You Tube Theology

A service of worship in Duke University Chapel. The Reverend Dr Samuel Wells delivers a sermon entitled "Starting from Zero." Opening excerpt from the sermon: ( 44:36) "The term "Ground Zero" is not an ancient phrase that goes back to America's founding fathers. But neither did it enter the dictionary on 9/11. The term "Ground Zero" was first used during the Manhattan Project that planned the deadly bombing of Japan. The fearsome weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 killed around 200,000 civilians. After the Manhattan Project and its apocalyptic climax, Ground Zero came to mean that part of the ground situated immediately under an exploding bomb. Since 9/11 "Ground Zero" has come to refer to the site in New York City where a rather different Manhattan project turned airplanes into guided missiles and left over two-and-a-half thousand people dead.--All of us know exactly where we were when we heard or saw the news. All of us experienced shudders of disbelief, panic, bewilderment and horror -- a sense of something new, and mesmerizing, and terrifying." Closing excerpt from the sermon: (1:06: 17) "But all our hope lies in the God who makes beautiful things out of dust -- who made us, called Abraham out of the dust of the desert, remade Christ from the dust of the tomb, will remake Manhattan from the dust of Ground Zero and will finally make all things new --the God who abides in the dust of Afghanistan, the dust of Iraq, and the dust of Arabia, the God who transforms the dust of our trampled dreams, the God who restores those who repent in dust and ashes, the God who breathes life into nostrils cloyed by dust, the God who lifts us up like a firefighter and carries us home like a shepherd --if only, if only amid all our anger and self-justification and sadness, if only we can find the humility and the humanity, ourselves, slowly and painfully, to start from zero and let God make something beautiful out of even this." Sermon begins at 44:36. Genesis 2:4b-9. Bulletin: http://bit.ly/omyBtk