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[The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler-Thielman. Today's sermon is based on the scripture readings from Numbers 34, 6, and Philippians 3, 13, and 14. Today's sermon is entitled, "On Doing Things That Haven't Been Done Before."

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Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in Paul's letter to the Philippians, the third chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered 8. "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ

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Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own based on the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that

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depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this, or am already perfect, but I press on to make

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it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

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Let those of us who are mature be thus minded, and if in anything you are otherwise minded, God will reveal that also to you. Truly let us hold true to what we have attained. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word.

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Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. There is a certain sense in which Christopher Columbus was a man far ahead of his time.

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His voyage in 1492 is perhaps the most decisive voyage in all of human history, for he united the old world with the new world to make the world as we understand it today. Samuel Elliot Morrison, who was professor of history at Harvard University for many years, was also a master mariner, and on one occasion he followed painstakingly the sea

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journeys of Columbus. He then wrote a three-volume study entitled Admiral of the Ocean Seas, A Life of Columbus, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and in the course of the narrative of that history he says this, "Christopher Columbus was the greatest mariner of all time.

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When you consider the primitive tools of navigation which were his, and the four transatlantic journeys which he made, and when you recognize that his latitudinous calculations were beyond those of anyone who had ever lived before him, you cannot but agree with that conclusion." You know, I was reading in Numbers last week, and I noticed where it said that when God

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led the children of Israel into Canaan, he said to them, "Your western boundary shall be the great sea and the coast." Well, that was true of the children of Israel in the land of Canaan, but no such limit was placed upon Europe, and Columbus is the one who sailed across the Western Sea and formed

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a new world. There are two great keys to his success. The first, his awesome navigational skills, which we have already noted. The second was his intense tenacity.

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Whether it was in begging for the money to make the journeys, whether it was contending with very poor shipping, leaking vessels, whether it was an obstreperous and difficult crew, whether it was the fact that he made four trips, two of them in great personal pain because he suffered extensively from arthritis, whatever it was, he never stopped

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doing it. He was absolutely persistent. This is what led Joaquin Miller to write in his poem about Columbus, "He gained a world. He gave that world its grandest lesson.

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On, sail on." So I say again that Columbus was a man ahead of his time. He did things that no one had ever done before. But tragically, he was also very much a man of his own time, with all of the moral perversities

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of that time. Columbus had two goals in seeking the new world. The first was riches; the second was souls. He went out with both gold to be found and a gospel to be preached.

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Unfortunately, greed quickly unbalanced these two goals. The Spaniards brought home out of one silver mine alone, the mine at Potosi, enough silver to triple the entire wealth of the continent we call Europe. But at the same time, Spain made the natives into slaves or into very bitter enemies.

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Columbus on one occasion wrote of the natives of the Caribbean islands, "They are the kindest, most peaceful and generous people in all the world." And then he did not hesitate to lie to them, to kidnap them, to execute them. On one occasion he took more than 100 into the hold of the Santa Maria, ready to take

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them back to Spain, only to discover the next day, to his great horror, that all of them had hanged themselves during the night, every man, woman, and child. The Spanish policy at that time, as articulated by Queen Isabella, was that if a person refused to become a Christian, that person must be a slave.

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If the person did become a Christian, then they became an indentured servant of the government. That is, they were put into the hands of some wealthy Spaniard in a leadership position of power, and they were put there in order that they might, according to Queen Isabella, be taught the useful habits of industry.

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Unfortunately, what happened, of course, was the subjugation of the native peoples and the establishment of the great encomiendas, which one can still find stretched all across South America, great, huge holdings by very small families, where the labor is still, in the twentieth century, nothing less than slavery.

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Please understand that not everyone at this time in the world's history felt as Spain did. For example, at the same time when Columbus was on his first journey, the House of Tudor was coming to power in Great Britain.

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Henry VII was already bouncing on his knee, a little baby who was later to become Henry VIII. The Tudors never permitted the practice of slavery. Savannah Rolla was preaching against the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church in Florence,

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and he continued to preach against these things until he was burned by that church. More books were being published at that time than at any time in the world's history. In the same year in which Columbus set sail for our shores, Leonardo da Vinci drew the first plans for a flying machine.

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And a little farther north, there was a nine-year-old boy studiously discovering new things in his school books, and the name of that nine-year-old boy was Martin Luther. What we have here is an illustration of the perversity of human experience as evidenced by contrary attitudes.

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We are able, on the one hand, to do great things, but on the other hand we are many times willing to do cruel things or to be silent while others do those same cruel things. It took Columbus 53 days to cross the Atlantic. In 1846 the clipper ship Yorkshire crossed the Atlantic in 16 days.

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In the early days of this century, the Lusitania crossed the Atlantic for the first time in only four days. In 1927 Lindbergh flew a plane across the Atlantic, covering the journey in slightly less than 34 hours.

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Today jets travel to Europe in seven hours or less, and the great SST, the Concorde jet, can make the journey from our shores to the shores of Europe in 112 minutes. This is an amazing technological advance. It is a record of great progress.

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But David Lowe, a British cartoonist, has made a serious point very well. He shows the Concorde flying through the skies at its awesome speed, and he writes on the side of that airplane the words, "Man's technological progress," and then far behind, lost almost in the vapor trail of the plane, there is a small stumbling turtle, and on that turtle

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are the words, "Man's moral progress." The fact of the matter is that while some people are flying, other people are dying. Starvation is rampant in our world. So is bigotry.

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So is unnecessary poverty. So is cruelty and violence. And there is some of this in every one of us, whether we like to acknowledge it or not. The story that we see written in advance on one hand and no advance on the other is the

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story of every human being. For all of us have those moments when we are ahead of our time and other times when we are stuck fast in our times. Columbus was at one and the same time a wonderful and a wanton man.

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He was a sacrificing and yet a selfish man. He would throw his mind ahead of where anyone had thrown their minds before and leave his heart behind. And we are in many ways the same kind of people, which leads me to what I would like you to

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think about most seriously this morning. And that is discipleship and the tyranny of time. This is Children's Defense Fund Sunday. It is a day on which we remember those children who are suffering so much, particularly in

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our own nation. Now it's appropriate that we should consider this subject on this day because Columbus often referred to the natives on those Caribbean islands as childlike or as being like little children.

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Still he surrendered them to his greed. And what I ask today is, is there more of Columbus in us than we would like to admit? Words were said a long time ago that a child, more than any other gift which heaven can give, brings with it hope and forward-looking thoughts.

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Well, with regard to children, are our thoughts forward-looking? Is both our principle and our practice representative of going beyond anything that is ever done before in the rearing and the blessing of little ones? In the next four years in America, a million eighty thousand children will be born dangerously

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below proper birth weight, and they will be so born because their mothers have had inadequate prenatal care. A hundred forty-three thousand of those babies will die. One million six hundred thousand of our high school students will drop out of high school

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before being graduated. And three million six hundred thousand children will be born in this country in the next five years in poverty. You see, children make up the single largest age group of those who suffer from poverty.

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But let's narrow our focus. Let's bring it down just to Pennsylvania. And let's take just one area of what is happening to children in our day. I speak specifically of abuse.

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In just the last year in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, sixty youngsters were abused to death. Five thousand one hundred ninety-five were so abused that they suffered what is described as major physical injury.

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Six thousand three hundred fifty-one youngsters were assaulted and/or raped. And seven thousand nine hundred eighty-six youngsters were molested by those they considered to love them and to be concerned for their good. You know, our Jewish friends and our Christian friends are in large measure in agreement

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that the Fifth Commandment stands in the place where it does in the Decalogue for a purpose. The Fifth Commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother," says, among other things, that parents are to represent God before their children. Well how are we doing in this regard?

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Tom Mulroy, one of the elders in our congregation, a partner in Pillar and Mulroy Law Firm here at Pittsburgh, specializes in divorce. And he told a group of us here at the Church how since the institution of no false divorce, the average marriage in America now lasts only seven years.

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The concept of no false divorce is in and of itself quite interesting, because what it is is a legal position that is arrived at without any reference to good or to evil. It is, and this is Tom Mulroy's phrase, "law without justice." Of those people who are divorced, about 78 percent will try a second marriage and fail.

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And what is the impact of this on our children, children who are to grow up in the environment of a healthy and a happy home, in a strong and vibrant family environment? What happens to kids who come out of this kind of situation? Two-thirds of the youngsters in America today who are under 18 years of age come from broken

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homes. Tests have shown, and repeated studies have shown, that they have significant emotional problems, and that these problems center most specifically in the area of goal-setting. And what is perhaps most tragic of all, in this whole concept of no false divorce, children

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have become little more than the trump cards which are played by their mothers and fathers in the settlement of property disputes. Now really, I don't think any of this should be too surprising to us. For look at the nature of our time.

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And let me choose just one area of our time to focus upon, and I choose the area of sexual activity. Elementary school children in New York City, elementary school children in New York City, now receive books which explain sexual procedures.

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Condoms are available to any youngsters who request them. I know a woman who attended a high school graduation, and the audience was told before the graduating process began that they were to withhold their applause until all had been graduated, and then clap for the entire class as one body.

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And they did this, with one exception. There was one girl who crossed the stage to receive her diploma who was quite heavily and distinctly pregnant. She got an immediate, rousing ovation.

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This girl was pregnant because of illicit love. The child she carried was illicit. Now if applause means any kind of approval, then only one youngster was singled out that night for sexual approval, and it was one who had a child out of wedlock.

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That shouldn't surprise us. We live in a society where one of our stellar athletes, Magic Johnson, can admit that he sleeps with hundreds of women, become HIV positive, and be invited to the White House to talk about it.

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There to say that he will join the fight against AIDS labors to retain it on his promise. What kind of moral leadership is that for a nation? And you know, while I was speaking of Magic Johnson and HIV positive, or AIDS, do you remember little Ryan White?

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Ryan White was a youngster who only lived for 15 years. He died of AIDS. He did not get AIDS from anything that he did wrong or that anything his parents did wrong.

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He happened to be a hemophiliac, and he was given some impure blood, and as a result of it, this dear little boy got AIDS. They weren't going to let him attend public schools, and he achieved nationwide notoriety by the fact that he and his family fought in the courts for the right for him to go

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to school, and they won. And he was received back into the school. His old friendships picked up. All the conflicts and antagonisms which they expected from the other children failed to

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develop. But when he was 15 years old, less than two years ago, Ryan White died. Did you know that three times since his death his grave has been desecrated by adults? The stone has been smashed to smithereens with sledgehammers, and human excrement spread

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across the surface of the green grass that covers his mortal remain. What kind of moral leadership are parents giving to children when they will do a thing like that? On Channel 35 in New York City, you can tune in any one of nine hours of the day to see

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men and women dressed in black leather acting out sexually-oriented sadomasochistic rituals. And that channel is spreading its tentacles into other communities. The Fox television network began its new season with a show called Key West, in which in one of the early plot lines there is a paraplegic who has sex with a woman who is not his wife

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while his wife watches. And NBC has just released its new show, Mad About You, and in one of the earliest episodes two people, husband and wife, are arguing over when it is correct to enjoy sex. And they debate this issue, and the episode concludes with them having sex on the kitchen

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table while their dinner guests await their coming in the next room. Planned Parenthood has isolated 65,000 illustrations of sexual perversion and violence seen on television in the hours when most youngsters are home from school and can view these things. They also determined that most of these youngsters see 14,000 of these episodes in any given

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year. And I haven't said anything at all about the lyrics in some of the music that is sung. I haven't said anything at all about politically correct thinking, which is revisionist in its orientation and which does not preserve and protect the history of our nation, but

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rather perverts it and makes children ashamed of the country rather than committed to making it better. Ted Koppel gave the commencement address at Duke University last year. In it he said that television does not deal with truth; it deals with facts.

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And facts, he said, are morally ambiguous. "We have developed the ability," he went on, "to speak to everyone. The difficulty is that we have nothing to say. The world of television believes that truth is too strong to be digested by the American

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people and would have us suggest and believe that Moses came down from Mount Sinai carrying the ten suggestions." And he concludes his remarks with these words, "I, who sit on the flashing altar of television every day, caution you young graduates to set your sights on what you cannot see.

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For there is true majesty in God, in a moral compass indifferent to trend and style." Trend and style. That's being stuck fast in your own time. That's refusing to think nobler thoughts and to move toward those thoughts, and settling

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your head for so much that we bosses our day, and then is in turn infested upon our little ones. Yes, Wordsworth said, "A child, more than any other gift which heaven can give, brings with it hope and forward-looking thoughts."

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But I would ask this morning, are we obeying that priority in our own thinking? Do we provide the children of this country, no matter who they are, with sufficient food and with sufficient medical care both before they are born and after it? What are we going to do about the growing incidences of abuse?

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What are we going to do about the growing attack on the sacred institution of marriage, and thus the destruction of the environment in which a child like some blossom is to come to flower? What are we going to do when our schools are committed in principle and practice to things

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which do not contribute to the moral education of our youngsters? What are we going to do? Bring up our children in a world which is bereft of God? That is not to be ahead of one's time, that is to be stuck fast in it.

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That is not to do what others have been unable to do, that is instead to become part of what we might quite properly call the immoral majority. This last Thursday a young man came to my office on an outing. He had been a part of the church I served in California more than twenty years ago.

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He came by to see me and specifically to thank me for two things. He thanked me first of all for being used of God in helping him to see Christ as his Lord. But he said, "I also want to thank you for calling my attention and my heart to the truth

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that Jesus Christ is not only the answer to the problems of the individual, but also to the problems of society." I expressed, as you might expect, my gratitude for his thoughtfulness in coming and sharing these things with me.

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They made me feel glad all over. I asked about his family. I hadn't seen a picture of them for a while, and I said, "Tell me about the kids. Let me tell you about Harold's kids."

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The first child, Jimmy, was adopted. He is now twenty-one years of age, but he was adopted when he was two. His mother had fed him lye, which utterly destroyed his voice box and his esophagus. He is able to speak only with the assistance of electronic equipment, and he is fed directly

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from a blender through a pipe into his stomach. Their second child is Frankie, who was their own child. Their third child is Corey, their own child. Their fourth child is Katie, their own child.

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Their fifth child was a Korean orphan named Lily, whom they adopted sight unseen. Their sixth child is Andrea, a little Hispanic girl who is quadriplegic and who can only move three fingers on one hand, but that is enough for her to control the little motorized chair in which she moves.

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She also was adopted by them. And then there is Annie, who was a crack baby. She was adopted by them also. And all of the evidences of the destructive influence of the crack have now gone except

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for the fact that she has a serious speech impediment, which is directly attributed to that filthy narcotic, and which she is making progress in special tutoring and rising above it so that someday, they say, she will be able to speak normally. Their last youngster is Jose, a little Hispanic baby who was part of a pair of twins born

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prematurely. His little brother died, as is quite common with premature babies. His lungs are not sufficiently developed to support his entire body, and so he must receive assistance in breathing.

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He does this through a tracheotomy. They say that by the time he is six or eight years old, his lungs will be developed enough for him to no longer need the tracheotomy or the other forms of assistance he has. He is the last of the children they have adopted.

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And I listened to him as he talked to me about his family. This one who had come and said, all the way from California, mind you, where he is the three-county director of Youth for Christ, I thought of how he had come and said to me, "I want to thank you for telling me that Jesus Christ is the answer to personal problems

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and to the problems of society as well." And I wept. I was shamed. I had talked, and he had done.

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In your board this morning, and I wish you would take this in your hand, you will find a cardboard folder which is produced by the Children's Defense Fund. The middle section has a heading, "Pledge for Children." I pledge to do justice for children by, I pledge to reach out to children, and I pledge

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to pray for children especially, and they are asking for the names of particular children. This is a card which you are to fill out and keep for yourself. You do not give it to anyone else. It is simply a reminder of commitments you make.

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Perhaps you will become a part of the Children's Defense Fund yourself. Perhaps you will become a tutor to school kids, maybe a storyteller in the library. Maybe you'll be the one neighbor in the neighborhood that has all the latchkey kids come to her home to be taken care of until mom and dad return from their jobs.

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Maybe you'll be a teacher's aide. Maybe you'll work in the boys' club of a church or in the girls' club of a church. We had to close our girls' club this year after decades of operation because we couldn't find anyone who cared enough to take up the task of leading it.

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Maybe all you can do is pray. If that is so, then write down the ones for whom you will specific pray, because prayer is more powerful as it is more specific. We are not to heap up mere vain repetitions.

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Now the bottom part of the card, you will notice, is addressed to the President. You are asked to sign this and to leave it in the pew with you today, or to bring it back next week. Why?

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You are not to take this with you and send it in. What the Children's Defense Fund wants to do is to get millions of these cards signed by millions of our citizens, and then on the day after the inauguration in January, they will present these cards to the President, whomever that President might be.

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I urge you with all my heart to make these commitments and to sign this letter to the President. We must do better than our times are doing, else why are we called Christian? We must refuse the tyranny of our time, or why are we called the children of eternity?

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We must forget the things which are behind, no matter how noble they might be in our lives, and press on toward the mark of a higher calling of God in Christ Jesus than we have ever reached before. We must, in our own lives, each and every one of us, we must honor the words of Joaquin

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Miller, whom I spoke about before and who wrote of Columbus, that his grandest gift to the land he founded was this, "Sail on, sail on, sail on and on, not stuck in today, not part of our own time, but ahead of our time, in love and in compassion and in the care of the most precious gift that heaven can give, a little child."

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Pray with me. They are so small and oftentimes so quiet. They're like gardenias, which are bruised by just the hard touch. But they are rare and precious, and they are filled with an infinity of possibility.

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Thou alone knowest, O God, what they can be, who they will be, and how the world will be blessed by their being it. We commit all the children of this country and of this world into thy hands, and we commit ourselves into thy hands as well.

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Make us, we pray, no matter how old, how hardened, how past such responsibilities we think we are, make us, O God, have a sense of responsibility and the courage in Jesus Christ to live up to it. We pray our prayer in his name.

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Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]