Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the full service

Luke 23:33-43

Click here to listen to the meditations only

Rev. Gaskell

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.

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…

Congregation and community, you come too.

Earthly assembly and heavenly chorus, you come too.

Beauty opens the world to grace.  Beauty may prepare you for the gospel of faith, the faith of the gospel.  Beauty is a ‘praeparatio evangelica’, a preparation of the gospel.  Bach is a prelude to faith.

Faith, the leap of faith, requires preparation.  Our colleague Peter Berger has written about this preparation: “I can find in human reality certain intimations of (God’s) speech, signals, unclear though they are, of His presence…joy, expressed in (great music) which seeks eternity…the human propensity to order which appears to correlate with an order in the universe…the immensely suggestive experience of play and humor, the irrepressible human propensity to hope, the certainty of some moral judgments, and last, but not least, the experiences of beauty…”(Questions of Faith, 12).

Beauty prepares us for faith.  Bach is a prelude to the gospel.

When you stand before your grandchild, in the hour of birth, you might think about that.  When you look into your father’s eyes, as he lies critically ill, you might think about that. When you realize that you have a real friend, one real friend, you might think about that. When you look at your beautiful country, in a time of need, and wonder whether you should bestir yourself to write a check or make a phone call, you might think about that. When a sunset seizes you, when a poem teases you, when a sermon freezes you, you might think about that.  It takes a leap.  Faith takes a leap.

Something beautiful may have prepared our gospel writer.  Bach may prepare you today.  Bach may lift your soul beyond youthful grunge.  Bach may raise your soul out of religious hiding.  Bach may sear your soul with beauty, and call you out of forty years of spiritual sloth.  It would not be the first time.  Today we hear a song of thanksgiving, a grateful and beautiful anthem. “Bach’s cantatas, in fact, were conceived and should be regarded not as concert pieces at all, but as musical sermons; and they were incorporated as such in the regular Sunday church services”. (The Cambridge Companion to Bach, 86).  I wonder whether the beautiful holiness of this music will touch you?

Dr. Jarrett

Today we present Cantata 10: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord’, Bach’s German setting of the Canticle of Mary as found in the first chapter of the Gospel according to Luke. Our program annotator Brett Kostrzewski reminds us both of the joyful prevalence of this text in most all Christian liturgies, but also the familiarity of the Leipzig congregation with this most joyful and famous canticle.

Let’s first consider the libretto for our cantata. Typically, we’d expect to find a biblical exhortation – perhaps a verse or two from a Psalm – followed by a series of recitatives and arias, each of which advances a different rhetorical argument or perspective of the scriptural subject of the day. The recits tend to pack in the most theology with their syllabic declamation, leaving the arias to convey a more personal response to the scriptural subject. Cantata 10 draws its libretto entirely from the Canticle of Mary, the first two verses quoted exactly, with the interior movements paraphrasing the remainder of the text. Only once does our anonymous librettist depart from the Lukan text when, in the final recitative, the tenor expounds on the broader theological implications of the word made flesh with themes that remind us of the first chapter of John. Bach adds the string orchestra at this moment, as if to underscore the importance of this final teaching opportunity.

There are three arias that comprise the corpus of the cantata. The first proceeds directly out of the opening movement without recitative, and immediately and successfully captures both the spirit of John the Baptist leaping in Elizabeth’s womb but also Mary’s joyful exuberance. The central aria provides the bass soloist and continuo cellist a flashy and virtuosic depiction of God casting down the mighty from their seat, exalting the humble, leaving the rich empty, and filling the hungry with gifts of grace. The third aria is perhaps the most inward looking moment in the entire cantata. Scored as a duet for alto and tenor, listen for the Magnificat chant played in long tones by the trumpet.

There are two recitatives for the tenor soloist, both of which offer rich examples of Bach’s extraordinary text setting. Note the chromatic flourish on the word ‘scatter’ in the first recitative, for example.

It is the cantata’s opening movement that best captures the urgency and ardor of Mary’s Song. The ages old Magnificat psalm tone is heard in long notes in the Soprano part, taken up by the altos for the second verse. All around, Bach scores music of brilliant vivacity, depicting both the exuberance of Mary’s joy, but also the promise and urgency of Christ’s advent.

Rev. Gaskell

Let us prepare ourselves, upon this Christ the King Sunday, and take on for ourselves, a spirit of wonder, of vulnerability

Erazim Kohak, of Boston University said of wonder:  ‘The ageless boulders of the long abandoned dam, the maple and the great birch by twilight, the chipmunk in the busyness of his days and of his dying, even I, making my dwelling place among them, are not only right in our season.  We also have our value in eternity, as witnesses to the audacious miracle of being rather than nothing.  Ultimately, that is the moral sense of nature, infinitely to be cherished:  that there is something.  That is the eternal wonder articulated in the rightness and rhythm of time which humans honor in their commandments, the wonder of being…There are humans…who become blind to goodness, to truth and beauty, who drink wine without pausing to cherish it, who pluck flowers without pausing to give thanks, who accept joy and grief as all in a day’s work, to be enjoyed or managed, without ever seeing the presence of eternity in them.  But that is not the point.  What is crucial is that humans, whether they do so or not, are capable of encountering a moment not simply as a transition between a before and an after but as the miracle of eternity ingressing intot time.  That, rather than the ability to fashion tools, stands out as the distinctive human calling.’

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, of blessed memory, said of vulnerability:  ‘Nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute:  we must simply hold out and see it through.  That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time it is a great consolation; for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bond between us.  It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap:  He does not fill it, but on the contrary, He keeps it empty, and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of pain.’

Gaston Bachelard, that Parisian philosopher poet, wrote, in full self-awareness:  ‘Words—I often imagine this—are little houses, each with its cellar and garret.  Common sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in ‘foreign commerce’, on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers.  To go upstairs in the word house, is to withdraw, step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words.  To mount and descend in the words themselves—this is the poet’s life…Yet listen well.  Not to my words, but to the tumult that rages in your body when you listen to yourself…And why should the actions of the imagination not be as real as those of the perception?’

Bach is filling us with grace and beauty! In particular, the final recit (No. 6) strays a bit from Luke, to amplify a little more theology, and seems to borrow heavily from John: “Thus it ever is, that God’s Word is full of grace and truth.”   Because the Gospel of John is centrally about the divine presence, this note fits our music today very well.  John is about presence, as is this magnificent cantata.  John is about Spirit, as is this magnificent cantata.  John is about mystery, as is this magnificent cantata.  John is about grace, as is this magnificent cantata.  Blessed be the Lord God of Israel!

“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,

for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.

He has raised up a mighty savior for us

in the house of his servant David,

as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,

that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.

Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,

and has remembered his holy covenant,

the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,

to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,

might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness

before him all our days.

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;

for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,

to give knowledge of salvation to his people

by the forgiveness of their sins.

By the tender mercy of our God,

the dawn from on high will break upon us,

to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,

to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

-The Reverend Victoria Hart Gaskell, Chapel Associate for Methodist students & Dr. Scott Jarrett, Director of Music

Reverend Gaskell’s portion of this week’s sermon is written by the Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel

posted in Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, The Bach Experience, The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation on 11.20.2016 at 11:00 am
Tags: Bach Experience, Scott Jarrett, Victoria Gaskell

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the full service

Luke 17:11-19

Click here to listen to the meditations only

The word “leprosy” in the Bible refers to more than one type of skin disease, not just Hansen’s disease, which is what is commonly thought of as leprosy when the work is mentined.  All the biblical diseases of that name are similar in that they are fearful diseases:  they are thought to be highly contagious, they cause physical disfigurement to greater or lesser degree, and they cause afflicted persons to be banned from society until they can prove themselves healed.  The two leprosy stories in our scriptures this morning seem fairly straightforward and turn out well:  Naaman and the ten lepers are healed.  However, as theologian and disability activist Sharon V. Betcher has pointed out for us before, the healing stories in the Bible are not only or not even about healing.  They are also social commentary and teaching stories as well.

As we are invited to explore the story of Naaman further, for instance, we note that he is a powerful and rich man.  He has access to captured Israelite children and is able to give a young girl to his wife as her servant.  He has other servants himself.  When he wants to give a gift, he is able to give away ten sets of garments, 756 pounds of silver, and 151 pounds of gold.  His success in life has come from the favor of his king:  as commander of the Aramean army he has won a great victory over the army of Israel in the series of border wars and raids that Aram and Israel conduct against one another.  The King of Aram is pleased, of course, but see how the writer of II Kings phrases the victory:  it is by Naaman that THE LORD had given victory to Aram.  This is the first sign that this is not just a healing story;  it is also a story about the reach of God’s power through all lands and all kinds of people, even an Aramean general.

And through a captive servant girl.  She is the one who tells Naaman’s wife about the prophet Elisha, who at this time is in Samaria, the northern part of Israel, and who can cure Naaman of his leprosy.  And Naaman’s wife tells Naaman.  It is a measure of Naaman’s desire to be rid of the disease that he listens.  Female captive foreign children and wives of the time, especially those who suggest to their master and husband that he go to the prophet of another people’s God who after all did not give that people the victory,  did not usually sway the decisions of rich, powerful, commanders of men,  But Naaman not only listens, he goes to his king.  The king of Aram, who after all wants Naaman at his best, not only gives him permission to go to the foreign prophet, but smooths his way with a letter of introduction to the king of Israel.

So Naaman takes his gold and silver and garments and horses and chariots and servants and letter and makes the trip to Elisha’s house.  He expects to deal with a professional prophet like those in Aram, who control their prophecy, able to say and do as they wish, and who have a responsibility to please their betters.  Instead, Naaman gets Elisha, who does not even come out to greet him or put on a show, but sends a messenger to tell him to wash seven times in the Jordan.  Naaman is so insulted that he misinterprets what the messenger says, and thinks that Elisha only offers him a ritual cleansing.  But his servants, who were not in a rage and who were able to listen to the messenger properly, convince Naaman to do what Elisha instructed.  Again, it is a measure of Naaman’s desire to be rid of his leprosy that he listens, and changes his rage and his mind in front of his servants and military personnel.  He washes, “according to the word of the man of God”, and is healed.  So he is no longer disfigured and no longer isolated.  But this is not just a healing story.  It is a story of conversion as well.  Because of his need, Naaman throughout has converted his power, wealth, and position to a position of acceptance of help and advice, help and advice that comesfrom the most unlikely people:  a female captive child, his wife, his servants, a disrespectful foreign prophet, all of whom had to manage him up to get him into the water.  And at the last, he makes a final conversion, to belief in the God of Israel as the God of all the earth.  For the writer of II Kings, Namaan is not just healed, he is truly whole.  And it doesn’t end there.  Later in II Kings there is the story of how the Aramean king, who now knows about Elisha, realizes that Elisha is working to advise the king of Israel.  Because of what Elisha does in a certain situation that there is no loss of life for the Arameans, the King of Aram stop the border wars and raids against Israel.  There are many kinds of healing.  And of conversion.

As we are invited to explore our second story, we notice that all ten of the lepers address Jesus as “Master”. They do in fact obey him when he tell them to go to the priest, and they are healed in the going, before they even reach the priest.  But nine of them, who we assume from the story were Jews, did not turn back.  Only one of them did, and he was a Samaritan, not only a foreigner but someone considered by Jews to worship wrong.  Yet he praises God loudly, falls on his face before Jesus, and thanks Jesus for his healing of body and his restoration to society.  The other nine may have b3een cured of their leprosy.  But the Samaritan is not only healed, he as a foreigner who worships wrong exemplifies true faith, faith in Jesus and in the power of the God of Jesus.  A better translation would have Jesus say to him that his faith does not just make him well, his faith saves him.  In his obedience, but even more in his conversion to praise and gratitude for God’s free gift, he is an example of the true disciple, of one who is truly whole.

Our theme for the Fall here at Marsh is conversation.  Conversation involves both speaking and listening from all parties involved.  Who is invited to take part in the conversation is also an important point.  In conversations about conflict transformation, for instance, one of the best practices is to notice who has not been invited.  This is because, if some of the people involved in the conflict are not in the conversation, their insights will not be available.  Or, and perhaps even more importantly, the uninvited will be angry about their exclusion and so the conflict will continue even if the invited people come to an agreement.  This is especially true in conversations about the dis-eases of our time, fearful that can disfigure our minds and souls if not our bodies.  We all know the categories:   race, sex, class, economic status, gender preference, climate change, body type, war, normality, religion.  Dis-eases that can have us isolate ourselves in barricaded ideological and social compounds,  lest we be contaminated by the change and inclusion.  Some of us now, in our country and in some of our faith traditions including my own, some of us actually find it is easy and acceptable to make others figurative lepers, to consider them the cause of our dis-eases.  to castigate them as not normal, wall them out, persecute their faith as wrong, take away or try to take away their agency and freedom,  love them only to a certain point in the name of God, deny our shared humanity with them.  No conversation at all with these outcasts.  No talking.  No listening.

Naaman and the people Jesus was talking to were instead invited by God to expand their conversation, to listen as well as talk.  They were invited to listen enough to take good advice and good example from those who were the most unlikely people to have it to offer.  But when they did listen, and acted on what they had heard, they were not just healed of their dis-ease.  They were converted, to a new relationship with God, with themselves, and with their neighbors.

The stories of Naaman and the thankful Samaritan invite us to expand our conversations too.  Not just with the rich and powerful or with each other.  But with those who we might consider most unlikely:  marginalized people, foreigners – whoever that is for us, people whose allegiances or worship we might think are wrong, those we might consider “the help”, people who don’t take us as seriously as we think they should.  Conversation sounds simple, but it might not be easy.  It probably depends on the measure of our desire to be rid of our dis-ease.

On the other hand, in conversation with those who are different from us we might just find some good advice or a good example.  We might find some healing, some wholeness, some praise and some gratitude, some truer discipleship.  We might find ourselves converted, to a new way of being with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors.  Before our dis-eases  disfigure our minds souls bodies and completely cut us off.  Before our dis-eases kill us and the rest of creation.  Conversation, even with the most unlikely people, is possible.  Thanks be to God, who gives us this chance to be whole.  May we choose to accept it and act on it, to talk and to listen with one another with praise and thanksgiving.  Amen.

—Rev. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Chapel Associate for Methodist Students

posted in The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation on 10.9.2016 at 11:00 am
Tags: Victoria Gaskell

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the full service

John 1:1-5, 9-13

Click here to listen to the sermon only

Happy New Year!  and welcome to this second Sunday of the Christmas season here at Marsh Chapel.  We celebrate the birth of Jesus for many reasons, and our scriptures this morning give us one reason in particular.  For it is not just as individuals that Jesus Emmanuel comes to us; he comes to us also as individuals in community; indeed, he comes to form us as individuals into a community, the community of the church, his heart and mind, ears and eyes, hands and feet still at work in the world.

Jeremiah reminds us that God’s work to build and restore community did not

begin with Jesus’ entry into the world.  It has been a constant in God’s relationship with humanity.  Jeremiah writes from exile in Egypt, while the rest of Israel is exiled and captive in Babylon.  This breaking apart of the community of Israel is a consequence of their choices and the choices of others.  Israel has chosen to break the covenant they had agreed to with God, and they also suffer global forces beyond their control as the Babylonians choose to expand their empire.

But Jeremiah keeps the vision of a restoration beyond exile.  God promises the fulfillment of this vision, a vision of an Israel brought back together from dispersal, a vision of homecoming and of a new covenant that will not be broken.  In spite of seemingly overwhelming forces against its happening, God will reunite the community.  And this reunification will be marked by dancing, merriment, abundance, and joy.  

The author of Ephesians writes out of a conflict within the new and growing Christian movement.  Jews and Gentiles have long been separated by law and culture.  Now they find it a challenge to integrate into this new inclusive community of church.  The author of Ephesians reminds them that they are united in Christ.  Because of that unity there are divine benefits as a present reality in the church’s life.  God provides forgiveness, wisdom, and spiritual power. Through the Holy Spirit God also provides an inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people.  Thus the church is a Spirit-filled community that brings the presence, power, and peace of God not just into its own life, but also into the life of the world.

The Psalmist glorifies God for three great blessings.  The first is the security God provides through inheritors, peace, and abundance.  The second is the creative word of God in creation.  And the third is the coming of God’s creative word to the community of Israel in the precepts that will form them as a unique people.

The author of the Gospel of John also lifts up God’s creative Word, in the person of Jesus, who is a gift to those who receive him and believe in him.  Jesus the Word here is a social being:  with God and as God he creates all things.  He comes into the world in flesh to live in creation among human beings.  He experiences rejection as well as belief.  To those who do believe in him, he gives power to become the community of the inheritors of God.

So these are four of the ways God forms us as individuals in community, as individuals into community.  One is the renewal of covenant and homecoming.  Another is the transformation of conflict.  A third is the giving of security and precepts for a unique identity.  And the fourth is the empowerment of the community to become the presence of God in the world.  So our individual belief and relationship with God is important in itself, and, its purpose is to incorporate us into a community that will act as God’s people in the world.

Now this may sound simple, but it isn’t easy.  With all the trouble in the world and our exhausting busyness, there is great temptation to cocoon and isolate ourselves with escapism and numbing out.  There are also many people, groups, corporations, and governments, including some of our own, that have vested interests in our isolation, and in the fear and sense of powerlessness that accompany it.

For instance, there is very little in the mainstream media that encourages us in our work for the kindom.  A steady diet of “If it bleeds it leads.” does not nourish us in love, power, or hope.  We have to be intentional to find the good news of God’s presence at work in the world.

There are also calls to other allegiances who claim to be sources of power.  I was at the movies last week, and an ad for an international computer corporation came on.  The computer corporation shall not actually be named, but let’s call it Corporation X.  Its ad showed happy and energetic people using the corporation’s products.  The end statement was “Corporation X empowers people to change the world.”  Now from a Christian perspective, a more accurate statement might be, “God empowers people to change the world, and then they use some of the tools sold by Corporation X to do some of the work.” It’s perhaps a subtle distinction, and, it’s a type of distinction that needs to be made more often.  Otherwise we give over our intrinsic power to act as the people of God to some other allegiance or entity with another agenda entirely.

Likewise the rhetoric of part of the current presidential debates, full of wall-building and carpet bombing, ignores the fact that at least some of the people to be walled out and carpet bombed are our sisters and brothers in the community of the Church, or at the very least are our neighbors who we are to love as ourselves.

Perhaps most challenging of all, in an individualistic culture such as ours, is to have the courage and conviction to step out of our individual concerns, out of our preoccupation with “My God”, and out of our fear of the stranger,  so that we can become truly God’s people.  Our greatest challenges are our own:  our remaining racism, our exclusion of LGBTQ persons and women from the full life of the church, our remaining consumerism instead of stewardship, our incivility toward those who disagree with us.  All these are things that keep us as a collection of individuals going in different directions, instead of being the beloved community united to assist the power and presence of God in the world.

We celebrate the coming of Christ because in him we see real assistance in the isolation of our lives.  God’s own self is a Trinity, one God in holy community, Source and Emmanuel and Spirit.  It is that God who invites us into the divine life of perichoresis, the divine life of dancing in partnership with God and with one another.  And in that dancing we are deeply loved and understood and renewed as individuals and communities, loved and understood and renewed by and because of the God who is with us.  

We also celebrate the coming of Christ because he begins with us as a baby.  Mother Teresa said that it is important to do small things with great love, and what we do in community does not have to be huge and exhausting.  The God who begins with us in baby steps will not mind if we begin our projects of love and justice the same way.  And for God to begin with us as a baby means that God trusts us.  God trusts us:  to protect, to nurture, to help grow, to bring to maturity in ourselves and our church community, and to rejoice in the presence of God-with-us, as we then embody the presence of Christ in the world.

In this new year we are invited to see beyond ourselves as individuals to see ourselves as part of the community of God’s people, and to encourage ourselves in that identity.  Where is God at work?  Where is the good news?  Where are we called to support that, or even blaze a trail?  We do not need to be afraid.  We are able to get up and be and be doing.  Because we are not alone.  The coming of Christ to one of us is the uniting in Christ of all of us in the community of God’s people, that community whose work and joy is to bring hope and new life to the life of the world.  Thanks be to God, who gives us this victory in the name of Jesus Emmanuel and in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Merry Christmas!

--Rev. Victoria Gaskell, Chapel Associate for Methodist Students

For more information about Marsh Chapel at Boston University, click here.

For information about donating to the Chapel, click here.

posted in The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation on 01.3.2016 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the full service

Ezekiel 34:11-16

Psalm 100

Ephesians 1:15-23

Matthew 25:31-46

Click here to listen to the sermon only

Today is the Sunday known as “Christ the King”.  It’s the last Sunday of the Christian Liturgical Year.  Next Sunday begins a new church year. It’s the first Sunday in Advent, when we begin to wait for and celebrate the fact that Christ the King began with us as a baby.  But today, Christ is with us in his full maturity as he comes into his own as King, with glory, with power, and with judgment.

Jesus was a Jew.  His followers sometimes hailed him as “Son of David”, and both he and the lectionary compilers of today’s scriptures connected him to the tradition of the Shepherd/King.  We are probably most familiar with this tradition through David’s 23^rd Psalm.  And in our Psalm today, God is our Creator, and our Shepherd, worthy of our praise and thanksgiving because God’s steadfast love and faithfulness endure forever.  The Shepherd/King tradition is also here in Ezekiel, who portrays God the Shepherd as the true King, the King who rescues, reunites, cares for, and protects the people – the true King over against the false kings, who have scattered the people and brought them to ruin and captivity in the Babylonian exile.  God the Shepherd is the one true King who judges not only those outside but those inside the flock.  And God will set up a permanent Shepherd in David, one who will feed the people and be their leader under God.  In today’s Gospel, Jesus is both King and Shepherd, as he separates and judges between those who have done what he has done and those who have not done what he has done.  Judgment as well as care and protection are within the mandate of the Shepherd/King, and judgment can be very harsh indeed against those who are fat and strong at the expense of the weak and injured, against those who do not recognize the King in his people.  It is a Last Judgment, in fact, with the choices we make today having eternal consequences.

Well, we who have been knocking around in the Christian faith for a while know all this.  We know it well enough that we have no excuse not to escape the eternal fire; we know that we are not to take advantage of the weak and injured, we know we are to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoner. We know it all.  And, quite frankly, it’s November, and it’s dark and it’s cold, and those of us with bears in the gene pool just want to sleep.  Many folks have some kind of major deadline in the next two weeks, and midterm projects and papers are running right up to finals.  And while “the holidays” can be fun, the fun can often be hard to get to in the crush of activities and expectations, in the trepidations about costs and housecleaning, in the unknown as to whether Aunt Sue the conservative and Uncle Joe the liberal will still speak to one another at dinner.  To say nothing … to say nothing … of the upcoming Ferguson grand jury decision.  It can be a challenge to promote peace and goodwill when our response to “How are you?” is automatically “I’m Fine.”, and “I’m Fine.” really means “I’m Freaked Out, Insecure, Neurotic, and Exhausted.”  Right now there don’t seem to be many good pastures and certainly not any lying down in them.

Now I grew up in a British constitutional-monarchist family, and I still keep some track of Wills and Kate and Baby George.  I  appreciate sheep for the wool they provide my knitting and thus I appreciate the shepherds who take care of them. But I don’t see many hereditary rulers or shepherds on Commonwealth Avenue, and if I did it’s a pretty sure bet that most of the rulers would not consider the “least of these” the members of their family.  And what Shepherd in his or her right mind would destroy the fat strong sheep and keep the weak and injured as the mainstays of the flock?  Christ the King is a very strange monarch, and Christ the Shepherd makes no sense at all.

So what are we daylight-saving-timed, democratic, urban, living-in-New Englanders to make of all this?  What are we as the congregation listening over the radio, webcast, and podcast to make of all this?

Well, we’re the sheep.  We’re the people.  We are (forgive me for this) the sheeple.  That means we are the fat ones who batten on the scattered, lost, weak, and injured, even if only through the complexities and complicities of our lives -- and, we are also the scattered, lost, weak, and injured ourselves.  That means we are the ones who cry “Lord, Lord” and then do not do what the Lord does – and, we are also the ones who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and the prisoner.  How we end up in the Judgment depends on where the majority of our choices come down, and most of all to whom we finally give our allegiance.  If we as members of the flock first trust in God’s provision of nourishment, rest, and healing, and then we choose to help the Shepherd strengthen all of the Flock; if we as disciples choose to help the Monarch care for all the members of the family as we have been cared for; if our allegiance is finally to God through Christ in whatever form God through Christ is found:  Ruler, Shepherd, baby, teacher, then we move from being sheeple to become the Church.

And that, says the author of Ephesians, is where we have it all.  We become a Spirit-anointed community in which we are not alone, where we have hope, a glorious inheritance, and the immeasurable greatness of Christ’s power at work in and through us.  For as the Church we become Christ’s body, we become his fullness that fills everything, we become through the Spirit part of a cooperative  interbeing between Christ the head and we the body, an interbeing that even in November can bring the presence of God, the provision of God, the steadfast love and faithfulness of God, to each other and to the world.

Christ the Shepherd.  Christ the King.  Maybe.  But certainly the one to whom as Christians we pledge our allegiance, certainly the one who with the Godhead and the Spirit protects us, cares for us, provides for us at our deepest levels so that we are able to do the work we are called to do as his disciples – and maybe we can even be able to stay awake and move with peace and goodwill through deadlines, midterms and finals, and the holidays.  We know it all.  Even if some of the images are strange to our form of governance and where we live, the choice is always under the mercy and love of God, the choice is always ours.  When we choose to pay attention to the wisdom, knowledge, and power for good we have in the Spirit as God’s Church, when we claim these gifts in faith, then we can begin to recover our courage, our creativity, our individual and communal energy, then we can begin to find ways that will help us to nurture peace and goodwill between us and God, between us and ourselves, between us and our neighbors, and between us and creation.

So how can we best pay attention and claim our wisdom, knowledge, and power for good?  Well, in a few days it will be Thanksgiving.  A secular Federal holiday, as it happens, but just as Charles Wesley asked, so to speak,  “Why should the devil have all the good tunes?’, so he used secular tunes for Methodist hymns, we would not be the first to see the gifts of God in the secular turned to the purposes of worship.  Thanksgiving is in fact a major traditional form of worship and praise:  it’s found in many if not all faith traditions; and it is certainly a mainstay for Christians.  To join in the spirit of this Thursday holiday/holyday, to look around us and acknowledge the gifts we have been given, to claim them in faith with gratitude -- all this is to put ourselves in the middle of God’s love, abundance, and provisions for our need, whether they are the wisdom, knowledge, and power for good we have as the Church, or the smile of a loved one, a delicious meal, a favorite tree or an animal companion, even the slow but steadfast stirrings of justice and peace.  In thanksgiving there is no fear, no anger, no discouragement; in thanksgiving there is no freaking out, insecurity, neuroticism, or exhaustion:  in thanksgiving there is only the happiness and wonder of the world and its riches.

So this Thursday, we might be a bit more intentional about our attitude of gratitude, to God and to others:  for instance, we could be very specific and detailed about the people and things for which we are grateful and why we are grateful for them; we could perhaps expand our notion of what we are grateful for; we might allow other people to be grateful for us; we might, greatly daring, speak aloud our gratitude to those people and about those things for which we are thankful; we might decide to make thanksgiving a more regular practice in our lives beyond this Thursday.  For it is when we pay attention to and claim in faith the gifts of God with thanksgiving that we can truly say, when asked about how we are, “We’re fine.”  Fine in the original senses of the word:  high-quality, first-rate, magnificent, exceptional, splendid.  Just fine.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

-Rev. Victoria Gaskell, Chapel Associate for Methodist Students

For more information about Marsh Chapel at Boston University, click here.

For information about donating to the Chapel, click here.

posted in The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation on 11.23.2014 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

James 5:14-16; Psalm 145: 1-5, 17-21; Luke 5:17-26

Click here to hear the full service.

Click here to hear the sermon only.

We are coming to the end of the year, the end of the secular year on December 31^st, and the end of the Christian liturgical year on November 30.  However we mark it, this year has been a year of great challenge.  Many of us still have thorns in our flesh: still, none of us are getting any younger; our personal challenges may still be with us or may even have increased.  This year it is not just the personal pain we may feel in the challenges to our health, wealth, work, or personal relationships; this year has brought great pain for others and for the world as well, griefs so large, so complex we can hardly name them, or bear to acknowledge them, or recognize the effects they have on us.  Here in Boston, the Marathon bombings and their shock in an historic event on a lovely day, the lockdown of a major American metropolitan area, the deaths that included two of Boston University’s own and folks that lived in our community’s neighborhoods.  All this against a continuing backdrop:  the so-called “natural” disasters, most recently the typhoon in the Philippines with its incredible strength and destruction; the accelerating threat of extinction of species including our own, some species also valued by humans but all precious in God’s creation; the complexities and complicities of our lives, often without our knowledge or consent, in human-trafficking and modern-day slavery, and in the career to endless war; the continued attempts to exclude LGBTQ people from full inclusion in religious and civic life.  Insert your own particulars here.

There have been many calls for the need for healing over the last year; there have been fewer proposals as to how that healing might come about.  And while there were indeed many poignant moments during the Red Sox Rolling Rally, we cannot always count on a series win for

healing, either individual or communal. … Go Celtics!

When I told folks that I would be preaching on this Gospel text from Luke, a number of them said to me, “Oh, that’s one of my favorites!”   This is in part due to the creative enterprise of the men, who knock apart someone’s roof to let the paralyzed man down to the floor, all the while shedding debris on him, the crowd, and Jesus.  And the rest is due to the fact that this is a Gospel healing story, with some unique features that are indeed good news in a quest for healing.

For one, Jesus’ reaction is notable:  “When he saw their faith”, he speaks to the paralytic, with words of forgiveness and healing.  Many of Jesus’ healings took place, not at the request of those who were sick themselves, but of others who brought their sick to Jesus to be healed.  Here Jesus acknowledges it is not just the faith of the paralytic,  if we can even assume here that he has faith, but it is also the faith, the expectancy and trust of the bearers themselves, so great that they break through a roof, that helps to bring about the healing.

Also, Jesus does not immediately heal the paralytic physically.  Instead, the first thing he says to the paralytic is, “Your sins are forgiven.”  And then he apparently doesn’t say anything, as if that were enough, as if that were the healing that needed to happen, not the healing of the man’s paralysis.  Sin apparently has to do with lack of well-being.  Now we want to be careful here.  Jesus never associates illness or physical condition with God’s punishment, and he does not always give forgiveness of sins to a sick person.  And, as here, he does also often says to a person that their sins are forgiven as a preliminary to healing.  Now some of my friends call me a semanticist, one who is concerned for the meaning of words generally and in context.  It’s a title I’m proud to carry, as I think that there is not nearly enough definition of terms in the life of faith.  Particularly as we consider the word “sin”.  It’s so often limited by fear and ignorance to who and how we love, or to anything remotely related to a good time especially when it is had by “other” people.  So in line with the definition of many scholars and fellow clergy, for the purposes of this sermon “sin” is anything that separates us:  from God, from our “own-most” selves, and from our neighbor, neighbor broadly defined as the person sitting next to us wherever we are this morning all the way to the whole of creation.  Looked at in this way, sin, our own sins and sins of others, does have a direct bearing on our health of every kind:  physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and relational.  Our own Chapel Associate Jennifer Quigley has spoken eloquently from this pulpit about the choices we make to find ourselves or to lose ourselves.   And if we lose our selves how can we be whole?  Likewise our own Chapel Associate Jessica Chicka has spoken eloquently from this pulpit about the dangers of fracking. And if we ignore or allow the poisoning of our land and our water and our air, how can we be whole?  The Psalmist in Psalm 32 acknowledges that his unconfessed sin wastes away his body, and only with confession and forgiveness comes relief.  Sometimes confession of sin is the first step to being whole, to name what is not well with us and be able to let it go, so that we can begin to ask how we might mend.

Next, the scribes and the Pharisees are horrified by Jesus’ forgiveness:  “Who can forgive sins but God alone!”  We remember that the Pharisees are influential layfolk who are very concerned about the strict observance of both the written religious law and its interpretation in oral tradition.  We remember that the scribes are specialists in the study of the religious law – elsewhere Luke calls them “lawyers”.  They have come from all over the country to see and listen to Jesus, and now with this outrageous statement these important people accuse him of blasphemy.  And then Jesus asks a question:  “Which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you’, or to say “Stand up and walk”?  And then he heals the paralytic, as a sign, that he has the authority to forgive sins.

When we think of healing, we often think of “cure”, and we often limit our thinking to physical cure, of an illness or a condition.  But in the Greek, to heal  can also mean to save, and/or to make whole.  In English as well, our words for health, salvation, and wholeness come from the same root.  The word “wholeness” in particular derives from the word “holism”, which does not mean a compartmentalized or disassociated view of human life and nature, but means the organic or functional relationship between parts of a whole.  Jesus’ healings of the physical witness to God’s intention to restore wholeness to all people and to all creation.  They testify to the spiritual power of God on which the kin-dom is built and on which we can build our lives.  But even in these testimonies physical healing is only one part of what is going on, and -- dare we say it in a culture obsessed with physical perfection – it is not necessarily the most important part.  If it comes, well and good and glorify God.  And, just as notably sins are forgiven, Jesus’ authority in the Spirit is established, the man is restored to God and to his family and friends rejoicing, and everyone, even the formerly horrified scribes and Pharisees, glorify God.

Here we are reminded also of Matthew, also known as Levi, a tax collector under the Empire’s  occupation and so considered a traitor, who had no physical condition but was recognized for who he could be by Jesus,  and then accepted the call to become a disciple.  We are reminded too of the woman with the alabaster jar, who had no physical condition but had her sins forgiven and her grief comforted and was recognized by Jesus for her great love.  Healing encompasses the whole person:  body, mind, emotions, spirit, and relationships.  Which indeed is easier:  to say, “Your sins are forgiven.”, or to say, “Stand up and walk.”?  Which indeed is the greater miracle: to be restored to physical health, or to be able to kick a habit or addiction, or forgive a relative or friend, or transform a conflict, or be in right relationship with God, ourselves, our neighbor on land and in water and in air?  Jesus offers not just a cure, the cessation of symptoms or condition, but the opportunity to be whole, to be truly healed in any and all aspects of our lives.

Jesus entrusted his disciples with this ministry as well.  In both Luke’s Gospel and the Book of Acts, both from the same author, Jesus’ disciples are seen to have the same power to heal as he did, and the early church assumed that healing was part of their community life.  A specific practice has come down to us in our text from James: the one who is ill, who is not whole, should call for the elders, the leaders in the church, and have them pray in faith, in expectancy and trust.  Those prayers of faith will raise up the one who is not whole, and again, sins will be forgiven.  Church members are to confess their sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that all may be made whole persons in right relationship.  Like the men in the story who brought the paralyzed man to Jesus, so we bring one another to the healing power of God.  John Wesley, the founder of my own faith tradition of Methodism, referred to our being “stewards of grace” to one another in such practices, practices that he called “means of grace”, those practices in which we remind each other of the power of God at work in our lives through the power of the Spirit in the name of Jesus, so that we are able to be continually moving toward a state of wholeness, of right relationship.

It is true.  We do need healing, after this year certainly, but also at many points in our lives; perhaps, given the times in which we live, at all times.  The church has formalized this practice so that both “elders” or “leaders” and those who request prayer for healing are stewards of grace for one another.

That is why, in the new church year, we will experiment, to restore this practice outlined in James here at Marsh Chapel.  On the first Communion Sunday of each liturgical season, we will offer two healing stations during the Communion, one each just under these first windows, so that after partaking of Communion, any of us who feel so moved may come, say what concern we have for our own healing, be joined in the concern in a brief prayer, only after giving permission receive a gentle laying on of hands on or just above the shoulder, only after giving permission be anointed with oil on the forehead, and be blessed.  In this way, we too will be stewards of grace for one another.

We are offering this practice with Communion, as Communion is our clearest affirmation of the presence of God in our midst.  It is where the confession and forgiveness of sins that we are offered every week are underscored by God’s nourishment of us in bread and wine, underscored by God’s empowerment of us by the outpouring of the Spirit.  It is where the congregational recognition of our common life encourages us to bring our individual needs to God with faith, with expectancy and trust that God’s will is for our good in all aspects of our lives.

This is an experiment, in the sense that our initial practice will be time-limited to the first Communion service of each new liturgical season, for this next church year.  Don’t worry about keeping track of the dates – we’ll keep you posted and the first time will be the first Sunday of the new church year, Advent I on December 1.  There will also be ways to evaluate our practice:  there will probably be surveys – short surveys -- but also as we welcome your emailed and written responses and your conversational observations.  This practice is also offered with the clear understanding and thanksgiving that there are many ways of healing given to us by God:  the fields of medical, surgical, mental, emotional, and relational  health, the arts, the work of justice, the work of peace.  This spiritual practice is intended to work with these other gifts, to promote the whole health of the whole person.

To pray for healing is not us trying to change God’s mind.  It is to put ourselves in a place of cooperation with God so that the Spirit can work in us toward the wholeness in all aspects of our lives that God intends.  We invite your prayers for this ministry, in trust and expectation, and, dearly beloved, the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.  Glory to God.  Amen.

~Rev. Victoria Gaskell, Chapel Associate for Methodist Students

posted in The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation on 11.10.2013 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Mark 10:46-52

Click here to hear the full service.

Click here to hear the sermon only.

Many of us, after we’ve been kicking around in the Christian faith for a while, have got a little list, of sayings we just wish Jesus had not said.  Or, if he were going to say them, we wish he’d included an indestructible set of footnotes, a bibliography, and a youtube video for the body language, so that there would be no confusion at all as to what he actually meant.  “Your faith has made you well.” is one of those sayings for me.

I served as a chaplain in both an “acute, chronic, and tertiary care” hospital and a mental health facility here in Boston.  One of the hardest parts of the work was when faithful Christians, of many years standing, would recount their own struggles as they quoted Bartimaeus’ story to themselves, and as they had his story quoted to them.  They recounted their frustration as they told themselves, and as their friends told them, to just pray more, or just pray different, or just have more faith.  They would wonder why their faith wasn’t enough, why God did not heal their cancer or their blindness or their bipolar condition.  They felt that they were at fault, that they were to blame, that their condition continued.   Their spiritual distress was as difficult for them as their physical or mental challenge.  And so the particular story of Bartimaeus’ particular healing, taken out of context and universalized, became a stick with which to beat those who already suffered.

I do not think it is the purpose of this story to cause more suffering.  So, what is the context and the specificity that might give another interpretation of this faith healing?

The Gospel of Mark has been called a Gospel of conflict.  The conflicts escalate, from Jesus’ preaching and manifestation of the kingdom of God in the local settings of Galilee, to his increasing conflicts with the religious authorities and the imperial overlords that end in Jerusalem.  Jesus’ teaching and acts of power are presented in the Gospel as a renewal of the people of Israel.  They address the social, political, economic, and even physiological aspects of life, for a people and land subjugated by the collusion of religious authority with empire.  Along the way there is also increasing conflict between Jesus and his disciples.  As our readings in Mark over the last few weeks have shown, the disciples continually fail to understand what Jesus teaches and what he does.  Their discomfort and quarrels with both Jesus and each other increases as Jesus leads them to Jerusalem.  They refuse to accept his teaching that he must be rejected, suffer, and die before he is raised again.  The story of Bartimaeus comes at the end of the part of the Gospel in which the disciples’ conflicts with Jesus are made plain.  It brackets this section, along with the earlier healing of another blind man in chapter 8, vss. 22-26.  Most Markan scholars agree that here the author of the Gospel contrasts the restoration of the two men’s sight with the continued “blindness” of the disciples to who Jesus is and what he does.

Bartimaeus himself is not just blind; he is a beggar.  In the culture of the time, both physical impairment and poverty were often considered to be signs of God’s disfavor.  But Bartimaeus, though physically blind, has insight:  he cries out to Jesus as “Son of David”, the one who was widely expected to restore the fortunes of Israel as a king.  Bartimaeus is also not cowed by his

marginal status:  He shouts out to Jesus;  the people around him “sternly” tell him to be quiet; he shouts even louder.  Jesus, for his part, stops in his tracks, and calls for Bartimaeus to come to him.  Now the people around him are all encouragement.  So Bartimaeus, blind as he is, throws off what impediments he can, springs up, and comes to Jesus.  Jesus then does not make things up – he asks Bartimaeus what he wants from him.  Bartimaeus, again showing insight, names Jesus as his teacher and asks that Jesus let him see again.  Jesus then tells Bartimaeus that his faith has made him well.  Immediately Bartimaeus regains his physical sight and follows Jesus along the way.  Bartimaeus,  the physically blind beggar, sees with spiritual insight; whereas the physically sighted disciples remain spiritually blind.  Bartimaeus, again in contrast to the disciples,  allows himself to be taught by Jesus, so that he exchanges his old suppression for the new kingdom of God present in the midst of the people.  He also is taught by Jesus so that he follows Jesus along the way; not just the way of faith but also immediately on the way to Jerusalem, where Jesus will end, not as an earthly king, but as a physically broken and executed political criminal.  If Bartimaeus’ faith has healed his physical sight, the healing of his physical sight heals his faith also, as he is given a new way of understanding his life, and recognizes Jesus for who he truly is and what his mercy truly means.

Sharon V. Betcher is a theologian and a disability activist.  At the age of thirty-seven, ordained, married with a child, teaching in university, she tripped, she fell, and she injured her leg.  Her leg became infected, and, to save her life, it was amputated.  In her book Spirit and the Politics of Disablement, she points out that with the removal of her leg, she will never be “whole” in the sense of “normal”, ever again in this life.  She describes the challenges brought by her literal “fall” from cultural and religious ideals of “normalcy” and physical perfection , the challenges that are harder to bear than her physical disability itself.     And she describes the challenges that stories like the Bartimaeus story posed and still pose for her and for many other people of faith, those who like St. Paul, receive “no” as the answer to prayers for the thorn in the flesh to be removed.

Betcher notes that the healing stories were told as witness to the visitation of the kingdom of God, over against the occupation of the Roman Empire, with its elitist rule, foreign occupation, heavy taxation for war and empire building, and the dislocations it brought to people and to the land.  Reading or hearing these stories, early believers were challenged to believe in wonder; they could fall in love with the world again, as she writes they “could again take joy in a life from which pain cannot be cut away.”  “Miracles”, Betcher writes, “get below or outside our infrastructure of tacit knowledge and may invigorate ways of thinking … may serve to break persons out of old patterns of thought.”  Jesus’ compassion – as it is free from pity, disgust, avoidance, or the assumption that he already knows what Bartimaeus would want from him  -- Jesus’ compassion encourages Bartimaeus to chart a different course, encourages him to increase his faith, that faith healed and justified in Jesus’ acceptance of him, as he was, and now as he is Jesus’ follower.  Jesus’ compassion upends the normal order of things, in which the blind to not see, and are so often not seen.

Paul Farmer, the founder of Partners in Health, writes in his book Pathologies of Power:  “To

explain suffering, one must embed individual biography in the larger matrix of culture, history, and political economy … as social forces … structure … risk for most forms of extreme suffering. … Social forces ranging from poverty to racism become embodied as individual experience … translated into personal distress and disease.”  In our culture the quest for physical perfection is also one of those social forces.  In our fascination with extreme makeovers of all kinds, we forget the economic, political, and cultural forces at work behind the scenes.

Dominique Moceanu, at fourteen, was the youngest member of the 1996 United States Women’s Olympics Gymnastics Team, the only American women’s team to take gold at the Olympics.  In her riveting memoir Off Balance, she describes the behind-the-scenes cost of her physical perfection and agility:  years of emotional and physical abuse from her trainers, family discord and deceit, and physical injury and pain.  Behind the Olympic gold and the national glory was a young girl in great personal distress.  Even though her faith in her dream granted her physical perfection, for a long time Dominique was not well.  Ironically, or perhaps miraculously, it is the discovery of a sister, born without legs, given away at birth, who also became a competitive athlete and performer, it is this sister who is of great support to Dominique in her own healing.

So, where does all this leave us, here this morning, many of us bearing thorns in our flesh, none of us getting any younger, and all of us living in a world increasingly toxic to healthy living?

At the very least, we may join with Philo of Alexandria, who wrote, “Be kind; for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”  We may also affirm that whatever we carry, it is not the whole of who we are.  As a woman who had become blind as a result of diabetes complications once told me:  “I’m just blind.  I still love to hike, to sing, to play the piano, to get together with friends and family.  I still have my faith, even more since God has brought me through so much.  I feel very well.”

So, Faith.  Healing.  Sometimes our faith does heal us.  Sometimes our faith is not the issue, in our human condition.  And sometimes it’s just that the answer is no.  But always, Faith. Healing. the healing of our faith, is possible.  It may not come easy; it is a great challenge for us, especially in our culture of denial and suppression, to learn to live with pain and loss, of any kind.  We do experience the diseases of empire, and of the corporate empire building of globalization:  war, pollution, economic disparity, consumerism, perfectionism; seemingly impersonal forces that become very personal, often to our great distress.

Yet God wills to meet us where we are on the road, God wills to meet us exactly as we are on the road, to help us chart a different course, to find a new community of love and inclusion, and to increase our faith as we follow along the way.  As Sharon Betcher invites us to consider, we are offered a life of neither tragedy nor triumph, but of trust:  trust that expects wonder, and the expected and unexpected presence of God, even, as Mother Teresa of Calcutta notes, in “distressing diguises;  a life of trust that allows us to fall in love with the world again; a life of trust in which, even in a world in which pain cannot be cut away, we can still take joy.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

The Rev. Victoria Hart Gaskell

posted in The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation on 10.28.2012 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the entire service.
Click here to hear the sermon only.
Matthew 25: 31-46

posted in The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation on 11.20.2011 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

“Be reconciled to God.”

We can take Paul’s exhortation in two ways this morning. In Lent we are most often asked to consider how we can be reconciled to God from God’s point of view, in light of our sin which separates us from God. That is indeed an important and necessary part of our reconciliation. And, this morning our scriptures invite us to consider also how we can be reconciled to God from our point of view, in light of the resentment and distrust we often hold toward God.

At first glance, the story that has come down to us as “The Prodigal Son” is a straightforward redemption story that focuses on the younger son. He asks for his share of the inheritance, squanders it “in dissolute living”, comes to rock bottom, and then “comes to himself”. He realizes that while he cannot have the life he had, he can still have a good life. So he goes back to reconcile with his father, to serve him as a servant if he cannot serve him as a child and heir. The father on his part greets him with joy and is quick to reconcile, restores him as a child if not an heir, and throws a luxurious party to celebrate his return. All well and good. But Jesus does not end the story with this happy ending. Instead, he continues the story with the arrival of the elder son, who bitterly resents the father’s joyful reception of the younger son with no retribution. He resents also the father’s lack of appreciation for his, the elder son’s, hard work. The elder son refuses to join the party even when his father pleads with him to come in. He refuses his relationship with his brother (“this son of yours”, he calls him). He questions his father’s love for him himself. We never do find out if he joins the party or not.

If we are honest, as we are called to be in Lent, it is often a challenge for us – the good people, the Christians, the members of the Church – to be reconciled to God in the face of what God and others choose to do. Even if others repent or undergo the consequences of bad or even evil choices, we still find it hard to believe that God can or should love them as much as we should be loved in our goodness and hard work. Some of you may remember the denial and outrage when it was reported that Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer, had repented and become a Christian in prison, and that when Dahmer was killed in prison the chaplain stated that he himself did believe that Jeffrey was saved and would be in heaven with God. Likewise the denial and outrage when Charles Colson, Richard Nixon’s hatchet man, repented in prison and went on to found his Prison Fellowship. Some folks found it very hard to pray for George W. Bush and Richard Cheney as they professed to be brothers in Christ, and some folks find it very hard to pray for Barack Obama as he professes the same. And in any given church deliberation more and more progressives and conservatives draw lines in the sand, with no allowances that God might even conceivably be present with the other “side”. These are just some of the challenges within Christianity. How much more are we encouraged by our culture and our own privilege to demonize the poor, the uneducated, the different, the refugee, the “uncivilized”, even as our delicate sensibilities call us to resent or distrust God on their behalf. Like the elder brother with his father, we often feel that we have worked very hard as good people, and have very little to show for it, or that what we have may be taken away. We feel more and more uncertain of our place in an entangled and globalized world. Climate changes and the decisions of others who we may not even know affects us and those around us in frightening ways. The complexities of our lives make us complicit in wrongdoing without our knowledge or consent. How can we be reconciled to God, who insists on love toward that which so deserves punishment?

In any relationship, there are times when one party has a grievance against the other, a big one or a small one. That is not the problem; the problem arises when the aggrieved party does not talk about the grievance with the other party. This then becomes a problem for both; as the Psalmist says, “when I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all the day long”. As with sins we have committed, so with sins we feel are committed against us. If we do not express our grievances, they fester, and turn to distrust and resentment. The problem is then compounded when the other party may not realize there is a problem. The elder brother at least expressed his resentment and distrust toward his father. The father then had an opportunity to respond. And he clearly stated his affection and plans: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” The reason the father celebrates, and pleads for the elder brother’s celebration, is that the younger brother has come back, come back not just from dissolute choices, but from his own death and being lost to his family, the true evil of his choices. In his response toward the elder brother’s grievance, the father invites the elder brother also to “come to himself”: to realize and claim for himself his own place as his father’s son and only heir, and to rest in that true identity. Maybe to claim it to the extent that he could just take a goat and celebrate with his friends, and not work all the time. Maybe to claim it to the extent that he could join the party for his brother, back from the dead to be a son and brother again in a different way, but a son and a brother nonetheless.

Be reconciled to God. The same principle of openness applies to our relationship with God. Part of the invitation of Lent is to examine our grievances toward God, to examine the sins we feel have been committed against us through the choices of God as well as the choices of others. This is for our benefit, so that we know the grievances that we carry and so that the grievances do not fester. It is also for God’s benefit, so to speak: we may feel that God already knows, indeed must know, what our grievances are, but to express them is to give God a chance to respond and to work with us to make things right.

So what does all this have to do with atonement? One of the preachers in my home
church used to say that the meaning of “atonement” was “at-one-ment”; the same word but hyphenated – at-one-ment; that in that great mystery of atonement/at-one-ment God became truly one with us, and we are invited to be truly one with God, in all the complexities and complicities of our lives. Indeed, Paul exhorts us to be reconciled to God “on behalf of Christ”, for Christ’s sake, for the sake of the one who was both God and Human, for the sake of the one who “was made to be sin who knew no sin.” for our sake, for the sake of the one who from the very incarnation in our humanity and human life is “God With Us.” While the mystery of at-one-ment finds its expression in all of Jesus’ birth, life and ministry, it finds its fullest expression in Jesus’ crucifixion. Crucifixion is a nice word for what it really was: Jesus’ execution -- by the state through injustice and torture and by the collusion of religion with political expediency and evil. The experience of crucifixion is the answer of God With Us. It is God’s answer in love and solidarity in suffering. It is God’s answer to our resentment, dist
rust, and fear of uncertainty. This is how much God loves us. This is how much God wants to be at one with us, even to our death in suffering and injustice. In the crucifixion together through Jesus Christ we may experience the worst that sin as evil has to offer, but we do not have to give in to it, we do not have to become it or retaliate in kind; we can keep the faith that evil does not have the last word, that same faith in which Jesus himself, even on the cross, knew himself reconciled to God.

Be reconciled to God. We do not know the end of the story of the Prodigal Son and the Elder Brother. But we do know the end of the story of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion. He did indeed die. But evil did not have the last word. There was instead Resurrection and Pentecost and the birth of the Church (which while often oblivious and coopted and aggravating by its own choice is for all its faults still on a good day the Body of Christ) and there is our ongoing sanctification in the work of the Holy Spirit. But these are sermons for other days. For today, we have the possibility and promise of our identity precisely as we are Christians, those who have accepted the love of God With Us and love God in return, as we do indeed work to serve the good: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new."

One of my mentors in the ministry of reconciliation says that “you have to give people a way back in.” Jesus told the story of the Prodigal Son and the Elder Brother in response to people who grumbled about the tax collectors and sinners who came to listen to Jesus, and grumbled about Jesus when he welcomed them and ate with them. The grumblers too were good people, religious people, who worked very hard for God, who also were challenged by the choices of God and by the choices of others. Jesus offered the story to give them a way back in, to recognize themselves in both the Prodigal Son and in the elder brother. If we are honest, as we are called to be in Lent, we too will recognize ourselves in both. As good as we may be, we are in no way perfect, in our own choices and in our judgments of the choices of others. Part of the recognition of the grievances we have with others is the recognition of the ways we may also be implicated in those grievances. To deny others a way back in is to deny it to ourselves as well.

In the mystery and paradox of atonement, God offers us a way back in to relationship, through our sin that separates us from God. God also asks us to give God a way back in through our resentment and distrust and fear of uncertainty. If we take the way back in, if we give the way back in, there is a new creation. We are no longer caught up in resentment, distrust, and the fear of uncertainty. We are reconciled to God, at one with God, able to claim our true identity as beloved and at home wherever we are, whatever happens. We also are entrusted, entrusted, God trusts us with the ministry of reconciliation for others, even those whose choices we may find challenging. We are trusted to offer others a way back in to reconciliation with God, with others, and with themselves. When we accept and offer reconciliation for ourselves with God, and accept and offer reconciliation to others, we go a long way toward the elimination of resentment, distrust, and fear of uncertainty for everyone. We go a long way toward helping to continue to create that new creation for ourselves and for the world.
Be reconciled to God. From both God’s point of view and from our own, it is love that makes reconciliation possible. May we accept our own at-one-ment, and offer at-one-ment to others, with joy and thanksgiving.

Amen.

posted in Lenten Series 2010: Atonement, The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation on 03.14.2010 at 11:00 am