Sunday Service - 4/1/12 - Sam Wells

A service of Palm Sunday worship in Duke University Chapel. The Reverend Dr Samuel Wells delivers a sermon entitled "Saying Stop."
Opening Excerpt from the Sermon: (47:36)
"How would we manage without KZbin? Once upon a time people wrote moving songs and the sun set over shimmering lakes while flocks of geese wafted elegantly by. But we never assumed the two belonged together until KZbin taught us to. Once upon a time puppy dogs did embarrassing acts and toddlers said cute things and cars reversed into lamp-posts and occasionally a home movie captured all three, maybe even in the same frame -- but only in the era of KZbin have we learned to pass links to such wonders on to friends and family with a little smiley face in the bottom of our email.
I'm sure everybody here knows what it means to play a game of dominoes. Nobody exactly agrees on the rules, of course, about things like whether you put the double six sideways at the beginning of the game or not, and whether you judge who comes second by the combined number of dots on the remaining pieces. But every single person in the whole wide world who has ever played a game of dominoes agrees on one single thing: there comes a point in every game when you lose interest in the regular rules and start to make a long snake by lining every piece up on its end about an inch apart and then watching them topple over. And KZbin gives us the proof: because there you will find thousands of people have deemed their efforts of lining up and then toppling over myriad upon countless myriad of dominoes in ever more elaborate cascades are worthy of viewing by the whole world."
Closing Excerpt from the Sermon: (59:29)
"As we walk through Holy Week together, we see the fall. From this joyous Palm Sunday, this exuberant day of creation, a day of Hallelujah and rejoicing, we descend to the Fall: we see the falling of one domino after another, and watch each one bring the next one down and the next one and the next. And we see our own fall in the fall of each of these characters, who fall for the same reasons we do. But then we see one character say, "Stop." And we see a ton of bricks fall on top of him. But because of that 'stop,' there can be a 'Go.' Because of the cross, there can be the resurrection. Because Gordon Wilson said what no one else had found it in them to say, people could begin to imagine peace in Ireland. May this be a holy week for you. May it be a rediscovery of how the whole world falls. May it be a week where you discover where in your life, where in the domino-chain of this world, you can find the strength and the courage and the wisdom to say, 'Stop.' And may God turn your human "Stop" into a divine 'Go."
Bulletin: bit.ly/HDxaKD
Sermon: bit.ly/H7cHSn