Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

Servants of the Word

2011-11-13T11:00:00.004-05:00

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Matthew 25: 14-30

Dedicated to the Memory of the Rev. Margie Mayson (d. 11/8/11)

I lift my voice in celebration of Jesus’ parable of the talents. (I heard WS Coffin in his first sermon at Riverside Church, autumn 1977, preach on it, and conclude by singing ‘This little light of mine”.) Life is a gift which inspires continuous giving, says the Lord. Talents are meant to be shared, says the Lord. What we have and who we are we are meant to invest in the future, says the Lord. This means risk. There is risk, always there is risk, in investment. The risk is real, and should be reasonable, and can be managed. But it is risk still. All walks of life, including yours and mine, involve real, reasonable, manageable risk. Let us apply the lesson, you and I, to our own lives and work. As OW Holmes said of a sermon: ‘I applied it to myself’. This morning, in particular, let us think about the servants of the word, ministers of the gospel, in the Methodist tradition of Marsh Chapel, and of those in that calling to whom the Lord may say: “Well done thou good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. We will set you over much. Enter into the joy of the master”.

I lift my voice in honor, defense, and happy admiration of a 32 year old Tennessee Methodist preacher, who questioned from his pulpit the invasion of Iraq in 2003. (With a congregation of conservatives, deep in a red blooded red state, he preached the gospel of truth about an action that was preemptive, unilateral, imperial, reckless, unforeseeable, immoral, post-Judeo Christian, and wrong.) “This mistaken action will haunt and shadow our beloved land for a biblical three to four generations”, he wrote in the sermon. With a wife and two pre-schoolers, and a massive seminary debt, he knew his sermon was more than generically risky: at worst, his collection plates might empty along with his pews. The DS might get some nasty email. He might be asked to move. Late one night, after putting the kids to bed, his wife gently asked him whether he really needed to speak up. He thought for a while and said: ‘Well, at least if the worst comes, I can count on another appointment, come June. That’s the way the Methodist church protects the freedom of the pulpit. I may not make much, but I have a kind of tenure. We will be able to feed our kids.’ A servant of the word.

I lift my voice in admiration for an ordained woman elder in Ohio, who had a couple coming for marriage ask if there were any man available, instead of her. The bride said, ‘We put down our deposit a year ago. We don’t want a woman to officiate. You owe us.’ When the minister explained to the administrative board that she would be going to small claims court over this, pointing to the stipulation in the wedding rules that the pastor in charge will officiate, there was a ruckus. ‘Why didn’t you just get our former pastor to tie the knot? He lives right here in town. He is retired and would be glad to do it.’ So, the red faced board chair demanded. At home that night, she promised her teenage daughter: ‘We may have to move next spring, which will be hard for both of us, but at least I will have an appointment, come June. We will not starve, you and I. We are Methodists. That’s the way the Methodist church protects the freedom of the pulpit. I may not make much money, but I will have a job somewhere. We are Methodists. We believe in the connectional, itinerant system, to protect the freedom of the pulpit.’ A servant of the word.

I lift my voice in honor of a New York district superintendent who questioned his bishop. I mean he QUESTIONED his bishop. Later he told his son how he dreaded sitting down across the table from his fellow elder, the resident bishop, and saying what he had to say: ‘Bishop, I know you are having an extra-marital affair. And while it is true that several of your colleagues have done the same, over the years, in this jurisdiction, and not looked back or been defrocked, I am not going to be still about it. You need to resign. Today.’ The son asked, ‘What will happen to us?’ His dad said, ‘I don’t know but I do know I will at least have a job in June. You can still count on going to Ohio Wesleyan next year. I may not make as much money as I could have in another denomination (like the Presbyterian or Episcopal Church), probably only a third as much, but I am proud to be a Methodist, where we protect our preachers from predatory and mendacious bishops. Methodists protect the freedom of the pulpit with the guaranteed appointment. Ernest Fremont Tittle’s great Evanston congregation, in their landmark statement on such freedom, and their defense of him, gave us a shining example. ’ A servant of the word.

I lift my voice in deep love and regard for an older Florida preacher, shepherded to his last assignment at age 64. The Staff Parish committee chair asked, ‘Don’t you have somebody younger, someone with kids in school, with a Dodge caravan, and a dog and an eagerness to please and a dislike of conflict?’. A year later, at age 65, the minister had to get up in the pulpit and point out that the congregation’s laziness, stinginess, shallowness, narrowness, meanness and arrogance were not working excessively well in evangelistic terms. (He dreaded doing it, for many reasons, one being that because he had started late in ministry, and needed as many pension years as he could muster.) He loved the younger people in the town, along the lake nearby, and the handful of good, loving, retired school teachers whose tithes kept the church open. But in his heart he knew he had no choice. And the DS had said, when he was sent there, ‘Speak lovingly, but truthfully. They have been coddled, dodged and lied to for years. I want them to hear about salvation. But I want them to hear about sin too. And if things get bloody, I’ll have a church for you in June. After all, we are Methodists. We stand for the freedom of the pulpit. We watch over one another in love, in connection and in itinerancy. We would not expect you to go anywhere you are sent without guaranteeing you a job somewhere. That would be cruel. That would be cruel to require you to move annually at the direction of a bishop, on a very modest salary, and not to commit to providing you some job, however humble.’ A servant of the word.

I lift my voice in concern for a 29 year old, newly minted United Methodist elder, who gave a strong sermon in West Virginia, in support of the full humanity of gay people. He did not sleep a wink the night before. He could feel the deep disappointment and anger in the eyes of the women and men—few enough already in number—with whom he would worship and for whom he would preach in the morning. He mused: ‘For all the visitation and counseling, all the weddings and funerals, all the long days and late nights, all the genuine friendship and pastoral care, they still will not forgive this. It means they have to re think their dysfunctional relationships to family and to the Bible. But silence, avoidance, and dishonesty are not helping them, as far as I can see. Ours is a gospel of truth. For it to be gospel it has to be true. Gay people are people. Gay people are people, not fractions of people. I know my voice may be muted, but it will not be silenced. I will be gentle, brief, humble and kind. I will visit later to listen in love. But I will preach. I am a traveling elder, an itinerant minister, a Methodist preacher. My college teacher (Howard Zinn) had tenure and could teach the truth as he saw it. I have an annual appointment to preach as fully and faithfully as I can. And I wilI. I can, I will, I promise, So help me God. I agree to go and work where I am sent, and the church promises a pulpit, however modest, and a salary, however meager. I can provide for my family. I am proud of our connection, our history, our birthright, our defense of freedom.’ A servant of the word.

I lift my voice in praise for a quiet, gentle, middle aged northern preacher, who disagreed in love with her resident bishop. ‘What he was quoted as saying in our city paper, after conference this summer, is just not right, just not true. I have to say so. I read a sermon once, ‘The Truth of Our Lives’ (M Mayson, AFUMC Rochester, 3/05) that gave me courage. I will do so personally, with respect, with grace, with humility, and in genuine love. But I have a pastoral responsibility too. In one paragraph quotation he did a decade’s worth of damage to our evangelism here in our struggling conference, by what he said. People will not darken the doors of churches whose leaders say such things. Bishops in our church are general superintendents, servants of the servants of God, servants of the servants of the word. They are consecrated not ordained. They are elders like the rest of us. Some of them hear so often what great people they are that they start to believe it. I know a few who can strut sitting down. He may not like my voice, or my view, but he will have to appoint me, even if it is to a tiny church in the north country. I will still be able buy rice crispies and cat food come June. I love my church and am proud to be a Methodist preacher. Only one thing would eject me from my cradle denomination: the trashing and elimination of the security of appointment.’ A servant of the word.

In the last sermon that I heard my father give, in Sherrill NY in 2008, he quoted the following passage from Timothy Tyson’s memoir, BLOOD DONE SIGN MY NAME. If you ever have any doubt as to the birthright, precious worth of the freedom of the pulpit, protected in our denomination by the security of appointment (now under attack by, of all people, the Bishops whose job it is to serve these very servants of the word), buy and read this book. Tyson, an historian, remembers growing up under the leaky roofs of many North Carolina Methodist parsonages, in the 1950’s and 1960’s. His father, an itinerant minister, a traveling elder, a servant of the word, was very effective and beloved from church to church, until he began, once trust was established, to preach about race and race relations—the full humanity of black people. To his white congregations this white man said something like ‘people all people belong to one another’ (H Thurman). Every three years or so, the DS called, and Bishop reappointed the family. On the road again. Once because he invited Dr Samuel Proctor, a fine African American Preacher, and then President of North Carolina A and T into his pulpit. Once because he organized an interracial memorial service following the death of ML King. Once because he preached a particular sermon on racial equality. Once because with his brother, the author’s uncle, he went to court and sat on the ‘wrong side’ of the courtroom. He said to the judge: “If you can tell me where to sit, you can tell me what to think, and what to say, and…I don’t believe you have that authority.’ His parishioners told him he was no longer welcome in any of the six pulpits on his circuit. He reminded them that ‘he’ didn’t stand in those pulpits at their invitation…but by the calling of the Lord and the appointment of the bishop.’ His wife was eight months pregnant. People crossed the street to avoid him. Threatening phone calls came, after which he sent his wife and kids to live with his mother. Then this, the passage my dad cited: “Lying in bed alone at the parsonage a few nights later, he heard a knock at his back door. He thought it might be the Klan coming to make good on their threats, but saw what appeared to be a white woman standing near the back porch. It was too dark to tell who it was, and the figure had moved back away from the house after knocking. He opened the door and reached for the light switch. ‘Please don’t turn on the light’ a female voice stammered. ‘I just wanted you to know how proud I am that you are my preacher. I just wanted you to know that.’ And then she hurried away into the darkness. (Tyson, Blood Done Sign My Name, 194) A servant of the word.

I lift my voice this morning to echo the ancient wisdom of the Apostle Paul, in whose words we again receive the call to preach (are you so called?), the risk of ministry (is this adventure yours?), the gospel investment in history and mystery (is this your path?): ‘How are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him…Faith come from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.’

~The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
Dean of Marsh Chapel

Divine Grace

2011-11-06T11:00:00.006-05:00

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Matthew 5: 1-12

Dean Hill

Today we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we receive the gift in memory of the communion of saints, and we give ear to the beauty of our second Bach Cantata of the year. We are truly ‘blessed’ as our Gospel lesson affirms. All the senses—sight, sound, scent, touch, taste—are enlivened today.

This is truly good news, especially for those who may be in mortal need of a living reminder, as the lesson says, that we are ‘children of God’. For we can sometimes acutely need such a reminder of belonging, meaning and empowerment. We are acquainted with the night. You are acquainted with the night. As our New England poet memorably put it:

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost

To such acquaintance does our sacrament minister, and our communion of saints, and the beauty of Bach. Tell us, if you will Scott, how best we can listen for the gospel today.

Dr. Jarrett

Our work opens with a mighty chorus. Heavy treading footsteps in the bass instruments accompany the wide reaching wailing line of the oboes strings and trumpet. The chorus enters almost chaotically; gradually the work’s organization becomes clear and a striding and extraordinarily energetic fugue brings the movement to a striking close. After a pleading alto recitative, the soprano aria with strings and oboe but no bass instruments creates a world shaking with fear. The shuddering strings, with no foundation of bass instruments, are a shaky base for the heavenly pleading oboe and soprano duet. The voice of Christ reintroduces the bass instruments and stability with its gently rocking texture like a swinging censer. The tenor aria brings back the trumpet. Here however it is confident, even. swaggering, rather than the mournful wail of the first movement. The skittering strings retain some of the shuddering quality of the soprano aria.. Bach saves the most striking gesture for the last. The shaking strings accompany the chorale but gradually slow down to soothing quarter notes by the end of the movement.

Dean Hill

This moment: in word and sacrament, in memory and hope, in voice and instrument. We are blessed. We are recalled as children of God: who enter the kingdom of heaven and receive comfort in mourning, and gentle the earth, and crave goodness, and trade in mercy, and see divine grace, and pave with justice the path of peace, and see out to the far side of hardship.

We gather our bits of hard won wisdom: ‘The only way of achieving any degree of self-understanding is by systematically retracing our steps’. ‘One can know fully only what one has oneself made.’ ‘I was once a philosopher, but joy kept breaking in.’ ‘What we borrow, we also bend.’ ‘To surrender the actual experienced good for a possible ideal good is the struggle.’

‘I have only just a minute,  Only sixty seconds in it. Forced upon me, can't refuse it. Didn't seek it, didn't choose it. But it's up to me to use it, I must suffer if I lose it, Give account if I abuse it. Just a tiny little minute, But eternity is in it.’

Our music sings it so:

Now, I know, You shall quiet in me

my conscience which gnaws at me.

Your faithful love will fulfill

what You Yourself have said:

that upon this wide earth

no one shall be lost,

rather shall live forever,

if only he is filled with faith.

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, Marsh Chapel Choir

A Tradition of Principled Resistance

2011-10-30T11:00:00.005-04:00

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Matthew 23: 1-12

Introduction

This week you may, suddenly, find that a choice is required of you, through no fault, intention, planning or device of your own. Further, the choice you want to make perhaps could involve resistance: refusal of a request from an archetypal authority, resistance to a popular mood, resistance to an ingrained habit, refusal of the pleas of a friend. Russell Lowell predicts that at least once to every person and group comes such a moment to decide.

With all your heart you may want to resist. An invitation, a suggestion, a promotion, a direction, an order. Resistance always costs. Resistance means sacrifice. Resistance hurts. The slings and arrow of fortune's discontent draw blood. Resistance. Does such principled denial have a place in Christian living? Dare ask: Does God evoke and use resistance? Does Christ, God's everlasting Yes--in whom Paul says there is no longer Yea and Nay, but only Yes--Does Christ desire resistance?

1. Daniel

For Daniel, refusal to give up his family name, his religion, his faith landed him, with the others, in the heart of a furnace. You enjoy the story, I know. Daniel resists the order to blaspheme, and accepts punishment, even death. Bound in the heart of fire, the prophet of God is protected, strangely, by God who answers prayer.

2. Naboth

For Naboth, refusal came more dear. Old King Ahab had every vineyard he wanted but one. He asked for the land. Naboth refused. He asked again, this time presumably in a more kingly voice. Naboth refused. Ahab asked again, with a hint of threat on his tongue. Naboth refused. And Ahab went whimpering to bed. Not so, Jezebel, who simply took Naboth aside, and cut off his head. Refusal can either cost you a king's friendship, or your head, or both.

3. John of Patmos

John of Patmos did something to put himself out on the rocky prison isle, a first century Papillon, as he wrote his Revelation, our last Bible book. Refusing to worship Caesar? Names jeeringly attached to Rome--beast, satan, whore? Resistance to the more established synagogue?
4. You are a part of a tradition of principled resistance. For Matthew, writing us these lines, the view is clear--Jesus who endured the cross both received and forever illumined a tradition of refusal, in the face of pummeling authority.

Here is such a loving, stark painting of Jesus, Matthew 23:1. He practices what he preaches, wearing out by wearing down, resisting the ‘strong man of this world’. He is respectful, but he resists. Resist those who do not practice what they preach. Resist those who ask much of others, but little of themselves. Resist those who have to have the limelight, for whom appearance trumps reality, the façade hides the face of God. Resist those who claim to teach without honestly admitting that all teachers are students too. Resist, refuse, resist. “How can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man?’ (Mat 12: 29)

5. Bonhoeffer

I simply, again, lift Bonhoeffer’s name.

A year before he was executed by the Nazis, languishing in a small prison cell, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this hymn:

"By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered
and confidently waiting, come what may,
We know that God is with us night and morning
And never fails to greet us each new day.

And when this cup You give is filled to brimming
With bitter suffering, hard to understand
We take it thankfully and without trembling
Out of so good and so beloved a hand."

6. A Tradition of Principled Refusal

The Chapel’s gothic nave, built to lift the spirit, welcomes you.

The Chapel’s sixty year history, at the heart of Boston University, welcomes you.

The Chapel’s regard for persons and personality, both in its Connick stained glass windows and in its current ministry, welcomes you.

The Chapel’s familiar love of music, weekday and Sunday, welcomes you.

The Chapel’s congregation of caring, loving souls, in this sanctuary, welcomes you in spirit.

Welcome today as we enhance our endowment.

Endowment. Yes, a word brings a lift to the decanal eyebrow, a stirring to the Episcopal soul, a tingle to the Provostial spirit, a warming to the Presidential heart.

A welcome word, today. Now, endowments are crucial for chapel, for school, for university. We shall other days on which to build such.

But today we celebrate the endowment we already have. It is a rich and treasure. It is an endowment vocal not visible, audible not audited, psychic not physical, moral not material.

Listen for its echoes…listen…

All the good you can…

The two so long disjoined…

Heart of the city, service of the city…

Learning, virtue, piety…

Good friends all…

Hope of the world…

Are ye able, still the Master, whispers down eternity…

Common ground…

Content of character…

Just a tiny little minute but eternity is in it…

What if I were to shout to you this morning that this church had received a magnificent bequest, a precious gift left us by an ancestor? Further, were I to announce that this one gift was worth more than all our buildings and all our current endowment and all our church program put together? Would you not dance, sing, soar?

You inherit a tradition of principled resistance, a pearl of great price, a treasure hidden in a field, a precious gift. A tradition of principled resistance. It is your saving birthright, with you all your life long.

7. Rosa Parks

In 1994 an older woman was robbed at gunpoint in her own home in Montgomery, Alabama. She found a prowler downstairs, drunk, who beat her. She died just six Octobers ago, 2005. The robber took $50. The newspaper, perhaps accurately, has quoted her in full as regards her view of this crime: "We are raising a generation of hooligans." She might have thought she was through all that.

Pummeled still, even in old age, even in closeted retirement, the violent spirit of the age pounds at her, lacing her with blows left and right. Yet she resists! You may recognize her, now.

This is Rosa Parks. A younger Mrs. Parks found herself, seated midway back in a Montgomery bus, on December 1, 1955, pummeled again by the hand of aggression, the Strong Man of this world. For some reason, she refused to move. Bus stopped. Police came. Crowd gathered. Anger, shouting. The Montgomery bus boycott began. A tradition of principled refusal--this is your native land, your mother tongue, your home territory.

Our alumni weekend reminds us so, in the honoring and recollection of spirited forebears, in spirited speeches. Thank you: Bob Herbert, James Lawson, Walter Fluker. Allan Knight Chalmers would be proud of you.

8. The Prophets

The prophets of old knew about all this. They spoke about God's unbending holiness. They spoke about God's own refusal to set his seal on any present moment, any present setup, any present arrangement of power. They spoke about human suffering, about how God sees, hears, knows, remembers, and intervenes for the suffering. They spoke about God's justice, critical of every established power. They resisted. Here it is: "Prophetic speech is an act of relentless hope that refuses to despair, that refuses to believe that the world is closed off in patterns of exploitation and oppression." (Brueggeman).

These Biblical promises can seem so improbable. They promise an eighth round coming, for which all godly resistance, all principled resistance prepares, by tiring out, binding the strong man of this world. Against the ropes, hum the verses:

The earth shall be full of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea
Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning
They shall not hurt or destroy any more in all my holy mountain
The lion shall lay down with the lamb
And all flesh shall see it together

And remember Amos 5 in sun and snow: Let Justice roll down like waters and righteousness as an ever flowing stream. Or, let Justice roll down like an avalanche, and righteousness as a never ending blizzard.

9. Rope-a-Dope

My son Ben had only one request for a Christmas Gift. He showed me a catalogue that pictured a little grill, for cooking meat, “ A lean, mean fat reducing machine, guaranteed to reduce each average hamburger by 3 oz of fat--$59.95” Then I noticed the sponsor of this culinary instrument—George Foreman. And I inflicted a story on Ben.

In 1974, one of the greatest boxing matches of the century pitted Mohammed Ali against the world champion, George Forman. Kinshasha, Zaire. November 2. Ali predicted: "The most spectacular wonder human eyes have ever witnessed." 60,000 cheering fans, shouting, "Ali Bu Mal Ye", which antiseptically translated means, "Go get him".

Scenes: Forman charging, rounds 1-6. Forman 25, young, strong, powerful. Recently defeated both Frazier and Norton. Ali: 32, guile fitness and will. After 5 rounds, Forman arm weary and bewildered. 3rd Round, Ali leans to crowd: "He don't hurt me much". 5th round, Forman tantalized by the stationary target, angry, frustrated. Angelo Dundee had loosened the ropes! Ali, later: "The bull is stronger but the matador is smarter". Then, 8th round: "Ali is leaning back against the ropes, inviting the champion's hardest blows..suddenly in the next instant he springs forward smashing Forman's face with 2 straight rights and a left hook. Down the champion went, the first time ever he had been knocked out.

Ali: "I'm the champion but I don't feel any different from that fan over there. I still walk in the ghetto, answer questions, kiss babies. I didn't go nude in the movies. I'll never forget my people."

The historic Christian church in this country has been on the ropes for a generation, 40 years of blows to the midsection. God's spirit is not in a mode of lightening triumph, for those who would still maintain a real connection between deep personal faith and active social involvement. Jesus' apocalyptic word: first the strong man must be wearied, bound. First the God of this world must be arm weary, frustrated, raging, tired. First the strong man must be bound, then the kingdom of God may enter.

Those who may need to resist and refuse today are part of the spiritual rope strategy, the wearying of the Strong Man, the binding of evil. It's not pleasant. Hurt, setbacks, delay, confusion. But there is an eighth round coming! There is an eighth round coming! Don't be surprised when the guileful, fit, willing spirit lunges out from the rope a dope crouch to fell the Adversary.

Tired, aging, fat, Ali was taunted by the press and others for entering the ring at all. For several rounds of brutal semi-sport, Forman landed crushing blows to the head and midsection of the Louisville champ. It appeared as if Ali was simply beaten. Yet, he resisted. He refused to fall. In fact, it was his strategy to lean back against the ring rope, and bind the Strong Man Forman by tiring him, resisting, refusing to drop, enduring the blows of great force, which permanently crippled him.

Today he is an invalid. (A relative’s firm does his legal work, so I hear of him directly and regularly). My seminary roommate left theological school to write for Sports Illustrated,, saying: "Sport opens the world to the observant eye". In this one case, I believe, he was right. Here is an image of the binding of a Strong Man, Jesus' apocalyptic preachment: God himself subverts the strength of the Adversary, the Devil if you will, by binding, tiring, outlasting the Strong Man Satan. One instrument in God's providence, one way he binds his Adversary, is through moments of human refusal, human resistance to the pummeling blows of this world's God.

How hungry the church is today to perceive this truth. God is at work in the world to make and keep human life human, as Paul Lehmann never tired to repeat. In part, to encourage and give stamina to those on the ropes, using Ali's rope a dope strategy, binding the Strong Man. A tradition of principled resistance. A pragmatic resistance, we might say, like that of John Dewey: to surrender the actual experienced good for the sake of the possible ideal good—that is the struggle (as Victor Kestenbaum has written in The Grace and the Severity of the Ideal).

10. Two Objections From the Balcony

Well taken, is your perhaps silent objection thus far: some refusal is Godly, but some is not. Too often those who resist or refuse are simply petulant, immature, arrogant, slothful, idiotic, selfish. Agreed. We speak here not of forms of hypocrisy, so many they are. Rather, we speak of principled resistance, which shows its character by suffering the body blows, by leaning against the rope and aching.

Or, maybe you doubt that refusal takes a part of small stage play. Perhaps only the civil disobedience of Ghandi or the peaceful resistance of Martin Luther King or the risky French Resistance of Albert Camus stand out, great historic refusals, great moments of common endurance. But you would be wrong, I suggest, to think so. Most refusal is hidden, unheralded, unknown, unrewarded. Most principled refusal is known only to the one sagging against the ropes, the one catching the body blows. Most real principled refusal is very ordinary.

Recall the Ten Commandments. These are bedrock resistance tools. The first three call us to resist idolatry. The second two call us to resist pride. The last five call us to resist selfishness.

11. Three Examples of Ordinary Refusal

Three examples. Tithing is primary a form of spiritual refusal, refusal to accept the world's understanding of success and refusal to accept the implication that all that we have is ours alone. Worship is primarily a form of spiritual refusal, refusal to accept the world's time clock, where all time is meant for work or play. Marriage and loyal friendship are primarily forms of spiritual refusal, refusal to accept the world's low estimate of intimacy, refusal to accept the unholy as good.

Christian Smith has recently written about this: The following chapters describe the ideas and behaviors of 18 to 23 year old Americans concerning morality, sex, alchohol and drugs, civic and political engagement…There is a dark side that shadows the lives of many emerging adults today. (Lost in Transition, 6-7)

12. Conclusion

In 350, Philip of Macedon wanted to unite Greece, which he did except for Sparta. He did everything he could. Finally he sent them a note: If you do not submit at once I will invade your country. If I invade I will pillage and burn everything in sight. If I march into Laconia, I will level your great city to the ground. The Spartans sent back this one word reply; "if". (laconic).

Thomas Moore tells us: "We live in a society that primarily starves our soul...we have to really resist the culture to care for the soul...but...if we choose with care our professions and ways we spend our time and our homes in which we live, if we take care of our families and don't see them as problems, and if we nurture our relationships and friendships and marriages then the soul probably will not show its complaints so badly."

On the other hand, you may not need this word today. You may want to remember it, though, especially if you are young. For one day, one day, you may want to use some of your spiritual bequest, your prophetic endowment. You may need to draw on the tradition of principled resistance.

Good news has it that along the ropes, and upon the cross, Jesus has bound up the Strong Evil, subverting by being subject to, and so empowered us to refuse.

13. Blake

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning Gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O Clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire.

I will not cease from Mental Fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

~The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
Dean of Marsh Chapel

Where is Your Passion?

2011-10-23T11:00:00.002-04:00

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Matthew 22: 34-46

The Passion of St. Matthew

Rolling down through the ages there cascades a gospel shout:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

St. Matthew’s fiercest passion, hidden from you in this sermon for a moment in order to build some interest and suspense, wells up out of the scripture for these weeks in autumn 2011September. Matthew holds a very high view of the church, far higher than we expect, far higher than yours and mine, I could add. For Matthew, the church is empowered: with the means of lasting forgiveness with a mind for sound ethics, and especially with the real presence of Christ.

Matthew trusts this risen Christ and this voice of the risen Christ to free him to follow his bliss, to succumb to his passion. And what is Matthew’s passion? What passion pulses through the parchment of this popular gospel? What force of energy is on the “kiviev” on the lookout, on the wing, hanging ten, parachuting in, ready to climax here today? It is the passion of an evangelist who finds every blessed possible way to connect Jewish Jesus with a Greek world. It’s the passion of an evangelist who enlists an old missionary teaching tract (“Q”) to spread inspiration, truth, and joy. It is the passion of an evangelist who portrays your Savior among pagans, amid harlots, appended to the cross, about the resurrection work of compassion. It is the passion of an evangelist who sums up his Gospel this way: “Go make of all disciples”. Here is this autumn’s Gospel: the point of St Matthew the blessed evangelist is that he is an evangelist. The whole point of the gospel of St Matthew the evangelist is that he is an evangelist. Matthew’s passion? Seeking the lost! Expanding the communion of saints, the circle of divine love!

And yours?

Sunday is the day for that kind of question. Where does your deep gladness meet the world’s great need? (So, F Beuchner).

Matthew, the writer of our first gospel, exudes a passion. Others have caught it.

I turn the historians among you to the poetry of Dionysius the Aeropagite, the archaeological preservations of St Helena, the mystic fervor of St Theresa of Avila, the fecundity of Susanna Wesley, the marvelous zeal of Sojourner Truth, the compassion of Jane Addams, the tenacity of Frances Willard, the alacrity of your mothers and aunts.

Some men helped along the way too.

This same passion moved Wesley from the Anglican Tree, shipped Asbury out from Brittany, placed the Gospel in a far country, and saved the souls of you and me.

One oustanding fact: by far and very far, Matthew is the most frequently quoted gospel in the first three centuries of the church’s life.

You shall love the Lord your God

With all your heart, not just your head

With all your soul, not just your body

With all your mind, not just your brain

Others have summarized the commandments in various numbers and lists: Moses 631, David 11, Isaiah 6, Micah 3, Amos 2, Habbakuk 1, Rabbi Hillel also summarizes with Lev 18:19.

Our granddaughter was sheepish around me at age 3. She didn’t know how to address me. One day I left for work, and she did not see me go. After a while, she came to her grandmother, puzzled: Where is somebody? I am looking for somebody. Do you know where somebody is? You mean grandpa? (I finally became SOMEBODY!)

You are a person. Somebody. This is good news. You have a heart, a soul, a mind. You come to worship to remember that. These ancient words have serious contemporary meaning.

You have a heart.

Kardia—cardiac…Bauer: the seat of physical, spiritual, mental life, seat of the inner life…organ of enlightenment…center of will, of moral decisions, (THEN ONLY of emotions, wishes, desires, love)…something like conscience, dwelling place of the heavenly powers.

You have a soul.

Psyche—psyche…Bauer: soul, life…’impossible to draw hard and fast lines between the meanings of this many sided word’…earthly life, center of life that transcends the earthly…that which makes alive…what one loses or saves

You have a mind.

Dianoia—mind…Bauer: understanding, intelligence, mind, seat of reason, thinking disposition, purpose and plan, ‘gird up the loins of the mind’… and the verb: perceive, apprehend, understand, gain insight into, think, imagine…understand the commandments, the parables, heavenly things, what is invisible

(But not isxus—strength…Bauer: strength, power, might be in possession of one’s powers, be competent, able, have power, be mighty…Why did Matthew not keep strength, as Mark had it? Bultmann: The tradition has repressed the prophetic-apocalyptic character of the mission of Jesus in favor of his activity as a Rabbi. Matt.Jesus casts doubts on the veracity and value of the Davidic descent. Was Matthew a Gentile? He wrote in Greek. He bring the Kings to the nativity. He has much to say about kosher cleanliness, as novel and new. And here, he throws David under the bus.)

I know the taste—I have savored it before. I can recall the landscape—I have seen it before. I want you to come with me. It is a long way from here and many days journey, some at night, and some in the rain. There are mountains to ascend and rivers to ford. Some grasshoppers will look, for a time, like giants. It may take up to 40 years. You will feel like you are in a wilderness. I cannot do it for you and I will not do it to you. But I can do it with you.

But have you forgotten the love you had at first? Have you begun with the Spirit to end with the flesh? Hear the Gospel! St Matthew the evangelist, all this fall, will invite you to succumb to another passion, one you have not yet fully known.

Discover, careful now as you unwrap the gift, the pure joy of a passion for compassion, a desire, of the first water, to love the neighbor.

A Passionate Invitation

Where is your passion?

Aging it may be, brings the preacher to the point of having the temerity to offer any advice of any kind on anything. To know Christ is to know His benefits, said the reformers. Counting those benefits may be one of the joys of aging.

Parents today will tell you that aging can be bittersweet.

Like the day after engagement when you are told about registering for china and appliances for wedding gifts. You feel older. But I just wanted to get married! What is all this merchandizing?

Or when you turn thirty, from twenty nine. A day that will live in infamy, a day of darkness and not of light. Who may abide the day and its coming? It is like a refiner’s fire. Illness descends.

Like the decision to buy a van, and to sell a convertible. The shift from sports car to van or station wagon—need I say more? Is there a surer measure of aging?

Time flies—ah no. Time stays—we go.

Like when you watch a 3 hour movie and realize that the stars look to you like they are teenagers. I prepare you for the pain.

Or when you find yourself asking people to repeat what they have said because you did not quite hear them. “Could you repeat that?” “Would you care to repeat what you said?” “Excuse me, but, huh?”

Or, on more serious note, you begin to feel the onset of age as you see that the great reforms you had hoped might occur in your own lifetime lie still buried under heaps of sloth and falsehood and pride.

Blame some aging for the urge to advise.

And the sheer beauty of a brief moment, a weekend, when the generations meet, for a moment. Parent’s Weekend.

Over donuts, on a tour, listening to two choirs and an organ, and walking the campus, I saw parents and children: some arm in arm, some playing and racing each other, some enjoying the sunshine and boats, some quiet, gentle in respect for the moment.

It made we wonder when the last day was that I lifted up my daughter in my arms—she who now has a daughter of her own. It made me wish I could remember the last day, the last time I lifted my son from sidewalk to shoulders—he who now lifts his own child so. It made me wish I had noticed, and recorded the last time our youngest was small enough and I strong enough to lift him and hug him—he who now can lift and hold me.

That is sacramental moment. But we don’t know when it comes, and we don’t record when it goes by. We expect, I suspect, that there will be another.

So, with time’s winged chariot hastening on, a word or two of interpretation, of advice. In loco parentis.

You can discover your passion in college, if you will remember six words. (They may just apply to life, eternal life, real life in life, as well…)

Study.

An often underrated part of the student life is found in this verb. One reasonable way to undercover your passion in college is to study. Force yourself. Train yourself. Flog yourself. And when all else fails, talk with a mentor. Find a way to use your time wisely. As George Fox told the Quakers, quoting Hebrews, “Prize your time now you have it, for God is a consuming fire”. If possible, work some study time into your schedule every day. The benefits will accrue immediately. Your parents will be pleased. Your grades will be better. You will be happier with yourself. And, you may graduate!

Les nearly failed his way out of Oswego State 30 years ago. He had a wonderful time and mad probation mid-way through the fall semester. Then he met Diane, bowling. They had such fun. It made all his other revelries pale. Friendship and humour and love and joy—and she was a good bowler too. After a long and late Friday night, Les asked to see her again on Saturday. “Sure”, she replied, “we can study together. One night a week of parties is plenty.” Les walked home on cloud nine, waiting for tomorrow, certain she was kidding. But 8pm Saturday night came and Les walked along Lake Ontario toward the dorm. He was dressed for the evening, but Diane met him at the door in jeans with a stack of books. So Les went to the library for the first time that semester. He squeaked by the fall and spring, picked up speed and graduated with his class. Diane and he were married just before he went off to Princeton seminary. There half his teachers asked him if he was born again and the other half if he was in tune with the universe. Les will tell you, “I had not realized how big a part of college studying can be, if you let it.”

Let the main thing be the main thing.

Walk.

Silence is rare in dorms. Students, like Jesus sitting in the temple, are beginning to think on their own, but they need time to do so. One dorm advisor who worked in a 600 student dorm made just one suggestion at orientation: take a walk every day. Thinking is the process of integrating information and insight, experience and judgment. To think you need time and freedom to step back from the 599 others and their stereos. Otherwise the mental muscle will not develop, and you will go too easily with the flow.

Late one night a sophomore knocked at her resident advisor’s door. She was the most socially active girl on her hall—soccer, sorority, floor meetings, ski club, marching band and, even, classes. The advisor was at first surprised to hear her whisper: “I’m so lonely here.” Fleeing her own becoming person, she had grown weary. At last she stopped and faced her fear. Said her advisor, “You are lonely because, now, you are alone. Stop running from yourself. Every afternoon walk up the hill to the Ag Quad and back. Twenty minutes of pure solitude and you won’t feel so lonely.” She quoted Pascal about sitting alone, too.

In walking—we have not spoken of prayer yet—you can hear your soul grow and change, remember and foresee. You can overhear what others are too busy or noisy to hear, even the deeper truth of their own lives. And behold I bring you glad tidings of great joy: Boston is pedestrian heaven; with some good walking shoes you can acquaint yourself with America’s most historic city, Boston, the cradle of liberty.

No!

Here is another underrated word.

But like a river needs banks, a life needs limits. Otherwise the

current of Being spills out all over the plain and there is no direction, no force, no power to the river. You just drift and glide. A good life needs boundaries, river banks. When parents sandbag, the responsibility lies elsewhere. Amos says we are to hate evil as well as love good. You will define yourself as much by what you oppose as by what you affirm.

Not every body of water is fit for swimming, for you.

Every “no” is an upside down “yes”.

If you say no to steady drunkenness it is for the joy of bodily health.

If you say no to religious discord you point out the path of future peace.

If you say no to $250 sneakers it is an affirmation of things invisible.

If you say no to nuclear arsenals it is too affirm the sacredness of life.

If you say no to flagrant abuse of the gifts of sexuality, you are trying to affirm covenant and integrity and future happiness.

If you say no to a life focused only on obtaining, you make room for enjoyment and love.

Every no hides a yes, and you can be negatively positive.

We all find some of our passion by finding our “no’s” and sticking to them.

Fun.

Have some fun along the way.

One depressed junior spoke to his teacher who simply asked him what he liked to do for fun. The list was made. Do you do any of these things regularly. No, I am too busy. The teacher sentenced the junior to a daily game of bridge, two basketball games a week, several monthly movies, and poptarts every morning for breakfast. He sentenced the student to use his own list. All work and no play makes Bob a dull boy.

Explore.

Try not to explore in ways you will regret, for regret is the forecourt of hell. But explore nonetheless!

Three sorts of exploration make good sense in college.

One is travel, far and wide, national and international.

Another is into the past, mainly by reading.

A third is across cultures.

Geography, history and culture are more open to you now than they may ever be again. As is theology.

RAH: No one has ever seen God. God is not our own best self writ large across the sky. God is not a clockmaker, a designer, a timekeeper, a being among other beings, a cause of causes, a definition of definitions. No one has ever seen God. God is other, people. Let’s make sure we put in the comma. Rationality is good, especially by comparison to irrationality; efficiency is good, especially by comparison with inefficiency. And then? And so? And yes? So what? In its lifetime the goose looks down upon the lowly mushroom, and lords it over the lowly mushroom, but in the end, come mealtime, they are both served up on the same platter.

Explore, with the single aim of finding what is good, of integrating this good into your vision of the truth. “Liberal education flourishes when it prepares the way for a discussion of a unified view of nature and man’s place in it.” (A. Bloom).

Friend.

Last, not least, open yourself to real friendship.

The friendships formed in these years will last a lifetime if they are well Planted and watered. The freedoms and struggles of that first real experience of independence can also provide the nutrients for the growth of real friendships. In friendship, as in love, there is terror and mystery.

Several stages are visible in the growth of a friendship.

Deciding when and how and who leads and follows.

Learning to give up something for another.

Making a really big life mistake.

Talking about making a really big life mistake.

Disagreeing.

Encouraging.

Parting.

Chapters in a book.

Friendships developed now can last a lifetime. One graduate of Smith College in the year 1914 corresponded through the 1980’s monthly with her college roomate. Illness and age prevented visits, but the letters still came and went.

Friendships developed now can transform.

I remember fondly the story of Jack Bruen, Colgate University basketball coach. Bruen died at 48. We have knew his kindness to our children over many summers of basketball camp. Said one former student, “Besides my father, his is the only shoulder I’ve ever cried on”. Read some books in college, but read the human documents too. They will change your life.

For the best of them, through friendship, will recall the spirit of Jesus, whom we affirm, this day, as our transforming friend. The Lord who calls us up to love and calls us out to our own truest passion.

Study. Walk. Say No. Have Fun. Explore. Befriend.

You will find your passion, your calling, your voice, your vocation, your ownmost self. You will Be Somebody.

Some ways to find passion in college. And in life. And “in God”. Lao Tse: The reality of the vessel is the shape of the void within.

Where is your passion?

Sursum Corda:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

~The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,

Dean of Marsh Chapel

An Embraceable Variant

2011-10-16T11:00:00.003-04:00

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John 17: 1-11

1. Summit

High atop the world’s greatest writings sits our Holy Scripture. Such knowledge is too wonderful for us. It is high. We cannot attain it.

Within the Scripture itself are conjoined the sibling testaments, the older and newer, the Hebrew Scripture and the Christian Writings. For us just now, the 27 newer books stand a little bit higher.

The Gospels and the Letters and the Apocalyptic Writings are all inspired and inspiring, all sufficient for faith and practice. The gospels though have a certain priority, in our liturgy, and in our hearts. They lie just a step or two higher, atop higher ground.

You love all the Gospels. One there is though which from antiquity has been known as the sublime, the spiritual gospel. We shall ascend today, on ascension Sunday, to the craggy paths and rarified air of the Fourth Gospel.

High above the rest of John, above the seven signs to begin and above the passion and resurrection to end, there lies the strangest moonscape in the Scripture, and so in all literature, and so in life. I mean chapters 13-17. We are about to place our homiletical flag on the very summit, the highest of high peaks, the textual Matterhorn, Everest, Mount Washington, Pike’s Peak: John 17.

And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

2. Where We Least Expect To Find It: Freedom In Disappointment, Grace In Dislocation, Love In Departure: John

The community of the beloved disciple knew about disappointment. After three generations, and some, the community had awaited the primitive hope of the church to be realized. They awaited the return of Christ. The resurrection of the dead from their graves. The end of time. The apocalypse of God. It did not come. He did not come, at least not in the way once hoped. I find it the most remarkable experience of the New Testament that John, rather than being lost in a sea of disheartening failure, in the very eye of his most stormy theological hurricane, found freedom. In disappointment he found freedom.

The community of the beloved disciple knew about dislocation. They had lost their family of origin. They were sent out from their mother religion. The church that wrote John had been thrown out of the synagogue. The life they grew up with had cast them out. It took three generations for them to grasp the joyful grace in dislocation. Count it all grace, brethren, when various dislocations beset you!

Our time has also known dislocation aplenty. We should hunt more for grace in the financial dislocation that is endemic in our time. I have yet to serve a church that was not financially challenged. Every religious institution in our region—church, conference, seminary, campground, school, all—is under water in financial terms. More: middle aged families are sinking into the quicksand of debt. They are buying groceries on credit. Debt is work undone. Savings is work done. We have work to do.

The community of the beloved disciple knew about departure. The layers of grief culminating in chapter 17, while ostensibly a rehearsal of Jesus’ own departure, may also have been crafted by the heart and voice of their aged John, the other and beloved disciple, whose own departure, in the midst of disappointment and dislocation, itself provoked these layers of grief. Is it not ironic that the sharpest, most rarified language of love in all of the New Testament—in all of literature—arises in the hour of departure?

In our time, we are bidding a reluctant farewell to God. To a certain, junior, perception of God. God reigns. This we affirm with the church militant and triumphant. But God’s way among us is away from us. He is risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him. The measures of freedom and grace given to us become real possibilities, real freedom and real grace, only when we have the gracious freedom to decide for faith. The same is magnificently true of love. This is the message of John, at the end.

The departure of the Christ makes space for love. As I have loved you, so you also ought to love one another.

3. Brother John

In the summer, it happens, as it may in your family, there is a family reunion for one part of our tribe. Occasionally, we would go, growing up. Like yours, ours is something of standard reunion. It is held on a farm near Albany, which has been in the family since before George Washington rode a horse. After the usual light meal of beef, corn, potatoes, bread, sausage, pies, and pickles and so on, the extended family (or those who having eaten so can still move) will sometimes stand for a photograph on the long farm house veranda. I ask you to look at the photo. I am holding it here. Can you see it? Well, even if you cannot see it across the radio waves, you can probably guess what it shows. Of these eighty people, do you see how many have red hair? About 60—young or old, tall or short, heavy or slight, male or female, they mostly have red hair, like John. 75% are redheads. In fact, in the photo, it looks like a sea of red hair. Maybe a red heads convention out in the farm fields of Cooperstown, NY. John isn’t the odd ball. His siblings are.

John is not the second century Greco Roman odd ball. His synoptic siblings are. When you put the Fourth Gospel, with all its red haired radical difference, on the farm house veranda of second century religious family literature, he fits right in. He stands shoulder to shoulder with all the Gnostic writings that are so like him, especially in these late chapters. It looks like a redheads convention. He looks and sounds quite like the rest of his second and third cousins, once or twice removed: The Paraphrase of Shem, the Treatise on the Resurrection, the Odes of Solomon, the Apocryphon of John, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Mary. How else will we ever hear this voice of Jesus from John 17?

And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom though hast sent.

Six Synoptic differences! Eternal life, not kingdom of heaven. Know, not believe. The only true God, not Abba. Jesus Christ, not Rabbi or Master. Sent, not begotten.

This voice is NOTHING like that of the Sermon on the Mount, or that of the parable of the Good Samaritan, or that of the cry from Psalm 22 on the cross. Not human, but divine, here. Not earthly, but heavenly, here. Not low, but high, here. Not immanent, but transcendent, here.

The community of the Gospel of John had a radical experience of Jesus, as God on earth. To render that experience meaningful, they had the radical courage to take language from the heretics around them, the Gnostics, and use it as their own BECAUSE IT FIT. It worked. It explained to the huddled humans clinging to Christ what they had experienced in him: divine grace and divine freedom. It rendered the sense of consecration, the sense of holy living and dying, the sense of consecrated joy, which they had found, with the Light of the World, with the Bread of Life, with the Good Shepherd, with the Resurrection, with the Word made flesh.

The community of the Gospel of John feared not the culture around them. They feared not truth, even when that truth was best expressed outside of their particular religious circle. They had the guts to use language belonging to pagans, outsiders, heretics, Gnostics to celebrate and consecrate their faith. In doing so, they opened up the church to the world, to the future, to the culture around them. They changed their way of speaking of Christ, and pointed to Christ above, in, and transforming the culture around them. They changed. They had the courage to change.

In age, our own, when the Gospel of John, served raw, without cooking, without historical interpretation, can be made to sound like the voice not of tradition but of traditionalism, we do well to remember John’s courage to change, to reach out to the culture around, to put the gospel in word and music on the air waves of a pagan culture, out on the radio waves of a secular world, and where possible to use that same culture.

Raymond Brown: ‘Some scholars may ponder on the luck of the Beloved Disciple that his community’s Gospel was not recognized for the sectarian tractate that it really was. But others among us will see this as a recognition by Apostolic Christians that the Johannine language was not really a riddle and the Johannine voice was not alien…What the Johannine Christians considered to be a tradition that had come down from Jesus seems to have been accepted by many other Christians as an embraceable variant of the tradition that they had from Jesus’. (TCOTBD, 18)

4. Where We Least Expect To Find It: Freedom In Disappointment, Grace In Dislocation, Love In Departure: Today

Freedom

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

A while later, on the street, one of church members saw him and asked what had happened. Did he not like the suit? Did it not fit? Was he afraid to wear it?

“Oh no, I love the suit. I look great in it. When I say myself in the mirror, I looked so good I thought, ‘I look like a million bucks. I look too good to go just to the Methodist church. I think I’m dressed well enough to go the Episcopal church. I think I will go there. And that is what I did”

The freedom of the gospel has gradually embraced multiple variants. The poor. The immigrant. People of color. Those once enslaved. Women. Gay people. Others. The Other. In fact, the lesson of the gospel of freedom enshrined in John is the spiritual expansion of freedom found in the embrace of the embraceable variant.

Some years ago we sat at dinner with several other couples, in a beautiful home, over a majestic meal, graciously served. Because the couples new each other well, and were in trust to each other, there was the chance for hard and serious conversation, consecrated conversation you might say. This evening the debate swirled around gay marriage.

There are tipping points in the way a culture moves. Some of them occur at dinner, in beautiful homes, over majestic meals, graciously served. The host was opposed, to gay marriage that is. The conversation widened, and then narrowed, and then widened again. We can surely agree that there are many ways of keeping faith, and many honest, different, points of view, on this and on many issues.

Across the table sat Carol, mother of two fine teenagers, married with joy to a business leader, baseball player, Red Sox fan. She had battled cancer once before, and now it returned, and she fought it again. We could not see it then, but in seven months she was gone.

Over some heat and some laughter, much disagreement but little discord, the conversation, consecrated you might say, moved on. Carol spoke fully, and at one point said: ‘You know, I have learned how precious life is, how fragile, what a gift every day is. Here is what I feel: if two people truly love each other, deeply commit to each other, and want to consecrate their vows, that is they want what Doug and I have, why would I ever want to stand in their way, why would I ever want to deprive them of that happiness that I know so well.’ I heard some minds changing as dessert came that night.

At a wedding dinner this month, in a beautiful room, with fine food and gracious hosts, gay and straight danced the night away together, gay and straight. It was right, normal, easy, organic, natural—the way things are meant to be. The embodiment of the embraceable variant.

Grace

Our churches are in the throes of dislocation. Lyle Schaller had our number 25 years ago when he said: “These denominations will gladly accept 2-3% annual decline in exchange for the tacit agreement that there be no significant change”. And so, in 25 years, in the Northeast, United Methodism has lost 50% of its membership. Today more 511 of the 930 pulpits in my home conference, Upper New York, are occupied by non-elders: the preaching and ministry are done by people without full or proper education, preparation, examination or ordination. In what other sector of serious life would we permit this?

Pasternak loved Shakespeare’s Sonnett 66. It is said that whenever he read aloud the crowd would not let him leave until he had rehearsed it for them. “Give us the 66th…” Its evocation of daily anxiety bears remembering. The poem is unequaled in its announcement of trouble. When life gives you the 66th remember Shakespeare, but especially his last couplet.

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,

As to behold desert a beggar born,  

And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, 

And purest faith unhappily forsworn, 

And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd, 

And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, 

And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd, 

And strength by limping sway disabled 

And art made tongue-tied by authority, 

And folly--doctor-like--controlling skill, 

And simple truth miscall'd simplicity, 

And captive good attending captain ill: 

Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone, 

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

‘Captive good attending captain ill…’ Can you hear that? It begs to be heard. Stand with your people in tragedy, honest and kind in word and deed.

In grace, our healthy future will come from a resurrection of thought, word and deed: of traditional worship, of traveling elders who excel in preaching, and in tithing to support the church we love.

All of the lastingly good features of my life have come through grace in dislocation: name in baptism, faith in confirmation, community in eucharist, partnership in marriage, work in ordination, love in pardon, and hope in Christ for this life and the next.

Love

Once to every man and nation

Comes the moment to decide

In the strife of truth with falsehood

For the good or evil side

Some great cause, God’s new Messiah

Offering each the bloom or blight

And the choice goes by forever

Twixt that darkness and that light

New occasions teach new duties

Time makes ancient good uncouth

One must upward still and onward

Who would keep abreast of truth

Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.” While we may shed the inherited demonic mythology in the verse, knowing and honoring its origins in the distant past, we nonetheless fully recognize the spiritual truthhere: we know not what a day may bring, but only that the hour for serving is always present. Our dear Springfield mother, caught in a tornado, covering her daughter and so saving her in a bathtub, knew not what a day would bring, but only the presence of mind to save her beloved. 1 John 4: 7-12 captures love divinely: Beloved let us love one another…

We too want to discipline ourselves and keep alert. So we pray. Do you pray? So we commune. Do you receive the eucharist? So we study. Have you devotionally read your Bible this week? So we converse with one another. Have you opened home and heart recently in Christian conversation? So we fast—park your car, save your money, do not reply all: fight pollution, debt and dehumanization. We too want to discipline ourselves and keep alert.

1 O LORD, thou hast searched me and known me!

2 Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar.

3 Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

4 Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.

5 Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.

7 Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

8 If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!

9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

10 even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

11 If I say, "Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be night,"

12 even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with Thee"

~The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,

Dean of Marsh Chapel

Let Love Be Genuine

2011-10-09T11:00:00.005-04:00

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Matthew 22: 1-14

To stand in a beloved familiar pulpit evokes, must evoke, some sense of humility rooted in pride, some sense of understanding rooted in wonder, some sense of life rooted in an awareness of death, some sense of love rooted in need.

Especially following the six Sundays since August, it feels good to pause and be thankful for your observance of the Lord’s Day. On August 28 there was a hurricane! Then matriculation, first for Chapel and then for University, on September 4. We engaged in a full day of observances on 9/11. Then came a special Thurman Sunday here, and a visit to the Congregational pulpit in Concord MA, the next Sunday. September 25 brought us the beauty of Bach and a farewell to our ‘shepherdess’, as she identified herself, our director of hospitality, Elizabeth Fomby Hall. Together we celebrated World Communion last Sunday. Much has befallen us in these three fortnights.

We also have tried to absorb our Yankee shared grief. You know the reference I make here. Ecclesiastes is right that the end of things is better than their beginning, unless you are referring to a baseball season like this one. Ecclesiastes certainly we feel was right to say ‘the race is not always to the swift…’ . A hundred year old poem came forcefully to mind…(Casey at the Bat).

After all of this, it is good to stand for a moment, to be thankful, to stand up in a venerable, historic, significant, beloved, familiar pulpit.

It is good also to stand in earshot of a well-worn text. To ‘stand in’ a beloved familiar text evokes, must evoke, some sense of humility rooted in pride, some sense of understanding rooted in wonder, some sense of life grounded in a premonition of death, some longing for love, genuine love, rooted in the struggle, acedia, ennui, loneliness of need. Romans 12: 9, and verses following, is a beloved familiar passage now to be opened, divided, interpreted aboard the great ship Marsh Chapel, and from—as Father Maple would have it—the ship’s promontory, bow, beak, nose—its pulpit. The pulpit rules the world, said he, in the opening pages of Moby Dick. We turn to Romans 12: 9-13.

We have an inserted copy for you to take home with you.

A bright sun dappled summer day can cut the haze of life. And so can a hurricane. This baker’s dozen commands can, like sun or wind, cut the haze of experience. Here, here, here! Here is how you do it, says the apostle to the gentiles, who is more regularly given to pastoral theology than practical advice.

Two years ago at the December University Leadership Council, a formal recommendation to create a PhD in Practical Theology was affirmed. Following the vote, a member asked, in good December spirit: “What may I ask would impractical theology be?”. Laughter subsided, our President said, ‘We will ask Dean Hill for a response.” I said, “I’m not sure, but Lessons and Carols is Friday evening, and I hope you all will come.”

Paul leaves speculative, less practical theology and jarringly tells us how to live. You would not expect such from one who traced our cosmic condition (our sin) from creation through conscience, in Romans 1 and 2. Impractical theology, there, though most treasured and precious. You would not expect such from the Apostle who poured out the great watershed (our salvation) from Christ to cross in Romans 3-5. Impractical theology there, though pearls, great in price, field hidden. Nor would you expect the 13 lightening bolts of 12:9 from the epileptic, tee totaling, bachelor, tent making, spitfire—what a friend we have in Paul—who unveiled Spirit (Holy Spirit) in the freedom of grace, in Romans 6-8, or who wept and pouted and conjured and pleaded about his own extended religious family, Judaism, in Romans 9-11. Impractical theology, there and there, though the high water mark of all his writing, a Spirit interceding for weakness, speaking of genuine love and honest need.

Imagine your shock. Not sin, not salvation, not Spirit nor synagogue, come 12:9. Rather, some utterly practical (in the normal English usage) theology, utterly applicable theology.

People—you?—will ask now and then for a basic primer, a summary of Christianity—faith, hope and love. Over 35 years of ministry I have often said either, ‘There is none—you would as hunt for a cliff notes version of dying, or growing up, or falling in love, or remembering the dreams of youth, or burying your spouse on a cold November day, or of anticipating and enduring child birth. You live it, then you learn it”; or, more practically, I have said, ‘Try C S Lewis, Mere Christianity, or N T Wright, Simply Christian, or Leslie Weatherhead, The Christian Agnostic, or The Gospel of Luke, or D Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship, or Augustine of Hippo, Confessions or J Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, or Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, or Karl Barth, Epistle to the Romans, or P Tillich, You Are Accepted, or R Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic or my own Village Green. The first answer is too little, and the second is too much.

Oye! Oye! The Pauline 13 may be your best—not too little, not too much—threshold, liminal line, front door in response to the question, ‘can you help me get going on this faith business?’ What does it mean to be a person of faith?

It means to let love be genuine.

Let love be genuine.

All these, note well, are plural directives. You all. All you all. The command in Genesis ‘be fruitful, multiply, fill the whole earth” is not an individual command, meant for you and your household alone. Your family does not need to do so alone, though Samuels and Susanna Wesley certainly did their double dozen best. It is a communal command. You all. All of you. In fact, given our limitations (I am being kind), there is no way for us to accomplish such commands on our own. Let love be genuine. Unhypocritical, in fact. Unfeigned, guileless, hearty, real, reflecting God’s own creative, salvific, reconciling love. God gives us life, eternal life, and forgiveness: ‘to create us, to draw us to eschatological consummation, and when we have alienated ourselves from God to reconcile us’ (D Kelsey).

Not all love is, genuine that is. Not all from the heart, nor true, nor durable, nor real. So one hymn we used to sing made reference to ‘by the light of burning martyrs’.

What does it mean to live in faith?

Hate what is evil.

It means to hate what is evil. Notice the firmness in Paul’s flexibility, the vagueness in his certainty. In sin, salvation, spirit he has now confidence that –for our time—we shall know the place of hatred and the outline of evil. He gives no list, he makes no single sculpture image, his art is not representational or personificational, he does not limit or quench. How would he know what 2011 looks like? He trusts in the freedom of birds in flight, the gospel, the grace and liberty of genuine love to guide us. He trusts Spirit to bring salvation out of sin. Implied here, by the flock of birds in flight, his verbal memorial to love, is this, from a hymn we used to sing: new occasions teach new duties. Not all of student social life is good. Some is, like the public garden. Some is not, like the Charles river. We are free, nay called, nay called out, in our own setting, to ‘hate what is evil’. I think of Amos: ‘I hate, despise your feasts. Let justice roll down like waters.’

Can you get me going on this way of faith? What does it mean?

Hold fast to what is good.

It means to hold fast what is good. Notice the firmness in Paul’s flexibility, the vagueness of his certainty. As David Kelsey reminds us: life is neither evil, nor a problem, nor a predicament. Life is good, and we are living it on ‘borrowed breath’. Of one scriptural admonition (like perhaps the coarse ending of our lesson, ‘heaping coals of fire’), K Stendahl once said, ‘It may be the word of God, but it is not the word of God for me’. We used to sing together, ‘time makes ancient good uncouth.'

Love one another with mutual affection.

It means to love one another with mutual affection, brotherly affection, a bond that is fraternal, sororial, militant if not military, visceral. And reciprocal. Real affection, genuine love, is reciprocal, mutual. Affection wherein one party has all the votes and the other pays all the bills (note here, a subtle reference in my own Methodist denomination to the current bad marriage between American bill payers and African voters) is not affectionate. It is not loving. It is affectionless, affected, not effective. Phil Wogaman identified last week the three biggest issues of our time as poverty and unemployment, interfaith dialogue, and religious legalism. He concluded: ‘whatever your issue, when you die, I want to find your body there’.

Outdo one another in showing honor.

It means—living by the faithfulness of Christ that is—to outdo one another in showing honor. From 1500 BC the Hindu Vedas were transmitted orally, father to son, with precise perfection, as Dr Doniger recently reminded us. Creative generosity, happy hospitality, continuously counting others better—here is our way. Forebear one another in love. You rule the roost. Good for you. Your wife rule the rooster. Light, salt, sheep: people need to see your giving hands, taste the spice of your commendation, and expect a willingness to be shorn. As our own Ed McClure put it his week: ‘We need balance. We need to balance what I want and what you want with what we need….If you don’t know how to talk to people you will need a stick or a gun.’

Never lag in zeal.

To live by faith means not to lag in zeal, to be ardent in Spirit, and to serve the Lord. These three dicta largely place before you the directive to get yourself out of bed, into some relatively clean clothes, over to Marsh Chapel, and into a seat in the fourth pew, come Sunday. A walk in the country or on the beach is good, but not good enough. With Thoreau, you may see: ‘I walk toward one of our ponds but what signifies the beauty of nature when men are base? Who can be serene in a country where both the rulers and the ruled are without principle? The remembrance of my country spoils my walk.’ Turning on the radio is good, but not good enough. People have so many reasons not to go to church. They range from the hilarious to the pitiful. But, on a Sunday when there is not another hurricane, think about this. Your sister here needs you, needs to see you, needs to lean on the encouraging support of your zealous passion. Your brother here needs the example of your ardent spirit. Serve the Lord! His service is perfect freedom and the worship service is all of one hour. We can become so lackadaisical about worship: and I am not only speaking about theologians ()! In a lifetime you have 4,000 Sunday, 1,500 haircuts, 60 income tax returns, and 529, 600 minutes a year (42, 368,000 total minutes). Come Sunday: zeal, spirit, service, baby!

Be ardent in spirit.

It orders your life. As Steve Jobs recommended, ‘simplify, simplify, simplify’.

Serve the Lord.

And here, we may touch the hem of Matthew’s dark parable, too. Again this week we hear (22: 1-14) a dark, baffling parable. Here is outpouring, divine generosity. Here is unawareness and resistance. Here is divine righteous indignation, and harsh judgment. Here is repeated outpouring, divine generosity. Here is speechless lack of awareness. Here is a riddle about the called and the chosen. You may read Luke’s lighter, happier version this afternoon. But Matthew has in his mind the culmination of the Jewish War in 70ad, and the destruction in that year of Jerusalem. Matthew has in his mind the tepid response to Jesus, certainly among his own people, and also in the wider Roman world, whose first century writes record not a single clear mention of Jesus. Matthew has in his mind the need for self protection in the late first century church, following the persecutions of Domitian. Matthew expresses an odium theologicum here, not unlike that of the Fourth Gospel. All this he marshalls to emphasize the importance of repentance and righteousness. Ardent, zealous service, he would affirm, with Paul.

Rejoice in your hope.

Faith means to ride the waves in community of hope and pain and prayer. Hope carries us beyond pain through prayer. We will gather for a wedding today, remembering all the sardonic lines from Thornton Wilder about weddings (‘once in a thousand times it’s interesting…a man looks pretty small at a wedding’) His sardonic preacher nonetheless solemnizes a marriage in great hope. It is an hour of great hope. This afternoon our wedding prayer will have us say: ‘Give them such fulfillment of their mutual affection that they may reach out in love and concern for others’.

Be patient in tribulation.

Patient here is longsuffering endurance. It is a hard recognition that life includes inexplicable hurt. Such pain drives us hard back onto hope in prayer. Prayer brings us up, out and forward through it all, whether in hope or pain. Faith is faith especially when it is all you have left. Some of us today are driven had back through our pain onto hope in prayer. With adorable beauty, nonetheless, the combination of Voltaire and Bernstein in ‘Candide’ brought us up short: ‘To give birth in anguish to miserable and sinful children, who will suffer everything themselves and make everyone else suffer! What! To experience every sickness, feel every grief, die in anguish, and then in recompense be roasted for eternity! This fate is really the best thing possible?’ (Voltaire, 1764). When we have hope, we celebrate, together. When we have pain, we endure, together.

Be constant in prayer.

Be constant, steady, regular, punctual, reliable, disciplined in prayer. Tutu wrote: ‘Goodness is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Light is stronger than darkness. Life is stronger than death. Victory is ours through him who loves us.’ How do I get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice…

Contribute to the needs of the saints.

The Apostle reserves the two toughest, communal, challenges for last, one about money and one about time. Fellowship, partner with the needs of the community. I will take one tithing Christian over every 100 of the born again variety. I will take one Christian who remembers the church or some form of shared service in her will over every stadium full of politically praying types. Maybe you would agree to the desire for less hat and more cattle. Wouldn’t be interesting to know what our potential Presidential candidates actually gave away last year? You cannot love what you do not support. Contribute to the needs, not the irresponsibility but the needs of the community, at 10%. Our BU business and hospitality schools serve the same ends: the nature of community. Leaders of both, I am proud to say, lead also in Marsh Chapel. You may wonder: if we can send (and pay) men and women in uniform to Iraq, why can we not send (and pay) women and men to schools, parks, road repairs, urban neighborhoods, and hospitals—why is there no WPA today when 14 million need work? Isn’t this question what is gurgling under the street encampments here and elsewhere?

Practice hospitality.

Hospitality is to time what generosity is to money. Hospitality is how you spend your time (such an interesting phrase in our mother tongue, to spend time). Hospitality—making the bed of friendship, cooking the meal of companionship, pouring the bath of empathy, cleaning the linens of suffering, embracing those completing a portion of the whole of the journey of life—“Welcome home! How was the trip! Let’s see your photos!”. Hospitality is to time what generosity is to money. Practice. Practice! You will get better with time. Our BU Dean of Hospitality identifies six touchstones in this realm: be both a customer and an owner, both an innkeeper and an innovator, both a servant and a leader.

Will you let love be genuine? Are we lovers anymore? Will you look for love, genuine love, this week?

If this were a Methodist revival, I would end by lining this out like a hymn, and having you sing. If this were the black church, I would call you to response in call and response, response and call, in rhythm and rhyme, rhyme and rhythm. If this were Fenway Park I would start the wave or Sweet Caroline. But this is Marsh Chapel, which in one sense is none of these, and in another sense is something like all of them together. So I will ask you, as a manner of encouraging our memory, just to repeat after me:

Let love be genuine

Hate what is evil

Hold fast to what is good

Love one another with mutual affection

Outdo one another in showing honor

Never lag in zeal

Be ardent in spirit

Serve the Lord

Rejoice in your hope

Be patient in tribulation

Be constant in prayer

Contribute to the needs of the saints

Practice hospitality

~The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
Dean of Marsh Chapel

Grace Note

2011-10-02T11:00:00.002-04:00

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Matthew 21: 33-46

Jesus meets us today to challenge us, to confront us and to inspire us with the hope of something new. Faith in Him, and love for his community, and a life directed toward a final hope—all these lie before us in this holy meal.

Some years ago, in our first year after seminary, a very small act of mercy on the part of a colleague began to show me the power of the new life, found in the doing of the faith. As the psychologists say, the heart follows the hand.

We had only been married a couple of years, and had more recently entered the working world. Some of you are there today, others remember those days, others expect them, one day. Our little house was gradually filling up, or being filled up, with the materials of early married life. A car in the driveway. Clothing on the line out back. A crib. Dog food bowls in the kitchen corner. Wedding and family photographs in new albums. It all happens so quickly! Marriage, degree, job, house, child, car, dog, clothes. All of a sudden. It hardly seems real, or possible.

One day during this period in our early life together there came a most surprising bit of information. This news was delivered in the course of a simple supper, as the dog barked and the drying clothes flapped in the breeze and the baby upstairs cried on to sleep. The information was in sum a medical bulletin, one of those little messages from doctor to patient to patient’s family, an insignificant bit of news as far as the televised world news was concerned, just another report, and a report on a lab report. Soon there would be another mouth to feed. What excitement! It hardly seemed possible, or real.

But reality did set in.

And reality did set in, was ushered in, not surprisingly, by means of the checkbook. Ah the checkbook. Stern reminder of the limits of life. Unerring measurer of the various pursuits of happiness. Implacable judge of the ways of humans. The checkbook. Clothes, dog, child, car and all finally had to be paid for, from one source. Reality did finally set in. Both Paul and Matthew, by the way, in their own way, are trying to convey a sense of reality.

So it was in this period of early marriage, the period of judgment by way of the checkbook, when, I recall, a great kindness was done.

Among many other unmanageable expenses, our car needed new brake pads. I did check to see the price that would be charged to have them installed. I wondered how we would afford it. Which is where things sat on a late summer evening, in a small cottage-like parsonage, nearby one of the great Finger Lakes, with the clothes flapping on the line, the dog well fed and ill behaved, and the baby crying to the moon above.

That evening I met with a new neighboring minister, a man about 15 years older than I. We did our work, and then set to talking about life in general. The topic of cars and brakes and brake pads somehow wiggled to the surface, and with it all the manifold cares and worries of this life, about which the Scripture says, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”. This fellow minister then suggested that the next day, early in the morning, I bring the car to his house, where and when he would teach me how to change the brake pads on the car. This we did together. In the course of the morning we also talked through various strategies open to young married couples to avoid the stern, grim judgment of the checkbook. There are ways, it turned out, and he had been there.

I know this backwater tale of an unimportant act of kindness done in 1980 hardly constitutes earthshaking news. I guess it is just a matter of vineyards and harvest, of the prize of the upward call, of the way we ought to be, as people of faith. Such a recollection of such a simple generosity hardly seems worth mention.

And yet it meant a great deal, and hovers in memory, years later, as the very grace of God. Here is one doing what he and we ought to have done. Here is an act of compassion. Here is an act of mercy. Here is something new. Here is what Emerson meant: “virtue alone creates something new”.

Today, World Communion Sunday, I sense a hunger, a sharp hunger in the souls of women and men from all different walks of life. It is a hunger that does not abate with the ministrations of all that position and fortune and plenty can provide. It is a hunger that reaches for God. It is a hunger for God. There is a hunger for God today in the souls of men and women that will not be filled by anything else. It will not be filled by anything other than God. Finally, the hunger and thirst for righteousness—and I believe there is such a fine, fine hunger in your own heart—can only be filled by God, by love, by freedom, by grace. By the faith of Jesus Christ and by love for his community and by a life directed toward a final hope of glory.

We can and will proclaim this hunger from this pulpit. We can and will announce God’s gracious love from this pulpit. But in the end you will find it, or it will find you, in your own experience. One by one. Two by two. You are likely to be shocked to faith by no more than one real encounter with one real act of mercy at the hand of one real person. Or, said negatively, as dour Matthew might, if one real kindness does not point you to new life, will a hundred, or will a thousand? One grace note, rung and heard, is all it takes.

Here is the vineyard, still. Here is the wine press, still. Here is the harvest, coming still. There comes a time when our time is no longer our own. So today: Let your own hand guide your own heart. Act in kindness and you will find that you are kinder too. Act in generosity and you will discover a generous spirit within. Act with faith and faith will find you. Your heart will follow your hand.

We come to meet Jesus who meets us in deed, now, not only in word. He meets us in the central moment of life, the full giving that is real loving, the real loving that is full giving, the offering of life for life.

Are we ready to receive Him today?

~The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,

Dean of Marsh Chapel

A Change of Heart

2011-09-25T11:00:00.001-04:00

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Matthew 21: 23-32

Bob

This Sunday we are confronted by one of the most endearing, and most alluring little parables in all of Scripture, maybe in all of literature.

How it fits with the rest of the lesson is not entirely clear, at least to me. Nor is it clear how the lesson in Matthew fits with the other assigned readings for the day, Philippians and our Psalm and so on. Dark sayings from of old, indeed.

But the collision of order and answer, of beckoning and response, has to haunt.

A man has two sons. Already, the plot is thickened, with rivalry, with competition, with family intrigue.

Then the preaching of the gospel occurs. The vintner—I prefer vintner to father here—tells something, it is a statement that beckons, not formally a question nor even an invitation. Simply a command. Go.

He commands. Schweitzer would be pleased.

Go and live, go and work, go and love, go and prune, go and pluck, go and tend your garden. Go. Up and Go!

Every day and every Lord’s Day, the word arises to us, singeing our nostrils. Go. The day accosts us with a challenge to the good, to a choice if Dewey is right between goods.

You know, I have a feeling about a feeling abroad.

I think some of us sometimes have the sinking feeling that things are not going so well, that things are drifting or worse.

We see war wounds that do not heal.

We see environmental gashes that we rue, ice melting, melting melting

We watch another attempt to bring expanding gambling to the commonwealth and wonder, is this the best we can do, the our selves at our best?

We see an economy that leaves out, as James Walters said this week, 14 million people, the equivalent of the total population of New England. Maybe twice that when you get everybody counted.

We see a beloved country and respected government that cant seem to organize a two car funeral.

And on top of it all, the Red Sox are not always winning.

You know, I think there is an ennui abroad, a languishing in doldrums of pervasive malaise.

So when the word comes. Come Sunday: Up! Go! You! Work! Vineyard! Today!

We pull up the covers and sleep in, or call in sick, or drive in late, or just are not really sure we can do anything about all these irremediable driftings.

What difference does it make what I do?

So, says son one, I will not go. Son two doesn’t go, he just evades, the compliant not the defiant one. He says Yes Mrs Cleaver, but he doesn’t go. He never meant to. He just doesn’t like conflict. Well who does?

But the first son has a change of heart.

Now I find this so encouraging, heartening, lovely. Up front, he says, no way, no way Jose. He is defiant, and willing to say it. I don’t think so, Mr. Vintner, Mr Father, Mr Voice, Mr Life, Mr. Daytime. I think I will just turn in my ticket. Thanks but no thanks.

But he has a change of heart.

Will you notice with me that the main thing we want to know is not told to us?

We want to know, what changed the heart? What did the trick? What sealed the deal? What moved the lever?

And the Bible says, ‘Address Not Known’. In other words, it is shrouded in mystery.

So we are a little free to speculate, and I plan to take that freedom in full today. We do not know what brought the change of heart.

But I know what can be a change of heart.

Beauty.

An experience of the beautiful can change the heart. A thank you note. A sunrise. A poem. A violin sonata. A student writing on our memory board, ‘I saw the planes hit from my fourth grade window’—there is a beauty in that memory of innocence lost.

When you come to church on Sunday, you may be saying no. NO I WILL NOT. You may be not willing to have any change, let alone a change of heart. It is in that very condition that John Wesley went in the rain to Aldersgate Street. NO I WILL NOT GO TO THE VINEYARD, not today baby.

But…

You get to church and…

Beauty.

Sun through stained glass. Organ meditation. Word fitly spoken. Bach.

Music can say things that words never can.

Beauty is like that.

Scott

Actually, Dean Hill, Bach suggests his own answer for the source of Son Number One’s change of heart. With the spirit of beauty, perhaps it was indeed ‘a spirit’ of Beauty – the angels encamped about Son Number One. Angels – the very picture of beauty!

Today’s cantata celebrates these spirits of Beauty and Light – the Angels. Originally written for the Festival of St. Michael, celebrated on September 29th, our cantata today commemorates the victory of Michael, the arch-angel, over Satan as depicted in Revelation. The first movement brims with joyful celebration complete with trumpets and timpani, in a light dance style. Any jagged depictions of the battle are replaced by the brilliance of the celebration. Here, there are no fugues or demanding complexities – we hear the voice of Bach’s finest expressions of jubilation.

As the cantata proceeds, Bach’s takes the turns we now anticipate – ‘We acknowledge and celebrate the great things the Lord has brought to pass’, and we now mark the ways in which the Lord continues to work on our behalf in our living, in our working, in our sleeping, in our loving, and, yes, in our departing. The central aria of the cantata – ‘Gottes Engel weichen nie’ / God’s Angels never retreat – depicts these airy beings as they watch over our every need, preventing us from danger and temptation. Notice the lightness of the string writing, and the angelic voice of soprano Margot Rood. The second half of the cantata reminds us that in our departing, God’s angels will usher us to Abraham’s bosom, just as he did with Elijah and his fiery chariot. Bach is always teaching us a Bible lesson! Our dependence on the angels becomes clearer in the final duet, ‘Seid wachsam ihr heiligen Wächter’/ ‘Be vigilant, you holy watchman’. The bassoon takes the role of the lonely watchman in his nightly rounds, protecting us from Satan’s snare. The Cantata concludes with the famous chorale, Herzlich lieb, which some Marsh Chapel congregants will recognize as the chorale that concludes the St John Passion. In the Chorale, God’s angels usher us to Heaven when we meet our end – ever present, and ever vigilant.

Who can tell the source of beauty behind Son Number One’s change of heart? Perhaps God’s Angels, or perhaps as Lincoln said, ‘the better angels of our nature.’ Or perhaps it’s all the same – a shared and common beauty, ready and available.

Bob

You know, sometimes, we come saying no and leave saying yes.

What changes the heart?

What pierces, transforms, moves the heart?

Beauty does.

It does.

It says, whispers, reminds:

There are a lot of things wrong. But there are a lot of things right. Somebody wrote this cantata—sheer beauty. Someone practiced and taught it---sheer beauty. Someone sang it and played it—sheer beauty. And here I am. I heard it. I heard it.

Music can say things that words never can.

Maybe number one son huffed no. Then he saw moonlight on Tiberias. Or his wife was singing as the children went to sleep. Or he remembered a part of a Psalm. Or he remembered the loving and lovely self giving of a loved one—maybe that of his father. Or a friend came by or came through.

Then he thought…

Well, maybe, well, maybe

Maybe things are bad, but maybe they can get better, and maybe better is the only good there is.

Maybe that is what you will think, leaving today.

Beauty stands beside me

Beauty stands beside me

I hear, I hear, I hear

Maybe I will say yes after all

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, Marsh Chapel Choir

Howard Thurman: A Voice for Speaking, a Faith for Living

2011-09-18T18:01:00.005-04:00

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Matthew 20: 1-16

Howard Thurman’s name and legacy are well honored here at Marsh Chapel. Come Sunday, whether you tune in on the radio, listen on the podcast, or sit in the pews at 735 Commonwealth Avenue, you will often hear Howard Thurman’s words sounding forth from this pulpit. You will hear him quoted in prayers, in sermons. After worship, you can visit Howard Thurman’s portrait downstairs in the room that bears his name. Dean Hill has even developed something of a Marsh Chapel mantra about Thurman; you will often hear him say that “Howard Thurman was one hundred years of his time, fifty years ago.” It is good that we remember and listen to Thurman’s words, but there is something missing when we encounter these echoes of Thurman. We miss out on the unique tenor of Thurman’s voice, his speaking voice, which so perfectly fits his personality, his person, his life, and his very soul. So this morning, I want to share with you a small recording of Thurman speaking, reading from Meditations of the Heart.

[Thurman recording] 2:17-2:42

Thurman, as you can hear, has a unique speaking voice. His is a deep and resounding bass, particularly when praying, meditating, or telling stories which really hit home. Very few people speak that low in the range of the human voice, and so when I first heard Thurman’s speaking voice, I was reminded of my paternal Grandfather. My grandfather passed away when I was quite young, but I can still hear the echoes of his voice in my mind, the deep resounding bass vibrating my whole body, as it chuckles after cracking a joke at the dinner table during grace or captured on a record, a single moment in time, singing a duet at my parent’s wedding.

Thurman’s voice is, of course, different from my grandfather’s; it is uniquely his. But it too, is a moment captured in time for us to hear today. It is oddly reedy for a bass, and when Thurman gets a little excited, you can imagine him rising to the balls of his feet or grasping the pulpit and leaning forward into the microphone. It doesn’t happen in this short clip, but when Thurman really gets warmed up, his voice soars up the scales like the opening notes of Rhapsody in Blue, reaching to a high, near falsetto range. Howard Thurman had his own carefully developed, deeply discerned voice.

Coming up to converse with Thurman this morning we have our gospel lesson from Matthew, the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, only found in the Gospel of Matthew. The parable of the laborers in the vineyard is colloquially known as the parable of the totally unfair vineyard owner. You mean that the people who sneak into the last pew just before the sermon and then in their return down the side aisles after communion bypass their pew and just keep walking, sneaking surreptitiously out the back…those people earn the same kingdom of heaven wages, the same good deed credits as those who sit all the way through, from the introit to the very last note of the postlude, all the while with their hands politely in their laps and eyes facing forward?

Yes, that would seem to be something of the meaning of Matthew’s parable. That is what the kingdom of God looks like in this parable of the generous (some of us might mutter under our breath socialist) landowner. In the parable, if there is a divine accounting system of any kind, it is not measured by our standards. Everyone’s work, everyone’s participation, everyone’s voice is of deep value to the vineyard owner.

But the generosity of the parable’s vineyard owner still grates at us, particularly in our politically charged climate. In this country, in our attempts to cure our extended illness of financial fear, we have become addicted to a vocabulary of scarcity, in which our attitude has become “There cannot possibly be enough for all so I better take my share before someone else does.” We secretly, and as we saw in the Republican debate last week, sometimes openly cheer those who, through some combination of choice and circumstance, might lose their job, their house, or even their very life. We cheer because we secretly hope that if another loses, we might have a job, a house, or the care that we need for life. This mass mentality leads to high emotions, which have become so ingrained in us that we cannot cut through the dense opiate fog to hear the parable, and in it, the voice of the evangelist, and behind him, the voices of the earliest Christian communities, and behind that, the voice of Jesus.

I’d like to retell the parable, using a setting perhaps a bit more familiar, and a bit less infuriating than the one found in our Gospel.

A senior professor, a real giant in her field, offered an advanced seminar to work through some final edits of her book before she sent it to press.

Her two advisees, doctoral students who were finishing up their own dissertations, were the only two to show up the first week of the seminar. They engaged with the professor in spirited debate. The professor thanked them for their contributions, and made some edits based on their responses. The doctoral students went away pleased.

The next week, they were a little surprised to find a master’s student sitting at the table. “I invited her because I wanted to include some more voices in the conversation to help me to really hone my work,” the professor said.

Two weeks later, past the allotted add/drop deadline, a timid young woman came into the classroom for the seminar. She was a freshman and had been invited to unofficially audit the course. “I invited her because I wanted to hear an undergraduate’s take on my argument,” the professor said. The freshman was shy at first in front of the graduate students, but with some coaxing, she opened up and shared her opinions.

The second to last week of the semester, everyone was shocked to see the professor escort in one last person, who was wearing one of those plastic vests that people who are soliciting money for some charity or political organization often wear when they accost you in the street. Donor clipboard still in hand, the young man took a seat and accepted the chapter of discussion for the week, from the professor, who explained to her seminar that she was thinking on her way to class about what people “on the ground” would really think about her book. “So, she said, “This fine young man introduced himself to me outside, and I thought he would be perfect!” The man spent the whole seminar reading the chapter and listening, and by the end, had only made a single, brief comment.

The last class, the professor came in with a copy of her final manuscript in a binder. “I want to thank you all for the help that you have provided me this semester. My book would not be as thorough, as thoughtful, or as articulate as it is without you. I have brought you my manuscript to show you that I have thanked you all, every single one of you, by name in the acknowledgments.”

The doctoral students were appalled. What might it mean to prospective employers when some nobody’s name was listed next to theirs in the introduction to what was sure to be the next big work in the field? Besides, they had engaged the professor’s use of secondary sources, her larger methodological choices. What, really, had the master’s student, the freshman, and especially that solicitor off of the street really done to deserve equal billing?

“You are both emerging scholars in the field,” the professor answered, “and you have a more developed sense of your own scholarly voice. But I needed to hear each of the voices that came to the table to truly understand what my final book needed to look like. Each of the voices in that seminar, even from the young man off of the street, was essential to the completed work.”
Now, parables are extended similes; as you learned in high school, they compare something to something else using “like” or “as.” The object of comparison throughout the Gospels is nearly always the Kingdom of God, that elusive eschatological term. The Kingdom of God is like a vineyard owner who goes out to offer work to all and pays them equal wages. The kingdom of God is like a professor who invites all voices into her classroom and gives them equal recognition.

We’re so used to hearing parables that we hardly pay attention to the other side of the equation, the “Kingdom of God” part. But that is essential to our understanding of the parable. The “Kingdom of God” is an eschatological catchphrase. “Eschatology,” is a word that has a tendency to make people nervous, conjuring up images of pamphlet-wielding, billboard-buying doomsdayers on the one hand and theologians squinting over dense, boring, difficult theological treatises on the other. What a strange phenomenon! What other phrase brings up such disparate, strange images to mind?

Earlier this semester, New Testament scholar Helmust Koester, introducing a lecture on the history of Ancient Christianity to a mixed classroom of underclassmen and graduate students, promised that his class required no background in the field. He came to the phrase “eschatology” in his lecture, and looking up, he noticed a few furrowed brows. “Eschatology is simply living in the present with a certain hope of the future” he explained. Eschatology is simply living in the present with a certain hope of the future.

With this clear-as-a-bell definition, our eschatological vision can expand to include all sorts of people who we can see live eschatologically. College students come to mind. College students labor away on their laptops, in libraries, in laboratories, taking on significant debt, working second jobs, all in the hope of a certain kind of future. College students can sometimes live extreme manifestations of their eschatology. Some live so deeply in the present that they ignore their fears about the future, which will include an abrupt entry into the “real world” where they believe there will be less fun, more seriousness, and earlier alarm clocks. Others focus so intensely on a future vision of success that they fail to become involved in their present surroundings, missing out on life-transforming friendships, community service, and student life. But when we welcomed our freshman class at matriculation just a few short weeks ago, we welcomed in young people who entered into Boson University with their eyes wide open, taking in their new, exciting, and sometimes terrifying surroundings. They have certain hopes that here they will discover something about who they are and who they are called to be. They have certain hopes that their voices will be heard. They have certain hopes that someday they will make a difference to the world. In short, they seek to find and share their own voice.

Will we invite them in to the conversation? Will we encourage their first attempts to speak out? Will we encourage them as they try out a different, tone, a different pitch? No seminar is too advanced, no economic problem too serious that we cannot include the nascent voices of those who will in the future teach our seminars and run our companies.

Besides, if we are honest with ourselves, we are always in the process of developing and discerning our own voice. It is shaped by the voices of others, and it is shaped in the stillness, when we listen for the voice of God. In the full chorus of voices not our own, we are best able to tune in to our own sound, to correct its pitch, to round out its tone. We are continuously in need of discerning our own voice.

Howard Thurman’s deepest commitments were to these values, to his firm belief that we are not complete, that we are not whole until we have begun to understand ourselves. And we cannot understand ourselves, Thurman believed, until we open ourselves to hear the voices of our neighbors, and to hear the voice of God.

This, Thurman believed, was the very definition of freedom. In 1948, speaking at the meditation hour of the National Council of Negro Women’s Convention, he said this, “The highest role of freedom is the choice of the kind of option that will make my life not only a benediction breathing peace, but also a vital force of redemption to all I touch. This would mean, therefore, that wherever I am, there the very Kingdom of God is at hand.”

The Kingdom of God paints a vision of how we are to live in the present if we have a certain hope for the future. From our parable today, the gospel tells us that we are to live our lives in the hope that someday this world will be like a ripe vineyard where all are invited to work at the harvest. We are invited to live our lives in the hope that someday this world will be like a classroom where all voices are truly welcome. Eschatology is not about doing nothing while we wait for this future to come. Rather, we are called to live in the right-now as though it were so. If we makes space for the still-discerning voices around us to try, to fail, and to try again to find their own-most selves, then we embody that vision of the Kingdom.

In June 2011, National Geographic published an article by Charles C. Mann about Göbekli Tepe, an archaeological site in Southern Turkey, which had remained relatively unknown in the West up until then. Göbekli Tepe is an old site. It is really old, older than old; it is the oldest structural site in the world. It is beautiful, circles of pillars with fascinating representations of human figures and animals, gazelles, scorpions, foxes, carved into the stone. It was built, archaeologists estimate, 11,600 years ago, seven millennia before the pyramid of Giza. Göbekli Tepe is not a palace, or a military outpost, or even a community dwelling. It is a religious site of some sort.

The traditional narrative about human development goes something like this; once our ancestors had settled down, domesticated some animals and some basic grains, once they stopped having to wander around constantly hunting for food, then “civilization” emerges, including art, religion, music, etc. We only turn to questions of meaning when questions of survival are relatively settled.

Göbekli Tepe is leading many scholars to turn that narrative on its head, because this site predates the domestication of livestock, and predates the cultivation of crops. Our hunter gatherer ancestors, it seems, turned to questions of meaning, questions about who they were and how they related to the universe well before they had figured out the whole settled living thing.

I am certain that Howard Thurman, with his incessant cultural and scholarly curiosity, would have loved the story of Göbekli Tepe. I think Thurman most of all would have agreed with the position it forces one to consider.

Thurman believed that questions of who we are and who we are called to be in relation to the universe are not afterthought questions. They are not something to turn to once the schoolwork is done, once the week is over, once the kids are in bed. No, these questions are an essential part of life, as important as our sleeping, our eating, and our breathing. May we hear the echoes of his voice and believe it too.

Thurman believed that when we turn to these questions about ourselves, we naturally turn inward to listen for the voice of God, and outward for the voice of our neighbors around us. May we hear the echoes of his voice and believe it too.

Thurman believed that when we invite all to labor beside us in the vineyard or in the classroom, we embody the Kingdom of God and become a blessing of peace and redemption. May we hear the echoes of his voice and believe it too.

Amen.

~Ms. Jennifer Quigley
Chapel Associate for Vocational Development

Transcending Boundaries

2011-09-11T11:00:00.006-04:00

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Matthew 18: 21-35

A. Sin

1. Thirteen Fears

We are a people somewhat dampened by fear.

For some the drenching is total like the water now cascading down from Vermont and Northern New England. For others the damp moisture is more like the relative sprinkling we in Boston received two Sundays ago. But the rain has fallen on all, the northern and southern, the just and unjust.

We have used our umbrellas and it has been a long time coming.

Since the day our freshmen went to kindergarten…

A cloudburst in 1998 about impeachment and redefinitions for simple words like ‘is’, like ‘sex’.

A thunderstorm in 1999 about Y2K. Some communities even had Y2k committees. Our church did.

A donnybrook in 2000 over a close election, decided finally by the Supreme Court. Can you spell ‘dangling chad’?

The hurricane in 2011 of 9/11/01, whose memory we mark today.

An autumn rain in 2002, a move from patience (‘we shall meet violence with patient justice’) to pre-emption, a full blown doctrine thereof.

A tornado in 2003, a tragic invasion of Iraq.

A tempest in an Ohio teapot in election2004and a Tsunami across the pacific.

A whirlwind in 2005, Katrina.

A change in wind direction in 2006, abroad, surge, at home, election.

An early morning rain starting to fall in 2007, falling on housing near and far.

A cataract in 2008, the Great Recession, unabated still. 14 million, 14 million, 14 million hunting for work.

Cloudbursts in 2009—tarp, stimulus, health care, and 401k to 201k, oil spilled in the gulf.

Steady rain since 2010, a country divided along the lines of liberty and justice, freedom and compassion, conservative and liberal.

We are a people moistened by fear. But it has been raining, after all. If you feel a little moist, you may have some reason.

2. Religious Troubles

My dear dad—a graduate of BU—used to say, with a smile, ‘just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you’. Since that sentence has several negatives, let me say it again: ‘just because you are paranoid, does not meant they are not out to get you’.

It was his way of saying that we need to be both realistic and self-aware.

To some friends, I might emphasize the word paranoid. To others, I might emphasize that that does not mean nobody is out to get you.

It is not the case that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. There are real, serious threats to security, collective and individual, which cannot and should not be avoided or denied.

Some of these are religious in nature. Religion qua religion is not necessarily good. It can be. Often it is not.

A surgeon who worshipped with us, a fine southern gentleman, would greet me at the door, following worship, in this way: How is your protoplasm Dr Hill?

In his memory I ask you: How is your eschatology, your pneumatology? Your sense of hope, your sense of presence?

It raises the issue sung out in the old spiritual: Have you got good religion, or bad?

An eschatological vision that promises paradise as reward for violence is religious, for sure, and bad. Bad eschatology is not the exclusive province and possession of only one religious tradition, to be sure. A pneumatological understanding of boundaries that makes of one set of cultural practices a necessary target of hatred is religious, for sure, and bad. Bad pneumatology is not the exclusive province of only one religious tradition, to be sure.

Good religion transcends boundaries, whether of hope or of spirit, whether of heaven or earth, whether eschatological or pneumatological.

Today I want to probe sense of presence and sense of hope.

B. Salvation

What we have heard in our Scriptures today is not unlike what may be found in the world’s great traditions: Bahai: ‘be generous in prosperity, thankful in adversity’; Buddhist: ‘may those frightened cease to be afraid’; Hindu: ‘may there be peace on earth’; Jewish: ‘swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks’; Muslim: ‘if thine enemy incline toward peace, do thou also’; Christian: ‘blessed are the peacemakers’.

But this common ground, when flooded with fear, can be difficult to hold, to walk. Our boots slide in the wet mud.

How are we ever going to dry out, drenched as we are? How will we get the roads rebuilt, the bridges repaired, the sewers flowing, the mud cleared, the clothes ironed?

Today the sun is shining. Briefly let us bask in the its light and warmth.

Religious people bear responsibility for religious problems.

1. Paul

Paul wrote so to the Romans.

Some think of this passage as advice for the church, the church alone. Jews and Gentiles. Get along, welcome one another, liberal Protestants embrace conservative Catholics, march together under the banner of Christ. The strong (the liberal) are to be forbearing of the weak (the conservative). Church advice for church people. Days and diet, Sabbath and sweets.

Is this what he means? If so, why is the word Christ all but absent? Paul says Lord, not Christ, with one exception.

No, Paul has bigger fish to fry than ecumenical relations. He is preaching about cosmic transformation. He is speaking about the Lord. Who is the Lord? The Lord is the Spirit. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. What this world needs is not a religious revival but a cultural revolution.

No age needs Romans 14 more than ours does. Here is the announcement, healing for nineleven, of the religion of unreligion.

You will need to channel your inner perennialist, in order religiously to enter the 21st century. Your human BA comes before your spiritual MA. The petty narcissism of small religious differences won’t survive the drenching of the eternal now, now. At the human level, the undergraduate level, the level of real human relationship, unnecessary boundaries based on outmoded religious distinctions need to go. When Daniel Marsh built a chapel without a permanent cross in it, with a star of David in it, with Abraham Lincoln enshrined in it, he took heat—radical moves for 1949. Humans have more in common than not with one another.

In other words, before we move on to the graduate school of human religious difference, let us complete our undergraduate study in human religious likeness.

All six billion of us.

We all survive the birth canal, and so have a native survivors’ guilt. All six billion.

We all need daily two things, bread and a name. (One does not live by bread alone). All six billion.

We all grow to a point of separation, a leaving home, a second identity. All six billion.

We all love our families, love our children, love our homes, love our grandchildren. All six billion.

We all age, and after forty, its maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. All six billion.

We all shuffle off this mortal coil en route to that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns. All six billion.

I need to remember that I am first a man, second a witness, and third a minister, in that order, not in the reverse order.

2. Matthew

Even Matthew—dark, dreary Matthew—challenged his church so.

We have reason to be careful, to see that our loved ones, that children, that people all people are protected, secured, made safe. We need make no apology for defending human life from religiously inspired hatreds or any others.

But you cannot win the game by playing defense alone. The Red Sox cannot win with pitching alone.

There is only one way forward, with regard to past hurt. There are many ways backward: regret, revenge, resentment come to mind. To move forward, we shall need, in Niebuhr’s under-heralded phrase, to become adept at a spiritual discipline against resentment. We shall need to learn the arts of forgiveness. The only antidote to religion is mercy. So, the Scripture, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’.

God’s delight is forgiveness. That is the gospel. The question then is, what is ours, what is our delight? What do we desire?

Mercy is a great mystery; forgiveness, when it happens, a grace. To err is human, to forgive, divine. Or, as thesis advisors suppose, to write is human, to edit, divine.

Our first Marsh Chapel preacher and Dean, Franklin Littell, so reminded us:

Just as the child is aware of the mother before it is self-aware, just as it commonly says mama before it says I, so the awareness of God and his work in history is primordially known to the person of faith. But the world of techne, in its aversion to the mysterious and the open, has sealed off that dimension of human experience. From the elementary school, the young person is taught to think in the symmetry of the closed, the traditional mathematical model, and by the time he has finished with the university he may be a skilled technician—but he is rarely a wise man. (13)

It is the threshold of the mind and heart of Howard Thurman, the great former Dean of Marsh Chapel. He wrote, “A beautiful and significant phrase, “Island of Peace within one’s own soul. Well within the island is the Temple where God dwells – not the God of the creed, the church, the family, but the God of one’s heart. Into His Presence one comes with all of one’s problems and faces His scrutiny. What a man is, what his plans are, what his authentic point is, where his life goes – all is available to him in the Presence.”

Our third Dean, Robert Hamill, said much the same:

To anyone who is seriously seeking for this final truth, it will come to him, often unannounced, sometimes unnoticed. It may come through some reading in Scripture or elsewhere, or some glimpse of beauty, or some encounter with a friend, or with an enemy, or by some shattering engagement with yourself, with failure, or guilt, or unspeakable joy. It may happen to you especially in some act of obedience, when you seek not so much to obey the commandments which bind, but to obey him who liberates. (motive, 1/61)

In this spirit, our fourth, Robert Thornburg, wrote recently about prayer:

Coming to the 10th anniversary of “9/11”, I had a really scary dream. What would happen if I were to be asked to say a prayer at some public occasion near ground zero? I pondered that possibility in other dreams. I envisioned looking through my file of “prayers for public occasions”. Those were interfaith enough, and written to include the widest circle of folk. But surely not adequate for a time so filled with sorrow, anger, love and hope--- all those feelings that bubble up at the mention of those two numbers. When all else failed, I began instead to ask myself “what would I prayer for?” “For whom should I pray?” and remember: this is a prayer we are uttering to the Eternal God, not a political manifesto.

Easy at the start: pray for those who were killed and their families, then add first-responders, both those who died trying, and others still suffering the effects. But what about those “other” people: Muslims who want to pray nearby, others who are even thinking of destruction again. I think that is the kind of situation our Master had in mind when he said: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Could I believe that prayer changes things, and that the Almighty God might move in all of us to change things by the power of incredible love and profound hope.

Then I woke with a start. What was I thinking about? If our faith and all the religions of the world has any hope of helping the terrible mess our world finds itself in, then we had all better pray without ceasing and include the widest possible circle of both friends and those who probably think of themselves as our enemies. (8/20/11)

Dean Five, Robert Neville (do you sense an emerging pattern of Roberts?), wrote:

For us religious people the most frightening dimension of the recent terrorism is its idolatry. If our speculations about the motives of the terrorists are right, or we take Mr. Bin Laden’s statements at face value, a political cause has been cloaked in ultimacy that belongs to God alone. Any political cause, just or unjust, or any ambiguous mixture of the two that is associated with divinity is idolatry. (9/20/01).

C. Service

What good difference will our worship today, and our observance later today, make?

We are a flawed and bruised people. We are long way from perfect. We are a little moist, a little damp.

Some time ago our Religious Life Council and leaders began to prepare an observance for this day. I met with my colleague, Rabbi Polak, among others, to seek his counsel. As we talked he invited a student working at the front desk to sit with us, and to tell us what she recommended for 9/11/11.

“Well, I would want to remember what the day was like for me and for my family. Then I think I would want some simple, quiet way to honor losses from that day, and to honor those lost. And then I would want to see if there are ways I could do something positive, to remember by serving.”

She echoed what others had said, and outlined what we have done: boards to write out memories, like those used ten years ago; an observance at noon on the Plaza, like those 5 and 10 years ago; and suggestions for service, listed and announced, like this one:

In 1995 I married a great couple, Jim the husband a Methodist minister and religion professor, and Betsy the wife a health specialist and first responsder. After 9/11/01, in the loss and rubble and fear, she and a small group of others decided to do something positive, to remember by serving, as our student put it. In Syracuse NY, bit by bit, she and they developed a network of women—Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Agnostic, Other—who began to meet together on a monthly basis. They formed bonds of friendship—‘belonging’ as the religious sociologists might name it. They read and talked together—‘meaning’ in sociological terms. They chose limited but fruitful conjoint acts of public service that made a difference—‘empowerment’ in sociology. In their small city, week by month by year, they brought a little bit of compassion, understanding, and hope up and out of the ashes of ground zero. They are still at it. Today, in the New York Times, you will find a supplement devoted to this date. It is a realistic, even pessimistic, darkly challenging segment. But there, right there, right there in the middle of today’s news, stands Betsy. There is the account, a glimmer of light and a ray of hope, of her friends who came together and formed Women Transcending Boundaries. They have 470 members. As Elie Wiesel has taught us: one who hears a witness becomes a witness.

What boundaries will you work to transcend this year? Religious people have a religious task, a religious responsibility. That is to transcend boundaries, eschatological or pneumatological, of hope or presence, which threaten to undo us.

The World Trade Center may fall, but no terror can topple the Truth at the Center of the world.

The World Trade Center, hub of global economies, may fall, but the economy of grace still stands in the Truth at the center of the world.

The World Trade Center, communications nexus for many, may fall, but the communication of the gospel stands, the Truth at the center of the world.

The World Trade Center, legal library for the country, may fall, but grace and justice still stand, through the Truth at the center of the world.

The World Trade Center, symbol of national honor, may fall, but divine humility stands, through the Truth at the center of the world.

The World Trade Center, material bulwark against loss, may fall, but the possibility in your life of developing a spiritual discipline against resentment (Niebuhr) still stands, through the Truth at the center of the world.

Speaking of eschatology, there is a self-correcting spirit of truth loose in the universe. Speaking a pneumatology, there is a self-correcting spirit of truth loose in the universe.

George Buttrick once remembered an evening in Boston:

All we know is that each man’s witness is needed, since each man is a person, in separate and distinctive gift a child of God. Recently at a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert the man with the triangle was required by the music to sound one note. Minutes before that note he stood ready, like a runner on his mark, triangle and hammer uplifted and poised. To most of us the note would not have been missed, but Conductor Muench would have missed it. We are responsible to the music and the conductor, not mainly to the listener. The man drew my eyes—and my concern. Suppose he should come in too early or too late! Suppose he should swing his little hammer and miss! But true to time and score: ping! I would like in the hereafter to be able to tell the Conductor that I pinged my little ping, in the right place and at the right time. (motive, 2/58, p.16)

Me too, George, me too.

Come! Live with us! Be a witness to the Truth at the center of the world! You can make a small, lasting difference!

L Cohen: Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.

~The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
Dean of Marsh Chapel

Grace

2011-09-04T11:00:00.001-04:00

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Romans 13:8-14
Psalm 149
Matthew 18:15-20

There will be no sermon text this week, but see below for Dean Hill's Invocation for Matriculation, 2011.

We bring forward our thanks today,

For the study of medicine, dentistry, physical therapy

Whose fruit is public health

For the study of law

Whose fruit is justice

For the study of management, business and economics

Whose fruit is community

For the study of art—music, dance, drama, all

Whose fruit is beauty

For the study of communication

Whose fruit is truth

For the study of engineering

Whose fruit is expanding safety

For the liberal, metropolitan and general study of art and science

Whose fruit is freedom

For the study of hospitality

Whose fruit is conviviality

For the study of education

Whose fruit is memory and hope

For the study of military and physical education

Whose fruit are security and strength

For the study of social work

Whose fruit is compassion

For the study of theology

Whose fruit is meaning

In this year may the 40,000 member city of Boston University—students, faculty, administrators, staff, alumni, neighbors all—become, by grace:

healthier, more just, more connected, fairer, truer, sturdier, freer, gentler, deeper, safer, more compassionate, and more aware

O Thou who loves us into love and frees us into freedom.

Amen.

Let Love Be Genuine

2011-08-28T11:00:00.001-04:00

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Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28

There will be no sermon text this week.

Border Crossing: Ministry with College Students

2011-08-21T11:00:00.002-04:00

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John 15:1-11

Sermon text coming soon...

~The Rev. Dr. Robin J. Olson, Director of Spiritual Life at Boston University's School of Theology, Boston, MA; Part of the 2011 Summer Preaching Series, "Evangelism in the Liberal Tradition"

For information about our summer preaching series, please contact us at chapel@bu.edu.

Border Crossing: Ministry with Teens

2011-08-14T11:00:00.007-04:00

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Luke 24:13-35

When my son was little, on certain spirit-filled August days, he would announce that it was time for “Safari.” He’d place binoculars around neck, don his Australian safari hat, pick up his trusty Peterson’s Guide to Birds and researcher’s pen… Open door and out he’d go to explore the wonders of our backyard. Exotic jungle to him. ½ acre upstate NY suburbia to me. He’d raise the binoculars up high, spying the tippy tops of trees and he’d crawl belly side down on the grass for close inspection of the native ecology.

Then with triumphant pride, he’d march back in to show his finds he had meticulously checked off in his guide Book. Common North American Sparrow. Check. Amazonian Rain Forest Red bellied Parrot. Check. Blessed with imagination he was able to cross the border from our plain backyard to a world rich with possibility.

Today we are invited to cross borders from crucifixion in Jerusalem to resurrection in Emmaus in an adventure with the risen Christ. We are invited to cross generational and cultural borders with teenagers so that our ministry may bear fruit. We are invited to cross into new perspectives, heeding the wisdom of Mark Twain who said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.”

In our gospel lesson today Jesus walks with two people – Cleopas and a friend – two who I like to imagine are teenagers out on a hike- venturing from their city backyard of Jerusalem out to the burbs- 7 miles west in Emmaus. They need to get up and get away from home in order to figure out who they are. They are a bundle of all sorts of emotions and thoughts and impulses. Curious and confused. They are kinda lost and they kinda know where they are going. Energetic and enthusiastic – and frightened and sad. They need to process what just happened in their lives- the torture and death of their leader Jesus– the sudden ambiguity of once clear and passionate dreams for the future. They are open to direction from whomever and whatever comes across their path. They may be like teenagers you know and love. You may be one of these sojourners. Who will meet our teens on their way?

Today in our text, Jesus meets them precisely where they are and he journeys alongside them as long as it takes for them to find joy and mission for life. He’s like an embedded agent of God - right here with them, immersed in the particulars of their contexts, knowing their fears and aspirations and constantly tapping on the shoulder, hey, follow me, try this path, my yoke is easy, you will find what you seek.

There is plenty of room on the path for adults to companion with Christ and teens. In fact teens are eager for the Church to show up, to enter into their world, to hang out through the thrilling exploring times and to hang in through the sloppy rough times.

There is nothing more exciting to me than walking beside young people and helping them awaken to the Christ already present in their lives. I have the most fun when I get to pick up my Generational passport that is stamped Baby Boomer, and apply for a Visa for Millennial World. If I am trustworthy and respectful and enthusiastic I am granted the Visa, and I get to walk beside young disciples. I get to learn the language and the social norms and the worldview of the OMG Generation , and I get to be an evangelist, a bearer of the good news, no the great news, no the astounding life transforming news – the Oh My God, God is so Good news of Jesus Christ.

Let’s put on our safari hats, get those binoculars out, bust open the doors of the church and go on a journey with teen disciples. Let’s walk together not because we are worried about church membership rolls or the future of a denomination. Let’s go for the joy of it.

In our Emmaus walk story Jesus suggests 3 practices for us Border Crossers in ministry with teens. Let’s take a few minutes to look at Practices of Curiosity. Of Witnessing. Of Action.

First, Curiosity. Jesus is curious here. He goes up to Cleopas and friend, joins them stride for stride, and starts asking them questions. Lovett Weems, expert in Church Leadership, says good leaders ask good questions. Leaders don’t have all the right answers. They ask the right questions. Jesus does this. Hey guys, “What are you talking about? Where are you going? What happened in Jerusalem? Who are you? And he gets them talking.

Be curious about Planet Teenager. I’ve found it helpful when preparing for foreign travel to read some guide books. To take out those binoculars and check out the far horizon, get a lay of the land. As an aging Baby Boomer who grew up with a rotary phone, who thinks a blue tooth is cause for visiting a dentist, and who remembers stores closing on Sundays – Really?- if I want to be relevant, I need to understand the world has changed.

“Who are you?” asks Jesus. With our far horizon vision we see that teens are members of a Generation, often named the “Millennials” in recognition of their coming of age at the turning of the millennium… a generation of people born from about 1982 on.
With generational theorists, notably Neil Howe and William Strauss we observe that they are Optimistic, Plugged in electronically, Global, Team players, Pressured to succeed and yet Sheltered at same time by we famous helicopter parents. They have been raised to know that they are Precious and Special and Unique and at the same time they are inspired to work together for the common good.

Interesting…we see they aren’t so much like my Coming of Age “Question Authority” but they are more like the GI Generation- Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation- civic minded and dedicated to offering their lives to make a difference. In fact Howe and Strauss coin Millennials “the Next Great Generation.”

Astoundingly there are more members of the Millennial Generation than there were people on the planet in 1950. Ten years ago Howe and Strauss called them a “revolution in the waiting” and so we the curious travelers think, hmmm, perhaps this revolution has moved from waiting to coming of age? We note youth -led movements for freedom earlier this year in North Africa: Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Fascinating. Far horizon curiosity. Check.

In our safari ethnography of course we’ll want to get down on our bellies for a close up inspection of indigenous culture. To know the kids in our zip codes. In our congregations. In our mission field. We could do this literally like the time I invented Under Pew Races for our youth group activity. Split into tag teams, see who could crawl on their bellies underneath the pews the fastest. Let me tell you it’s not easy, and I was a handicap to my team. I learned youth are inventive and kind, as the winning team offered to spray themselves with Pledge and race again, to save our sexton the chore of dusting.

I served as a Youth Pastor to a large congregation, 150 teens active, 16 different high schools. We enjoyed sophisticated systems of youth ministry- dedicated youth space, a clearly articulated youth mission that was wholeheartedly supported by the congregation, meals and programs and mission trips and Bible study and procedures and protocol. I led 10 volunteer adult counselors, who were sometimes intimidated by our lists of desired outcomes and purpose statements.

So on occasion I’d say Let’s go over your job description: Love the kids. Can you do that? We are not asking that you be a Bible scholar, we are not insisting on mastery of the egg in the armpit relay game, but can you love them? Do you like teens, just the way they are? Or do they drive you crazy and you want to change them? Sometimes we well-intentioned folks cross borders to fix those kids… Show them how to do and be Church the right way. But we are called to love them, and to love them we must know them.

But it doesn’t stop there. Practice 2: Witnessing. Along the way to Emmaus, Jesus questions, listens, and then he tells them his story. He shares a witness with them. He unpacks traditions of Moses and the Prophets and interprets the events in Jerusalem as an unfolding drama within salvation history.

We are called to cultivate disciples of Jesus Christ. - We don’t cross borders only to learn best practices for building community- We are not just mentors for civic engagement. We are spiritual companions – so that through incarnational witness the very face of Christ can be discerned.

My safari loving son is now 15 and he went on his first mission trip with his youth group this summer, rebuilding Katrina-damaged homes in Biloxi Mississippi. Each day his wonderful youth pastor Rev. Jamie Green engaged in a spirit of inquiry and asked the group, “Where did you see God today?” “Who was the face of Christ for you today?” In the people we served. In the patience and trust I learned. In the love we put into action.

I recall a Teen Mission trip I led to a United Methodist Mission Site in OH. Theme for week “We are the body of Christ.” I wanted kids to engage with the Bible- not as a dusty ancient ideal, but as a living means of grace. I wanted them to EMBODY the Word. So we started tattooing. Each day I had the group tattoo a scripture on a body part. OK, by tattoo I mean semi-permanent marker.

First day, BICEPS: “I can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens me.” Philippians 4. Second day inscribe on your FOOT, “walk humbly with your God” Micah 6. Third day, little more challenging for some- write around BELLY BUTTON from Psalm 139 “ God knit me together in my mother’s womb.” You get the idea.

For service work our large group of 50 was split up into smaller teams. I went with teens to put a new roof on Heather’s house. Heather was a young widow raising two daughters on her own. The poverty of her living conditions was a stark contrast to the suburban blessings of our teens. Heather was covered with tattoos. Now by tattoos I mean the indelible kind. You couldn’t help but notice that some of them were elaborate and colorful and some were simple and incomplete.

Our teens were awkward and uncharacteristically shy. They didn’t know how to start conversation with Heather. And Heather was equally shy. But towards the end of the week, Heather became a border crosser and approached our teens on a water break. “What’s with all those words on your bodies?” she asked. The teen who was struggling with the BELLY BUTTON day gave me one of those withering “you are so embarrassing me” looks that seem to be perfected by youth. Another teen said, “Oh, Robin is teaching us that we are the Body of Christ.”

Heather thought about it a moment, and said, “Hmm, my husband used to say that my body was his canvas.” And she opened up and told us her story. We sat down on the grass and listened. She told us about her husband who died the year before. He had known that he was dying of kidney failure. He was a tattoo artist, and he wanted to teach her the trade so she would have a way to support herself after he died. He was very worried about her. The Drs. would not allow him to get any more tattoos, so he taught her on the canvas of her own body. She pointed to the beautiful ones – he did these, and to the wobbly ones- I learned here. “Each tattoo reminds me of how much he loved me.”

The once embarrassed teen met her in that common place where borders are no more. He extended his hand and showed her the Ephesians inscription of the day “You are God’s handiwork” “Heather, I guess you are God’s handiwork.” They sat and talked a very long time. That evening the teen shared in our devotions – “we are all the hands and feet of Christ. Us on the roof and Heather and her kids inside. I learned so much today.”

We are called to give witness to transforming love of God in Christ.

I want to say a brief word about our Third Practice: Being Active. It’s been embedded all along in our practice of Curiosity as we get to know teens and in the Practice of Witnessing as we imagine effective ways to communicate the gospel.

Cleopas and Friend practice “solvitur ambulando” Latin for “It is solved in the walking,” a practice labyrinth walkers know well. We’ll figure it out by the Doing. They get up and DO the things that Jesus did whether or not they fully understand. In fact - it is only when our two disciples DO precisely what Jesus did- invite a stranger over for dinner- that they recognize who Christ is.

One of the many things teens can teach us is the value of being doers of the Word, not just hearers of the Word. Teens do not sit around a conference table and wait until every system is in place, every contingency in anticipated, and every operations manual is updated. No, they have faith that Christ is going to show up and Christ is going to provide - as long as we are out there walking on the journey. And by the way, won’t it be fun to see how it all happens.

Finally, on another mission trip, this time 11 hr drive to rural Kentucky, our caravan of vehicles labored up, around, and down Appalachian Mountains for miles and miles, no towns in sight. This was REMOTE. We adults were tense from white knuckle driving- trying to focus on the road instead of the precipitous drop off cliff inches from our wheels.

When we finally arrived at our Mission accommodations -2 hours late, hungry, tired, it was pitch dark and raining buckets. One of our vans had been sent ahead to scout out the place. The first person I saw when I arrived was the counselor who had been sent on reconnaissance and she did not look happy. “Robin, I really do not think this is going to work.” I looked around and saw what she meant. We were standing in a coal mine adapted as a bunkhouse, mighty short on the adapting part. I walked ahead a bit by myself, trying to think of something positive to say when the complaints started coming my way. And then a 9th grader, on his very first Mission Trip, came sprinting up to me. Here it comes, I thought. He skidded to a stop, looked me directly in the eye, and said with a big grin, “Robin isn’t this perfect!” and he bolted off again to share in the excitement with his friends.

Friends, we are called to join Christ to companion with young people as they crawl under and tattoo along and run through this holy path of faith formation. We are called to learn from these young disciples even more than we could ever teach. And at the end of the day, let us run back to our friends with enthusiastic witness and proclaim, “Isn’t it perfect!” Thanks be to God. Amen.

~The Rev. Dr. Robin J. Olson, Director of Spiritual Life at Boston University's School of Theology, Boston, MA; Part of the 2011 Summer Preaching Series, "Evangelism in the Liberal Tradition"

For information about our summer preaching series, please contact us at chapel@bu.edu.

Fear Not The Fallow

2011-08-07T11:00:00.017-04:00

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Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33

Jesus meets us today dressed in summer attire.

Water, wind, boats, mountains, crowds, quiet, waves, sea—these are the forms of raiment he wears coming toward us this morning, out of the unforeseen, out of the future.

We has sent the crowds away. He has ordered the twelve into a boat, with a destination given ‘on the other side’. He has gone up, gone out, gone away, onto the mountain to pray. Day came and then evening, morning and then night, and he was there on the mountain alone.

Soon there will be much and more work to do. The wind will come up, the team will be afraid, the waves and wind will rise, and he will be called out at the fourth watch of the night, late at night, the wee hours, ‘dark thirty’. And all of this will arise, we are taught in the Scripture, as an invitation to faith. ‘O Man of Little Faith…’

Just for now, though, just for a minute, there is a clean summer wind blowing across the top of the mountain, whence Jesus bids us come.

One year, some miles west of here, within a time and space of joyful ministry, we passed a year in which snow fell on every major holiday and Sunday. Snow fell on Halloween. Snow fell on Thanksgiving. Snow fell on Christmas Sunday, on Christmas, on New Year’s, on Ground Hog Day, on Palm Sunday, on Easter. To top it all off, snow also fell on Mothers’ Day. In our region, when summer comes, we recognize a different, necessarily different, season. A fallow time.

Howard Thurman, by the report from Oregon in email this last year, once gave a sermon with this title. We find no record of it, nor need we one. The title tells it all. There are full times, with much snow, and there are fallow times, wherein we are restored, free from snow. These fallow times, mountain times, lake times, breeze times, quiet times, and faith times, we need not fear.

In the summer, in the north, we often gather for family reunions. Here we are connected vertically, by generation and time, rather than horizontally, by work and space. You may have some reason for caution and for anxiety, heading for such a party. Our families of origin bear within them difficult memories, hard words spoken, past hurts, settled, negatively settled, relationships. Yet, in the fallow time, we go to the place where ‘when you have to go there, they have to take you’. Fear not the fallow. You may discover someone, something, a story, a memory, an uncle, a gift, which could only come your way in a quieter mode, up a mountain, apart from the economics of work and the rest of life.

In the summer, in the north, we may have more time for friendship. If you are forever fiddling with the latest blackberry or other quasi communication, as is part now of our technological turf, you may be uncertain, even anxious, with the quieter rhythms of friendship: listening, more listening, speaking, quiet. Fear not. Our friends give us back our real selves, our own best selves. They both require and deserve our undivided attention, come summer.

In the summer, up here in the north, we too may take to the high mountain. It is the attention, the mind, once freed, which illumines the natural world. The monarch butterfly is always there. In the quiet, with enough warmth to get around and to watch and look, we of a sudden may be able to appreciate the miraculous wonder of the created order. Fear not the fallow. It is the forecourt of prayer.

In the summer, in the north, we may find the idler rhythms, the fallow mode, if we can shake off the natural fear of a different way, a different habit: in travel, in exercise, in reading, in devotion, in silence. Our being, our human being, is not fully exhausted, though we may be, by our fretful and grasping construction and expenditure, the getting and spending by which we lay waste our powers. An hour a day, a day a week, a week a quarter, a quarter a year, a year every seven: these are not times meant only for a few. We are human beings not human doings.

From this pulpit, in this summer, we have prayerfully paused to listen for the gospel under the theme of ‘Evangelism in the Liberal Tradition: South, North, Youth.’ From Kentucky, Rev. Wade brought us deeply to consider faith, in the binding of Isaac and the Ethiopian Eunuch. From New England, Rev. Garner and Rev. Thomas announced with us the goodness of God and the presence of God. Next week, and the week following, Rev. Olson will bring us her wisdom regarding the gospel and young adults. Voices from South, North and Youth ask us to consider the grace of invitation.

Jesus, by the record of St. Matthew, ‘went up on the mountain by himself to pray’. By his example he invites us to join him, as Frost wrote, I am going out to clean the pasture spring. I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away, and watch the water clear, I may. I shan’t be gone long. You come too.

We pause by the table of grace, with bread and cup prepared. A natural, urgent objection, opposition, response, may arise as we see Jesus in summer attire.

What of our sisters and brothers, near and far, for whom the fallow is the fullest time there is? What of those who are waiting, without idols but without fruit, for a harvest time, a morning time, a full time, a work time?

Here is a man, whose day, every day, is fallow. He watches from the hospital bed, blank eyed.

Here is a woman who has known the power and happiness of real work. She again scans the screen, the paper, the mail, the news, looking for a place to invest her real gifts.

Here is a couple who have much in memory to share, much in life earned wisdom to share, and no visitors. My grandmother had a sign on her kitchen door: Do you know who I would like to cook a big chicken and dumpling dinner for? Anybody.

Those who can remember, can help those who are learning to remember. Frost: When to the heart of man was it ever less than a treason, to go with the drift of things, to yield with a grace to reason, to bow and accept the end of a love or a season?

Look about you. 14 million Americans who are looking for work are not finding work. The income of the top 1% of the population exceeds that of the bottom 50%. Average household wealth for Caucasian families is 20 times that of families of color. We may lack to some degree the pastoral or personal imagination such a time requires. We may need films, novels, sermons, books, which quicken the heart, in an appreciation for what such a fearsome fallow time can mean. Do we remember what it feels like to be left out? We need an Uncle Tom’s Cabin of unemployment, and a Harriet Beecher Stowe of loss of work. We need a Grapes of Wrath of unemployment, and a John Steinbeck of loss of work. We need an Ironweed of our current unemployment, and a William Kennedy of loss of work. We need a Cesar Chavez of unemployment, and a workers movement for loss of work. For those who have not been vocationally excluded, who have jobs, and who have good minds and hearts, we need a rhetoric which will touch the heart, open the heart, warm the heart, change the heart and move the heart.

Can you remember what it feels like, what it is like, to lack what others have, and to want it badly? In meditating on today’s Gospel, the figure of sinking Peter brought a memory. You know, Peter means ‘rock’. Usually we think of this as a reference to his foundational strength in the building of the church. In this passage, as he goes under water, his name perhaps has more direct reference to his sinking qualities, ‘sink…like a rock’. For some years, I taught swimming and ran a waterfront at a church camp, along the shores of a most beautiful lake. Those years, and the men and women I met there, caused me go to seminary. It was not what they knew, or what they professed, or what they did, even, that drew me. It was the way they lived, in freedom and love. I pray that here, year by year, somehow, others will see in you, and me, such freedom and such love. I looked this week at a now very worn BOOK OF WORSHIP, a gift from one such soul who inscribed: To Bob the lifeguard, firs you saved lives, now you’ll save souls. God bless you. Some gifts do last a lifetime. In those summer years, we had a firm rule: no drowning. Yet with the right preparation, you really should not have any, drownings that is, anyway, which thankfully we did not. But occasionally, we had to dive in after somebody. One of the most poignant, frightening, and repeated instances occurred, you will think this odd, during the swimming tests. Young teenagers had to show that they could swim 50 yards, and tread water, in order pass the swim test and swim in the deep water. Most did fine. But every now and then, a fourteen year old who did not know how to swim, and who did not want to admit it, but who did not want to be left out, and who did not want to be seen as different, would get in line, stay in line, and then, I guess hoping for who knows what, would jump in, and begin to sink. They just did not want to be left out. In the eyeglass of memory I look at those young people. Can you remember what it feels like to be left out? Can you remember what if feels like, to lack what others have, and to want it so badly? Can we remember, come autumn, what it feels like to be in our teens? Today, can we gain a little measure of empathy for 9.1% of the population looking for work?

Our gospel commends faith, the antidote for fear. Humans do not easily walk on water, as Peter, the Rock, reminds us. My own experience with gravity, is not unlike your own. Rocks rolling down the hill go all the way. Consistently. Cars on ice slide down hill. Consistently. Boat hoist wheels once loosed and holding the boat spin uncontrollably. Consistently. Swimmers who do not know the prone float sink. Consistently. Matthew 14 was not written to erase the need for a swim test. Granted that we are not ever in a position to say what God can and cannot do, our experience with gravity holds. So too does our need for faith. So too does our need to face the fallow. Fear not the fallow.

Why do we fear to face the fallow? We are uncomfortable with silence, with solitude, with quiet, with lack, with anything that interrupts the 24/7/365 din of information falling like a not so gentle rain upon us. The fallow is meant as a season, not as a permanent condition. It is meant as Sabbath, preparation, restoration, reinvigoration, as the balance that provides a living critique of our idolatry of work. The fallow is meant not to last but to lean upon us, to shift our body weight, to raise a question.

In the summer I pass by daily a farm still operated, forty years later, by an elementary school friend. We were caused one year to perform a stage version of Tom Sawyer’s playful entrapment of Huck Finn along the fence. Do you remember this typically Twain send up of work?

Tom is told to paint the fence. He begins, when up comes Huck, who is curious. Tom couldn’t possibly give up the joy of the job. The more he smiles, the more intrigued Huck becomes. Finally Tom relents, and says he will graciously allow Huck to paint the fence for him, which delights Huck. Only, Tom finishes, Huck will have to pay for the privilege of work. He has only an apple to his name, which Tom seizes and departs.

How deeply have we thought about just how much we adore work? Has Twain’s story caught us at all? It should. Work is crucial, especially for those who lack it. Work is perilous, especially for those who cannot see its limits.

Man does not live by bread alone. Bread alone will never begin to bring us to terms with life or death, with loss or betrayal, with choice or failure, with sin or death or the threat of meaninglessness. More, bread alone will not ever help us set the theological balances by which we live and die: how much creation, how much fall; how much grace, how much sin; how much freedom, how much constraint; how much divine, how much human; how much mind, how much heart; and, in today’s encounter with Jesus, how much full time and how much fallow, how much work and how much prayer.

We need not fear the fallow, if we face the fallow, and fix the limits of the fallow, with a measure of personal empathy, of sympathy for those for whom the fallow is all they have.

A measure of faith may help. To move from fear to faith means learning how to float. You know, sometimes, after failing the swim test, and through the rest of the week, a young person would come for lessons, to learn to swim. The difference between sinking and swimming is floating. To float is to learn to trust that the same water in life that can sorely threaten you will also hold you up. No analogy is perfect. But the trust that allows one to float, to learn the prone float, is like the trust that keeps one afloat in life, and moves one from fear to faith. Lessons in the strokes come later. First there comes a moment when you stretch your arms and lie face down in the water, and a wait for your feet to rise. You see? You can float. You have faith. The water will hold you up. We are in good hands, and so it behooves us to bear one another’s burdens, as Huston Smith once said.

We may thereto find a way to mark out a new way of living, perhaps not quite walking on water, but one that carries us forward by faith in one who stills the waters and calms the sea. Then our fullness will be fallow, and our fallow full. So Frost, Yield who will to their separation, my object in living is to unite my vocation with my avocation, as my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, and the work is play for mortal stakes, is the deed ever really done, for heaven and the future’s sakes.

A long time ago, in a borrowed upper room, a gathering of very human beings was fed by One they came to know as Son of God. What they were fed gave them the courage to face the full and the empty, and especially the faith to ‘fear not the fallow’.

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
Dean of Marsh Chapel

Never Alone

2011-07-31T11:00:00.003-04:00

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Isaiah 55:1-5
Matthew 28:16-20

Our Savior pronounces a directive for the eleven that they teach all nations, to glorify the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to glorify the Divine Godhead of what we have come to identify as our Christian faith. In that day they would be known as early evangelists, as men and women of the way. What was this way? It was a declaration in time and space that Emanuel, God with us, has now completed a work in human flesh that no other man or divine could do, or would do. He had provided himself, a spotless sacrifice that we might redeemed from the separation that sin created between humankind and the divine. This sacrifice was not ritual, ceremonial, it was literal; it demanded blood, it demanded death. And now it was completed…death, completion? Yes, it was completed, but that was not the end of the story. For on the third day morning He presented Himself to the world, claiming all power in heaven and earth belonging to him. So this commissioning is a great point of ministry. We really have something to tell.

There is much Jesus taught his disciples, that confirm this spotless, sacrificial life that lived, that men and women would believe. For in belief do we understand the power of this commission. Our belief helps us to understand that in our most challenging times, we are never alone.

If one accepts Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, concerns about being alone might be best understood at the level where social concerns and needs dominate our existence. Our commission with the Christian Faith requires us to remember that in Christ, all things are now made new. This newness demands that we see, hear, and act differently. How we process the world changes. We cannot approach this task, in the glow of the resurrection morning, in disbelief, for this disbelief renders us powerless.

In our lesson today, we see that not all of the disciples believed. Mark tells us that Jesus upbraided them for this…he gave them a talking’ to! Might I say this like the old preachers I grew up with?—in my “Holy Ghost imagination” I can hear the savior saying to these fellas---Look, I have sent to you first, the news that I had risen as I said I would, but you did not believe—Is it because I gave the women this task? In like manner I gave audience to some believers out in the country, where we sat for spell and talked of eternal things. But you still did not believe. What’s wrong fellas> Are you looking for my word of instruction, my word of liberation to come only from men. Or are you thinking that only in the great edifices in the great cities will my word need to be heard?

Well, before I get too carried away in critiquing the disciples, we are likewise lacking evidence of an eternal appreciation of this good news. Breaking the bonds of death, the resurrection was the good news. No longer could we be subject to the extortions of promised life or the briberies of earthly wealth, and certainly not slaves to the creations that belong to God. God is, is central to this story. We might exhaust flesh and time our consumption of the words of the Bible. Indeed the words are life giving, but they are also pointing towards one end, to Glorify God. Psalm 19:1, “The heavens shall declare thy handiwork.” But Isaiah 48:11 gives us an understanding that God will not relinquish his Glory. So there must be a faithful reconciliation of the events on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and The resurrection, Sunday morning. These eleven, were at a Passover celebration, a supper that Jesus declares he had looked forward to eating with them. He had before spoke of his body and his blood and the necessity of partaking of such. Some of the disciples and followers followed him no more because of this image. Yet, these eleven stayed, as did the traitor Judas. One might wonder how different the passions of Judas were from the other eleven. I suggest that being open to Jesus as the Glory of God is a crucial difference. So, then we can see that this struggle is a consistent one in the narratives of the Bible.

Struggling with the central tenets of this notion of God’s Glory is the rhyme and meter of biblical literature, and we have heard this in our reading of psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want….” Throughout the psalm we are given I believe, important attributes of God. We have the transcendence and immanence of God. The Divine is involved in my life, and because of that I shall not want for any good thing: “No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly… For He is a Sun and shield” Psalm 84:11. Yet even these words are loaded with expectations and too often we miss the central ethic of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. The gospel of John gives us help:

John 20:21-23

21 Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven." NIV

Providing another view of this commissioning, one which helps us to see this Trinitarian promise and the power it holds over the very notion of ministry. We understand that we are never alone. The presence of the Lord is crucial to our Christian living, our Christian Faith. It is one aspect of our attempt to understand God, and it can be a help in the increase of our faith. Many would be faithful, except for the fears of what seems like a lonely journey. It is not a metaphor, this loneliness. It can strangle your faith, just as it binds your abilities to love, forgive, and be the embodiment of all that Christ has been to you. God tells us to have faith in him; believe him; trust him; his mercies are new every morning; why are you downcast? (Psalm 42:5) he asks, Hope in God! For He cannot forget us (Isa. 49:14-16).

In these times of despair, when the poorest are least considered in the body politic,

Remember—you are never alone

When a ministry of justice seems to be a distant concern for those who say they represent Christ,

Remember—you are never alone

When few seem to have concern about the deconstruction on God’s Word, to fit popular press,

Remember—you are never alone

When success in worldly matters incite jealous attacks upon you and your character,

Remember—you are never alone

When those who say they are friends are nowhere to be found,

Remember –You are never alone

When your testimony of Christ brings rebuke and scorn,

Remember—you are never alone

When grace is viewed as weakness,

Remember—you are never alone

Summary

God’s word consistently shares with us His concern and love. He demonstrated this in the most dramatic way in human history. He came to be with His people. In our text this morning Christ has provided proof to his disciples and given instructions that they might receive the fullness of the God head with the coming of the Holy Spirit.

We are never alone. The Love of God is forever with us. Christ resurrected is the greatest testimony of love the world has ever known. God’s immanence—He proves to us daily that He has not abandoned the world. He is active in the world. His transcendence is proof of his power beyond this world. And by that same power he is the center of all creation. And the resurrection is our proof of God’s abiding love and eternal power. But it is demonstrated most by his presence. His presence is the foundation of ministry. Tell the world the good news that Jesus the Christ has conquered death and has risen from the dead. It is the essential belief of our Christian communion.

~The Rev. Dr. Gregory E. Thomas, Senior Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Haverhill, MA; Part of the 2011 Summer Preaching Series, "Evangelism in the Liberal Tradition"

For information about our summer preaching series, please contact us at chapel@bu.edu.

Speaking Our Faith

2011-07-24T11:00:00.002-04:00

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Ezekiel 37:1-18
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

I. Evangelism in the Liberal Tradition

It is an honor to join you for this summer’s preaching series at Marsh Chapel, which is focused on Evangelism in the Liberal Tradition. “Evangelism,” “evangelical,” “to evangelize”…these are not comfortable terms for many New England Christians. A number of years back, our family attended the wedding of some distant relatives in West Virginia. The groom and his groomsmen were clean-cut, athletic, enthusiastic young men who were all planning to serve Christ’s church as youth ministers. Over the course of the weekend celebration, they learned that I was a pastor in New England. I remember them shaking their heads in a kind of pitying admiration, and then one of them said,“Boy, New England is a tough place to evangelize.” I didn’t have the heart to tell them we don’t even like to use the word.

For those of us who preach or teach or participate in churches in New England, we know this is a tough place to evangelize. It’s a tough place to have a vital and vibrant church, its a tough place to be a Christian. According to a Trinity University study, New England has surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region of the country.

II. Grace Restaurant in Portland, Maine

We see evidence of this all around us. Someone told me about a church in Maine they attended a few months ago. They said they had a great experience. Absolutely loved it! I was intrigued, and I asked what made the experience so wonderful? They said, “I had the pan roasted Atlantic Cod with braised baby artichokes, clams, fingerling potatoes, olives, and oven-dried tomatoes. It was divine!” They had eaten at Grace Restaurant in Portland, Maine a trendy new restaurant that opened last year in a 1850s Gothic Revival-style church. The review in the local Portland paper stated: “Few of us bother to go to church anymore, so people in Maine must find ways to reuse our houses of worship, just as we do our riverside mills in this post-industrial age. Grace Restaurant's repurposing of the Chestnut Street Methodist Church is the most impressive reclamation project yet.” There is more “repurposing” of former churches, in New England than anywhere else in the country.

III. Church Condos

A number of years ago, the Boston Globe’s Real Estate section had a cover story entitled “Converted.” It was about the many churches in and around Boston that have been converted into high-end condos. The comments from the new condo dwellers were as amusing at they were disturbing. One woman said, “I am a very spiritual person, living in this old church is like being cradled in God’s hand.” Another commented, “I love old buildings, if there were icons on the walls that would have been really fun.” I don’t know about you, but I will turn over in my grave, if years from now someone is living in a two bedroom condo in a church I attended or served saying, “you know it would be really fun if there were icons still here. If only there was an etching of the crucified Christ over the kitchen sink – that would have been really neat.” Slowly, but surely, the Church of Jesus Christ is being driven into exile in New England…what group of Christians can think about evangelism, when many communities are just struggling to survive!

IV. Culture Shift

It used to be, in the good old days, you could get a dose of Christianity just by going to school. We were a Christian nation and people just assumed everyone believed just like they did. The Ten Commandments could be posted wherever people wanted to place them. Manger scenes could be erected on town greens without creating a firestorm of controversy. In fact, our historic old New England churches we referred to as meetinghouses because the church was where the people of the town went to conduct civic business and engage in community discourse. The church was central. Sports games and practices were never held on Sunday. You couldn’t buy booze on Sunday. In the town my wife grew up in, you couldn’t even drive on Sundays. Everyone went to church – in fact, it used to be that you didn’t dare miss church because if you did, you’d be the one everyone would talk about at coffee hour…the good old days! Much has changed – the church in New England isn’t central anymore – our faith is in exile, and if Christianity is to regain it’s relevance in this region, evangelism has to become more than just a scary word we don’t dare speak.

V. Ezekiel in Exile

The Prophet Ezekiel understood exile. He was among the first group of Jews to be deported from his homeland in Judea in 598 BC, to the menacing empire of King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. From a distance, Ezekiel learned of the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, and the sacking and burning of the Temple. All that had been, was lost. The glory of Israel was a fading memory. That is when God gave Ezekiel a powerful and disturbing vision. We are told that the spirit of God placed Ezekiel in a valley filled with countless dry, sun-bleached, lifeless bones – a gruesome sight that could have only sunk Ezekiel’s spirit more deeply into despair. When you find yourself in the Valley of the Dry Bones, it always seems as if things have gone from bad to worse. I suspect we have all had our moments when it felt as if death and destruction were all around us. Our health was failing, or our business was failing, or our marriage was failing, or our children were failing…the bones of misfortune piled around our ankles and all hope seemed to be lost. If asked by God, “Mortal, can these dry bones live?”, we might have responded with a resounding “No!”

Ezekiel’s response to God is not far off from that. When asked, “Mortal, can these dry bones live?” “Can what is dead regain life?” “Can the exiled Hebrews thrive again?” Ezekiel answers, “O Lord God, you know.” Which is a way of saying, “I don’t know.” “Things look grim.” “I’m not sure I like our chances.”

God’s answer comes in the form of a command. “Prophesy!” “Speak!” “Tell the people what is possible!” According to this passage of scripture, the first step to new life and vitality is to speak about it. Tell people about it. Proclaim that God can put back together that which has been broken apart, and then watch what happens! Dead bones, dead relationship, dead churches, dead faith – are given new life by speaking good news into unfortunate situations. Curiously, that is exactly what evangelism is – the sharing, the speaking of good and encouraging news. When people are told what is possible – that is when good things can begin to happen. The Hebrew’s hope, their faith, and their imagination had been deadened in exile – they lost a sense of possibility. The first step back to their Promised Land, was to have someone speak up and proclaim that God could lead them back from the brink of disaster. Ezekiel, standing in a deep dark valley with dead bones gathered around his ankles became that someone! He proclaimed that God could breath life into death!

VI. Good News in Exile!

As Christians across New England sit in sparsely populated church pews, as we see the role of Christianity in our culture greatly diminished, as we quietly wonder if our faith makes any difference at all…it can seem as if all hope is lost. And what has really been lost is our imagination – we cannot even conceive of a vital Christian faith that captivates our lives and our culture. We don’t know what it looks like. We have no vision for it. We can see the mustard seed, but we can’t imagine it taking root and growing into an enormous bush that demonstrates the expansive nature of God’s kingdom. We can’t imagine having a faith that daily directs our actions, any more than we can imagine sitting in a church packed with people who are passionate about bringing about a better world for the glory of God. All we see around us are the skeletons of once proud churches, now repurposed into condos, or restaurants, or community centers. “Mortal, can these dry bones live?” Our first instinct is to say, “No.” “Things look grim.” “I’m not sure I like our chances.” But Ezekiel encourages us to believe that it is possible. Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed encourages us to believe that it is possible. Both of these stories prompt us to raise our voices and proclaim that God can still breath abundant, expansive life into death!

VII. Ezekiel’s Witness

The prophesy that Ezekiel dared to proclaim in the Valley of Dry Bones came true. Against all odds, seventy years after their captivity in Babylon began, King Cyrus of Persia allowed the Jews to return to their homeland. Why? We have no idea. But it happened. It is a historical fact. God said the Hebrew people would be restored to their land, and it came to pass. Given all the challenges to their survival throughout the generations, it is nothing short of miraculous that any Jews remain in Palestine today. Time and time again, when the Jews were standing in the Valley of Death, with the bones of their people literally gathering around their ankles, God brought them back from the brink of destruction into new life.

That’s what God does. God is in the resurrection business. God resurrects lives. God resurrects relationships. God resurrects entire communities. God can resurrect churches. God can take a mustard seed and turn it into a powerful image of heaven. God breathes abundant and expansive life into death – it has been true for the Jews, it was true for Jesus, it can be true for us and our churches. And something of the resurrection message, which is found throughout the bible, must be at the heart of evangelism. Resurrection is the good news we are called to share – in the Valley of the Dry Bones, in desperate lives and situations, and in dying churches. “Yes,” we are encouraged to believe, “these dry bones can live!” A mustard seed of faith can produce a kingdom full of possibility. Resurrection is real!

VIII. The "E" Word

In truth, as New Englanders, the word evangelism freaks us out a bit. It conjures up images of theologically disturbing religious tracks on car windshields, or hellfire and brimstone preaching yelled trough a megaphone by a guy wearing a sandwich board sign licked with flames, or roadside billboards that proclaim a Judgment Day that came and went without much happening. That is what we think of when we hear the word evangelism – so we choose not to have anything to do with it whatsoever. We have come to believe that evangelism means telling people they are doomed if they don’t change their ways. It’s about telling people how bad things will get because of their sins – and as thoughtful people who are aware of our own failings, we don’t want any part of that.

However, according to this story of Ezekiel, evangelism is just the opposite. Evangelism is not about bad news, but about good news. Evangelism is standing in the midst of difficult, perhaps even desperate situations, and getting up the courage to tell people that God intends for things to get better. Evangelism is not about hell and fire, but about hope and faith. It’s about how seeds become giant bushes, and giant bushes can become powerful symbols of God’s abundant and expansive love. Simply put, evangelism is about sharing good news like that with others!

IX. Speaking of Faith

So, given this story of the Dry Bones, what might evangelism look like today in New England? I think, like Ezekiel, as Christians, we are called to stand in the dry and barren and desperate places of life and proclaim words of hope. We are called to speak up – and to speak words of encouragement. In disheartening situations we are called to be the ones who proclaim what is possible, even if we hold some doubts ourselves. In the midst of broken dreams and broken promises, broken relationships and broken churches, and broken budgets and broken political discourse, we are called to ignite people’s imaginations by reminding them that we serve a God – we follow a Lord – who is in the resurrection business. Time and time again, our God breathes life into death. God takes what is broken, and puts it back together again. That is who God is, that is the essence of God’s character. Our Lord is a life-giver, and that is good news. And when we gather up the courage to share that good news with others…that’s called evangelism. That is what evangelism looks like in our tradition, and that’s something we all can do!

Amen.

~The Rev. Dr. Stephen Chapin Garner, Pastor of United Church of Christ, Norwell, MA; Part of the 2011 Summer Preaching Series, "Evangelism in the Liberal Tradition"

For information about our summer preaching series, please contact us at chapel@bu.edu.

The Spirit's Sway

2011-07-17T11:00:00.003-04:00

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Acts 8:26-39
Psalm 23
Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43

Fifty years ago finds me on one side or another of my ninth birthday, I am sitting shotgun in my Aunt’s 1960 Buick Le Sabre, a tank of a car, white exterior, red interior, huge fins in the rear, floating above six round taillights. The Buick is a year plus old, but it probably doesn’t have 5,000 miles on it because we don’t go anywhere. Our family owns and operates a small motel in a small town, which requires around the clock attention all year long.

My aunt and I are leading a family from New York to a tourist home for the night’s lodging. This family drives an expensive car, is very well dressed and very well spoken. They are also very African-American, and this happens in Kentucky, where the Jim Crow laws of segregation rule the day. Like every other business in that town, we, reserved the “right” to refuse service to, well, you-know-who. Reaching the black section of town, my aunt found the tourist home, knocks on the door, speaks to Mrs. Johnson, the proprietor, and holds the door as the family carries their luggage inside.

Without saying a word, my aunt taught me that we were on a journey of injustice. I could read it in her worried and sad face. We were Christians for goodness sake, But she, along with my uncle and many others, felt powerless to change things all by themselves. Which is to say, while my family contained no civil-rights heroes, there few, if any, villains, either.

I serve as pastor of the Anchorage Presbyterian Church, established in 1799 on the outskirts of Louisville, Kentucky. From its beginning, that congregation faced some major challenges to the prevailing wisdom, and passed through some excruciating changes. One of the earliest of these, according to our records, was the introduction of a Melodeon into worship. A Melodeon is a household-quality pump organ. Foot pedals work bellows which push air through metal reeds, giving the Melodeon pitch and volume. The musical tradition for most Presbyterians at that time was voices singing Psalms, not hymns, unaccompanied by any instrument. That practice went back to the 16th century, to John Knox, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Calvin.

Thus a scandal was created with this instrument which some unnamed soul or souls brought to church one weekday. When the faithful gathered on Sunday, there it was.

The Session, the church’s governing body, was infuriated at this breach of both authority and tradition. It ordered that the Melodeon be removed forthwith. And lo and behold, the Session was ignored. The Melodeon remained in place. The Elders grumbled. but they apparently got used to it, and accompanied music, complete with harmonies, a choir, hymns, anthems, contemporary music and even a few praise songs have been the tradition ever since.

We laugh and wonder how it could ever have been controversial to have instrumental music in worship, and most of us -- if not all of us -- are perfectly pleased with this turn of events. But in those days, many people considered such a new way of doing music to be worldly and sacrilegious, and they would not put up with it, and it split congregation after congregation in those years in that part of the world.

But still the risk taken to bring in that Melodeon was nothing compared to the risk Philip took when he and the Spirit climbed into that chariot and treated that Ethiopian Eunuch as if he were a child of God.

In the Ancient Near East, it was not all that uncommon to have castrated males serve in special roles, especially in service to a Queen, especially when it involved money. The idea was that sexually neutralized men would be less aggressive and more trustworthy. This man might have been neutered by an accident, or, when he was young, could have been neutered on purpose and sold into indentured servitude. In either case, it was not a life that one would choose.

Be that as it may, we read that he was on the return trip to the Ethiopian region, having worshipped in Jerusalem. In biblical times, the place-name “Ethiopia” referred to all places is Africa outside of Egypt. It is possible that the man was Jewish, but not likely. It’s more reasonable to assume that he was a Gentile. Maybe he was in process of conversion to Judaism, or maybe he was a “God-Fearer” who worshipped the God of Israel and undertook many of the practices of Judaism, but, for whatever reason, became only what we might call a “friend of Judaism. So he’s an insider in own culture. But he’s an outsider in the culture of Judaism. It’s hard to say where he fits.

This is all pretty amazing. He’s rich enough to ride in a chariot, educated enough to read the Greek of the Septuagint, devoted enough to travel all the way to Jerusalem for worship, and humble enough to admit that he did not understand what he was reading. He is also a man of gracious hospitality, When Philip asks if he can hitch a ride, the Eunuch invites him to hop aboard. The welcoming inclusion in this story works both ways.

The church I serve sits next door to the Bellewood Presbyterian Home for Children. It’s one of the oldest church-sponsored children’s homes in the country, beginning with the years after the Civil War, when orphans of veterans north and south filled its beds. In the mid 1960’s, the board of the Children’s home voted to integrate. You would have thought that the whole world was going to end right then and there. Dissenting board members resigned, and good Christian members of the church were in an uproar.

It all seems so silly today that we fought over such things, but it was a serious business in those days. In this culture, angry words were spoken, families were torn apart, violence, bombings, and murder occurred much too frequently.

As a near-eastern native, Philip himself had dark, olive-toned features. The Ethiopian he approached had even darker skin, since his genetic origins placed him closer to the equator. But the skin color was probably not as bothersome to Philip as was the fact that it marked the Ethiopian as a Gentile, as a foreigner, as “the other.” And his being a eunuch marked him as being twice cursed. As a castrated male, the Bible (Deuteronomy 23:1; cf. Lev. 21:17-21). forbids him to enter the temple. He can never be part of the inside circle of the faith he admires so much. And perhaps it is the Eunuch’s personal situation that draws him to Isaiah’s passage about the suffering and outcast servant, which in turn draws him to Jesus. When the Eunuch’s story of humiliation is seen through the lens of the cross -- and the resulting death and resurrection of Jesus, -- it becomes, under the sway of the Spirit, a story of redemption and hope.

In fact, nothing happens in the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch that is not under the pervasive influence of the Holy Spirit. Philip doesn’t choose to walk the wilderness road to Gaza; the Eunuch chose neither the accident of his birth nor his castration nor Philip to come along as his interpreter. And the words of Isaiah lie flat and inert on the page until Philip, by that same Holy Spirit, is enabled to interpret the words of Isaiah.

Words, by themselves, are just words. Even biblical words are confusing and unintelligible without the Spirit to give them loft and meaning and energy. Spirit-infused, they just leap and dance and fly off the page into the rarefied air of new life and fresh purpose, and connection to all that is real and loving and true. As the Good Book says, The letter killeth; the Spirit giveth life (II Cor. 3:6).

In the late sixties and early seventies, it was hard for the church I serve to accept women as equal partners in the business of being the people of God in a particular place and time. People tended, in those days, to emphasize biblical texts that excluded women from leadership, such as I Timothy 2:8ff and Ephesians 5:21ff. They also tended to underplay biblical passages that included the ministry of women, such as Galatians 3:23ff, and Luke 10:38-42.

I am told by an eyewitness that when our first female ruling elder served communion for the first time in our sanctuary, there were several people who walked out. They excluded themselves from the table fellowship of Jesus Christ because they were more threatened by the gender of the server than they were attracted to the promise of communion with God. Now, in the life of that church, women serve communion all the time and nobody gives it a second thought.

In all these cases, certain readings of Scripture can be used to justify positions and practices firmly held by well-meaning Christians in the past. In all these cases, other readings of Scripture point to more open, inviting attitudes. Sometimes we move toward the Ethiopian Eunuch, so to speak. Sometimes we move in the opposite direction. But no matter how we move, the movement of God’s living Word flows toward acceptance for all because for all Christ lived, died, and was resurrected into eternal life.

In many ways, the human story is one of tragedy and sin. Part of that sad story stems from our tendency to divide ourselves up in opposing camps based on race or gender or economic status or educational achievement or religious affiliation or native tongue or sexual orientation or personality type or physical ability or country of origin or what-have-you. Such separation diminishes the whole as much if not more than it diminishes the parts. And it tells an ugly lie about our faith in the one sovereign and universal Lord of light and love. We are one, not because we look alike, talk alike and act alike, we are very different. But we are nonetheless one because of one blood we were created by the grace of God. Just as importantly, we were redeemed into one human family through the faith of Jesus Christ.

That’s why, every now and then, our human story takes a turn toward the holy and the just. A few short weeks ago, the people of Anchorage Presbyterian Church baptized a little baby whose skin was as soft as velvet and as black as coal. I mean complete, unmitigated black. His father was one of the lost boys of Sudan, and his mother was not a lost girl, exactly, but still a Sudanese refugee from oppressive violence. In biblical times they would probably just be called Ethiopians. It was the most amazing sight to behold. It would have sent some of our former church members spinning in their graves if they had not been reborn into eternal life and eternal loves themselves.

I’m here to tell you this morning, that as that beautiful black baby was baptized and brought into the community of God’s faithful people, we were caught firmly yet tenderly in the spirit’s sway. We stood on ground we had not occupied previously. It was the kind of ground that makes you want to take your shoes off. If just for one glorious moment, we breathed the air of grace, we saw with the eyes of the broken yet healed heart, and we were convinced that we were following smack dab in the middle of the way, the truth, and the life of Jesus Christ. There was water in the font, and nothing in heaven or on earth could have prevented us from baptizing that boy that day.

Here, with you, in this neighborhood where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. studied and in this sanctuary where he worshipped the Lord his God, I am privileged to make this humble proclamation of hope:

May such moments flourish in all of our communities of Christ-followers, in all places where God’s people gather, and whenever the Spirit of God soars on eagles wings,the wings of love, love pure and sweet.

Amen.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. (Eph. 3:20,21)

Amen.

~The Reverend Dee H. Wade, Pastor of Anchorage Presbyterian Church, Anchorage, KY; Part of the 2011 Summer Preaching Series, "Evangelism in the Liberal Tradition"

For information about our summer preaching series, please contact us at chapel@bu.edu.

The Binding of Isaac

2011-07-10T11:00:00.003-04:00

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Genesis 22:1-14

A few weeks ago we were shook our heads at the story of a 44 year-old Long Island woman who was arrested for threatening bodily harm to a Little League baseball coach and his family. It seems that her son was not selected to play on a traveling all star little league team. She was outraged that anyone would reject her son for such an important opportunity, and she was not going to take this insult lying down. In a letter addressed to the coach, she wrote, “I will personally make it my goal to make sure that you and your family will suffer dearly. You will rot in hell soon.” The woman sent another frightening letter to the coach’s 14-year-old son. A sentence read, “Think about it, if something terrible happens to your dad or mom or sister, you can blame your dad for not taking my threats seriously” (WABC, channel 7, NYC).

Closer to my home in Louisville, another mother was arrested when her two children, ages 2 and 5, were found wandering alone in a grocery store a half-mile from their home. They had infected bug bites, hadn’t eaten in a long time and the two year old hadn’t had a diaper change in eight hours. Police found the mother at home, sleeping, and was charged for being in possession of a controlled substance as well as two counts of wanton endangerment, criminal abuse, and endangering the welfare of a minor (The Louisville Courier-Journal, 2 July 2011, p. B-4).

It’s a sign of our times. The culture in which we live toggles between child over-indulgence one moment and child neglect the next. We are at least conflicted about the way we accept children into our lives and prepare them for lives of their own.

It is a fairly recent phenomenon for parents to worship their children to such and unhealthy extent, and it is also a recent phenomenon in the precise way we abuse children these days. People in the past -- especially in the Ancient Near East -- did not have the luxury to create
either child-centered families or child-ignoring families. However, in the time of Abraham and Sarah, the antecedents of our present ambivalence about children can be found. And as I hope we will see, this passage is not just about the care and feeding of children, but also about the broader, deeper relationship between God and ourselves.

I imagine Sarah wondering what these four men and one donkey are up to as she watches them walk away toward distant mountains. I see the old woman is standing in an anachronistic kitchen (from the 1950’s, before dishwashers and microwaves and Vulcan stoves and stainless Zero-King built- in refrigerator/freezers). She’s at the sink, washing the breakfast dishes, looking out her anachronistic kitchen window as these 5 figures recede ever so slowly from her sight, getting smaller and smaller and smaller, becoming dancing dots against the desert floor, until they disappear over the horizon.

“Men!” she grunted. “If they let anything happen to my boy, they will have to answer to me.” We appreciate her concern. Isaac was the golden boy, the son of her old age, her sole sources of comfort, the child of blessing, child of promise. She knew that life was fragile enough when a child is kept close to home, with its thousand ways to die, from snake-bite to whooping cough. So why would that old coot husband of hers tempt fate by carrying off the child that was the literal answer to their literal prayers to a desolate, god-forsaken mountain. When she had reminded Abraham about the need for a lamb to take with them for the sacrifice, he mumbled something about God providing the sacrificial lamb. And that comment spun her mind into a crazy place she could not countenance for more than a second or two before seeking distraction with her work.

When the first of his three daughters were born, Frederick Buechner remembers filling pure elation, fulfillment of the proud poppa kind. She was the hope of the world, she was a living, breathing article of faith, squalling in that hospital delivery room, she was another child, another chance that one human being at least, could get it right, and be good and do all things well.

Reflecting over that birth years later, as a parent who had raised real children in a real world rather than dreamy children in a dreamy world, Buechner noticed that joy that children bring is often matched -- and sometimes overmatched -- by the pain they sear into our hearts. If we don’t want the pain, we must push back the love, or more effectively not have the children. To love any one is to suffer -- for them, by them, with them. He or she who would avoid pain and suffering should also attachment of any kind.

But, Buechner asks, if we knew that the love for our children would take us to the depths of despair, would we still have them? Yes. It is the one worthwhile feature of our species, evidence for the grace of God running though our lives. Because children represent life to us, and life is all about love and love is all about God who is the Lord of both life and love.

And it may be trite but is is nonetheless true: the giver of life is to be worshipped over the gifts of life. And that is what Abraham is sifting through as he trudges along toward the far mountain, where he will meet his destiny, and the destiny of his son and the destiny of his people, indeed, we believe, the world and the whole created order. For out there, in the bleak beyond, Abraham is not just tempting faith, he is tempting faith: the faith his has in God and the faith he believes God has in him and this whole project for the redemption of humanity which begins with Abraham being asked to go to a land God will show him and Abraham’s simple act of commitment: “And Abram went…” The one chosen to reveal God’s will for redemption, the progeny of whom will bless not just Abraham and his family, but the whole wide world.

The question Abraham mulls over and over again, trudging along the dusty, rocky of existence is this: do I love the God for God’s own self, or do I love God because of all the blessings God gives me? Do I love God purely and utterly, or is my love and commitment to God a desire to manipulate God into answering my prayers the way I want them answered? If I do love God purely, then I wall obey God’s command to go and offer my son, the Son of Promise, as a sacrifice to God. I will obey God even as I trust that God will, in truth and in fact, provide a sacrifice that is not my beloved Isaac.

That is Abraham’s test of faith, and it is much like Job’s test. In turn, it is much like our test of faith, too. It is easy, is it not, to love God when you credit God with a wonderful marriage, 2 kids with straight teeth, good dispositions and academic scholarships to Whatever U and a townhouse in the city and a vacation home by the sea and great big fat 401K’s on tope of pensions and guaranteed health care and besides social security.

But replace all that with a rotten marriage to a sad and angry person with whom you have two challenged and problematic and therefore very expensive children with little or no prospects of independence and only your credit card balances are great, big, and fat, and periodic unemployment and perennial underemployment have consigned us to a medicaid-based future dependent upon the largess of government or family or charity or none of the above. If you take that as God’s will for your life, can you still love God and trust God?

Sarah, back in the kitchen at home, is being tested as well. Even if only three return form this strange journey they are on, three men minus one boy, will she still be grateful for having Isaac, the child that brought her laughter, even for a short time? I don’t know, but I think she will. Oh, she will be angry with God for a long, long time, and even angrier with Abraham fort having listened to God, but I’m betting she will still be grateful, for her one period of love for love’s sake, and in that gratitude will reside God’s everlasting grace, God’s saving act.

Even God is tested in this passage. Are the promises of God true or false? As human as our story teller here casts God, is God a victim of the divine ego? Like we are trapped by ours? Apparently not, though God bumps up against a limit in Genesis 22. God needs to know something, seeks to learn something. At story’s beginning, God didn’t know if Abraham would be willing to give up his son for the sake of God’s love. At story’s end, God finds out (Brueggeman, 187).

At others times in the sequence of events between Genesis 12 and Genesis 22, Abraham fails miserably in his trust of God. Not once but twice does he offer his loving wife Sarah into the hands of a competing tribal leader just to save his own skin. He is the cowardly lion without prospect of gaining a strong heart. But, here, on Mt. Moriah, he trusts God completely. He offers up the one thing on earth he loves more than anything else, and God provides and alternative sacrifice, a ram who was caught in the thicket, not by chance, but because God put him there, a God who trusted Abraham perhaps more than Abraham trusted himself.

Across-current within the biblical stream was always suspicious of the sacrificial system. The prophets -- like Isaiah and Micah -- are particularly hard on the hypocrisy that comes from using religion, using God, as a means to self-seeking ends.

So God makes good on the divine Word -- a sacrifice is provided, and the bound Isaac is unbound. Not only that, the blessing is unbound too. Earth can breathe again; the world is offered a fresh start; humanity has a reason to hope. The story line of redemption continues though Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Joseph and his brothers, down to kings David and Solomon and forward through time to Jesus of Nazareth and Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene and the rest of his disciples. Now the story of peace and reconciliation is ours to tell and to live.

God provides, God gives, because is savior. God is gracious and loving and an ever present help, who refuses, time after time not to give up on the people God has made. Even when those people give God every reason to abandon them to their own devices.

God tests because God is Lord, sovereign over all. God wants to know who the people of God really are, whether they are able to love God for the right reasons, not just because of the goodies God drops their way.

Oddly enough, the testing of Abraham and of us pays him and us a huge compliment. God wants to work with people who are more or less mature and responsible and reliable to carry through on their commitments. God seeks out Jesus followers, the Christ-like among us, to be God’s agents out there in the world, doing God’s work, being God’s people, not for our sake, and not to make the church a more successful, more powerful institution, but for the the peace, the love, the justice, and the joy that only God can give.

God just wants to put us through a little some continuing education, to teach us that we only possess what we are willing to give away, and we only love those whom we are willing to grant freedom from our control.

Week after week we pray, “lead us not into temptation; do not put us to the test,” since we are not sure that we would be up to the challenge. And knowing our limitations, week after week we pray for God’s provision: “give us each day the bread we will need for our journey.” Because we know we will be tested, sooner or later, we need sustaining food for our bodies and our souls.

As she grew up, one of Frederick Buechner’s three daughters developed a nasty case of anorexia nervosa, and she was quite literally starving herself to death. She just about starved her her whole family to death, too. Her illness dragged on for years. Nothing Buechner and his wife tried worked. Doctors were baffled. Finally, she was committed to a hospital because a judge determined that she was a danger to herself.

Buechner rush to her bedside, breathless with the desire to help, but he was turned away by wise doctors and therapists. They finally convinced him that the more he tried to help his beloved child the more her case worsened. He could not make her well; she would have to choose health herself. The only way Buechner could really help her was to stand back and let go of her, even if that meant that she might die. So he backed off, and over time, she began to eat again, reaching for life and love over darkness and death (Buechner, "The Dwarves in the Stable").

It the hardest, therefore the most important lesson of all, the lesson of letting go and putting all faith in God. It is the first and last lesson of lesson of discipleship. Jesus said, For whoever will save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospel’s sake will save it (Mark 8:35).

Meanwhile, back home, with Sarah in the kitchen, looking out the window six days after her menfolk began their strange journey, she notices a few specks on the far horizon. They grow and grow until they look like people -- four people and one donkey. Sarah is witnessing resurrection. They are all -- not just the boy -- back from the dead. The joy is returning to her life, the laughter will yet ring within her household.

And across the world as well, for God does not just heal family troubles and answer personal pleas for provision. God also provides for the healing of the nations, the renewal of the entire created order of things. To borrow a current expression, that’s how the God of heaven and earth God rolls, a promise spoken from Genesis to Revelation and at many points in between.

Centuries later another man would climb a mountain, and like Isaac carrying the wood for the altar, he would carry his cross But there would be no ram in the thicket for him. When humanity, the world, the creation really needs a sacrifice to be made, God says, “let me do that for you. For if am am going to command you to love God with all you’ve got and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself, maybe I need to show you what that looks like, that I am willing to go to hell and back for your love.”

The man carrying his cross was a true child of Abraham. He was Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, our gracegiving Savior and our righteousness-commanding Lord.

Amen.

O the depth of the riches and wisdom
and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are God’s judgments
and how inscrutable God’s ways!
For from God and through God
and to God are all things.
To God be glory forever.

Amen.

~The Reverend Dee H. Wade, Pastor of Anchorage Presbyterian Church, Anchorage, KY; Part of the 2011 Summer Preaching Series, "Evangelism in the Liberal Tradition"

For full bibliographic information on the citations integrated into this sermon text, or for information about our summer preaching series, please contact us at chapel@bu.edu.

Freely, Humbly, Honestly

2011-07-03T11:00:00.020-04:00

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Matthew 1:16-19, 25-30

It is good to begin in a spirit of gratitude, and so once again it is incumbent upon me to begin this sermon with a word of gratitude to Dean Hill for his gracious offering of a preaching series in the late spring and summer of 2011. Yes, whether you like it or not, you have managed to arrive in the nave of Marsh Chapel for the final installment of Br. Larry’s 2011 Secular Holiday Preaching Series. Some of you may remember when we began, back in May, on Mother’s Day, and then a few weeks later continued on Memorial Day. And now, here we are, once again, this time on Independence Day weekend, at the conclusion of the series. For those who, at the conclusion of this hour, will have withstood all three installments, you have my sincerest condolences.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray.

Holy God, Holy and mighty, Holy and eternal, have mercy on us this day, that we may come to live freely, humbly and honestly in the communion of you most Holy Spirit, in whose unity you dwell with Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

As parts of speech go, adverbs tend to fall at the, “Well, okay, but only if we must,” end of the spectrum. To be honest, the trendiest aspect of grammar these days is punctuation, as evidenced by the passionate debates on Twitter in the past few days about the use of the Oxford comma. The bedrock of grammar, of course, is the noun. Nouns have substance. We can see, hear, taste, touch and smell their referents. Verbs help us talk about what nouns do and adjectives help us distinguish the blue nouns from the red nouns. All adverbs do is to qualify the manner in which nouns do the things their attendant verbs indicate. We even go out of our way to find ways of avoiding adverbs. After hearing a politician or a preacher we are likely to say, “Well that was a stupid thing for him to say,” as opposed to saying, “she spoke stupidly.”

It is little wonder, then, that so many in our time struggle to find their spiritual voice, since religious and spiritual life dwells in the land of the adverb. To be religious or to be spiritual is to be concerned with the manner in which life is lived. Life is the noun, live is the verb, and the manner in which life is lived is expressed adverbially. The reality of the adverbial nature of religiosity and spirituality is found in our Gospel reading this morning. In the first half of the pericope, Jesus is frustrated by the lack of understanding of the ministries he and John the Baptist undertook. This lack of understanding is situated in the focus placed upon particular actions, or inactions, undertaken by Jesus and John, namely eating and drinking. Then, the members of the generation Jesus’ critiques ascribes particular connotations to the states of being of Jesus and John, respectively, based on those actions or inactions. The members of the generation observe the verbs and then classify the nouns according to those observations. In the second half of the pericope, Jesus indicates that the generation has missed the point, and that what is really important is hidden from them. Later in the pericope Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” We may ask, what makes people weary? Too much activity. Too many verbs! And those carrying heavy burdens have too many nouns, or too much of a given noun. When we learn from Jesus, we come to understand that it is not about how many activities we can undertake or how much we can carry. It is not about nouns and verbs. It is about the manner in which we do whatever we undertake. To follow Jesus is to learn to live adverbially. Not that adverbs are easier than nouns and verbs, just lighter and less frantic. No, the challenge of living adverbially is garnering the focus of attention required.

There are many adverbs in religious and spiritual life. On this Independence Day weekend, we will consider three: freely, humbly, and honestly. First, and the adverb most closely keyed to the holiday, freely.

The notion of living freely as a spiritual manner of life flies directly in the face of how moderns, Westerns, and particularly we in the United States generally think about what it means to be free. Most often we speak of freedom, a noun, a substance. Freedom is something we have as a possession, and one of the reasons we celebrate Independence Day is to celebrate the substance of freedom that was won as a possession in the wake of the colonies declaring independence and fighting the Revolutionary War. It is a bit odd to think of freedom as a substance. After all, have you ever tried to put freedom in a bag and carry it down the street? Can you walk up to a street vendor and say, “I’ll have a large cup of freedom with sprinkles on top?” Admittedly, for a time you could order Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast from restaurants and snack bars run by the U.S. House of Representatives, but that is a whole other story and a whole other sermon.

No, the modern western concept of freedom is not a noun like “book” is a noun, namely something you could carry down the street with you. Instead, most often what we mean by freedom in the modern west is both the capacity to act as we choose or desire and the lack of impediment or constraint resulting from the actions of others. This double concept of freedom is epitomized in Isaiah Berlin’s lecture, Two Concepts of Liberty, in which he distinguishes freedom “to” and freedom “from.” Of course, the two may conflict. After all, every action I undertake may impede the actions of another or constrain them from acting at all. If I hold a large rock concert on Marsh Plaza in the middle of a Thursday afternoon, this will likely impede the ability of scholars in the College of Arts and Sciences, the Law School, and the School of Theology from being very productive, and will be a significant distraction to students studying there, to say nothing of the Chapel Choir rehearsing in the nave here in Marsh Chapel. My freedom to hold the concert runs counter to the freedom of others from distraction. The conflict between freedom from and freedom to, and various approaches to managing the conflict, is the source of much of political, social and legal controversies of our time.

Our religious and spiritual traditions, however, teach us that to be free is not to possess the substance freedom but rather to live freely. To live freely is to cultivate the capacity to behave in ways that avoid the turn to the frenetic and overburdened. As Saint Paul tells it in our reading from Romans, to live freely is to live in concert among head, heart and body. Of course, the way Paul tells it belies a rather unfortunate dualism between body and spirit, but that should not inhibit us from retelling it in a way the expresses the truth of our common desire with Paul to live integrated lives. Such integration is a prerequisite to living freely.

The Buddhist doctrine of non-attachment is a correlate to this living freely. It emphasizes that in moving beyond frantic activity and heavy burdens we are able to be more fully present in the present moment. In doing so we are able to bring our full attention to the reality of the here and now without needing to control for every possible future outcome. This is not to say that we should neglect future outcomes; that would be irresponsible. It is to say that living freely means freely receiving what comes and offering back the best synthesis of what we receive in gracious generosity. We should not become too attached to what we receive, or we will not be able to offer it back generously. We should also not become too attached to the outcomes we intend in making our offering, as we are never fully in control of those outcomes. We do our best with what we have, and when our best is not good enough, we offer what we have received and what we have offered up to God in penitence and thanksgiving.

When living freely, it is very possible that the conditions in which we live, some of which are brought about by other people, will resist our best intentions. In religious and spiritual life, as we work toward living freely, we should not be too concerned when our best intentions cannot be realized. The religious and spiritual traditions testify that freedom-from is an illusion at best, and a trap at worst. At the same time, they teach that freedom-to is never absolute and is always constrained by the conditions at hand. The generation that so frustrated Jesus frustrated him precisely because they thought that the Messiah would come to bring their freedom from the political, social and religious oppression of the Roman Empire. The Messiah Jesus, however, came to teach them instead how to live freely under the conditions in which they found themselves, which living he believed would eventually restore them out of oppression, as the prophet Zechariah had promised.

What does living freely look like? Perhaps we should take our cue from Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who said of the late Reverend Professor Peter Gomes of Harvard Memorial Church, “He was the freest man I ever knew.” I have quoted Governor Patrick on this several times, and many people have looked at me quixotically. I think that what Governor Patrick meant is that Reverend Professor Gomes lived freely. He cultivated a way of being that allowed him to be fully present wherever he found himself. When he found himself faced with a crisis at Harvard over the status in the community of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, he calmly stood up, taking up the authority of his revered position, and announced that he was gay. Furthermore, he said that the secret to his ministry of over forty years at Harvard was “ubiquity, ubiquity, ubiquity.” Reverend Professor Gomes lived freely, and that empowered him to be fully present in situations where he was wanted, challenging those who said they wanted him along the way, and fully present in situations where he was not wanted, opening up avenues of dialogue toward finding common ground amidst difference.

So too, those of us who seek to live religious and spiritual lives seek to live life humbly. Just as freely the adverb is a far cry from the noun freedom, so too the adverb humbly is a far cry from the adjective humble. In our gospel today Jesus says that he is “gentle and humble in heart,” but I would submit that the qualifier “in heart” would indicate that he means that he seeks to live his life adverbially humbly. After all, it would be hard to say the Jesus was entirely humble, riding into Jerusalem as he did on the back of a donkey in kingly fashion, fulfilling the words of the prophet Zechariah. This is not what we would associate with a humble person, which is to say one whose entire way of being, one whose life-substance is qualitatively humble through and through. To be humble is to be of small stature, to be one who refrains from entering the fray, to suppress the desire for the better, to say nothing of the best.

The problem with being humble is that it holds back the integration we already saw was a prerequisite for living freely, which is also a prerequisite for living humbly. This is precisely the problem with the dualism that Paul sets up by seeking to humble his body that his spirit might be free of sin. The humbled body can never be integrated with the spirit, which is to say cleansed or justified. More than simply being integrated as a prerequisite however, living humbly also requires recognizing and respecting the integrity of others. Integrity requires deference. To live humbly is to live in such a way that our own pursuit of religiously and spiritually fulfilled lives comes about in concert with the pursuit of religiously and spiritually fulfilled lives by others. At the same time, living humbly recognizes that religious and spiritual fulfillment for any one person cannot come about at the expense of such fulfillment by any others. If my salvation can only come about by the damnation of others, it is not salvation, but also, if the salvation of others can only come about by my damnation, it is not salvation. If the salvation of the mob can only come about by arresting, trying and crucifying Jesus, it cannot be true salvation, but neither can the salvation of the world come through the killing of the mob, as one disciple set out to do by cutting off the ear of the slave of the high priest. Living life humbly recognizes the integrity of others and so empowers us to resist that which would oppress us, often as not by submitting to that very oppression.

The nonviolent activism of Mohandas Gandhi and Boston University’s own alumnus the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., exemplifies what it means to live life humbly. It is in recognizing the integrity of others that Gandhi and King sought to organize those others to resist the attempts on the part of a wider society to oppress them, while at the same time teaching the others to recognize the integrity of the others who made up the wider society. What it means to live humbly is embodied in the three points of Gandhi’s philosophy, summarized in E. Stanley Jones’ biography of Gandhi, that inspired King to take up the practices of nonviolence:

1. that nonviolence is the method of the strong, not the method of the weak and the cowardly

2. that it is better to fight than to take up nonviolence through fear or cowardice

3. that by using the right means, the right result will follow

We should note that the last point is a summary of the principle that religious and spiritual life is concerned with the adverbial character of how life is lived, and that life lived adverbially is the good life, not life lived frantically and overburdened.

Now, what is this integrated self that we have been speaking of as a precondition for life lived freely and humbly? It is life lived honestly. If we are to have any hope of the many parts of ourselves abiding together wholesomely, then they must first be acknowledged honestly. Just as life lived freely is to be distinguished, even opposed, to freedom, and just as life lived humbly is to be distinguished, even opposed, to being humble, so too life lived honestly is to be distinguished, and even opposed, to truth. Truth is something that is established and stable for all time. Life lived honestly recognizes that we ourselves are not established and stable, that the way we are now is not the way we always were and is not the way we always will be. Furthermore, the situation of our lives is not established and stable, is not the same now as it always has been, and will not be in ten days either what it is now or will be tomorrow. If truth is once and for all, then living life honestly is a way of being in constant discernment of who we were, who we are, who we will be, in light of ever changing circumstances.

Of course, it is the very instability of living honestly, the very continuous and ongoing cycles of change, that gives rise to the adverbial character of religious and spiritual life. All of those nouns and verbs that pervade our speech and our thought about what is most true and good risk making us participants in the very generation Jesus bemoans in our gospel reading today. Take, for example, the extraordinarily vitriolic language all too prevalent on the tips of the tongues of politicians and pundits, to say nothing of friends and family, aimed at Muslims and the Islamic world. Such vitriol can only arise from a clinging to a truth that claims an exceptional character for the United States and a demonic character for all Muslims based upon the actions of a few. Today, in the midst of Independence Day weekend, we would do well to seek to live more honestly. How quickly we forget that the modern western world of science and technology would not exist except for the rediscovery of Aristotle, transmitted through the Islamic world back into the west during the late Middle Ages. How quickly we forget that the Roman Empire once thought itself exceptional, and now it is dust.

Today, in the midst of Independence Day weekend, let us live according to the good news of life lived adverbially. Let us live according to the good news that we can live integrated and wholesome lives when we seek to live honestly with ourselves and each other. Let us live according to the good news that we can live humbly, recognizing the integrity of everyone and everything around us. Let us live according to the good news that we can live freely even in the midst of the constraints brought about by chance and by the free lives undertaken by integral others. And in living freely, humbly and honestly we experience salvation. Clinging to a substantial freedom will leave us conflicted socially. Clinging to a humble nature will leave us conflicted personally. And clinging to absolute truth will leave us ineptly groping about in a constantly changing and complex world. Nouns and verbs are the substance and motion of life, but they are not the fullness and fulfillment of life. For fullness and fulfillment, long live the adverb! Amen.

~Br. Lawrence A. Whitney, LC+
University Chaplain for Community Life

Two Persistent Women

2011-06-26T11:00:00.002-04:00

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Luke 18:1-8

1. Persistence in Luke

We begin today in the town court of Nazareth, the honorable UnJ Judge presiding. We are courtroom focused in Boston this week, so we can imagine the scene. Hear ye, hear ye. Hizzoner awaits. And Behold the Lord Jesus Christ dressed today in the apparel of a poor woman: He told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.

It is a story about a persistent woman, who had her voice and her persistence to go on, and not much else. She prevailed.

We may be ready, this summer, for such an encouraging word.

We fear, and try to find our security in larger automobiles or drug supplies or stock collections or homes or layers of disconnection, gated communities of the mind and heart. But security comes not through possession, but through relationship. Do you want to be safe and secure? Invest your self in a lifetime of building and keeping healthy relationships. There is your security, where neither moth nor rust consumes.

Jesus pointed to the Town Court of Nazareth and therein to the simple figure of a persistent woman. See her at the bench. Watch her in the aisle. Listen to her steady voice. Feel her stolid forbearance. Says she: “Grant me justice.” We leave her there for a moment.

2. A Summer Run

Instead, jog for a moment along a familiar village green. For there is a second persistent woman today, not of Scripture but of experience. It is largely in the interplay between these two women, Scripture and Experience, that we discover truth. You can see her in your own past, your own gallery of saints. Name the most persistent woman you ever met. Bella Abzug. Betty Bone Scheiss. Florence Nightengale. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Eleanor Roosevelt. Esther. Barbara Streisand. That uppity Syropheonician woman. Harriet Tubman. Sojourner Truth. Susanna Wesley. Your grandmother. Whomever. I was thinking of one such persistent woman on a 90 degree day several summers ago. For that summer day, hot and humid and happy, I took the car from our lake house into the neighboring little village of Hamilton, NY (the home of Colgate University) for repair. They needed much skill and two hours and some money to do the job. So in the great heat I was free to run through a familiar village, and across a village green, where long ago I was raised in a patchwork complex of relationships, durable and healthy.

Running along, with no deeds to do no promises to keep, I recalled an earlier age…There is a lanky Baptist preacher, heralding the promise of truth; and a musician on the bandstand, singing for justice; and a postmaster protecting communications; and a library, awaiting the emergence of justice; and a church and a store, and a graveyard with night falling. All in the mind’s eye.

Through the familiar streets I ran thinking, steadily and especially, of my teacher, Marjorie Shafer. In the sixth grade she opened the world to us--by teaching us to read. June 25 is good Sunday to remember teachers who made us who we are. As a teacher, she used the resources she had available, namely, her time and her voice. She persisted, through those years, prayerfully using the common resources of time and voice. You have time and you have a voice, too. You have need of persistent prayer, too. You have a desire not to lose heart, too. I was impressed, with the dogs barking in the summer heat, by the persistent memory of her persistence. It was good to remember the time given and the voice lifted, in 1966 in the 6th grade—SRA reading, sock hop, changes in classmates, baseball—Sandy Kofax and Orlando Cepeda, the Beatles, James Bond, memorizing the map of Africa, a mock debate about Vietnam, and the long great story of Bilbo Baggins. And, suddenly, awareness of another gender:

Three things I do not understand
Four are too wonderful for me
The way of a ship on the high sea
The way of an eagle in the sky
The way of the serpent on the rock
And the way of a man with a woman

So continued this reverie, in a summer run, on a hot day, along a village green, several years ago.

3. An Unexpected Christ

Meanwhile, back in Bethlehem town court, all rise hear ye hear ye the honorable U J Judge presiding, another persistent woman employs time and voice. You have time and you have voice. Like Christ himself, she implores the implacable world to grant justice. Like Christ himself, she comes on a donkey of tongue and patience. Like Christ himself, she continues to plead, to intercede. Like Christ himself, she importunes the enduring injustice of this world. Like Christ himself she prays without ceasing. Like Christ himself she persists. She is an example to us of how we should use whatever time we have and whatever breath remains--to pray. It is prayer that is the most realistic and wisest repose of the anxious of this season of our several fears—global, political, economic, personal. By prayer I mean formal prayer, yes. But by prayer I mean the persistent daily leaning toward justice, the continuous pressure in history from the voice of the voiceless and the time of the time bound.

What drove Luke, alone, to remember or construct this parable? The lengthening years, without ultimate victory, since the cross? The long decades of living without Jesus? The uncertainties of institution and culture and citizenship and multiple responsibilities? The daily stresses of managing a budget? It is the primitive church that can give an example to an America trying to balance liberty and justice, courage and compassion. Things take time. They waited for Jesus to return. And he delayed. And he delays, still. And there is rampant, hateful hurt, across God’s village green earth. It is enough to make you lose heart.

Though with a scornful wonder we see her sore oppressed
By schism rent asunder by heresy distressed
Yet saints their watch are keeping their cry goes up ‘howlong’?
And soon the night of weeping will be the morn of song.

It is a long wait. And that is just the point. Like the bridesmaids who waited with lamps trimmed, we feel the length of the wait.

Notice, waiting with us, is a poor widow. She lacks power, authority, status, position, wealth. She has her voice and all the time in the world. Like Jesus Christ, whose faith comes by hearing and hearing by the preaching of the word. We shut the courtroom door for a moment.

4. Persistence in Life

Meanwhile, back along the village green of experience, not the town court of Scripture, the heat hangs heavy on happy halcyon Hamilton, NY. I run over to the Golf course, up the willow walk, past the artesian well, around the library, by the road to Chapel House, down Fraternity row, along the swan pond. I am carried by the wings of love and faith, and Rev. Al Childs now dead runs with me and Rev. Dale Winter now dead runs with me. Goodness and mercy—got my back.

This summer my friend said: “In my life I want to focus on relationships and flexibility”. I said: “yes, on love and faith, relationships and flexibility.”

I decided, with still more than an hour left of repairs, to run over to the school, down Kendrick Ave.

This one persistent woman, Marjorie Shafer, gave us a love of books—Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, the Hobbit, Harriet the Spy, the biographies of the Presidents, the Gospel of Luke. I suppose she looked out for the day when every voice would be lifted in praise. I perceive in hindsight that she, and your own favorite feckless female, persisted by faith. She was already old when she taught us. She was at least 40. I suppose she was one of those saints waiting with persistence. I guess maybe she rode down to Washington on a bus a few years earlier and heard a good sermon:

One day every valley shall be exalted…
With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope…
With this faith we will be able to work together…
This will be the day when all God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning…

And she taught for several more decades, persistent, tough, helpful, kind.

She found a corner of the world in which she could have some influence for good, and invested her time and her voice in another generation. She persisted.

5. Persistent Prayer and Justice

We enter again the Nazareth Town Court. The Honorable U J Judge presiding, and falling asleep. Our Bishop fell asleep at Conference a few years ago. It was a memorable moment. There was more awareness in that somnolence than in many other moments.

If we are not to lose heart, in the seemingly unending search for justice, we shall need to pray always, to “relax into the truth”, and to give ourselves over to the divine presence in our midst. Maybe this summer, starting today, will be a summer of prayer, for you. And me.

Ernest Fremont Tittle was the greatest Methodist preacher of his mid twentieth century generation. Tougher than Sockman, truer than Peale, Tittle preached in Chicago until he died at his desk, writing about Luke. This is his book, only at best half written, and published after his death. It reads like someone cleaned off his desk into a printer. Yet I prize this volume. Here is what he thought about persistence and prayer:

There is special need for persistence in prayer when the object sought is the redressing of social wrongs. God will see justice done if the human instruments of his justice to not give way to weariness, impatience, or discouragement, but persevere in prayer and labor for the improvement of world conditions. Here we can learn from the scientist. Medical research is a prayer for the relief of suffering, the abolition of disease, the conservation of life—a prayer in which the scientist perseveres in the face of whatever odds, whatever darkness and delay. More especially we can learn from great religious leader like Luther, Wesley, Wilberforce, Shaftsbury, who year upon year prayed and fought for the causes to which they dedicated their lives. The need for persistence in prayer arises not only from the intransigence of the oppressor, but also from the immaturity and imperfection of the would-be reformer. We have a lot to learn and much in ourselves to overcome before we can be used of God as instruments of his justice. Recognizing this, Gandhi spent hours each day in prayer and meditation, and maintained a weekly day of silence.

The importunate widow continues, simply continues, and by her continuation comes to personify the divine. All this, behind the humble door of the Nazareth Town Court.

6. Surprise!

And meanwhile, jogging on the village green, the sun is getting higher as noon approaches. It is time to head back out toward the garage, and pay the piper. I have been running in such a sweet reverie, a happy retrospective, that the hour has come too fast. I have been thinking all morning of my old teacher. Now the school is a block away. She must be in her mid-eighties now. I wonder if she is still active. I remember how it felt to walk to school at age 12, excited for the start of every day, arriving 20 minutes early, entering the school that marked the portal to the future. What a persistent presence in so many lives she was! Behind the school there is a large parking lot, and a long park. The park sometimes is used for family reunions. Almost choosing otherwise, I decide to run out to the back, to see the park. This has been a long run, and I am tired. It has been a long run in the ministry. It has been a long run in the church. It has been a long run in the conference. It has been a long run in the academy. I am feeling the burning in the calves, some ache in breathing. It is hot.

Where do we find the persistence that keeps us going through adversity so that we do not lose heart? Do we not find it, given to us in prayer? Is this not our source of sustaining grace? How shall we have any lasting life without prayer, worship, study, tithing, service, song, fellowship, loving conversation?

Do you ever have a feeling that something is going to happen and then it does? A kind of premonition? I turned down into the back lot, empty for summer vacation, and saw just one lone car. It was hot and I was sweating, so I could not see too clearly for a time. And there was a kind of haze in the hot air. I saw the car move and stop, move and stop, two women in the front seat. I slowed, the car paused. I paused, the car waited. I looked, and then I looked again. There in the rider’s seat, to my utter astonished amazement, sat Mrs. Shafer, as old as could be, teaching, still teaching, using her voice and her time, this morning teaching her granddaughter to drive. I had not seen her in many years. “Hello Mrs Shafer” I said. “Hello Bobby”, she bemusedly replied, “it’s nice to see you.”

Sometimes you just need keep going, to run one block more. Sometimes, with a little persistence, just a little more running, just one more street, keep going just one more block don’t stop for quitting for suicide for divorce for giving up for leaving, you run headlong into Presence. “In thy presence there is fullness of joy.”

I ran on to get my car, confident that at least one sermon illustration had been offered on a hot day, in a long run, in a little village.

Hear the gospel of two persistent woman, Scripture and Life, a first century plaintiff and a twentieth century teacher, who both say to us:

7. Coda

Pray always
Labor Omnia Vincit
Do not lose heart
Work conquers all
Pray always
All of us are better when we are loved
Do not lose heart
Early to bed and early to bed and early to rise
Pray always
A stitch in time
Do not lose heart
Waste not want not
Pray always
Rome was not built in a day
Do not lose heart
Only the devil has no time
Pray always
God is time and voice
Do not lose heart

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
Dean of Marsh Chapel

As You Go, Make of All Disciples

2011-06-19T11:00:00.084-04:00

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Matthew 28:16-20

One who hears a witness becomes a witness.

Professor Elie Wiesel has taught us this at Boston University over the years.

To hear a witness is to become a witness yourself. In that sense, every Sunday on which we stand to hear the witness of the Gospel, we again become witnesses. We stand up, and becoming upstanding, in bearing witness.

Our Gospel today, the sacramental and hospitable conclusion to the First Gospel, that of St. Matthew, addresses us as a community about our witness.

What then shall your witness be? To whom, to what, to whom shall you bear witness?

Dime con quien andas, y te dire quien eres, say the Spanish: Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.

Wiesel again spoke to us this past year, as he has for 34 years at Boston University. He spoke about Deborah, in the Book of Judges. He spoke that is about the Scripture and about the interpretation of the Scripture. He spoke about meaning, justice, and truth in our time and all time. He delivered his meditative lecture as a witness to an earlier witness, the witness of Deborah.

Around us this past school year have swirled other such witnesses. Professors Prothero and Bacevich recalled and reflected, one evening, upon Jonathan Winthrop’s famous sermon from the Massachusetts Bay in 1630, ‘a city set on a hill’. They were recalling earlier witnesses. Downtown, earlier in the year, during the meeting of a civic club, a woman remembered the sermon series on ‘Darwin and Faith’ which we provided here at Marsh Chapel two summers ago. She was recalling a form of witness. One evening in our Gottlieb center, four people who were children in Europe in the Second World War gave witness to the searing, tragic experiences of their childhoods, and those who helped save them. They were recalling the people who got them to where they are, who got them to whom they are. Various BU alumni have appeared to visit this year and have spent some time in reverie and reminiscence. They have been recalling those who made them the kind of disciples they are. Two visitors brought a video recollection of Howard Thurman, our predecessor here at Marsh Chapel. They recalled his witness. A man wrote from Oregon, not long ago remembering a sermon of Thurman’s from that era: ‘Fear not the Fallow’. Did we have a copy? We have not discovered it yet, but, that title pretty much preaches the sermon, a good early summer reminder; ‘Fear Not the Fallow’. Our students and staff, including some from Marsh Chapel have remembered this year their experiences growing up gay, and the ‘fightings without and fears within’ which they experienced, including those who encouraged and sustained them. They were recalling witnesses.

In our Gospel Lesson, St. Matthew too offers a word about bearing witness. The original frames the Matthean exhortation in the shape of a journey: “As you go, make…” We hear the Gospel and we are reminded, recalled to a rightful mind. We are reminded that we are children of God. The Gospel reminds us that the good news is for people, about people, within people. We have rehearsed before us today again the ethic of love in the teaching of the church, the ethic of Jesus in the teaching of the church.

In a few minutes, we shall close our service, singing a familiar hymn, “Go Make of All Disciples”. Every hymn has a story, every hymn is itself a witness. This one was written and first used for a June Sunday service like ours today, back in 1955. It was composed by the minister of University Methodist Church, in Syracuse, NY (twenty years after Norman Vincent Peale had left that pulpit for Marble Collegiate Church in NYC). The hymn was lifted on a day of great celebration, with many hundreds of children, that Children’s Sunday, singing their way into the summer, with a reminder: ‘as you go, make’.

Our capacity to understand and then to embody such a gospel and such an ethic depends in a practical way upon those whom we know well enough and admire fully enough to choose as mentors. The church has recognized this need, over the years, by remembering, in particular, particular persons who have led, exemplary lives. One tradition may hallow and revere individuals, chosen and examined over time. Another tradition may emphasize in the communion of saints, the COMMUNION more than the individual saints. You may find that there is some wisdom in both. But when we are touched by the communion of SAINTS or by the COMMUNION of saints, we are influenced, shaped and changed. To hear a witness is to become a witness.

Over this past year, you have perhaps experienced some loss. The cloud of witnesses to whom you turn in heaven for guidance on earth may have grown. One—only one—part of your work in grieving their loss will evolve through your own assessment of their helpful examples. You will want to find ways to hold up and to hold on to the gifts, graces and goodness of their lives, as time goes by. My family joined your grieving in the labors of love when our Dad died last June. The manifold, multiple kindnesses which were extended to us, through a season of bereavement, for which we are deeply thankful, have connected us to you, one to another, in a deep, and personal, way. Bereavement is a sacrament. Bereavement is a kind of sacrament. There is a grace, a deep river of grace, running through it all. In particular, this year, I have been impressed by the memories which men have shared, of their own fathers, memories which men have recalled and related, concerning the deaths of their dads, of your dads. They come to mind this Father’s Day.

A part of grace in bereavement arises from the communal capacity to remember. As a graduate of BUSTH in the class of 1953, my father could appreciate that communal capacity of memory. To hear a witness is to become one yourself. The ethic of love in the teaching of the church, the ethic of Jesus in the teaching of the church, becomes personal and real when we can identify persons who witness to that ethic and that teaching, and so teach us how to live. Another generation heard the witness of Earl Marlatt, then professor and Dean in our BU School of Theology, who asked a question: Are Ye Able…said, to remember, when the shadows, still the master.

In the spring of 1973 six freshmen from Ohio Wesleyan University (as we have noted before, a small Methodist college for small Methodists) drove a large Oldsmobile in the rain, across eastern Ohio and Central Pennsylvania, bound for a lake cottage in upstate New York. We had planned to meet my father there for a late dinner, and the beginning of a summer break. In the rain on route 80, the car went over an embankment. Passengers and luggage went in all directions. I had been bringing two white lab mice, in an open bucket equipped with a drip water dispenser, as some sort of gift for my sister Cynthia. After the crash the mice were gone, the car drivable but without windshield wipers, and the six freshmen rightly frightened. We inched along in the rain in silence. About an hour into the silence a roommate in the front seat started shouting and screaming at the top of his lungs. At least one of the mice had survived, and was crawling up his left leg. We inched along in the rain in further silence, one headlight, no wipers. Near dawn we turned down the camp road to see lights burning, and a little smoke coming from the chimney.

Dad had paced all night, after we had called to tell him our delay, and greeted us with a fierce joy. He fixed us a lumberjack breakfast. As we went to sleep, I could see him stoking the fire, before going off to work, to meet the challenges of 1973, after a sleepless night. Just before dosing off I heard him singing: “Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I will pray. Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I will pray”.

That song at the hearth and from the heart still resounds, rings out, true of his life and faith. It is important for us, for the coming generations, the remember the witness of those who taught us how to bear witness. Unhappy are those who lose access to their own best past. Happy are those who find access to their own best past. In that personal song of spirit, experience, and prayer were many of the cherished beliefs and values for which he lived, by which he lived. Let me name some of them.

He and his companions in the ministry lived in the openness, the magnanimous freedom of grace, the freedom for which Christ sets us free, on which we are to stand fast, and not to be enslaved again.

He lived convinced of the lasting worth, the ultimate value of persons and personality.

He lived and taught that love means taking responsibility.

He placed the highest premiums on marriage, family, children, and friends.

He had a rare, great capacity for friendship.

He could be restless with and critical of those perspectives which narrow the wideness of God’s mercy. And he could be restless with and critical of those practices in personal and institutional life which did not become the gospel, were not becoming to the gospel.

He trusted that wherever there is a way, there is Christ, wherever there is truth, there is Christ, wherever there is life, there is Christ.

He honored his own conscience and heart, and expected others to do the same. The conscience of the believer is inviolable.

Many of you remember today those who helped you become a disciple, with toughness in love and love in toughness.

And as I heard him say, circa 1990,during a meeting in the Oneida church sanctuary, ‘because I am loved, I can love’.

Given Matthew 28:16, and given this particular Sunday, and given the venerable pulpit here the stewardship of which in these years is our shared responsibility, it is fitting to remember his poem about preaching:

Preaching

Preaching is not Bible study, but

It does require Biblical understanding

Preaching is not theology, but

There must be theology in it.

Preaching is not biography, but

It does require an understanding of people.

Preaching is not teaching, but

It is instructional.

Preaching is not social ethics, but

It must point to social responsibility.

Preaching is one vehicle God has chosen

That can grow life.

Preaching is humbling,

Frightening,

And Rewarding!

As you probably suspect, I believe these words fit more than preaching. They really ask us about our witness to what most matters, counts, lasts, and works. They ask us about our journey in faith. “As you go…’ What?

Does your way of living have some root and grounding in ancient, holy, inspired Scripture? Well then, as you go, read the Bible some and set an example for those growing up to become students, that is disciples, with you.

Does your way of living, your going as you go, afford a place for thoughtful reflection, for putting things in the light of divine love? Well then, as you go, you might want to share your regard for thoughtful living, for theological reflection, and so set an example for those growing up to become students, that is disciples, with you.

Does your path, your journey involve some other, interesting people? Some colorful characters? I hope so! Tell their stories to those you are making as disciples.

Does your own experience leave you with something to pass on to others, some life learning? Well then, as you go, find some creative ways to leave a trail of bread crumbs for others to follow.

Does your way of living in faith bear the weight of responsibility we share for the common good? What about justice, and mercy, and humility? Do you have a cause or three? (Like refugee resettlement, or employment for all, or care for those in military service?) Well then, as you go, let us know.

On this Father’s day, to conclude, is your way of living a kind of living that grows life for others, and sets an example that is humbling, challenging and rewarding? My marine friend says this: ‘Leadership is example. Period.’

As you go, make of all disciples…

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,

Dean of Marsh Chapel

Birthday of the Church

2011-06-12T11:00:00.008-04:00

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John 20:19-23

Pentecost is the birthday of the church.

The church will exist until the end of time. Some parts of the church may not. Nevertheless, discreet communities, communities of common faith and common ground and common hope, communities of meaning and belonging and empowerment, will continue to the end of time.

Our text from John 20 identifies several abiding features of the church, of community life, as the community of the beloved disciple took shape in the early second century. Notice them with me, on this happy Pentecost Sunday.

In the life of this community, there is continuity between the Lord and his disciples, the life of Jesus and the lives of those who have gone over to him, gone after him. ‘Jesus came and stood among them’. We are not after the physics of this, but the metaphysics. There is a flow, a river of being, a somehow marvelous interlacing of death and life, of Jesus and church. Every Sunday we marvel at this. People are in worship, and yet they have their minds, rightly, on loved ones afar: traveling, in peril, gone to God, in another country. With Jesus we learn to pray first, walk together, and save lives.

In the life of this community, the connection or interlacing of the Lord and the disciples is effected through speech. ‘He said…’ Our voice, our most personal characteristic, carries us from the lonely continent of our personal isolation across the sea and hell of anxious separation, and transplants us onto the dry shore of another person’s heart and mind. This is what it means to fall in love, to experience friendship, and to know forgiveness. We see this week by week in our churches, often in pastoral care. The good pastor begins and ends work by getting to know his people, by keeping track of them, by watching out for them, by taking the time to go out onto their own turf.

In the life of this community, whose birthday we today celebrate, the roadsigns point to peace. ‘Peace be with you’. Peace is not so much the absence of conflict as it is the awareness of love.

In the life of the community of the beloved, the church, we should note, there is real bodily hurt, and real personal change. ‘He showed them his hands and his side’. Yes, this was mentioned to show that the crucified was the raised, the glorified was the ascended. But before the theology, there was the tragedy. The church came out of hurt, suffering, defeat. Things do not always turn out. Justice is not always done. Some things end badly. It is the hallmark of the church, at its truest, to be honest about this. Then, too, the one sent, sends. We are all spiritual itinerants. We change, we move, we grow, we age.

In the life of this community, there is a breath of fresh air. We receive the Spirit. And here, unlike in the rest of the Gospel, that spirit gift is tied to forgiveness, with the further admonition that we are playing for keeps. People will know forgiveness in the actual living of a forgiving community. ‘They have been forgiven’. How this sudden occurrence, not recurrence, but occurrence of a word on forgiveness relates to the rest of a Gospel that does not mention forgiveness, I am not sure. I am sure that it stands out here, a beacon, a lighthouse, a voice in wilderness, a swan song: forgiveness. People know forgiveness by being forgiven. If you are like most people, including me, you probably have some unfinished forgiveness projects strewn around the basement and attic and garage of your unconscious mind.

The utter reality, the unrepeatable miracle of days lived is here shouted, blasted at us: every day matters. Fortunately (to call on Paul) we are not alone. Those of us who keep silence, have among us others who utter wisdom. Those of us who have no knack for healing, have among us others who are natural healers. Those of us who are clumsy at insight and imagination, have among us others who shine in the dark. Those of us who are all thumbs, have among us others who put the X in dexterous. We have a whole body, a church, born on Pentecost.

Let us love our church, let us love our community, let us love our beloved community. For the church today is in serious decline, and so truly can benefit from love. By today’s Gospel, we are responsible for what has been forgiven and what has been retained.

The decline of my own beloved Methodism in the Northeast (a harbinger of similar decline coming soon to other regions) is not the consequence of the will of God (the theological defense). Nor is this decline the result of inevitable demographic trends (the sociological defense). Neither is the decline due to insuperable national and regional trends in lifestyle or commitment levels (the cultural defense). This spectacular decline is also not assignable to educational fashions (the pedagogical defense). Our decline toward death in the Northeast has been a matter of consistent, deliberate, and conscious choice, on the part of church leadership. It is a case of the banality of evil. Little decisions, choices, elections, selections, expenditures, repeated and reinforced, over time. It need not have happened. It did. We did it. To ourselves. Neither a vengeful God, nor a drop in population, nor culture wars, nor seminary curricula are to blame. We simply chose decline over health, death over life. The banality of demise is seen in its location in every mistaken expenditure, every misdirected election, selection, choice, decision, budget and appointment. We are responsible for what has been forgiven and what has been retained.

We had several excellent reasons.

In the meantime, though, the body of the church lost significantly more than half its size, and aged well out into retirement years. In the span of little more than a generation. We simply decided not to tithe at any level of church life, not to engage in the exacting discipline required to preach well, and not to replenish our spirits in the vital liturgical traditions of the church.

Since 1972, my beloved church, the United Methodist Church of the Northeast, has displaced, off loaded, dismembered half of her people. 2% a year for 30 years. The farther north, and the farther east, the worse the numbers. Lyle Schaller’s tragic prophecy has come true: ‘the denominations will gladly accept 2% annual decline in exchange for the tacit agreement that there be no significant change’. We don’t seem to mind dying, as long as we can do it at home, in our jammies, watching TV, eating ice-cream, with pleasant pastoral (read hospice) care.

So let us remember where we are, whose we are, and what time it is. Today is Pentecost, the celebration of the birthday of the church.

Dearly beloved, the Church is of God, and will be preserved to the end of time, for the conduct of worship and the due administration of (God’s) Word and Sacraments, the maintenance of Christian fellowship and discipline, the edification of believers, and the conversion of the world. All of every age and station stand in need of the means of grace which it alone supplies. (UMH, 1968).

He said to them, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I send you’. And when he said this, he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’.

There is a gentle, warm summer wind breathing through us today. The happy news is that a return to excellence in preaching, consistency in tithing, and immersion in tradition will bring us back to life. Here are some gentle suggestions, as we pray first, walk together and save lives.

The mark of disciplined living in our time most needed by our churches is robust giving. The old word, a good word, is tithing. In a materialistic age, nothing testifies better to the invisible than generosity with abandon. People notice. Likewise, when the church appears to act irresponsibly with money, people also notice. In an age of entitlement, nothing witnesses better to graceful love than intentional self-abandon in regular (not occasional) giving. Steady investment in fellowship is a great joy to the giver. In an age of greed, nothing bears stronger witness to another way, than another way of relating to wealth. We have not always and consistently remembered well our inherited practice of tithing. Our current average lay giving hovers between 1 and 2% of income. Our current average clergy giving is lower still. More sadly still, we have overburdened our basic ministries in the local churches by requiring not a tithe, but often over 25% of income to be sent on into the elaborated ministries of the denomination. The power to apportion is the power to destroy. This heavy handed ladling of required donations has most hampered growing and larger churches, which most would have benefited from the reinvestment of extra-tithe resource in developing ministries of worship, education and service. To equip our church for the struggle ahead, we will need to teach tithing by precept and example, in season and out.

In Methodism we need to recover our confidence about the importance of education. No denomination anywhere, ever did more to support educational development than did the Methodist church in America during its first two centuries of life. 128 US schools and colleges continue to this day to honor such investment. More statues to John Wesley are found on campuses than in churches today. John Dempster (Methodist minister and founder of Boston University) exemplified the recognition of an earlier era to the need for education in the preparation of clergy, and education in the development of laity. Our current willingness to let semi-prepared people occupy our pulpits in large numbers is a direct contradiction of our own best past. When I entered the ministry in 1979, about 5% of the pulpits in our conference were held by non-elders. Today it is 55%. 500 of the 937 pulpits in upstate New York are occupied by unordained, only partially educated ministers. You cannot run a college on adjuncts. It is far better to have one good sermon preached four times than to have four bad sermons preached one by one. Our confidence in our inherited use of circuits has disappeared. We have made a virtue of uneducated piety. But there is no such thing as piety without learning. The two go together. Better a good sermon preached four times on a circuit than four bad ones comfortably heard and given, without any driving.

We shall need to recover a love for worship that is traditional without the scourge of traditionalism, that is enchantment not entertainment, that is God centered not conversation centered, and that is excellent, entrepreneurial and enjoyable. Every church both deserves and requires fine preaching and music. Especially preaching. It is the heart of pastoral ministry. It is the one thing most desired and needed in our churches. It is the single thread of consistency linking all healthy and growing churches. It is utterly difficult consistently to do well. It is more important than all the other features of community life. It was what we have been known for, our verbal endowment. “I am grateful for the discipline which preaching requires” (R Dolch). We hunger, hunger for the right handling of the word of truth.

For some years our churches have been under the sway of a kind of preaching meant to distance the church from the culture. Unlike Jesus, who ate with sinners, and Paul, who wrote good Koine Greek, and John, whose Gospel itself may be considered (to borrow from Harnack) the acute Hellenization (that is acculturation) of Christianity, this currently influential quasi-Gospel tells us we are resident aliens. Resident aliens. I heard this same now tired, now old phrase used again this week. In it there is some truth, we must affirm, the truth of the narrow gate and the straight way. But on the whole it misses the large, Pentecost, great, Spirited, good, Gospel. Friends: you are not resident aliens in Boston! You are angelic residents of Boston. Not resident aliens, but angelic residents.

Such preaching takes preachers who love both the Bible and the people, both the church and its life, both the community of faith and the culture in which it dwells. If thine heart be as mine, then give me thine hand. (J Wesley). How shall they hear without a preacher? The cunning of a private detective, the resilience of a boxer, the courage of the matador—these are the marks of speech which moves from peace to forgiveness, which is the preaching of the gospel.

For example, we have been told recently of a governor in a far off golden state, who lived for decade, in a household where he was a known father of some, but an unknown father of another. Daily deception. Remarkable. (Of course I feel sorry for all in this situation, and want the grace of forgiveness extended to all.) The Governor was living a double life, his deeds and their consequences all around him, visible fully to him, but not to others. Until a moment of revelation.

But just a minute (so says a preacher). Just how many of us are utterly, completely known by others as we know ourselves? Just how many of us have metaphorical offspring whom we see, but others do not? Others may not see our illegitimate offspring (I am speaking by analogy here, metaphorically here). But we do. They walk right by us, on the way to breakfast. That is what makes the California story of some weeks ago so compelling. It is not just about him, it is about us, about you and me. We see, suffer, rue, endure the presence of things about ourselves that others do not see. We are all the ‘party pooper’, to some degree.

Hence the dire need for the announcement of forgiveness. The Gospel is that God’s grace frees us and forgives us not only from what is seen, but also from what is not seen. Forgiveness frees us again to try to live the lives we hope to live, and which we hope will inspire others, particularly the young.

We want to love our church.

Every spring, we try again to do so, in our Annual Conferences. Although we continue to fail, I find the spring time call of the Spirit utterly compelling. A conference is a chance to confer. This week I heard a saintly superannuated preacher, and Boston University graduate, open his heart in eloquent confession, before 2000 others, about a view of his from 1980 and 1984 which he now knows to be mistaken, in light of Scripture AND tradition AND reason AND experience. This week I listened to a saintly preacher in mid life, and a Boston University School of Theology graduate, who has quietly spent 22 years rebuilding a tiny church into a great community—the real, messy foundational work of our era in ministry—and July 1 will move 100 miles to start all over and do the same in another setting. This morning I have the privilege of meeting and greeting the spirited congregation of Marsh Chapel, a heart for the heart of the city, and a service in the service of the city. Listen, as we end this morning, to the historic questions every budding preacher answers on her way to ordination. See if these questions do not catch you up. See if they do not inspire you. See if they do not touch your heart, and make you think, about how best to live, from this day forward:

Have you faith in Christ?
Are you going on to perfection?
Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?
Are you earnestly striving after it?
Are you resolved to devote yourself wholly to God and his work?
Do you know the General Rules of our Church?
Will you keep them?
Have you studied the doctrines of The United Methodist Church?
After full examination, do you believe that our doctrines are in harmony
with the Holy Scriptures?
Will you preach and maintain them?
Have you studied our form of Church discipline and polity?
Do you approve our Church government and polity?
Will you support and maintain them?
Will you diligently instruct the children in every place?
Will you visit from house to house?
Will you recommend fasting or abstinence, both by precept and example?
Are you determined to employ all your time in the work of God?
Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in your work?
Will you observe the following directions? a) Be diligent. Never be unemployed. Never be triflingly employed. Never trifle away time; neither spend any more time at any one place than is strictly necessary. b) Be punctual. Do everything exactly at the time. And do not mend our rules, but keep them; not for wrath, but for conscience’ sake

Though with a scornful wonder we see her sore oppressed
By schism rent asunder, by heresy distressed
Yet saints their watch are keeping, their cry goes us ‘How long?’
And soon the night of weeping, will be the morn of song.

Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’.

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
Dean of Marsh Chapel

Consecration

2011-06-05T11:00:00.002-04:00

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John 17: 1-11

1. Summit

High atop the world’s greatest writings sits our Holy Scripture. Such knowledge is too wonderful for us. It is high. We cannot attain it.

Within the Scripture itself are conjoined the sibling testaments, the older and newer, the Hebrew Scripture and the Christian Writings. For us just now, the 27 newer books stand a little bit higher.

The Gospels and the Letters and the Apocalyptic Writings are all inspired and inspiring, all sufficient for faith and practice. The gospels though have a certain priority, in our liturgy, and in our hearts. They lie just a step or two higher, atop higher ground.

You love all the Gospels. One there is though which from antiquity has been known as the sublime, the spiritual gospel. We shall ascend today, on ascension Sunday, to the craggy paths and rarified air of the Fourth Gospel.

High above the rest of John, above the seven signs to begin and above the passion and resurrection to end, there lies the strangest moonscape in the Scripture, and so in all literature, and so in life. I mean chapters 13-17. We are about to place our homiletical flag on the very summit, the highest of high peaks, the textual Matterhorn, Everest, Mount Washington, Pike’s Peak: John 17.

And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

2. Where We Least Expect

Your own participation in this sermon is cordially invited, and fully required today. We affirm, with the ancient Gospel according to St. John the Divine, that we find freedom in disappointment, we grasp grace in dislocation, and we learn love in departure. Look back at all your experience to date. What is your greatest disappointment? It is a clue to freedom. What is your hardest dislocation? It is a signpost for grace. What is your most grievous departure? It is the way of love.

The community of the beloved disciple knew about disappointment. After three generations, and some, the community had awaited the primitive hope of the church to be realized. They awaited the return of Christ. The resurrection of the dead from their graves. The end of time. The apocalypse of God. It did not come. He did not come, at least not in the way once hoped. I find it the most remarkable experience of the New Testament that John, rather than being lost in a sea of disheartening failure, in the very eye of his most stormy theological hurricane, found freedom. In disappointment he found freedom.

The community of the beloved disciple knew about dislocation. They had lost their family of origin. They were sent out from their mother religion. The church that wrote John had been thrown out of the synagogue. The life they grew up with had cast them out. It took three generations for them to grasp the joyful grace in dislocation. Count it all grace, brethren, when various dislocations beset you!

Our time has also known dislocation aplenty. We should hunt more for grace in the financial dislocation that is endemic in our time. I have yet to serve a church that was not financially challenged. Every religious institution in our region—church, conference, seminary, campground, school, all—is under water in financial terms. More: middle aged families are sinking into the quicksand of debt. They are buying groceries on credit. Debt is work undone. Savings is work done. We have work to do. Go back and read Who Moved My Cheese.

The community of the beloved disciple knew about departure. The layers of grief culminating in chapter 17, while ostensibly a rehearsal of Jesus’ own departure, may also have been crafted by the heart and voice of their aged John, the other and beloved disciple, whose own departure, in the midst of disappointment and dislocation, itself provoked these layers of grief. Is it not ironic that the sharpest, most rarified language of love in all of the New Testament—in all of literature—arises in the hour of departure?

In our time, we are bidding a reluctant farewell to God. To a certain, junior, perception of God. God reigns. This we affirm with the church militant and triumphant. But God’s way among us is away from us. He is risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him. The measures of freedom and grace given to us become real possibilities, real freedom and real grace, only when we have the gracious freedom to decide for faith. The same is magnificently true of love. This is the message of John, at the end.

The departure of the Christ makes space for love. As I have loved you, so you also ought to love one another.

3. Brother John

We are four siblings in my family of origin. The older three have brown hair. The youngest is a redhead, whose name is John. John’s bright red locks are unlike, quite unlike, the less remarkable curls of Bob, Cathy and Cynthia. He stands apart, does John. It makes you wonder where he came from, with such a distinctive aspect. John is like his Gospel namesake, the Fourth Gospel. The youngest of the four, he stands out, so different from his synoptic siblings Matthew, Mark and Luke. They with their shared brown hair, their shared parables and teachings, their shared emphasis on the humanity of Jesus, their shared trips from Galilee to Jerusalem, they just don’t look at all like their younger redheaded brother.

In the summer, it happens, as it may in your family, there is a family reunion for one part of our tribe. Occasionally, we would go, growing up. Like yours, ours is something of standard reunion. It is held on a farm near Albany, which has been in the family since before George Washington rode a horse. After the usual light meal of beef, corn, potatoes, bread, sausage, pies, and pickles and so on, the extended family (or those who having eaten so can still move) will sometimes stand for a photograph on the long farm house veranda. I ask you to look at the photo. I am holding it here. Can you see it? Well, even if you cannot see it across the radio waves, you can probably guess what it shows. Of these eighty people, do you see how many have red hair? About 60—young or old, tall or short, heavy or slight, male or female, they mostly have red hair, like John. 75% are redheads. In fact, in the photo, it looks like a sea of red hair. Maybe a red heads convention out in the farm fields of Cooperstown, NY. John isn’t the odd ball. His siblings are.

John is not the second century Greco Roman odd ball. His synoptic siblings are. When you put the Fourth Gospel, with all its red haired radical difference, on the farm house veranda of second century religious family literature, he fits right in. He stands shoulder to shoulder with all the Gnostic writings that are so like him, especially in these late chapters. It looks like a redheads convention. He looks and sounds quite like the rest of his second and third cousins, once or twice removed: The Paraphrase of Shem, the Treatise on the Resurrection, the Odes of Solomon, the Apocryphon of John, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Mary. How else will we ever hear this voice of Jesus from John 17?

And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God.

This voice is NOTHING like that of the sermon on the mount, or that of the parable of the Good Samaritan, or that of the cry from Psalm 22 on the cross. Not human, but divine, here. Not earthly, but heavenly, here. Not low, but high, here. Not immanent, but transcendent, here.
The community of the Gospel of John had a radical experience of Jesus, as God on earth. To render that experience meaningful, they had the radical courage to take language from the heretics around them, the Gnostics, and use it as their own BECAUSE IT FIT. It worked. It explained to the huddled humans clinging to Christ what they had experienced in him: divine grace and divine freedom. It rendered the sense of consecration, the sense of holy living and dying, the sense of consecrated joy, which they had found, with the Light of the World, with the Bread of Life, with the Good Shepherd, with the Resurrection, with the Word made flesh.

The community of the Gospel of John feared not the culture around them. They feared not truth, even when that truth was best expressed outside of their particular religious circle. They had the guts to use language belonging to pagans, outsiders, heretics, Gnostics to celebrate and consecrate their faith. In doing so, they opened up the church to the world, to the future, to the culture around them. They changed their way of speaking of Christ, and pointed to Christ above, in, and transforming the culture around them. They changed. They had the courage to change.

In age, our own, when the Gospel of John, served raw, without cooking, without historical interpretation, can be made to sound like the voice not of tradition but of traditionalism, we do well to remember John’s courage to change, to reach out to the culture around, to put the gospel in word and music on the air waves of a pagan culture, out on the radio waves of a secular world, and where possible to use that same culture, and its language, for the cause of consecration.

4. Spirit of Truth

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide
In the strife of truth with falsehood
For the good or evil side
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah
Offering each the bloom or blight
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light
New occasions teach new duties
Time makes ancient good uncouth
One must upward still and onward
Who would keep abreast of truth

5. Rich Man, Poor Man

A poor man went to a Methodist church for worship. The congregation welcomed him and he returned week by week. After a while the women’s circle took up a collection and bought him a nice new suit, with a blue tie. He happily received the gift, but they never saw him in church again.

A while later, on the street, one of church members saw him and asked what had happened. Did he not like the suit? Did it not fit? Was he afraid to wear it?

“Oh no, I love the suit. I look great in it. When I say myself in the mirror, I looked so good I thought, ‘I look like a million bucks. I look too good to go just to the Methodist church. I think I’m dressed well enough to go the Episcopal church. I think I will go there. And that is what I did”

6. Carol and Realized Eschatology

Sometimes a dose of realized eschatology can clear the mind and strengthen the soul. In a way, every day is our last. In a way, heaven and hell are here and now. In a way, the end time is all of time. John puts it this way: ‘the hour is coming AND NOW IS’.

Some years ago we sat at dinner with several other couples, in a beautiful home, over a majestic meal, graciously served. Because the couples new each other well, and were in trust to each other, there was the chance for hard and serious conversation, consecrated conversation you might say. This evening the debate swirled around gay marriage.

There are tipping points in the way a culture moves. Some of them occur at dinner, in beautiful homes, over majestic meals, graciously served. The host was opposed, to gay marriage that is. The conversation widened, and then narrowed, and then widened again. We can surely agree that there are many ways of keeping faith, and many honest, different, points of view, on this and on many issues.

Across the table sat Carol, mother of two fine teenagers, married with joy to a business leader, baseball player, Red Sox fan. She had battled cancer once before, and now it returned, and she fought it again. We could not see it then, but in seven months she was gone.

Over some heat and some laughter, much disagreement but little discord, the conversation, consecrated you might say, moved on. Carol spoke fully, and at one point said: ‘You know, I have learned how precious life is, how fragile, what a gift every day is. Here is what I feel: if two people truly love each other, deeply commit to each other, and want to consecrate their vows, that is they want what Doug and I have, why would I ever want to stand in their way, why would I ever want to deprive them of that happiness that I know so well.’ I heard some minds changing as dessert came that night.

7. Give us the 66th!

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly--doctor-like--controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

‘Captive good attending captain ill…’ Can you hear that? It begs to be heard. Stand with your people in tragedy, honest and kind in word and deed.

8. Presence and Thanksgiving (Ps 139)

1 O LORD, thou hast searched me and known me!
2 Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar.
3 Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.
5 Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.
7 Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, "Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be night,"
12 even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with Thee

9. Coda

“Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.” While we may shed the inherited demonic mythology in the verse, knowing and honoring its origins in the distant past, we nonetheless fully recognize the spiritual truth in 1 Peter: we know not what a day may bring, but only that the hour for serving is always present. Our dear Springfield mother, covering her daughter and so saving her in a bathtub, knew not what a day would bring, but only the presence of mind to save her beloved.

We too want to discipline ourselves and keep alert, as the 2nd century author of 1 Peter instructs his baptizand. So we pray. Do you pray? So we commune. Do you receive the eucharist? So we study. Have you devotionally read your Bible this week? So we converse with one another. Have you opened home and heart recently in Christian conversation? So we fast—park your car, save your money, do not reply all: fight pollution, debt and dehumanization. We too want to discipline ourselves and keep alert.

We want to live consecrated lives.

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
Dean of Marsh Chapel.

If...Then...

2011-05-29T11:00:00.011-04:00

Click here to hear Sermon only

John 14:15-21

Once again I find myself compelled at the outset, and even in his absence, to thank Dean Hill for his gracious offering to me of a preaching series during the late spring and early summer. Some of you may remember that we began on May 8, Mothers Day, with a reflection on life’s journeys in conversation with the resurrection story of Jesus meeting the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Yes, here you are, whether you intended to be here, or more likely not, on Memorial Day Sunday, right in the middle of Br. Larry’s 2011 secular holiday preaching series. Whether you are here in person or listening over airwaves or internet signals, it is good that you have come on Memorial Day weekend, so that you may pray that what follows you might quickly forget. Speaking of prayer.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray.

God of memory and of mindfulness, guide our hearts and minds in these moments of reflection that they may be turned to you, to your wisdom and your grace, and that our lives may benefit from the beneficence of your most Holy Spirit. In the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, we pray. Amen.

Have you ever sat and watched as a baby, sitting in the middle of the floor, attempts to get up and go after a ball or some other toy that she has flung across the room? This attempt at locomotion is often accompanied by a facial expression of some degree of anguish. It is as if said baby wants to say, “If only I could get up and go, I could get across the room and get my toy. Alas, since I cannot get up and go, I shall have to put on a show of consternation in order to motivate someone around me to get it for me.” Amazingly, as the facial expression of anguish turns to vocal consternation, someone usually does just that.

And so it begins: life in the conditional. If the baby cries, then someone goes to get the toy. If the child pushes the button, then the screen comes on. If the adolescent breaks curfew, then the parents ground him. If the young adult gets a job, then she can pay the rent. If the politician commits adultery and his constituents find out about it, then he will be voted out of office. Well, maybe. Life in the conditional is at the heart of the human endeavor. It is so much so that the great modern philosopher Immanuel Kant put it at the heart of his articulation of the nature of knowledge and experience alongside time and space: the conditional movement of causality is constitutive of pure reason.
Actually, reality is a bit more complicated than this. And so we ask, do you live in the world of Sir Isaac Newton or the world of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr? This is an important question for us here at Marsh Chapel who seek to live faithful lives, and not merely for the physicists working in labs across the street. So, let’s have it, do you live in the mechanistic universe of Newton, where things move around bumping into each other like billiard balls such that when one thing encounters another it causes the thing it runs into to alter course? Or do you live in the probabilistic universe of Einstein and Bohr, which is to say the quantum universe, where outcomes of interactions are only certain to a degree of probability? While it is probably best for us to leave it to the physicists to demonstrate why the latter is the more robust view in the laboratory, we can confirm it in our own lived experience. After all, does the adolescent not run a rough calculus of the probability that his parents will ground him for staying out past curfew? And does the politician not calculate both the probability that he will get caught in adultery and the probability that his constituents will find out about it? Perhaps we will address the question of why it is that both adolescents and politicians are so likely to miscalculate their respective probabilities when we gather for the third and final installment of the 2011 secular preaching series on Independence Day weekend.
And so it is that we find ourselves living in a probabilistic conditional world. It should not be entirely surprising, then, that we carry the presuppositions of our probabilistic conditional world over into our spiritual lives. Our lesson this morning from 1 Peter is an excellent example of this phenomenon. “Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?” Transcription: If you do what is good, then you will not be harmed. The fact that the world is not merely conditional but probabilistically conditional comes into play in the next sentence: “But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed.” That is, for those of you who are good but fall outside of the probability of not being harmed, and thus are in fact harmed, do not worry too much, because you are still blessed. This is beginning to sound a lot like the witch test: if she drowns, then she was clearly not a witch! Oh dear.
It is an interesting thing to consider that religious people figured out that the world is probabilistically conditional long before the physicists did. After all, how often have you heard stories of people praying, “God, if only you will X, I promise to Y”? How often have you prayed such yourself? Martin Luther prayed in the forest that if he would survive a thunderstorm then he would become a monk. He survived, so he did in fact become an Augustinian. Of course, it is notable that these promises tend to arise at the extremities of life. That is, these promises tend to come about when life itself is at stake, taking the form of, “God, save my life and I will give my life to you.” This has the side effect of effectively negating the probabilistic quality of the conditional. After all, if God does not save them, then we never get to hear their story of praying that they will do something if God saves them.
No, it is much better to look to the more mundane spiritual conditionals to understand their probabilistic nature. These are more wont to take the form of, “God, if you will only find me a parking spot, I promise to stop doing whatever it was that I was doing that made me late in the first place.” Here in Boston, I am quite confident that there are more such prayers offered daily in the confines of motor vehicles than all of the prayers offered in all of the houses of worship in this city combined. And multiply that number by 100 when the Red Sox are in town! This mundane conditional is much more interesting because of the fact that it frequently does not come true. How often have you seen a host of angels swoop down and carry off a car so that you can take its space? No, often as not you are left driving around frustrated that your meeting is starting in a building mere feet away and you are stuck outside trying to dispose of a massive hunk of metal.

Of course, not all non-mortal conditionals are so trivial. How many of you have offered prayers, perhaps in this very nave, for family and friends who are terminally ill? And how many of them have died? How many of you have prayed for work? And how many of you are still unemployed? How many of you have prayed for peace? And how long will we remain at war? The fact of the matter is that these non-trivial conditionals do cause some people to abandon faith and abandon God. That this happens should not be surprising. But what is truly fascinating is how many people do not flee from faith and God upon finding themselves outside the desired probability. In religious and spiritual life we are accustomed to the probabilistic conditional.
The movement from if to then that constitutes the conditional is a place of deep anxiety in human life. The probability that the if will not come about, and the probability that the then will not in fact follow, leaves a great deal of uncertainty as to how and when to move. And the fact that the probabilistic conditional figures in the literature of our spiritual heritage does not make living in the midst of such instability any easier. However, acknowledging the reality of the probabilistic conditional as one of the primary modes of human engagement of experience is not the only testimony of the religious and spiritual traditions. The good news offered in the spiritual quest is precisely a transcendence of the if-then dichotomy of human affairs. There is more to life than predicting a probability and then hoping for the best. Our Gospel lesson from John highlights this point. “If you love me, keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.” The if-then conditional of the first sentence is not the last word. The uncertainty of Good Friday’s crucifixion is transcended, but not eclipsed, in the confidence of the Easter resurrection. The uncertainty Jesus’ departure in the Ascension is transcended, but not eclipsed, as we shall see in the next weeks, in the confidence of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The promise of the Holy Spirit is not simply another conditioned clause. It is its own indicative statement. The Advocate will come in spite of our fulfillment of the condition, not because of it. We are saved by faith, not by works.

This movement of transcendence-sans-eclipse is an important one in our spiritual lives. The transcendence of the if-then dichotomy is the source of the hope that is in us, of which we are called to account in 1 Peter. And yet, we are called to give this account “with gentleness and reverence.” This is because in this life we never fully depart from the dichotomy of the probabilistic conditional. We can never escape the vicissitudes of life. At the same time, the transcendence is not merely cast off into some future afterlife. The transcendence-sans-eclipse of our Easter and Pentecost experience is a source of real hope and transformation in our lives now.
Paul testified to the importance of this transcendence in his speech in front of the Areopagus in Athens, accounted in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Paul testified about the unknown god to which the Athenians had built a temple. He testified that this unknown god of the Athenians was “the God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth.” Furthermore, he testified that the creator of the world cannot be bound in shrines or works of human hands, or even served by human hands. Paul testified to a God who transcends the conditional tense of daily life. God “allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope and find him – though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’” Our searching for the transcendent God should not lead us to place our hope in something finite, but it should also not lead us to place our hope in something to come in the future, which is, after all, also finite. No, the transcendence-sans-eclipse of the hope promised in Easter and Pentecost provides a living hope in the midst of the probabilistic conditional experience of life.
The hope that is in us is not that God will fulfill all of our desires, no matter how mundane or extreme. It is not even that we will always come out on the preferable side of the probabilities. No, the hope that is in us does not transcend the conditional character of life by resolving its dichotomies but transcends the conditional character of life without eclipsing that life as it is. After all, it is the life God gives us and calls good. Instead, the hope that is in us is the hope of life and love. “Because I live, you also will live,” Jesus proclaims in the voice of the fourth Evangelist. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10: 10). “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them an reveal myself to them.”

The good news of Jesus Christ for us today is that life and love are not faint hopes. They are hopes in the power to overcome the brokenness of life in the conditional tense. They are movements toward wholeness that draws together not only the preferably possibilities but also those we might wish to avoid. Life would not be life without death. Love would not be love without struggle, pain and loss. “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” And is not the achievement of holding such disparate and diverse realities of life together in a more awesome whole far greater than finding a parking space? Amen.

Br. Lawrence Whitney LC +

If...Then...

2011-05-29T11:00:00.007-04:00

Click here to hear Sermon only

John 14: 15-21
Psalm 66: 8-20
1 Peter 3: 13-22
Acts 17: 22-31

Once again I find myself compelled at the outset, and even in his absence, to thank Dean Hill for his gracious offering to me of a preaching series during the late spring and early summer. Some of you may remember that we began on May 8, Mothers Day, with a reflection on life’s journeys in conversation with the resurrection story of Jesus meeting the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Yes, here you are, whether you intended to be here, or more likely not, on Memorial Day Sunday, right in the middle of Br. Larry’s 2011 secular holiday preaching series. Whether you are here in person or listening over airwaves or internet signals, it is good that you have come on Memorial Day weekend, so that you may pray that what follows you might quickly forget. Speaking of prayer.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray.

God of memory and of mindfulness, guide our hearts and minds in these moments of reflection that they may be turned to you, to your wisdom and your grace, and that our lives may benefit from the beneficence of your most Holy Spirit. In the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, we pray.
Amen.

Have you ever sat and watched as a baby, sitting in the middle of the floor, attempts to get up and go after a ball or some other toy that she has flung across the room? This attempt at locomotion is often accompanied by a facial expression of some degree of anguish. It is as if said baby wants to say, “If only I could get up and go, I could get across the room and get my toy. Alas, since I cannot get up and go, I shall have to put on a show of consternation in order to motivate someone around me to get it for me.” Amazingly, as the facial expression of anguish turns to vocal consternation, someone usually does just that.

And so it begins: life in the conditional. If the baby cries, then someone goes to get the toy. If the child pushes the button, then the screen comes on. If the adolescent breaks curfew, then the parents ground him. If the young adult gets a job, then she can pay the rent. If the politician commits adultery and his constituents find out about it, then he will be voted out of office. Well, maybe. Life in the conditional is at the heart of the human endeavor. It is so much so that the great modern philosopher Immanuel Kant put it at the heart of his articulation of the nature of knowledge and experience alongside time and space: the conditional movement of causality is constitutive of pure reason.

Actually, reality is a bit more complicated than this. And so we ask, do you live in the world of Sir Isaac Newton or the world of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr? This is an important question for us here at Marsh Chapel who seek to live faithful lives, and not merely for the physicists working in labs across the street. So, let’s have it, do you live in the mechanistic universe of Newton, where things move around bumping into each other like billiard balls such that when one thing encounters another it causes the thing it runs into to alter course? Or do you live in the probabilistic universe of Einstein and Bohr, which is to say the quantum universe, where outcomes of interactions are only certain to a degree of probability? While it is probably best for us to leave it to the physicists to demonstrate why the latter is the more robust view in the laboratory, we can confirm it in our own lived experience. After all, does the adolescent not run a rough calculus of the probability that his parents will ground him for staying out past curfew? And does the politician not calculate both the probability that he will get caught in adultery and the probability that his constituents will find out about it? Perhaps we will address the question of why it is that both adolescents and politicians are so likely to miscalculate their respective probabilities when we gather for the third and final installment of the 2011 secular preaching series on Independence Day weekend.

And so it is that we find ourselves living in a probabilistic conditional world. It should not be entirely surprising, then, that we carry the presuppositions of our probabilistic conditional world over into our spiritual lives. Our lesson this morning from 1 Peter is an excellent example of this phenomenon. “Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?” Transcription: If you do what is good, then you will not be harmed. The fact that the world is not merely conditional but probabilistically conditional comes into play in the next sentence: “But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed.” That is, for those of you who are good but fall outside of the probability of not being harmed, and thus are in fact harmed, do not worry too much, because you are still blessed. This is beginning to sound a lot like the witch test: if she drowns, then she was clearly not a witch! Oh dear.

It is an interesting thing to consider that religious people figured out that the world is probabilistically conditional long before the physicists did. After all, how often have you heard stories of people praying, “God, if only you will X, I promise to Y”? How often have you prayed such yourself? Martin Luther prayed in the forest that if he would survive a thunderstorm then he would become a monk. He survived, so he did in fact become an Augustinian. Of course, it is notable that these promises tend to arise at the extremities of life. That is, these promises tend to come about when life itself is at stake, taking the form of, “God, save my life and I will give my life to you.” This has the side effect of effectively negating the probabilistic quality of the conditional. After all, if God does not save them, then we never get to hear their story of praying that they will do something if God saves them.

No, it is much better to look to the more mundane spiritual conditionals to understand their probabilistic nature. These are more wont to take the form of, “God, if you will only find me a parking spot, I promise to stop doing whatever it was that I was doing that made me late in the first place.” Here in Boston, I am quite confident that there are more such prayers offered daily in the confines of motor vehicles than all of the prayers offered in all of the houses of worship in this city combined. And multiply that number by 100 when the Red Sox are in town! This mundane conditional is much more interesting because of the fact that it frequently does not come true. How often have you seen a host of angels swoop down and carry off a car so that you can take its space? No, often as not you are left driving around frustrated that your meeting is starting in a building mere feet away and you are stuck outside trying to dispose of a massive hunk of metal.

Of course, not all non-mortal conditionals are so trivial. How many of you have offered prayers, perhaps in this very nave, for family and friends who are terminally ill? And how many of them have died? How many of you have prayed for work? And how many of you are still unemployed? How many of you have prayed for peace? And how long will we remain at war? The fact of the matter is that these non-trivial conditionals do cause some people to abandon faith and abandon God. That this happens should not be surprising. But what is truly fascinating is how many people do not flee from faith and God upon finding themselves outside the desired probability. In religious and spiritual life we are accustomed to the probabilistic conditional.
The movement from if to then that constitutes the conditional is a place of deep anxiety in human life. The probability that the if will not come about, and the probability that the then will not in fact follow, leaves a great deal of uncertainty as to how and when to move. And the fact that the probabilistic conditional figures in the literature of our spiritual heritage does not make living in the midst of such instability any easier. However, acknowledging the reality of the probabilistic conditional as one of the primary modes of human engagement of experience is not the only testimony of the religious and spiritual traditions. The good news offered in the spiritual quest is precisely a transcendence of the if-then dichotomy of human affairs. There is more to life than predicting a probability and then hoping for the best. Our Gospel lesson from John highlights this point. “If you love me, keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.” The if-then conditional of the first sentence is not the last word. The uncertainty of Good Friday’s crucifixion is transcended, but not eclipsed, in the confidence of the Easter resurrection. The uncertainty Jesus’ departure in the Ascension is transcended, but not eclipsed, as we shall see in the next weeks, in the confidence of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The promise of the Holy Spirit is not simply another conditioned clause. It is its own indicative statement. The Advocate will come in spite of our fulfillment of the condition, not because of it. We are saved by faith, not by works.

This movement of transcendence-sans-eclipse is an important one in our spiritual lives. The transcendence of the if-then dichotomy is the source of the hope that is in us, of which we are called to account in 1 Peter. And yet, we are called to give this account “with gentleness and reverence.” This is because in this life we never fully depart from the dichotomy of the probabilistic conditional. We can never escape the vicissitudes of life. At the same time, the transcendence is not merely cast off into some future afterlife. The transcendence-sans-eclipse of our Easter and Pentecost experience is a source of real hope and transformation in our lives now.

Paul testified to the importance of this transcendence in his speech in front of the Areopagus in Athens, accounted in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Paul testified about the unknown god to which the Athenians had built a temple. He testified that this unknown god of the Athenians was “the God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth.” Furthermore, he testified that the creator of the world cannot be bound in shrines or works of human hands, or even served by human hands. Paul testified to a God who transcends the conditional tense of daily life. God “allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope and find him – though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’” Our searching for the transcendent God should not lead us to place our hope in something finite, but it should also not lead us to place our hope in something to come in the future, which is, after all, also finite. No, the transcendence-sans-eclipse of the hope promised in Easter and Pentecost provides a living hope in the midst of the probabilistic conditional experience of life.

The hope that is in us is not that God will fulfill all of our desires, no matter how mundane or extreme. It is not even that we will always come out on the preferable side of the probabilities. No, the hope that is in us does not transcend the conditional character of life by resolving its dichotomies but transcends the conditional character of life without eclipsing that life as it is. After all, it is the life God gives us and calls good. Instead, the hope that is in us is the hope of life and love. “Because I live, you also will live,” Jesus proclaims in the voice of the fourth Evangelist. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10: 10). “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them an reveal myself to them.”

The good news of Jesus Christ for us today is that life and love are not faint hopes. They are hopes in the power to overcome the brokenness of life in the conditional tense. They are movements toward wholeness that draws together not only the preferably possibilities but also those we might wish to avoid. Life would not be life without death. Love would not be love without struggle, pain and loss. “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” And is not the achievement of holding such disparate and diverse realities of life together in a more awesome whole far greater than finding a parking space?

Amen.

~Br. Lawrence A. Whitney, LC+
University Chaplain for Community Life

Baccalaureate

2011-05-22T11:00:00.001-04:00

Click here to hear Dean Hill's introduction of Dr. Zewail and Dr. Zewail's address
Click here to watch the video of Dr. Zewail's address

Boston University's 2011 Baccalaureate speaker was Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Ahmed Zewail. Later in the day, Dr. Zewail was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree at BU’s 138th Commencement. For more information about Dr. Zewail, please read BU Today's article.

There will be no sermon text posted for this Baccalaureate address.

This I Believe

2011-05-15T11:00:00.009-04:00

Click here to hear all 4 reflections with interlude music

Acts 2:42-47
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10

"This I Believe" Narratives

Tyler Sit

Click here to hear Tyler's reflection only.

God be in my end, and in my departing.
I have spent four years at Marsh Chapel, with some hiatus in the middle for living abroad. The worship service we are sharing today has followed me through my college career, regardless the continent I was on, and for the sake of our time (which is now) and the sake of our place (which is here), I would like to frame my beliefs in the elegant rhythms of the Marsh Chapel worship service. And what better place do we have to begin but the end—from this choral response, let us step back to the prompt. God be in my head.

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you…

I believe we can be a benediction for each other, and in so doing witness a gospel in the present tense. I believe the Spirit lives in the hearts of all, and we cannot begin to understand the nature of God without the participation of all.

I mentioned I lived abroad but surely the most important travel I have ever done was to visit the temples of every-body, to sit in the pews of another person’s understanding of God and glissando in reverence of another person’s chorus. The past four years gave me conversations with people who envision God from a different angle—my Orthodox Jewish brothers looking back throughout history, my Buddhist sisters looking around and within, my Catholic friends looking—well I’m not really sure, but they are indeed beside me and I cherish them like I do my Muslim classmates and Hindu roommates and the debates I have with the swell of atheism that characterizes this generation.

What a benediction they are to me, how earnestly I try to represent Christ to them.

I believe that our offertory can be a social one, that when we are with each other we can bless others just as we have been covered with blessings. For it is when we are with each other that we find our place within the Creation that has already been worshiping:

All Creatures of our God and King, lift up your voice and with us sing, Alleluia! Alleluia!

It is when we walk in offering and sacrifice to God that we can hear each other, that the prayers of the people can find volume. How greatly the capacity of our hearts enlarge when, kneeling next to each other, we can support the whole world and work to end suffering that we can only touch by prayer. And for the suffering that we will encounter once we step outside of this sanctuary, we orient ourselves right, crying:

Lead me Lord (for I have lost my inspiration), lead me in thy righteousness (for we have rejected our liberation), make thy way plain before my face (Oh You, our object of adoration).

And after such contemplation I find I can’t help but preach about it. To share a gospel with my tongue but also to deliver a sermon with my living—that each song I sing can be like David that each lesson I bring can be like Paul. Not that either of those guys were particularly holy, which works out because I’m not either. The good news, though, is that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, this proves God’s love for us—now all we need to do is prove that we can love each other.

I believe that each morning gives us opportunity to begin worship anew. Just like this morning, how we gather—now, here—where the dawn of the east meets the twilight of the west, and the cool of the north touches the calm of the south. We follow the same worship rhythm, but the song changes with every breath.

Amen.

Monica Castillo

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I never suffered growing pains when I was younger. If you can’t see me behind the podium today, you now know why. Childhood didn’t quite prepare me for the lessons I learned in college. I wasn’t challenged out of my comfort zone often. I went to middle school with practically the same people and teachers as I did when I left for college. Change was not something I was used to, but it was something I desired.

On my own for the first time, I felt truly lonely. Seeking to keep some regularity in my life, I came to Marsh Chapel for services on a very windy, but sunny day. I dragged my parents along to a service they said reminded them of “The Phantom of the Opera.” Yes, the music was new for me too, but the message was similar. After the service, they offered a trip to the JFK Library, and I decided to tag along.

And along I stayed. It was in Marsh I found a home away from home. I ran here when news of the stock market crash hit and since then, nearly every crisis I’ve gone through has ended with me coming here for help. Within the first month of classes, I lost one of my youth pastors from home and ended up in the sanctuary crying. I wasn’t alone for long, before someone came and talked with me. I found other people just as interested as I was to find friends and stability. I started to joke that Marsh had adopted us bratty freshmen. One friend and I even made a Marsh family tree, with Dean Hill and his wife, Jan, as our grandparents, Elizabeth as our aunt, Ray as our uncle, and Brother Larry as our brother. To further the joke, I started to write the Thurman Room couch #1 as my address in the red books in the pew.

It saddens me to walk away from all this after only three years. After all this trailblazing, I don’t want to go anywhere else. I want to stay here, in Boston, at Boston University. In my case, I won’t even graduate with the girls I was so closely friends with. They have still a year to go, and I am leaving early. My family is coming up from the South to see me graduate, but I want my Northern family, my Marsh family, to be there too! Perhaps this is a kind of sadness that acts like a growing pain, letting me know it’s time to move on. I fear that to graduate is to lose them. But wherever this graduation process drops me off, I hope to still have my faith in this family. Because that’s what Marsh has taught me. Not faith in the good book-I’ve had that for awhile. No, Marsh Chapel have given me back my faith in the family, faith in friendships, and restored my faith in nearly everyone around me. Perhaps I will be able to walk away from here as I did from my home in Florida, assured that even if I move or they move that we will always have the times we once shared in a place we called home. Perhaps these growing pains would at least lend me an inch or two in time for graduation.

Rachel Hassinger

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Good morning!

My name is Rachel Hassinger.

Thank you for including me in your service today.

I started this journey to graduation many years ago at a different school. Now I am finishing here at Boston University.

I am a woman of faith. I used to believe in a God that heals. I still do, but it hasn’t been easy.

I grew up a believer. I led the youth group, and studied the bible with my peers and my mentors. I joined ecumenical and other student religious groups at my previous college.
Unfortunately, my experiences with extreme antigay hatred and fear have catapulted me out of the church.

While this may not change soon, I trust, that although my student life at BU did not lead me through Marsh Chapel or other religious groups, my finals days as an undergraduate student are just the beginning of my future -- grounded in a faith that knows no boundaries, a faith that transcends creed, class or nationality.

This I believe:

I believe in a goddess of suffering, a god of true life.

I believe in a spirit of justice, a father/son, mother/daughter, tree of life.

I believe in a faith that shatters and is yet still restored.

I believe in a Jesus that lived on this Earth, and suffered beyond human understanding.

I believe when an officer shot and killed Danroy Henry, a black, 20-year old Pace University student, sitting in a car outside a New York bar last year, our Yahweh mourns. And when that same cop is crowned Officer of the Year, we can hear Her wail in sadness and rage.

I believe that God created each of us in Her image – that race and gender are built by humans to explain oppression based on color, country, gender expression, sexuality or creed.

I believe that a person who steals bread is first and foremost hungry -- that we as a society are accountable for acquiescing to a system that leaves that one – and a million more – starving and underfed.

I believe that God knows no boundaries; God knows no walls.

I believe if we listen to the oppressed: such as the Palestinians, whose homes are being bulldozed in Gaza, the Jews who came before whose lives were shattered, the Muslims targeted by xenophobia and bigotry, or the persecution of the brown skinned in the name of fake borders and walls -- we can hear our Lord calling us to turn over the tables in our temples of greed.

I believe in a Love that seeks justice, in a love that kindles passion and purpose in those that know Her.

I believe that God does not only bless America or Boston University, the wealthy, the light skinned, the able-bodied, or the straight -- god blesses all.

I believe that no matter what humans conjure up as creed, that the single most important truth resides in these words from Jesus: love your neighbor as you love yourself.

RuPaul – host of Logo’s hit show RuPaul's Drag Race -- says it another way: "If you can't love yourself, how (in the hell) you gonna love someone else?"

"Can I get an Amen?"

Radha Patel

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Two weeks left of our undergraduate education, and the first sunny day of the season upon us, a new friend and I sat on BU beach. Our professor had just mentioned the saying, “all paths lead up the same mountain” while my friend had recently heard a similar proverb, “the view is the same at the top of the mountain”. Thus began our debate on whether the two maxims had the same significance.

This moment was a triumph for me in more than one way. Not only had I picked up on a nuance in the sayings, but because I myself confessed what I believed to be true. All paths up a mountain indicates, everyone looks for a universal divineness believed to be at the top, while climbing for a view highlights a moment for contemplation at the top.

An underclassman once asked me if I ever found myself overwhelmed, depressed or confused by deciding to double major in religion and biology. It was the first time I was asked to contemplate my personal beliefs and how they were affected by studying religion and science, and I was scared. Until then, I carefully isolated what I studied from my faith. Being a student, there is an understanding that we are to be the pragmatics in society; better to be one while at the forefront of a progressive one. I wasn’t ready for my faith to confront what I was learning. I was frightened by the possibility of coming to the logical decision to reject God. And, I was ashamed to admit, if He did exist, I didn’t want to be punished by God for rejecting him.

Instead, it was easier to shunt those niggling reservations. I even thought to myself that I would reflect when I had the time- I was too busy making friends, studying and traveling to be able to peacefully think. Obviously, this wasn’t successful. Whenever there was a quiet moment, the conflicts between logic and faith screamed to be heard in my head, and so, slowly, in the sanctity and secrecy of my own mind, I began to pose questions in an assumed format: Humans are only given so much responsibility because God believes us to be capable- right? God ensures that in the end, it is a just world- right? I then became more ambitious and I asked: Is there a paramount realization experience to be had if we meditate hard enough? Should authentic reactions of hate, jealousy, and anger, though facets of humanity, be denied because they are ugly, or, are all faiths taking different paths up the same mountain?

Learning and enquiring has threatened my faith, however it is thrilling and I have developed a more nuanced view of it. Questioning is strenuous and a blessing. You are your own most judgmental critic, but in this way, once you form your fluid convictions you understand the path you took to get there.

This I believe: Having absolute static beliefs is easy. Allow yourself to doubt and form dynamic beliefs.

While it may make you feel vulnerable, it is right before then, that you see the view.

Journeying On

2011-05-08T11:00:00.004-04:00

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Luke 24:13-35

Allow me this morning to publicly express my gratitude to Dean Hill for giving me my very own preaching series. Yes, indeed, you have arrived at Marsh Chapel, whether in person, or by radio waves or by internet signals, for the first offering in Br. Larry’s 2011 secular holiday preaching series. We begin today, Mother’s Day, and will pick up again at the end of May with Memorial Day. The series concludes on July 4, Independence Day. I consider it the highest honor to have been invited to participate in the life of Marsh Chapel in this way, although I would encourage you to note that Dean Hill reserved for himself that pinnacle of secular holidays. Yes, the very one you are remembering just now from back in February, Groundhog Day. I can only pray that some day I will attain to such a stature in preaching as to aspire to be invited on so noble an occasion. Speaking of prayer.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray.

Holy and Gracious God, we gather this morning of Mother’s Day and we celebrate the mothers here with us and the mothers, for some of us, who dwell far away. Keep our hearts and minds, this day and all days, in the mothering presence of your most Holy Spirit, that the thoughts of minds and the meditations of our hearts might be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Surely you have had the experience of being a passenger in a car traversing the streets of Boston. You are riding along on your way to an afternoon at the Museum of Fine Arts. You know where you are going. Your driver knows where she is going. You sit smiling as you gaze out the windows. Then, your driver takes a turn. “Hmmm…” you think, “this must be a shortcut. I should pay attention for the next time when I am the one driving.” Another turn. “Really. Interesting. I never would have thought to go this way,” your minds voice utters. A third turn. Now it is impossible for you to contain your words any longer. “Um, where are you going?” “Well,” your companion replies, “I am going to the MFA. Where did you think I was going?” “Yes, I thought we were going to the MFA, too, but the MFA is over there,” you reply, pointing back through the rear windshield. “Yes, dear,” says your companion, soothingly. “But this is Boston. Sometimes it is necessary to circumnavigate the entire city just to get next door.”

Amen? Amen.

“Where are you going?” There are actually two questions bound up in this one verbal ejaculation, but let us begin by taking the question at face value. It is certainly a legitimate question to ask as we consider the journey of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. There is another question that we might wish to ask along with Cleopas of his companion, namely, who are you? That line of questioning, however, at least at this stage, is not terribly likely to arrive at positive results. On the other hand, it is not entirely clear that our “Where are you going?” question will lead to positive results, either given that there is no clear evidence of a village called Emmaus two stadia, which is about fifty miles, from Jerusalem. This is to say that we do not know precisely where Cleopas and his friend were going, but the question remains relevant for us.

“Where are you going?” This question may be a constant, and perhaps somewhat grating, refrain for many of our graduating students here at Boston University. Family, faculty, friends, chaplains: all want to know where our graduates will be going next. Bound up in the question are clearly many other questions. “Do you have a job?” “Are you going to graduate school in the fall?” “Are you staying in Boston or moving back home or somewhere else entirely?” There are broader implications of the question as well, not merely about the immediate future but about the long term. “Do you have a plan?” “Are you career minded?” “What are you going to be, now that you are grown up?” And the questions have implications beyond merely the trajectory of career and work. “Are you going to get married?” “Are you going to have children?” “Are you going to be able to put your life together in such a way that you will both be fulfilled and able to pay the rent?”

“Where are you going?” In a time of global economic and political uncertainty, it can be especially challenging to even acknowledge the question. “Do you have a job?” “No, but not for lack of trying.” “Are you going to graduate school?” “Well, yes, but only because I cannot find a job, and by the way, I have no idea how I am going to pay for it, either now, or in the long term.” “Are you going to stay in Boston or move home?” “Well, I would like to stay in Boston, but Boston is expensive, and although I really do not want to be the graduate who spends the next two to three years living in my parents basement, I really do not see that I have any better options at this point.” Sorry, dear friends, but here at Marsh Chapel we do not preach a prosperity gospel but a Gospel of responsible Christian liberalism, which is to say that we abide in a realistic spirit with great hope for the possibilities of the future. It is in the spirit of realism that we must confess that the prospects are not what we might have hoped when we began four years ago. And it is in hope that we journey on.

It is a funny thing, returning for a moment to our pair of companions seeking to find their way to the MFA, that the question posed by the passenger to the driver, “Where are you going?” is not really a question as to the destination, but as to the route. This is to say that passenger and driver are both clear on where it is they intend to go. They are both aiming toward the MFA. It is just that the real route of the driver does not quite align with the ideal route of the passenger. Indeed, the real question the passenger is asking when verbalizing, “Where are you going?” is, “How are you going to get there?” This too is a question we may wish to bring to Cleopas and his companion on the way to Emmaus. After all, it is a neat trick not only to arrive but merely to set out toward a village of which there is no evidence of existence. How do you get to somewhere that isn’t?

It is my great hope that there is a primacy of the “How are you going to get there?” question in the “Where are you going?” inquisition that our graduates are racked upon by family, friends, faculty, and yes, chaplains. Indeed, of the two, it is the more profound. “Where are you going?” is simply to inquire of a single point, and the final point in the series, at that. “How are you going to get there?” inquires as to all of the infinitesimal points in between here and wherever it is you may be going. Furthermore, it is not so much a quantitative question about the points themselves, but a qualitative and relational question directed more toward the person for whom those points will be constitutive of their life. This is to say that the “How are you going to get there?” question is really a question of “Who are you, and how will you be in the world?” It is not a question of doing but of being, not that the two are ever more than theoretically distinguishable. It is a question of what sort of person you are and what manner of being you will endeavor to live into.

“How are you going to get there?” The reason that I hope that this question is the primary question implied in the “Where are you going?” inquisition is that this is the question that a university education should prepare you to answer, even if it does not prepare you to answer the “Where are you going?” question on its face. If nothing else, I pray that our graduates have uncovered something about themselves in their experience at Boston University, whether in the classroom, in the dorms, on the athletic fields and courts, in the dining halls, while studying abroad, while participating in community service, or just walking up and down Bay State Road. This is to say what Howard Thurman said much more eloquently: “Do not ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go and do that, because what the world needs is people who come alive.” In the final analysis it is a sense of concrete, embodied purpose, which only comes by moving through the spiritual process of self-discovery and actualization that empowers those who change the world. To transform others, be ye first transformed, and journey on.

Now that we have winched tight the inquisitor’s rack on Cleopas and his companion, perhaps we should stop for a moment and ponder the fact that the two questions that spring immediate to mind for us, “Where are you going?” and “How are you going to get there?” are actually not the question that Jesus poses. Jesus does not ask where these two disciples are going. It would have made sense if he had. After all, we hear throughout the Gospels of how the disciples are constantly misunderstanding what they are to do, where they are to go, and most importantly, why they are to do what they have been given to do. It would make sense that Jesus would be concerned that these disciples have once again wandered off, and as the good shepherd, that he would seek to bring them back to the fold.

Instead of asking, “Where are you going?” Jesus asks, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” Jesus is interested neither in the destination nor in the route but in the relationships built along the journey. If Jesus had been in the car making its way through the streets of Boston toward the MFA, or at least intending to be moving toward the MFA, the driver and passenger would not have been riding along silently such that the first audible sound is the inquisitor’s whip, “Where are you going?” Had Jesus been in the car, he would have wanted to know why the pair was going to the MFA. “Well, there is a new Art of the America’s wing that has just opened, and we have heard so much about it.” “Is American art important to you?” “Yes, we are particularly captivated by the expansive landscapes of the Hudson River School.” “What captivates you so?” “Well, I think it has to do with the way the artists work with light, so that parts of the painting are illuminated while others fall into shadow. In so many ways it is more real than the actual view of which the painting is purportedly a record could ever express.” “Is not this the point of art?” “Yes, seeing the world in an artistic lens tells us more about who we are than we could ever otherwise come to know.”

Of course, the conversation with the disciples fails to actualize the potential for such a conversation. After all, these are the same dumb disciples who have been misunderstanding Jesus and his purpose and ministry since the get go. They are entirely bound up in trying to reconcile themselves to the crucifixion, and now also to the reports that Jesus is resurrected. And so Jesus must turn to admonishment. “‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” Once again, Jesus is left trying to bring the disciples up to speed. It is clear that the disciples have a ways yet to go as they journey on.

Speaking of journeying on, it seems that this is just what Jesus is intent to do, and what Jesus would have done had the disciples not intervened to invite him to Emmaus with them for dinner. Now, it is important to remember that these two disciples did not yet recognize that this was Jesus. Is this not often our experience as well, that we fail to recognize Christ in our midst. Often as not, Christ comes to us in the figure of others, the very same family, friends, faculty, and the occasional chaplain who winch us tight on the inquisitor’s rack. St. Francis said, “You may be the only vision of Jesus Christ someone will ever see.” A dear friend of mine said it even more boldly: “You may be the only Jesus Christ the world will ever see.” It is indeed a great responsibility.

It is significant that, even though they did not recognize Jesus, the disciples invited him into their home for dinner. The saying goes that you should always extend hospitality to strangers because you never know when you might play host to angels. Well, apparently you may also end up playing host to Christ. Jesus becomes known to the disciples in the breaking of the bread. Of course, the disciples later recognize that they had in fact felt the presence of Jesus as they journeyed together along the road, in the familiar sense in which Jesus had always made their hearts burn. Perhaps, not realizing that the feeling signaled the presence of Jesus, they even took an antacid. That is what you do for heartburn, isn’t it? Anyway, they had not recognized him, which is to say, the familiar sense of hearts aflame had not risen to the level of conscious awareness, but now they were aware of the connection between what they felt on the road and what they had felt as they accompanied Jesus throughout his ministry.

This is to say that as you journey on, I would encourage you to extend and receive hospitality. In the end it is neither the goal nor even the path that is truly important. It does not really matter whether or not you ever make it to the MFA. What matters is the relationships you cultivate along the way. This is the good news of Jesus Christ for us today: resurrection and salvation by relationship. I leave you today with the prayer of my order, of the Lindisfarne Community: that we may be as Christ to those we meet, and that we might find Christ within them.
And in all things, make your mother proud. Amen.

~Br. Lawrence A. Whitney, LC+
University Chaplain for Community Life

Spring in London

2011-05-01T11:00:00.002-04:00

Click here to hear Sermon only

John 20:19-31

1. Love Divine

Love Divine all loves excelling
Joy of heaven to earth come down
Fix in us thy humble dwelling
All thy faithful mercies crown
Jesus thou art all compassion
Pure unbounded love thou art
Visit us with thy salvation
Enter every trembling heart

2. Deeds That Speak

We hear today the ringing conclusion of the Gospel of John, the courageous Fourth Gospel, the gospel of love divine.

Notice the unique appearance of Thomas, so unlike anything else in any other gospel. Notice the power and irony that he who mistakes the gospel of believing for the truth of seeing, nonetheless announces the full gospel’s full truth: My Lord and my God! Notice the gospel writer who forever reminds us that signs and wonders are deeds that speak (Bultmann, TFG, 698). Notice the ardent proclamation of a personal faith that is not a conviction that is present once and for all but must perpetually make sure of itself anew, and therefore must continually hear the word anew (ibid, 699)…The recounted events have become symbolic pictures for the fellowship which the Lord, who has ascended to the Father, holds with his own (696). Seeing is not believing: believing is seeing. Touching Thomas tells the truth.

3. All Weddings Are Royal

Deeds that speak include weddings, royal and common.

The spring London fog lifted Friday and the spring London rain waited and we enjoyed a royal wedding, 2 Billion of us. The hymns, prayers, liturgy, vows, and spirit of the service are closely similar to the dozens of weddings we will solemnize here at Marsh Chapel this year. As the minister said, all weddings are royal and every bride and groom is a king and queen. For a moment the fog of three questionable wars, a warming environment, a cooling economy, and 400 tornado taken in the south lifted and the rain of anxiety waited and there was a dress, a ring, a carriage, a kiss, a party and a convertible. 60 million Britons had a holiday, and you got up early to watch. Why did we watch?

I hope we heard the sermon. A good word about a generous God who evokes generosity in us. A good word about a new century in which the discoveries of the past century we will need to control and manage: the emphasis on science in the 20th century may be giving way to an emphasis on religion in the 21st, a shift from discovery to community, from creation to redemption. A good word which quoted a personal prayer. A good word about seeds of devotion growing into eternal life, of which the Gospel of John eternally speaks. I hope we applied the sermon to ourselves, along with the beautifully read verses from Romans 12.

But I doubt that is why we watched. In fact, only one observer to my ear so far, among the 2 billion, has come closer to the deeper reason for our attention. Those of us listening to Bonhoeffer this spring will not be surprised.

4. Freedland

“The power of the young Elizabeth’s brief scenes in the King’s Speech is not solely chronological. It is not only that she was around a long time ago; it is that she was around then, during what Churchill predicted would be known thereafter as Britain’s finest hour. She is the last living connection to an episode—the island race standing up to Hitler—that has become the foundation story, almost the creation myth, of modern Britain…Britain alone, Churchill, 1940, the Blitz—this is the tale of unalloyed heroism that the country likes to tell and retell itself. And as long as Elizabeth sits on the throne, Britons remain tied to those events directly” Jonathan Freedlander, New York Review of Books, 4/28/2011, 30.

5. Their Finest Hour

We used to remember that. It is the courage in history of a real love of freedom, that has preserved our way of life, and that has us speaking English today, and not German. Wesley said he knew how to prize “the liberty of an Englishman”. That fierce, pugnacious, relentless, John Bull, bulldog, dog with a bone love of freedom. At the right moment, one momentous Spring in London, 1940, Winston Churchill faced down the more polished, better heeled, more popular and more experienced old Britons of his newly formed war cabinet, and steadily led his country away from their desire to compromise with Adolf Hitler. With Belgium defeated, Churchill clung to a love of freedom. With France cut in two, Churchill clung to a love of freedom. With 400,000 men stranded at Dunkirk and escape virtually impossible, Churchill clung to a love of freedom. With the whole German airforce poised to incinerate England’s green and pleasant land, Churchill clung to a love of freedom. With Lord Halifax ready to seek terms and Lord Chamberlain ready to let him Churchill clung to a love of freedom. Read this summer John Lukacs’ Five Days in London, May 1940. He concludes: “Churchill and Britain could not have won the Second World War. In the end, America and Russia did. But in May 1940 Churchill (alone) was the one who did not lose it.” Churchill’s mother grew up south of Syracuse in Pompey. One wonders if some of his paternal love of freedom came from the winds of the Allegheny plateau. Authority is about love of freedom.

6. Hell’s Destruction

When I tread the verge of Jordan
Bid mine anxious fears subside
Death of death and hell’s destruction
Land me safe on Canaan’s Side
Strong Deliverer, Strong Deliverer
Be Thou Still My Strength and Shield
Be Thou Still My Strength and Shield

7. Aldersgate Street

The freedom and love in today’s Scripture lesson provide an alternative. Authenticity, finally, is at the heart of any godly authority.

We once remembered that. It is the experience of freeing love, that ignited our church. At midlife, one enchanting night in the English Spring of 1738, John Wesley heard something said in church that warmed his heart for good. He had been on Aldersgate street that Sunday evening, going to chapel service more from duty than from passion, when he heard a preacher read Romans 8 and also Martin Luther’s commentary on that passage. There is something so fragrant and so full about damp London in the springtime. As he left church, Wesley felt something new, a freeing love in the heart, which is the creation and work of the Holy Spirit, which blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it. Authority is about freeing love. If you missed Easter Vigil, you missed a part of this story.

8. Resurrection Changes Us

“So let us listen to the stories of Jesus and his miraculous birth, his calling of disciples and teachings of friendship, his sharp knocks at hypocrisy and love of childlike innocence, his proclamation that the last will be first and the first last, his miracles of healing and his struggles with fickle crowds, his interpretations of history and parables of the Kingdom, his gospel of love and demands for justice, his institution of sacraments and founding of a beloved community, his bitter betrayal and corrupt trial, his bloody suffering and desolate crucifixion, his harrowing of Hell and glorious resurrection, his blessing of our maturity and gift of the Spirit, his ascension into Heaven and mythic transformation into the atonement for all sins, into the Cosmic Christ, into the Second Person of the Trinity, into the divine founder of the Christian movement, into an ever-loving friend personally available to each of us, into a reality that is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. All of these things are part of the deep truth that works in us when we celebrate them. Better yet, let’s sing them, because music moves the soul faster than words alone. What changes with resurrection? We do. What is that change? A closer connection with God. What is that connection? An entry into the divine life whose wildness is embraced with Easter joy. “And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood?” You bet!! “Bold I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown, through Christ my own.” Amen.” (Robert Cummings Neville, April 23, 2011)

9. Moral Lessons

Just how shall we live changed lives? I have studied, preached, taught and interpreted the fourth Gospel for 33 years, but I never tire of wonder and amazement at what John does not say. He says nothing to us about how we are to live. There is not a single ethical sentence in the gospel—not a proverb, not a moral, not a parable, not a wisdom saying, not a command, not one, no not one. For John trusts—John believes—that once the heart has changed, once our own devotion, decision and discussion are strangely warmed, then we will figure out the rest for ourselves. We shall to build Jerusalem, and then we shall do so.

Let us make a start today. Let us take communion with the promise to live the communion. Let us keep faith with our partners and spouses. Let us tithe, give away 10% of what we earn—at least 10%. Let us worship—an hour a week of careful liturgy, prepared preaching, vibrant music, real fellowship. You can do this. You can. I know you can. We should get ourselves into our own Westminster Abbeys more than once every thirty years.

10. Jerusalem

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning Gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O Clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire.

I will not cease from Mental Fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
Dean of Marsh Chapel.