human spirit, which through him transformed that experience for all of us. In the Gospel of John, the first chapter and the 14th verse,

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we find the words, "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." Today's English version puts it like this. The word became a human being and lived among us.

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Our subject, sermons in flesh. Last January, D.E. King, a distinguished pastor in Chicago, handed me a book that he had written. and he inscribed it with this trenchant admonition.

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Charles, preach Christ and not sermons. Ever since Dr. Ware invited me to the privilege and holiness of this occasion, I have been praying for the wisdom and the courage to preach Christ among you

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and not sermons. I pray, and I hope you are praying, that the word which addresses you and me will be more than the audible statement

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of a mortal preacher, more than words, more intimate than speech, more provocative than a plan, more personal than a proposition, more dynamic than a doctrine.

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The gospel is a person. The gospel is Jesus, the Christ, the central reality of human existence, the hope of every race and nation, the destiny and joy of humankind.

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When God was ready to deliver the ultimate word, to convert old creation into new creation, to answer persons and not merely questions, to preach the gospel to the poor,

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to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are oppressed, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord

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when God was ready to speak the truth that sets people and nations free, he opened his mouth, he cleared his throat, and his word was a baby born, a child given, a person living and teaching and loving and blessing and healing and leading and forgiving and dying and rising and living again.

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The word was made flesh and dwelt among us. We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. This is what distinguishes Christianity from Islam.

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In Islam, the Koran is the absolute, inerrant, infallible, incarnate word of Allah. The words of the Koran are the truth that saves. The content of the message is the message. The power of the message is the message.

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The center of the faith is the message. The central authority is a tyranny of written words, laws, principles, propositions. And that assumes that people have in themselves the capacity to hear, to understand, and to accept and live up to the message.

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But what of the blind who cannot see? Or the deaf who cannot hear? but the dull of spirit and the slow of heart who cannot and will not respond.

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Verbalized truth cannot rescue. If I am caught in a house on fire, I need more than someone to tell me where the door is or where the window is.

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My lungs are filled with poisonous vapors. My eyes with smoke. My body is sick. My legs are weak, and I need strong arms to reach me

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and snatch me out of the flames. And I need strong hands to carry me when I cannot walk. And I need a strong love to lift me when I cannot help myself.

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I need not a creed, but a Christ. Not a plan of salvation, but a savior. Not an announcement of liberation, but a liberator. not a sound doctrine, but a strong deliverer.

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And that's what we've got. The God revealed in Jesus did not remain aloof or indifferent to the world with its many problems, perplexities, and pains,

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but he took all the risks of total involvement. He didn't save by telephone. He knocked on the door. He didn't redeem by mechanical means,

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but by total identification and involvement. He didn't save the world by remote control, but he transformed the world by his personal presence. He did not save from the safety of the shoreline,

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but he plunged into the agonizing depths of the human predicament. He didn't care enough just to send the very best, but he came himself.

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The word was made flesh and dwelt among us." And this is the whole truth about God. It tells us who God is and whose side he's on. He's not remote.

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He's not pure, disinterested essence. He is not virginal, rational principle. He's not bound up in his own self-relatedness. He wedded himself to his lowly opposite

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and identified with humanity and all of its vital contradictions and concerns. The word absolute deity became flesh, finite human nature, and was pleased as person with people to dwell.

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The word flesh, translated from the Greek word sarx, means more than the extrapolated individual. It means the whole of man in all of his relationships. It is somewhat reminiscent of that Hebrew word nephish,

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which is poorly translated soul. Man became a living soul, a living nephish, which is the total person in all of the intricate involvements and complicated entanglements of human existence.

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I remember hearing Frank Cross defining nephish as a man's consciousness, his bones, his teeth, even if they're false, his family, his dreams, his commitments, his society, his totality.

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To save souls is to save society. That's what God became, not a phantom deity always floating at arm's length from the mess and flux of human existence, but a living, breathing, nephesh, or sarks,

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human being, living, laboring, loving, hoping, suffering, bleeding, dying, this is our God. A little girl asked her mother, where is God? And her mother answered, "Why, he's everywhere."

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The girl answered, "Well, I want God to be somewhere." And in her childhood groping, she struck the central cord of our faith. This is our God.

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This is what God is all about. He's not just almighty. He's an intimate friend, closer than breathing, narrower than hands and feet.

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He's not just from everlasting to everlasting. He's also here and now. Because the word was made flesh and dwelled among us. Go tell it on the mountain.

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Go shout it to the cities. Go preach it to the poor. The word was made flesh. The abstract turned into the concrete.

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Divine majesty put on human misery. The eternal became external. The superior got involved in the inferior. The a priori got married to the a posteriori.

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The holy entered the commonplace. The spiritual embraced the carnal. Perfect peace clothed itself in the human struggle for right and for liberation.

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Thought was changed into action. Principle became person. God became man. In order to redeem and transform and enhance humanity,

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the word became flesh and dwelt among us. That's the whole truth about God, but it is also the whole truth about humanity, and it serves as a check on our cynicism

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and defeatism and despair. It gives us hope in whatever condition or situation we find ourselves, we have hope that for every sinking child, there is a loving Christ,

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and in every Egypt, there's a Moses, And in every exile community, there's an Ezekiel. And in every political house of bondage, there's a Martin Luther.

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And in every colony of pain, there's a Thomas Jefferson to write a new declaration of independence. And for every captive people, there's a John Brown, a Nat Turner, a Frederick Douglass, a Harriet Tubman,

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a Sojourner Truth to bleed and die for freedom. And in every hovel of despair, there's a Paul Robeson. And in every dungeon of oppression, There's a Martin Luther King Jr.

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And in every hell, there's a hero. We hear too much about the clash between fervent evangelicals and enthusiastic social activists. Don't we need them both together?

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Without social activism, evangelical fervor can become either an escape or an apology for things as they are. And without evangelical passion, social activism

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can lose its personal relevance, its motivational love, its eschatological destiny, and its teleological direction. But evangelical fervor linked with social vision and passion and activism is evil's biggest enemy and humanity's best hope

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and our dearest delight. The word was made flesh. in order to bless and save and deliver all of us. In conversation with a representative

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of a great evangelist, I made mention of some of his shortcomings in the area of social concerns. And the representative was quick to get me straight and to explain to me, well, he's an evangelist.

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He's not a social activist. But I just wonder, can Christians plead evangelistic exclusion from the pains and problems and deprivations of human beings.

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There is no privilege at all, academic, evangelical, social, or financial, that can excuse any of us from our divine commitment and command to enhance and improve and enlarge human life.

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Yes, the word without flesh is like the vehicle of the aristocracy in Lord Byron's funeral. The funeral procession contained many carriages sent by the nobility, but they were empty.

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The nobility felt that they owed some measure of perfunctory respect to a fellow peer, but they did not want their personal presence to be regarded as approval for Byron's politics

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or private life. But God will not tolerate our absence without leave from the battlefield, where justice and injustice are joined in conflict.

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To stay out of the struggle is to strengthen the forces of injustice. The word without flesh is harmful to the cause of the word.

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The word without flesh is also incommunicable. It's like the Scottish preacher of whom his listeners said, he's invisible during the week, and he's incomprehensible on Sunday morning.

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The word without flesh must be symbiotically related. The word without flesh is empty. The flesh without word is crude and brutal. But the word made flesh is the power and love of God.

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I know that we in America are well taught in philosophy and that we are well tutored by the sages of the ages, that we are equipped with truth and tongues to say something. But the world will not be saved by intellectual explanations,

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but by personal demonstrations of the life and the love of our Christ. It is not the written word that shall save us, nor yet even the spoken word, but it's

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the living word that can make a brave new world of redeemed people and nations. It's not more information that we need. We already have more information than we know what to do with.

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We spend hours glued to the tube, getting instantaneous information. We don't have to read to see what happened. We can press a button and know it all while it's going on.

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We do not need more information. We need more transformation and more incarnation of truth into human life and dedicated service. Jesus is not just another bearer of information,

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but he is a living incarnation of salvation. The word flesh means that Jesus has put the ideals of truth and beauty and goodness into body language.

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And he has left us as his sacrament, not a reminder of his words, but an offering of himself. He said, this is my body, which is given for you. This is the new contract between God and humanity,

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written and certified in blood. He did not say, these are my words. His followers did that. But he said, this is my body.

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And that's the only kind of sermon that really counts in a world like this. One of the most dramatic things that ever occurred when Jesus was executed was that the curtain in the temple

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was torn in two from top to bottom. And I think that just may be symbolic of the fact that God tears away the distance between himself and us, between Christ and culture, between the world

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And the church between God and man, between heaven and earth, between eschatology and history, God will not tolerate the separation. God came to live and to suffer and to love

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and to die among us in order that we might be one. He is the embodiment of the high ideal. So personal charity is not enough. Individual salvation is not sufficient.

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Love must be embedded in the structures and systems of our common life. For God saw all of the agonizing and aching needs of struggling humanity.

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He saw all of our unsolved problems and unmet needs. He saw 40,000 people dying every day of starvation. He saw unrequited wrongs, unmitigated evils. He saw a voracious economic system eating up the poor.

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He saw an unredeemed humanity. He saw blinded eyes and deafened ears and deformed bodies and stony hearts and frozen wills and obdurate selfishness and perplexed people and our hard spirits

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that need to be thawed out and made to flow freely in the sunshine of his amazing grace. He saw and he wept over sins and cities of corruption, therefore knowing that only by his presence

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Could the ills of humanity be healed? The word became flesh and dwelt among us. He looked at every need that humanity presents, and he identified himself as the answer to that need,

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whatever it is. Who is Jesus? He stood in the midst of all of our problems, and he identified himself.

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He said, I am. I am intimately related to all of your necessities. I am intricately involved in human community. I am the cause of every high aspiration.

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I am the guarantor of every legitimate hope. I am the fulfillment of every worthy aim. I am the strength in every struggle for right. I am the kingdom and the power and the glory

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in every battle for truth. Before Abraham was, I am, I am what? He identifies himself in terms of needs. To the hungry, he says, I am the bread of life.

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To the blind, he says, I am the light of the world. To the frustrated, he says, I'm the door. To the lost, he says, I'm the way. To the confused, he says, I'm the truth.

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To the dead, he says, I'm the resurrection and the life. To the rejected, he says, I'm the true vine. To the hated, he says, I'm the bright and morning star. And to those who are trampled, he says,

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I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold, I'm alive forevermore. When I went to Fisk University, we used to sing that beautiful spiritual,

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Lord, make me more holy. That's what we sang. Well, it's all right to be holy, but I wish that I could write a song entitled,

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Lord, make me more human. Because when God was ready to demonstrate how holy he is, he showed us how human he could become. The word was flesh.

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And that is a compassionate conjunction of God's grace and humanity's sins. It is God's determination to say something by doing something about our sins and our sufferings.

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It also confronts each of us with a daily challenge, never to sit in the seat of the satisfied, and never to join the conspiracy of silence against the oppressed. For Martin Luther King Jr. said, the world

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is being destroyed not so much by the vitriolic words of bad people as by the appalling silence of good people. And another sage said that the only thing that

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is necessary to cause evil to triumph in the world is for good people to do nothing. One summer, I ventured to preach the gospel in the Republic of South Africa, where the majority of 23 million

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is disfranchised and oppressed by a government that represents only a minority of 3 million, which occupies 87% of the land, owns all of the land and all the mines and all the rich mineral resources.

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There, the native indigenous majority are made aliens and tenants on the unarable 13% of the land. And there, 90% of the people live below the poverty line, are not allowed to vote or to go to public school free,

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not allowed to live in the cities, but are pushed onto miserable reservations. There, the majority dies daily from the structurized violence of an exploitive society.

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And from there, of all places, I got an invitation, a telegram, to come and preach the gospel. Well, I wanted to go because I had never been there, and yet I didn't want to go because I was afraid I

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might not get out alive. I was scheduled to leave the US in June, June the 29th to be exact, and to start preaching July the 1st. And I applied to the South African consulate general

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for a visa early in January. And the visa did not arrive until June the 25th. And I had the comfortable feeling of knowing I had tried my best, but I just couldn't go.

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And here I'm faced with a visa. So I said to my secretary, I'm not going. I can't go. And she just looked at me, but there was judgment in her look.

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So I at least had to go to the hospital so they could tell me that I didn't have enough immunizations and I couldn't go and endanger the health of those poor people.

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But the hospital says, oh, yes, you only need one we can give it to you now. And then I went to American Express hoping that they would tell me, well, there's no reservation.

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You're too late. You should have applied two months ago. But they said, yes, we've got a seat left, and you can have it. And I went to the deacon board, and I said,

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you know I don't have any money, and they can't pay my travel expense. And they told me that I'm not going to get an honorarium, so I'm sure that we can commiserate together

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and have a prayer meeting for them. I said, well, pastor, we'll send you. So there was the money. And every door was open, and I just had to go.

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So I left Detroit Sunday, July 1st at 1:45 and departed Kennedy International Airport at 7 PM and landed in Johannesburg Monday evening at 1030 and was driven across country to East London and Cape Province

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and preached there for five days and from there to SOMO in the Transkei and preached in a municipal revival and from there to Lesotho and Swaziland and from there to Johannesburg and flew back over to Cape Town.

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And it was on that mission that I learned what Jesus meant when he said, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Tell them that if any person is in Christ,

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that person is a new creation. Tell them that I'm still God and I'm still in charge. Tell them that justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

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Tell them that nations will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and study war no more. Tell them that my will must be done, that every knee must bow and every tongue must confess,

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that the wicked will cease from troubling and the weary will be at rest. Tell them, Charles. Well, I tried to do it.

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Gave them the best sermons I could prepare. But before I left South Africa to return home, I discovered that the real effect of my service was not in a word I said.

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For they told me as they took all of the air out of my homiletical ego, it's not a sermon you preach that means much to us. They will soon all be forgotten.

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But the fact that you came here, that you lived with us in this place, making no special demands for special treatment or ecclesiastical privilege, eating what we eat, sour cream and porridge, sleeping as we sleep,

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sometimes on the ground, they said, it is that that gives us hope and joy and courage. I'm afraid it is not what the church says that will redeem the world, but what the church does,

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as it demonstrates in its own life what it means to worship the word made flesh. A black spiritual asks this searching question, is you got good religion?

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Not just religion, but is it good religion? For there's a whole lot of danger is bad religion in the world. Bad religion can mess you up.

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Bad religion can drive you crazy. Bad religion can make you hard and cold and insensitive. Bad religion is worse than no religion, for there is not an evil cause in world history that has not been sponsored by somebody's sick perverted bad religion. Bad religion

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spawned the medieval military crusades. Bad religion grabbed the enforcement of the state to destroy freedom of conscience. Bad religion sent people to stand before the Inquisition. Bad religion burned Joan of Arc at the stake and executed John Huss and Hans Dink. Bad religion assassinated Mahatma Gandhi,

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killed Tyndale for translating the Bible into the language of the people, murdered Anwar Sadat, slew Indira Gandhi, cut up Lebanon, divided Iran, segregated South Africa. Bad religion sponsors terrorism and materialism and sexism and ageism and fascism. No wonder the spiritual asks, "Is you got good religion?" Bad religion is

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mean. Good religion is merciful. Bad religion is harmful. Good religion is healing. Bad religion is cruel. Good religion is compassionate. Bad religion is exclusive. Good religion is inclusive. Bad religion is fueled by fear, but good religion is liberated by faith. Bad religion divides. Good religion unifies.

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Bad religion turns inward on the self, but good religion reaches out to humanity. Bad religion stays at the altar to get a blessing, but good religion goes down the Jericho Road to be a blessing. Bad religion is shaped like a cross, like a spurious pole that reaches up to heaven, but does not reach out to anybody.

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But good religion is shaped like the cross of Christ. With the vertical beam it reaches up to God for power, but with the horizontal beam it reaches out to humanity with love. Is your God good religion? When the word became flesh, he was no less God. In fact, he was more glorious because of his humiliation. The

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more he suffered, the brighter he did shine. God reached way out and became the human opposite of his splendid divinity. He was God. He became human. He was clothed with eternal life and absolute power and he wrapped himself in a mortal body of dying flesh. He was full of heavenly esteem walking among stars but

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he emptied himself in humble obedience and submission to his own suffering love. He was rich but he became poor. He was all the way up but he came all the way down. He stepped from his throne pulled off his royal robes and gave away everything he had. He gave his blue azure mantle to the sky, he glazed his flashing

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eyes to a thousand twinkling stars, he gave his immaculate countenance to the angels, the archangels, the hosts of heaven and the sons of God. He pulled off his pre-existent glory and lowered his kingly head and put on a mortal body. Born in Bethlehem, wrapped in swaddling clothes,

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laid in a manger, surrounded by sheep and cattle, slept on hay, reared in Nazareth, baptized by a rustic named John in the muddy waters of the Jordan, misunderstood by his family,

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betrayed by his friends, forsaken by the disciples, arrested by the Roman soldiers, condemned by the government, beaten by an angry mob, nailed to an old rugged cross, crucified on Calvary, wounded in his side,

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and yet he kept on giving, even while he was dying. He gave forgiveness to his enemies. He gave paradise to a thief. He gave John to his mother.

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He gave his mother to John. He gave salvation to the world. He gave joy to the church. He gave freedom to the oppressed.

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He gave life to the dead. And then he bowed his smitten head and died in agony, was buried in a tomb, sealed in his grave, He guarded in his death, but he didn't lose anything.

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For early Easter morning, God raised him up and gave him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee must bow and every tongue must confess

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and every heart must adore him and sing. All hail the power of Jesus' name. Let angels prostrate fall. Bring forth the royal diadem and crown him.

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Crown him Lord of all. The word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Let's pray. O Lord, support us all the day long throughout this troubless life.

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And when the shades lengthen, the evening comes, the busy world is hushed. The fever of life is over and our work is done. Then Lord, in thy mercy, grant us safe landing, holy rest, and peace at last.

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Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. Amen. Our hymn is "Crown Him with Many Crowns." You have a crown.

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It's the gift of your life in open trust and faith, or it is the investment of yourself into church membership, or it is a promise that you wish to make there in the sanctuary of your own spirit. But whatever, crown him.

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Let us rise and sing. [BLANK_AUDIO]