Sermons of Arthur C. McGill. Arthur C. McGill
human venture not at level of whole wld or God . . . but at level of wrestling with the concrete. That is where the creative edge of human exs [existence] always is. Hence primacy of phenomenology. . . . What ethics are involved in this attention to the concrete? . . . Here’s where ethical impact of eschatology on relations to the concrete comes into play.
“The focus on the concrete means that art has a fundamental & indispensable role. . . . Art finds a form to recover the concrete as we newly & freshly experience it. Cf Celebration of Flesh Chap. 1.
“But obviously, to make a case for the centrality of the concrete for theology, I must be able to translate the basic & obvious theological categories—sin, salvation, judgment & grace, God, JX [Jesus Christ]—immediately into concrete experiences. That ‘immediately’ is
crucial. . . .
“The concrete exper[ience] is not self-enclosed [or need not be self-enclosed; this is one of the grand intimations—and realizations of art: tapped in certain ways, the concrete can touch the universal] . . .
“Does Ritual belong to the concrete exper or not? . . .
“How is naiveté related to concrete experience? Naiveté is the acceptance of concrete experience . . .
“Concrete exper[ience] has an appalling inadequacy about it. Eliot ‘Portrait of Lady’ ‘Gerontion’ Eliot identifies this with transiency. The theoretical way is a response to this inadequacy. But it is a false response. Question: Does JX [Jesus Christ] give us another focus away from concreteness, involving renunciation of the world? Cf Eliot ‘Ash Wednesday.’ Or does he establish us in a relation to God that requires concreteness, in its inadequacy? Humility, acceptance of our littleness & transiency. Does the inadequacy of concreteness direct us elsewhere in JX? Or is it to be accepted in JX by virtue of letting God be our glory?” As often in McGill, “inadequacy” is the way to the adequate—or to the more than adequate.
27 McGill says much when he writes in his “Confession of Faith,” “. . . I came through readings in American literature [with a little Russian literature on the side], curiously enough [or not], to the shattering apprehension of the reality of God . . .”—see below, p. 148. Literature implicates specificity. See the reference to literature again, p. 154. In this statement, McGill writes also of “the positive acceptance of the other person . . .” (p. 152). This, again, is specificity. Appropriately enough, much in this “Confession” helps to prepare one for the sermons. The sermons help to explicate the “Confession.”
28 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Random House, 1950) 281. James Breech quotes and comments on this passage in The Silence of Jesus, 18.
29 McGill affirms, “Victory . . . is the decisive and final fact of human existence”— “Reason in a Violent World,” 47.
30 Abner Dean, Wake Me When It’s Over (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955) 59.
31 Stringfellow gives this account: “I raised with Karl Barth during his visit [to the United States, 1962] the matter which is basic here. Again and again, in both the public dialogue and in our private conversations, it had been my experience that as Barth began to make some point, I would at once know what he was going to say. It was not some intuitive thing, it differed from that, it was a recognition, in my mind, of something familiar that Barth was articulating. When this had happened a great many times while I listened to him, I described my experience to him and asked why this would happen. His response was instantaneous: ‘How could it be otherwise? We read the same Bible, don’t we?’”—William Stringfellow, A Second Birthday (1970; reprinted, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2005) 151–52. Hermeneutics! The point must be: we read the same Bible because we read the Bible in the same way.
32 Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 488 (italics added).
33 The Confessions of St. Augustine, trans. John K. Ryan (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 43.
34 See McGill, Suffering: A Test of Theological Method (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982), 99–111; chapter 6, “Resting in Our Need.”
35 Often I have stared at a word with magnifying glass for extended times over days—and over years. Then, suddenly, the word is clear and unmistakable: no brackets of any kind. A little victory. Lucy McGill has been responsible for many such victories.
I
Good Neediness
“If you are not willing to be one with your neediness, you cannot be blessed.”
—Sermon 2
Sermon 1: Loneliness
Sermon submitted in Candidacy for Licensure
October 28, 1951
I looked on my right hand,
and beheld, but there was no
man that would know me.
No man cared for my soul.
(Psalm 142:4, KJV)1
We have all at one time or another, when we joined with an unfamiliar group of people, felt strangely alone. All of the time, I suppose, we are vaguely uneasy because no one quite understands us. We are always pushed by a subtle insecurity in an effort to show ourselves to our neighbor, to bridge the gap of ignorance and indifference between us. But at a party where no face is known, or in a new town to which we have just moved, we experience this insecurity and fear of loneliness in a peculiarly acute way.
On the other hand, when we go back to our parents’ house for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, we feel a wonderful reassurance because this loneliness is almost conquered. All the objects in the family home—the pictures on the wall, the designs in the rugs—are part of our own intimate past. To the people around us we are closely bound by the memory of experiences which we went through together. We love to tell the old jokes, to rehearse past events. Here we have a peculiar sense of belonging; here we seem to be known and accepted by others; here for a moment we seem not to be isolated, but together.
In the ancient world, the family was given tremendous importance in a man’s life, because there was here an understanding, a familiarity, and a loyalty among the members which made it a unique spiritual community. Here a man sank the roots of himself, here he was not alone. But in our day the family no longer has this meaning for children or for parents. We still have the custom of letting male children keep the family name. But the family is not consciously thought of and honored and defended as the place—the one place—where we are not alone, the place where others are loyal—truly loyal—to us, and we respond with loyalty to them, the place where we commit to others certain usually hidden parts of our personality. The family is not consciously valued in this way anymore. It is not appreciated or used by our souls. We have lost the ability to tap the spiritual resources which family intimacy offers. The liberal divorce laws and the automobile by no means caused the breakup of the family. They were merely occasions where our new inner attitude became visible in action.
Lacking the unique spiritual community of a family, you and I today are especially burdened with loneliness. Too often even the Thanksgiving dinners and