The Howard Thurman Podcast

In the final sermon of this series, Thurman affirms that Jesus does not struggle with the fact of death but the fact of finality swallowing all future possibilities. When Jesus asked God whether the cup before him might pass, what he possibly considered, Thurman notes, is whether more time living might be better than dying. The test of faith, Thurman says, comes when life’s agony is not relieved. In Jesus’ yielding expression, “Thy will be done,” Thurman interprets God’s ability to intervene “in the midst of the breaking heart and the anguishing spirit” and inspire peace and resolve.

Part of the Collection, The Temptations of Jesus (1962, United Church of Canada, London, ON, Canada)

Tags: death, loneliness, peace, temptation, tempter

Description by ShaCarolyn Halyard

Recorded in United Church of Canada, London, Ontario

Citation: Thurman, Howard, “In the Garden, 1962 September 16,” The Howard Thurman Digital Archive, accessed July 9, 2024, https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/34.

Thurman’s fourth sermon in this series expands the traditional frame of the wilderness temptations and portrays Jesus’ decision to go to Jerusalem for the last time as a crossroads dilemma. In this instance, Jesus must decide whether to go to Jerusalem, where he would be rejected and killed, or, to continue his ministry elsewhere and live. Thurman explains the crossroad faced by Jesus as a dilemma because this moment reflects the "agony" of any dilemma in that one must choose either between competing goods or competing evils. Jesus knew going to Jerusalem would mean meeting his fate. If he did not go, it would mean quieting the revelation of God within him. In the choice Jesus makes to go to Jerusalem, Thurman recognizes the crowning example of faith to trust God and follow divine will.

Part of the Collection, The Temptations of Jesus (1962, United Church of Canada, London, ON, Canada)

Tags: agony, crossroad, dilemma, Jesus, Judas, temptation, tempter

Description by ShaCarolyn Halyard

Recorded in United Church of Canada, London, Ontario

Citation: Thurman, Howard, “At the Crossroad, 1962 September 15,” The Howard Thurman Digital Archive, accessed July 9, 2024, https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/33.

In his third sermon regarding Jesus and the tempter, Thurman discusses the dilemma one faces when deciding whether personal ascent to power will compromise one's spiritual integrity. It is possible, Thurman says, that Jesus considered how ruling over the kingdoms of the world might position him to further the aims of God’s kingdom. Perhaps Jesus contemplated the potential of his teaching, healing, and miracle-working power backed by political authority. However, Thurman warns that “the nerve center of our consent” must always go to God. Rather than succumbing to the temptation of expediency, the individual must be invested in a reality beyond one’s own.

Part of the Collection, The Temptations of Jesus (1962, United Church of Canada, London, ON, Canada)

Tags: consent, Jesus, Kingdom of God, love, power, temptation, tempter, trust

Description by ShaCarolyn Halyard

Recorded in United Church of Canada, London, Ontario

Citation: Thurman, Howard, “The Kingdoms of this World, 1962 September 14,” The Howard Thurman Digital Archive, accessed July 9, 2024, https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/32.

In the second temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, Thurman explains why Jesus resisted making himself an exception to the rule of the natural order. The tempter’s efforts to convince Jesus to operate beyond the logic of physical reality was an effort to get him to be less human. Jesus did not act outside of life so that he could speak to human life, Thurman notes. No one can do as one pleases or “disregard the structure of dependability that holds life in focus.” Trusting God rather than seeking exceptions to the natural order is what allows one to feel the closeness of God, Thurman says, and feel the hand of Jesus “on my shoulder speaking the word of reassurance” and offering peace.

Part of the Collection, The Temptations of Jesus (1962, United Church of Canada, London, ON, Canada)

Tags: Jesus, order, peace, temptation, tempter

Description by ShaCarolyn Halyard

Recorded in United Church of Canada, London, Ontario

Citation: Thurman, Howard, “Tempt God, 1962 September 13,” The Howard Thurman Digital Archive, accessed July 9, 2024, https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/31.

In this sermon, Thurman discusses the strangeness associated with following Jesus and taking up the life of ministry. The strangeness of this act is that one must leave the known for the unknown, convert family into strangers, and assume a spiritual orientation to a material world. When Jesus opted not to turn stones into bread he must have done so, Thurman muses, knowing that while humans do not live by bread, alone, they do live by bread. While the time men and women spend on earth is a time of the body, the meaning of life is vast and transcends the body.

Part of the Collection, The Temptations of Jesus (1962, United Church of Canada, London, ON, Canada)

Tags: body, integrity, Jesus, self-deception, spirit, temptation, tempter

Description by ShaCarolyn Halyard

Recorded in United Church of Canada, London, Ontario

Citation: Thurman, Howard, “Not By Bread Alone, 1962 September 12,” The Howard Thurman Digital Archive, accessed July 9, 2024, https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/30.

In the final lecture of “Quests for the Human Spirit,” Thurman discusses three fundamental assurances that underly spiritual quests. First, it is necessary to achieve a sense of being totally encompassed and embedded within a dependable reality. Second, more than maintaining a sense of the all-encompassing, one’s faith must become a “tutor,” Thurman says. Believing that God exists, is “close at hand,” and available to participate in one’s various experiences is fundamental to dealing with the anxieties of aloneness. Third, in understanding that God is love, and engaging in the practice of love, one experiences a kind of rightness with the world.

Part of the Collection, Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA)

Tags: all-encompassing, creativity, dependability, God, invention

Description by Dr. Tim Rainey

Recorded in Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts

Citation: Thurman, Howard, “Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 11: The Quest for God, 1962 May 27,” The Howard Thurman Digital Archive, accessed July 9, 2024, https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/24.

In Thurman’s second lecture on peace, he focuses on the collective experience of harmony in a world context. While human beings are deeply embedded within the ambitions and structures of governments and states, it is essential for the individual to establish a sense of being separate and distinct from the world in which one is nourished. Amid Cold War politics nearly twenty years after the use of the first atomic bomb, Thurman considers the meaning of thinking about peace in light of the threat of nuclear war and mass death within human populations. Calling for a moral revolution, Thurman explains that we exist within a collective moral web that connects all people. Individual commitment to peace must, then, transcend the self, participate in the shared fate of our world and society, and become felt within the highest reaches of power.

Part of the Collection, Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA)

Tags: atomic bomb, community, peace, power, Soviet Union, state, violence

Description by Dr. Tim Rainey

Recorded in Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts

Citation: Thurman, Howard, “Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 10: The Quest for Peace (continued), 1962 May 13,” The Howard Thurman Digital Archive, accessed July 9, 2024, https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/23.

In the first of this two-part lecture, Thurman defines peace as a sense of “inner togetherness.” Experiences of peace are diverse and unfold through manifestations of innocence, exhaustion, reconciliation, conformity, and triumph. Here, Thurman emphasizes peace associated with “trials.” He does so because only tranquility on these terms persist within when external conditions do not change. This, he says, is the peace that passes all understanding.

Part of the Collection, Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA)

Tags: forgiveness, peace, tranquility, wholeness

Description by Dr. Tim Rainey

Recorded in Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts

Citation: Thurman, Howard, “Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 9: The Quest for Peace, 1962 May 6,” The Howard Thurman Digital Archive, accessed July 9, 2024, https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/22.

Possessing a name provides a sense of being situated in the world. It is how the person marks one’s claim against society, Thurman notes. Identity in this regard requires the person to have a sense of one’s own body and idiom. Distinctive character underlies the capacity to probe the social world wherein one exists so that who one is becomes more articulate and more integrated within the whole.

Part of the Collection, Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA)

Tags: identity, mooring, name, selfhood

Description by Dr. Tim Rainey

Recorded in Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts

Citation: Thurman, Howard, “Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 8: The Quest for Identity, 1962 April 1,” The Howard Thurman Digital Archive, accessed July 9, 2024, https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/21.

Integrity is the alignment of self-image with the facts, or, the truths concerning a person. It is the “creative synthesis and wholeness inside the man.” Such inner “unanimity within,” Thurman claims, allows a person to take a stand and possess humility. Never fooled by any single or biased opinion about oneself, one must turn to ultimate judgment – to God. Meaning can only be defined in the presence of sovereign critique.

Part of the Collection, Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA)

Tags: absolute judgment, humility, inner unity, integrity, self-image, ultimate judgment

Description by Dr. Tim Rainey

Recorded in Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts

Citation: Thurman, Howard, “Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 7: The Quest for Integrity, 1962 March 25,” The Howard Thurman Digital Archive, accessed July 9, 2024, https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/20.