Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

John 12: 1-8

Click here to hear the full service.

Click here to hear the sermon only.

 

Frontispiece

Our mentor and friend Rev. Russell Clark, a Colgate and Boston University graduate, served a small church in Oriskany Falls , NY for many years.  He dodged and weaved as appointments elsewhere were offered, to bigger churches and salaries.  He stayed.  He fell in love with a quieter life, natural beauty, the intrigue of pastoral ministry, the mystery of the cotidian. The Clark home sported a large twirling book shelf in the living room, filled with novels and histories and poetry.

 

His lay leader died after some years, to the regret and lasting hurt of the community.  People are not replaceable.  The widow, usually of regular perfect attendance in worship, stayed home, for some time.  At last in Lent she appeared.  Russell asked her how she found her way through the morass, the mess, the maze of grief, and got back home to church.  “Well, it was not the scripture, though I love all the scripture.  It was not the hymns, though I sing them to myself day by day.  It was not your visits, though they were most gracious.  It was not the family care and feeding or that of the neighbors.  It was not my personal faith in the resurrection, though I do have faith.   It was not even prayer, though I practice formal prayer, evening and morning, at meals and at bedtime.

 

“It was just this:  the chickens had to be fed every morning.  So I had to get up every morning.  Once I was up, the rest of the day—and at last, over longer time, the week and month, including Sunday morning—seemed to fall in line.  It was the chickens.  The clucking of those hens.  The clucking of those hens meant more to me, in healing, than all the hymns of Easter.  The regularity of feeding them, early in the morning, restored me, over time.  The clucking of those chickens meant more to me than all the hymns of Easter.”

 

Robinson

Come Lent, here at Marsh Chapel, we converse each year with our sibling Christians out of the Calvinist tradition.   We grow and learn, from and with, the slight differences, in sibling traditions, wherein we do not always agree, but agree to disagree agreeably.  Our interlocutor this year, 2013, is Marilynn Robinson—essayist, novelist, Calvinist.  Her love of Scripture, her sense of the eternal, her rendering of John Calvin, her prophetic defense of wonder in our time, her unwillingness to buy the cheap goods of a culture that languishes in the doldrums of a pervasive malaise, her celebration of quiet life, pastoral ministry, providential grace, and the deeps of love:  all these human gifts we gratefully receive from her this year.  Especially her sense of the extraordinary in the ordinary, health in the clucking of hens, helps us this year.

On Scripture:  One Easter I went with my grandfather to a small Presbyterian church in northern Idaho where I heard a sermon on the discrepancies in the gospel accounts of the resurrection…I was a young child… yet I remember that sermon…I can imagine myself that primal Easter, restive at my grandfather’s elbow, pushing my nickels and dimes of collection money into the tips of my gloves…memorably forbidden to remove my hat…It seems to me I felt God as a presence before I had a name for him…I was aware to the point of alarm of a vast energy of intention all around me…and I thought everyone else must also be aware of it…Only in church did I hear experience like mine acknowledged, in all those strange narratives, read and expounded…(227)…Amen (the preacher) said, having blessed my life with a lovely thing to ponder

On Speech: What should we call the presiding intelligence that orchestrates the decision to speak as a moment requires?  What governs the inflections that make any utterance unmistakably the words of one speaker in this whole language-saturated world? 120

On Sin: It took, for instance, three decades of the most brilliant and persistent campaign of preachment and information to establish, in the land of liberty, the idea that slavery was intolerable. 249

 

On Salvation: (Calvin’s) theology is compelled and enthralled by an overwhelming awareness of the grandeur of God…his sense of things is so overwhelmingly visual and cerebral, that the other senses do not interest him 221…heaven’s essence for him is that it is inconceivable in the world’s terms, another order of experience

On Service: We should maintain an appropriate humility in the face of what we think we know…encourage an imagination of humankind large enough to acknowledge some small fragment of the mystery we are… The Judeo Christian ethic of charity derives from the assertion that human beings are made in the image of God, that is, that reverence is owed to human beings simply as such….Our civilization believed for a long time in God and the soul and sin and salvation, assuming, whatever else, that meaning had a larger frame and context than this life in this world. 84…I do not think it is nostalgia to suggest that it would be well to reestablish the setting apart of time traditionally devoted to religious observance… 99 Science cannot serve in the place of religion because it cannot generate an ethics or a morality.71…  137

 

Driver

Speaking of speech, my former teacher Tom Driver recently remembered:

 

“I was twenty-five years old in 1950, a bachelor newly arrived in New York City to attend graduate school. I bought a single ticket and went alone to see director Harold Clurman’s production of The Member of the Wedding, by the southern author Carson McCullers. With the rest of the audience, I was put under a spell by Ethel Waters singing “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” There came another spell at the final curtain. The play’s central focus has been the longing of a pre-adolescent girl to escape from her loneliness. Young Frankie Addams (played by Julie Harris) wants to be part of the forthcoming wedding of her older sister. This privilege is not readily granted, but In the last scene, the way becomes clear, and she exclaims with joy: “The wedding will be the we of me.” Curtain.

 

“I will never forget what happened next. There was long applause and several curtain calls. And then we just sat there. No one wanted to leave. The strangers sitting next to me were just as slow to move as I was. After a few moments we hitherto strangers began to talk to each other. The theater had become the “we” of us. The performances on stage (and everything that Harold Clurman and the crew did to enable them) had performed something over and above the dramatis personae roles. They had created for that brief moment in time — less brief than most such occasions — a community of people whose lives otherwise did not cross. It is called theater magic, which means no one quite understands it and can never predict just when it will occur. But when it does, our joy is immense. It is similar to an experience of religious transcendence.

“In an age in which the term “public” has been denigrated in favor of “privatization,” when housing is increasingly “gated “if it is affordable at all, when public education and health care and transportation and all manner of intrinsically social services are either neglected or attacked as impingements upon “liberty,” when guns are thought to be necessary almost everywhere in the name of freedom and self defense — in such a time, the liminality engendered by ritual, theater, and religion, carries an important potential.”

Our gospel then raises for us the question of authority.

 

Authority

Religions wrestle with authority, all the time, everywhere.  The current change in Rome, and the ascendancy of Francis, our brother, whom we honor, encourage, and celebrate, recalls for us centuries of struggle over authority.  To the Calvinist right, all authority is vested in Scripture.  The Bible is the only full authority, ‘sola scriptura’, an historic, in some ways tragic manner of interpretation of life and love.  To the Catholic left, final authority is vested in the Bishop of Rome.  Before we, or more specifically I, become too critical of these vested stations, we, or I, must also recognize that at some point, some one has to break the tie, make the decision, guide the church, be ‘primus inter pares’, whether in the form of a breathing holy person or in the form of a spirited, breathing holy text.  My own tradition attempts to have it all or both ways, not always with shining success.  Methodism combines catholic tradition, reformation message, puritan discipline, Anglican liturgy, and pietist feeling.  Methodism interprets Scripture through Tradition, and Tradition through Experience, and Experience through Reason.  Such a separation of powers, by the way, has great advantages in a university setting, like this one.

Fragrance

But what of our gospel?  What form of authority does the Gospel of John prefer, select, elect, prize?  Ah, glad you asked.  No church in John, just a communal experience of Christ.  No leadership in John, just the deeds and words of the risen, I mean crucified, I mean incarnate, I mean spirited One.  No worries about ethics in John, no catalogue of virtues or vices, just a single command, to love.  No hierarchy, patriarchy, oligarchy, ecclesiology in John.  Just this:  Spirit.  Another Counselor.  With you forever.  A guide into all further truth.  How is that going to work?  Exactly.  That is why we have the letters of John, uno dos y tres, because, clearly, it did not.  The letters add in:  leadership, orthodoxy, ethics, teaching, form, all.  They wake from the Johannine dream.  But what a dream!  A spirited dream of spirit befitting any high Calvinist view of Scripture and any high Catholic view of clergy.  A dream of Spirit, leading to truth, over time.  A fullness of fragrance, spirit in life.  As in Proust, ‘What matters is to transform common occurrence into art (NYRB, 3/13).’

You will recognize the story of the anointing at Bethany.  Sort of…

It is like the familiar parable (sic):  A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and saw a man who had fallen among thieves, so he went and he asked his father for his inheritance.  The father gave him seeds to plant, but most fell on rocky ground.  He appealed to a judge, who would not listen, and then to a dishonest steward, who would listen, but who stole the rest of the seeds, and then planted them and they multiplied thirty, sixty and a hundredfold.  But he left 99 of the fold and went after a lost sheep.  On the way, he stumbled on a lost coin, and put it in his tunic.  This will be like a mustard seed, he thought, which is small but grows a big plant.  He went back to his father and said, I am not worthy to be a son, but make me a worker in a vineyard, and pay me as much as you pay those who started at dawn.  Which of these do you think proved neighbor to the man who fell among thieves?

I know you remember that one.

That is, John has somehow combined a story which was also known to Mark, and used by Matthew, with a story from Luke, unused by Mark or Matthew, and has added his own special ingredients, Johnannine special sauce if you will.  Or maybe a redactor re-edited portions of this passage.  For the record: John has added Judas as the stingy knee jerk liberal; John has added Judas’ motive, not so liberal, of greed;  John has not kept Mark’s ethical admonition, ‘For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want you can do good to them’. (But Matthew also apparently erased that sentence, for who knows what reason.)  John also has misplaced or erased the fine conclusion, which Mark writes and Matthew copies, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her. John also neglects to repeat that Jesus said of Mary’s act that she has done a beautiful thing for me.  In other words, what has been told in John was not so much in memory of her, though perhaps in the rest of the whole world it was so.  Most delicately, Mark and John both use a rare adjective, rendered her by the English word ‘pure’, which comes in the original from the same root as the word ‘faith’.  The gospels repeated an admonition from Deuteronomy 15, ‘the poor are ever present’, not at all to discountenance care of the poor (so important to us, and rightly so), but to lift the fragrance, the wonder at the heart of the gospel, to the highest level. (Bultmann, perhaps rightly, hears here a reference to the full fragrance of gnosis spreading throughout the world.)

John, alone, fills the room with fragrance.  That is his point, here.  Incense, the sense of the holy, the mysterium tremendum, the idea of the holy, the presence.  Resurrection precedes crucifixion in this reading.  Crucifixion is merely a coming occasion for incarnation in this reading.  Incarnation is a lasting fragrance in this reading, the fullness of fragrance.

Friends

My friend Rev. John Holt says of his work in ministry:  ‘we are trying to help people discover their spiritual side so that they can make a difference for good in the world’.  That is what I am trying to do in and from this pulpit, trying to help people discover their spiritual side so that they can make a difference for good in the world.

 

Our poetic friend George Herbert wrote:

Love bade me welcome: yet my sould drew back, Guiltie of dust and sinne.

But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning, If I lack’d any thing.

A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here : Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah my deare, I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them : let my shame Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame? My deare, then I will serve.

You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat. So I did sit and eat.

 

A friend, of some more years than I, brought her children to worship on Christmas eve.  Afterward, she asked each one—6,8, and11 years old—what they most liked.  Said 6, ‘I especially liked the candle, except the wax dripped on my finger and that hurt.  Said 8, ‘I liked communion and the way the choir music drew us forward, together, into it.  Said 11, ‘I like the way you feel after you have been to church’.  6,8,11—they came to themselves.  And grandma did too.

 

Our neighbor Ron Dworkin wrote before his death: I shall take these two—life’s instrinsic meaning and nature’s intrinsic beauty—as paradigms of a fully religious attitude to life…These are not convictions that one can isolate from the rest of one’s life.  They engage a whole personality.  They permeate experience:  they generate pride, remorse and thrill.  Mystery is an important part of that thrill. (NYTRB, 68, 3/13).

My friend Frank Halse has written of the presence, recently, a letter and seven poems.  Frank is a double Terrier, CLA\STH, now in his late eighties, a widower, living alone in the great snows of the Tug Hill Plateau.  He was the Protestant Chaplain at Syracuse University from 1965 to 1975.  He drew a short straw and did marvelous ministry.  He is a poet, and now his poetry is all about presence:

Dear Bob,

Joyce’s death left me empty.  Stunned even.  That emptiness stayed for the 1^st year.  Then, two years ago, I began to be bumping into something that I finally put a name down. ‘The Presence”.  My first experience with the mystic corners of our world.

I felt unprepared and awkward, but in time, I began to experience what can only be described as whisperings quietly in my ears.  So I began to struggle with poetry as I think I was hearing:

God is as close as my breath

My heart pulsing my breast

No search reveals the Presence;

Only exhaustion, tragedy, and

Failure will temper my vision to

The point where I can sense the

Presence who responds to my

Needs with gifts of patience

From:  F Halse, Epiphany at Kennebunk Pond, 8/16/01

 

Coda

On the Sacred, Marilynn Robinson:  So I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes.  I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation.  With all respect to heaven, the scene of miracle is here, among us.  The eternal as an idea is much less preposterous than time, and this very fact should seize our attention.  In certain contexts the improbable is called the miraculous.

What is eternal must always be complete, if my understanding is correct.  So it is possible that time was created in order that there might be narrative—event, sequence and causation, ignorance and error, retribution, atonement.  A word, a phrase, a story falls on rich or stony ground and flourishes as it can, possibility in a sleeve of limitation.  Certainly time is the occasion for our strangely mixed nature, in every moment differently compounded, so that often we surprise ourselves, and always scarcely know ourselves, and exist in relation to experience, if we attend to it and if its plainness does not disguised it from us, as if we were visited by revelation.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Not everything measurable is meaningful, and not everything meaningful is measurable.

The greater the sea of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of mystery surrounding it.

The world does not lack for wonders, but only for a sense of wonder.

 

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

Luke 15: 11

Click here to hear the full service.

Click here to hear the sermon only.

 

Frontispiece

 

Have you ever found yourself on the edge, verge or cusp of a new insight, or maybe even on the edge of a new life?

How much do you need (to acquire, to achieve, to conquer) before you are open to God? Open my eyes that I may see…

Maybe this winter morning, this Lenten hour, you too will have a prodigal thought, and you will come to your self.  Such an interesting phrase.  But when he came to himself…On coming into his true self…

There was a man who had two sons.  Notice all that is not here, before us today.  No incarnation.  No pedagogy.  No transfiguration.  No temptation.  No trial.  No passion. No crucifixion.  No resurrection.  Only a story about a man with two sons.  One who stays home.  And one who goes away.  Most of the listenership and most of the congregation today know this story, or at least have a vague lingering memory of some of it.  With the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son is the most famous of Jesus’ parables, and rightly so.  It is the account of the lavish love, the personal love, the uncritical love, the joyful love, the parental love, the patient love, the courageous love, the magnanimous love, the ecstatic love, the gracious love—the love of God. For you.  God loves you.  You are loved, so you can love.  Because God loves me, I too can risk love.

A Turn of Phrase

Prodigal means extremely—extremely something:  wasteful, generous or abundant.  The verb is (an Aorist participle):  and coming (in) to himself (a moment in time, a process in thought).  “For till then he was beside himself, as all men are, so long as they are without God in the world.’ (J Wesley).

But notice that the gospel, love, is hinged today on a single phrase.  After his travel and squandering, and before his return and reception, the prodigal has a thought, a prodigal thought at that.  All of the gospel this Lord’s Lenten day turns on a thought.  When he came to himself…When he thought to himself…

Three pulpits ago Professor Roland Wolseley endured this minister’s more youthful preaching.  Now deceased, Dr Wolseley was the preeminent scholar in the field of African American journalism.  Through his post at Syracuse University he almost singlehandedly created the discipline, through the publication of many books, the guidance of doctoral students, and a dogged, fierce love of his field, the struggling saintly newspapers and journals of the black community.  Roland went to Medill in Chicago, at Northwestern.  There, in his twenties he fell under the spell of my own greatest pulpit hero, Ernest Freemont Tittle, at Evanston First UMC, then the largest UMC in the country.  Tittle, a pacifist, as was Wolseley, gathered a group of graduate students for fellowship and reconciliation.  Wolseley met his wife, Bernice, there, and she went on to be for many years Tittle’s secretary.  You can read about Tittle in Robert Moats Miller’s older biography, or in Christopher Evans more recent monograph.

In those Syracuse years, Roland, a person of deep faith and quiet humor, would trace the work of Tittle in contrast and connection to what he was hearing.  Occasionally, too occasionally, he would say, leaving church, ‘Tittle would be proud  of that one’.   Another of those early 1940’s graduate student couples, it happened, awaited us when we moved to Rochester, where Ruth and Vernon Lippitt then lived.  These people, young in the forties, were mature the eighties and nineties, but had lost nothing of their early conviction, a combination of deep personal faith and active social involvement, found decades earlier, in the arm of a University congregation.  Marsh Chapel:  the seeds you plant today will flower and blossom and grow for decades, with telling affect.  Faint not, fear not, flag not!

Roland also kept us alive during administrative meetings, using punctuative humor.  Our trustees usually hired the same painter, a fine painter named Bogus, when the decay of the building outran their native parsimony.  When they couldn’t wait any longer to the paint a room, they made a motion to ‘hire Mr. Bogus’.  After the motion and second, with practiced timing, and with all knowing what was coming, yet unable not to laugh when it did—some things are just funny for no real reason—Dr. Wolseley would compliment the recent extravagance of the trustees in hiring Bogus, then add, speaking of Bogus, ‘Is the is guy for real?’  In eleven years I think I heard that question thirty times—‘Is Bogus for real’?—and yet it always made me smile.  After three hours of administrative board meeting, it doesn’t take much, that is true.

Roland was a careful listener.  He wanted the best for preaching and preacher, and, from Tittle, he knew the best, and he knew the rest.  Once the sermon including the phrase “I thought to myself”.  Afterward he asked sharply, ‘Why the redundancy?  Just say, ‘I thought’.’  He was probably thinking of William Strunk, ‘omit needless words’, a fence I have long since jumped, as you have the scars to attest.  But I took his advice.

Except, today, with love and real affection for Roland who is now in heaven, we wonder…When he came to himself.  There is something in that lingering middle voice construct in a language like ours that has no middle voice, only active and passive, but has lingering forms like this one.  The phrase shows the mind circling on itself,when he came to himself.   We do this in memory, come to ourselves.  We do this in discovery, come to ourselves.  We do this in prayer, come to ourselves.  Give some Lenten minutes to memory, discovery and prayer.  We do this in those moments when we realize there is more to life than meets the eye.  When he have a prodigal thought.  A new, wayward, slightly reckless, excessive, extravagant, prodigous thought.

Gnostic Thought

Now I put it to you:  how long has it been since you have had a prodigal thought?  The prodigal son is prodigally reckless in departure.  But he is prodigally excellent and ecstatic in return.  His negative prodigality in descent is eclipsed by his positive prodigality in resurrection.  How long has it been since you have come to yourself?

Though no one says so, and to my knowledge no one has yet so written, Luke 15 may be the most Gnostic of chapters in the New Testament.  It is about gnosis, self knowledge, coming to oneself. As the Gnostics taught, we are trapped in a far country, a long way from our true home, like a man who has squandered his birthright, and moved from light to darkness.  As the Gnostics taught, we are meant to get home, to get back home, to get back out from under this earthly, fleshly, pig slop bodily existence, and back to higher ground, to heaven, to the heaven beyond heaven, to the land of light, to the loving father, like a prodigal son returning to the home that is truly his.  As the Gnostics taught, there is just one way to get back home, one key to the magic door.  That way and that key is knowledge, self knowledge, the knowledge of one’s own self—whence w come, wither we go.  As the Gnostics taught, salvation comes from this sort of esoteric, personal, soulful knowledge.  When he came to himself…

It is jarring, I give you that, to admit that this most traditional and most popular and most orthodox of parables may well have grown up outside the barn, outside the fences of mainstream Christianity.  But there is nothing orthodox about the prodigal and his coming to himself.  His is truly a prodigal thought.  I need to get back home.  Back to the land of light.  Back to the pleroma.  Back to the God beyond God.  No ‘Christ died for our sins’, here.  No ‘lamb of God’, here.  No settled orthodox Christology here.  No cross, no gory glory, no Gethsemane, no passion of the Christ, here.  It all comes down to self awareness, to awakening, to a moment of clarity.  When he came to himself.The parable of the Prodigal Son is the most Gnostic, most heterodox, most Johannine of them all.  Stuck here in the middle of Luke, read here in the middle of Lent, interpreted here in the middle of March.

The Gospel challenges us to come out from hiding.

You cannot hide behind a distrust of organized religion today.  The prodigal thought soars beyond that.  You cannot hide behind a disdain for clergy, for formality, for robes and choirs and altars and candles.  This prodigal thought pierces all that.  You cannot behind the hideous moments in religious and Christian history—many there be—as a way to fend off the gospel, at least not this morning.  The knife cuts deeper, to the deeps, to your very soul.

You cannot hide on the left behind a critique of Catholicism today.  Prodigal thought soars beyond that.  You may reject the celibacy of the priesthood, the sacrifice of the mass, the subordination of women, and the infallibility of the pope.  But many, very many, Catholics do the same.  No, the gospel undercuts your smart but narrow critique, and asks about your soul.  You do have one you know.

I cannot hide on the right behind a critique of Calvinism today.  Prodigal thought soars beyond that.  I may reject Calvinist total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints.  Not all saints persevere, grace is resistible, atonement limitation is not divine, election has a human dimension, and depravity, well, it certainly is present, but not total.  But you know, many Calvinists, very many, would agree.  No, the gospel undercuts my own smart but narrow critique, and asks about my soul. I do have one, you know.

It asks whether you are coming to know yourself?  Are you?  This is the parable, oddly enough, that calls the seekers’ bluff.   Today the Gospel attacks where you have finally no ready defense.  It moves to your mind, your soul, your own most self.

Calvinist Interlocutor Lent 2013 M Robinson

As our Calvinist Lenten preaching partner this Lent, M Robinson, writes in The Death of Adam, and in Absence of Mind, prodigal thought is soul thought, and meant to change your life. She is a powerful voice today honoring the mind. A prodigal thought is a tussle between the mind and the world, the mind and the soul, the mind and itself.  Give her voice some space in your mind:

It all comes down to the mystery of the relationship between the mind and the cosmos. 3…

Consider…The deeply pensive solitudes that bring individuals into congregations and communities to be nurtured by the thought and culture they find there 9…The mind as felt experience…

We suffer today the exclusion of the felt life of the mind 35…A central tenet of the modern world view is that we do not know our own minds, motives or desires 59

The mind is an illusion according to modern theory… The renunciation of religion in the name of reason and progress has been strongly associated with a curtailment of the assumed capacities of the mind… 75

Yet we have… A singular capacity for wonder as well as for comprehension 72…

For the religious, the sense of the soul may have as a final redoubt, not as argument but as experience, that haunting I who wakes us in the night wondering where time has gone, the I we waken to, sharply aware that we have been unfaithful to ourselves, that a life lived otherwise would have acknowledged a yearning more our own than any of the daylit motives whose behests we answer to so diligently

Soul is…a name for an aspect of deep experience  116… The self that stands apart from itself, that questions, reconsiders, appraises. 119…

 

How does your soul fare?  Are you open to the challenge of a prodigal thought—in memory, in discovery, in prayer?

 

When He Came to Himself in Memory

 

In my fifties I have come to myself, at least in one sense.  I realize I now have time for opportunities I no longer have.  Once I had opportunity but no time.  Now I have time but no opportunity. I walked on the Charles River the other wind swept day, along the northern bank, along Memorial Drive.  The wind blew hard and cold.  Now seven years into a delightful deanship, with things rolling, no tenure to earn, ten books out, 1000 sermons written and delivered, and so on, I have the real mental and spiritual freedom easily to converse with my dad.  But he is dead.  Now that I have time I don’t have him.  When I had him I didn’t have time.  Now I have the time.  Stepping along the river bank, in the heart of the city of Boston he so loved, across the river from the University he so loved, thinking of him whom I so loved, I came to myself.  And what would I not give for another conversation with him?  You know this in your own experience.  I am driven to memory, and saved by memory.

 

When He Came To Himself in Discovery

Our son is a thirty five year old lawyer in Albany, NY.   He wrote a letter to the editor of the paper there, about a man in his church who had died:

“The front page article ‘Religion? More reply ‘none’”, Oct 21, about the decline in our community, particularly in my demographic, forced me to think about why I still go to church, despite its flaws.  As I continued through the paper, I found my answer in the obituaries.

“I met Dr. Wesley Bradley at Trinity UMC about five years ago.  I was immediately drawn to him—to the earnestness of his handshake, to the comforting advice he offered me as a new dad, to the way he proudly strolled down Lark Street with his lovely bride as if it were their first date

“Although I did not know the extent of Dr. Bradley’s professional accomplishments until I read his obituary, I knew the greatness of his grace.  I witnessed the faith that had sustained him and I learned from his humble and caring example.

 

“The church provides a time and place for God’s grace to touch and connect us.  But for church I would not have known Dr. Bradley.  My soul, which now grieves his passing, would have remained unaffected.

 

“I go to church to feed my soul.  It’s not the only way to do it, but I think Dr. Bradley’s life of faith is worth my generation’s consideration.”

 

When He Came To Himself in Prayer

 

We stood with 500 eighteen year olds gathered Thursday evening past, in the wake of the death of our 18 year old student.  For many, in their teens, a first harsh encounter with death.  In a secular gathering they offered a secular prayer.  Some came to themselves that evening, thinking:

 

“We mean to be thoughtful, and to be together in our thoughtfulness.

We are not alone in our thoughts.  We have each other to lean on.

We will lean on our friends,  those with whom we can share a hug.

We will lean on our groups, classes, dorm and hallway neighbofrs, those who know our names and call us by name.

We will lean on our own traditions of memory and hope, so significant, now, those words and events and stories that place all experience in ultimate perspective.

We will lean on our religious traditions, wherein we sing and kneel.

We will lean on our faith, that dimension of life that is deepest and truest to our own most self, our soul, the dimension of deep experience.

We will lean on some snippets and memories of words and phrases—goodness and mercy will follow me, let us love one another, love is God, let us watch over one another in love.

We may be moved to wonder again, at life, the meaning of life, the boundaries of life, and our own choices and actions and words therein.

We will be thoughtful and we are not alone in our thoughts.”

Coda

Memory. Discovery. Prayer. What will it take for you?  How much more do you need (to acquire, to achieve, to conquer) before you are open to God?  God is patient.  He waits.  Like a dad who has time when his son does not.  He waits.  He waits at home, hoping for little dust rising on the trail a long way off, sign of a boy coming home.  He waits at home, knowing the pig husks we can mistake for real food.  He waits at home, having already given more than enough in inheritance.  He waits at home, awaiting that moment that may come—today?—in a far country, in a rough circumstance, in an unwelcoming place.  That moment of prodigal thought….But when he came to himself…My life flows on in endless song…

 

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

 

Luke 13: 1-9

Click here to hear the full service.

Click here to hear the sermon only.

 

This Lent in our preaching we converse with Marilynn Robinson.  Each year we have chosen a voice from the Reformed tradition, a tradition different from the Methodism of Marsh Chapel, with whom to learn and grow, from whom to develop a fuller sense of discipleship, in whom to find ways to expand our circles of faithfulness.  So these years we have heard also from Bonhoeffer, Barth, Ellul, Edwards, Calvin and from varieties of interpretation of the Atonement.

 

Robinson is a contemporary novelist and essayist, and a Calvinist, perhaps the strongest living American exponent of Calvinism.  Her depiction of the Rev. John Ames, in the novels Gilead and Home, has been deeply meaningful to many of us.  Her writing celebrates the privilege, terror and joy of pastoral ministry.  Her writing celebrates the goodness of village life.  Her writing celebrates providential grace.  Her writing celebrates the power of story, of parable.  Her writing celebrates the beauty of the world around us.  Listen to her voice in that of the Rev. John Ames, depicting dawn in Iowa:

 

“I love the prairie! So often I have seen the dawn come and the light flood over the land and everything turn radiant at once, that word ‘good’ so profoundly affirmed in my soul that I am amazed I should be allowed to witness such a thing. There may have been a more wonderful first moment ‘when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy’, but for all I know to the contrary, they still do sing and shout, and they certainly might well. Here on the prairie there is nothing to distract attention from the evening and the morning, nothing on the horizon to abbreviate or to delay. Mountains would seem an impertinence from that point of view.”

Jesus taught in parables, stories with a point.  Two today, the latter which affirms a second chance to love, the former which acknowledges random hurt. They challenge us to follow their form and tell our own parables, two today. The first challenges us not to take for granted those closest to us.  That is the point of the parable:  care for those closest to you.  The second reminds us of the hurts hidden in each human soul.  That is the point of the parable:  remember that every heart has secret sorrows.

 

Let us care for those closest to us…

 

Some time ago, in a small upstate village, there lived a man and a woman. They were of middle age and middle class. In fact, they ran their own business, a “mom and pop” store. Through the village, the man was known for the attention which he showed his partner. He doted on her. He opened doors and bought flowers and made compliments. For her part, she also was devoted to her man. She stood by her man. She baked and sewed and entertained. In church, they sat in the front pew, holding hands for the Sunday observance.

 

The pastor in the town for years admired them, and during wedding services would quietly pray, Lord make these young people like them, devoted to each other. One night the pastor was invited to visit the home of these two lovebirds. After the usual chitchat, it became clear that something was afoot. Wringing his hands and sweating, the man awkwardly asked, at last, whether the pastor would have any qualms about performing a wedding ceremony. “Not at all,” the parson replied. “For whom?” Silence followed, the man coughed, and the woman blushed. Dimly, the pastor realized that the wedding was to be theirs. Yes, they had come to the village many years ago, had fallen in love and worked together, and then lived to together, first in aid of their business, and then as the townsfolk began to refer to them as MR and MRS, they began to relax and enjoy one another. They were very happy.

 

The wedding ensued, quietly performed in the parsonage living room.

 

Exactly one month to the day after the wedding, late at night, the parsonage phone rang. The man, panic stricken began in a rush, “It’s all over.” Our marriage doesn’t work. Please come and help us.” The pastor took the two aside to hear their confessions. “For years, you were so happy, and now, married, you are not? What has happened?” The man began, “Well, it used to be, you know, I just never knew whether she would stay. We weren’t really married. She was free to go. So every day was special. I watched what I said, and I watched what I did, and I watched her. I wanted to please her. But somehow, after that ceremony, I let down. I guess I figured she was there to stay now, so it didn’t matter. I think I took her for granted.” And he cried. The woman also reported, “It used to be that every day was an adventure.  I knew he could leave at any time. Every meal might be our last. Then we actually got married and I let down. I guess I figured it didn’t matter as much now. I think I took him for granted. Pastor, what are we going to do?” After more hours of tears and talking, the pastor finally prepared to leave the home. As he left he commanded the couple to promise each other that from that moment forward, they would live as if they were not married. He said to the husband, “You are to live as if you have no wife.”  So he interpreted Scripture, I Cor. 7:25.

 

Marilynn Robinson in two fine novels, Gilead and Home, over the past several years, has given you a sympathetic reading of determinism (fundamental or radical), which, ultimately, though cautiously, she rejects.  Here is the climax of Home:

 

This second book places the apparently damned Jack in earshot of a young woman who has married an old preacher:

 

“Just stay for a minute”, she said, and Jack sat back in his chair and watched her, as they all did, because she seemed to be mustering herself.  Then she looked up at him and said, ‘A person can change. Everything can change’…Jack said, very gently, ‘Why thank you, Mrs. Ames.  That’s all I wanted to know’. (p 228)

(and)

There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error…You must forgive in order to understand.  Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding…If you forgive…you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace (p 45)

Luke 13, a second chance with the fig tree to love.  Luke 13, a remembrance of shared, random hurt.  One lesson:  do not take for granted those closest to you.  A second: every heart has secret sorrows.

Remember that every heart has secret sorrows…

 

Several decades ago, a poor boy was growing up in a small town along the Finger Lakes. His family worked hard, but had little extra, and so he would work himself on a neighboring farm. There he became friends with the farmer’s son, a boy about his own age. They became fast friends, cleaning the barn, and milking, chasing the cattle in the summer, filling the hay mow. At Christmas the farmer gave both boys trumpets. They sat down together and carved their names into the handles. Then they fell to practicing, and found the joy of music. Every night, after chores, the poor boy would cross the valley and ascend the hillside where his home lay. Then, as night fell, he would turn and face across the valley toward his friend, and slowly play a melody. Then, with the other trumpet, the friend would reply. “Day is dying in the west…” For some years this was their habit, and the farm folk and villagers in this Finger Lake region came to rely on the trumpet duet as a call to evening prayer.

 

Then, the farmer’s son was drafted and, in short order word came that he had died in the great world war. The poor boy was devastated. He had known little of the comfort of life, and little of friendship, and now, what he had known, was taken away. He became bitter, and his life drifted on, building itself around the heartache at the center of his soul. He grew old. One day the pastor came to call. The pastor dreaded the visit in this home, because there was so much hurt, and so little comfort. On this day he happened to ask if there was any good memory, any happy memory that the man could share. After some silence, the man replied, and told the story of the two trumpets. He told of his friendship, his love of music, his acceptance in the farmer’s home, his bitterness at the tragic loss. The pastor asked to see the trumpets, and then asked if he might borrow them.

 

Some weeks later, the old and bitter man was seated rocking on the porch, in the summer heat. Suddenly, a familiar tune came his way. From his left afar off he heard, “Day is dying in the west…” and then from the right “Holy Holy Holy…” It came closer… and closer… and with every verse, somehow, a bit of the faded memory came clearer. Two boys, high school age, came playing the trumpets, grateful for their use, prompted by the pastor to offer this tribute. What a precious gift a friendship is, the old one thought. How lucky I am to have known even briefly, its power.   The parable interprets for us the meaning of the psalmist, Psalm 100.

 

Marilynn Robinson could put it this way:

 

 

Come to the table of remembrance, and of presence, and of thanksgiving.

Greet and so be greeted, here, by the Lord Jesus Christ, our Lenten Grace, of whom we sing, ‘Blessed is He whom comes in the name of the Lord.

As those who have known betrayal, in the active and the passive tenses and senses, come for mercy.

Join the angelic chorus, singing hosannas, in the highest, meaning the very height of heaven.

Make of this moment a readiness to join lasting banquet, the heavenly banquet of grace, freedom, and love.

As Christ offers Himself, come to offer yourself, to love, for God and neighbor.

Come, partake.  Receive with grace the Lenten Grace.

 

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

 

Luke 9:28-43a

Click here to hear the full service.

Click here to hear the sermon only.

 

The Gospel from Luke for this second Sunday of Lent might strike you as a little odd, perhaps even disjointed. What does transfiguration have to do with an exorcism? Both the congregation and, I will admit, the preacher might have preferred that this excerpt from the 9^th chapter of Luke stop with verse 36, before we get to the part with that lovely quote from Jesus that more often finds itself redacted and deployed as a slogan in hate speech or internet trolling than engaged with in any meaningful way. But, so it goes; the verses march on after verse 36. And, in a way, it is helpful from time to time to read a slightly messier lectionary reading, because it reminds us that this is how the Gospels are constructed. The authors of our gospels were compiling the stories and traditions of Jesus and His Disciples, and if you sit down to read the middle chapters in the synoptic gospels, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you will find little phrases to string together various parts of the Jesus tradition to create a sequential strand of parables and miracles, teaching and preaching. The Gospel writers concerned themselves with a message to a 1^st-century audience, not with satisfying a 21^st century continuity check. My favorite example of this is the Gospel of Mark; Jesus crosses the lake so often it looks as though the disciples are running a ferry service.  It is well worth the hour or two it takes to sit down and read one of the Synoptics in a single sitting, to pay attention to the beautiful patchwork-quilting process that is the Gospel.

This week, our gospel reading from Luke frames two small patches of the quilt, a transfiguration and an exorcism. One day, the disciples are witness to the greatest heights of humanity’s encounter with the divine; they see the possibilities of the better angels of our nature. The very next, they bumble their way through the ministerial trenches; in fear of the messiness of sin and illness, they fall away from the grace which first overtook them. There are two stories, two days,  two lessons to our Gospel this morning. The first is familiar, stirring, enchanting: the blossoming of faith, the transcendent beauty of assurance. Faith is the Joy of the Lord and the Church.  We love when individuals are overtaken by faith. The second is strange, discomfiting, bracing: the growth of faith, the hard work of sanctification. Discipleship is the Crown of Faith and the Church. We long for individuals to become disciples, just as we long for the transformation of the church, the one body, to the body of Christ’s glory.

Faith is a deeply personal transformative experience that is often fostered in the midst of community. You hear a word over the radio that touches something deep inside the very fiber of your being. You hear a word which speaks to where you are in your life. You close your eyes and let the forte waves of a choir wash over you. You hear some music that awakens some feeling in you. You have a deeply meaningful conversation, you feel safe enough to ask someone you trust the difficult questions, and you feel a sense of peace deep within your soul.  You find your heart strangely warmed, you come to kneel at the altar rail, you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and savior. Different denominations, local churches, and worship styles have diverse ways of fostering the sort of atmosphere through which God’s grace can flow. But the electricity of God’s grace is able to be conducted through a number of materials, and the result is faith awakened in the soul.

It is important at the outset of Lent to hear a word about faith, about assurance, about presence, about the personal experience of the divine. You heard such a word last week from Dean Hill. It is important to begin Lent with a shoring up of faith, an experience of beauty, learning, comfort, assurance. It nourishes us, it can sustain us for the forty days of reflection and fasting to come. But after worship on Sunday, after the first few days of Lent, after the first few moments of faith, comes the question, “What comes next?”  What about Monday morning? What about the rest of Lent? What about the rest of life?

A preschool put on a production of the Ugly Duckling, the beloved Hans Christian Andersen tale. It combined the best parts of early childhood education: group singing, moving on and off stage in a straight line, a moral lesson, and of course, a crafts project. Each child would make her own set of wings, with help, of course. Cutting with safety scissors, using an Elmer’s glue bottle, carefully attaching feathers, and filling in the gaps with marker. It was the ideal craft for a small child, messy and fascinating. Almost all the children used bright yellow; Big Bird-color feathers and a sunny yellow marker. These were the ducklings. One boy and one girl, though, were selected to be the ugly ducklings in the production. They had the same work to do as the other children: cutting, gluing, attaching, coloring. Their feathers were a dull grey-brown, the name of their Crayola marker was more optimistic than it looked: “golden beige.” But they had to put in twice as much work as their classmates; they had the rare preschool homework assignment. Each had to make a whole second pair of wings, to cut, glue, attach, and color all over again. It took forever, but this time, there was glitter, whole tubes of silver and gold glitter and bright, iridescent feathers. Twice the work, to be sure, but this little boy and little girl got to do a quick costume change during the production, to exchange their wings to become swans.

Don’t we all want to be swans? Don’t we all want a chance to exchange our wings? To put down the burdensome wings of our sin, shame, our old lives? Faith means we get to put down the old wings of our lives, to start over again, to molt the old feathers. And that is beautiful, saving grace, that we get a costume change in life. But something happens after that. To put on new wings, to molt, we need to cut, glue, attach, and glitter that new set of wings. We don’t do it alone. We do it by the grace of God and with the support of a community of faith, but we still have homework to do.  We have help, but we need to make that second set of wings.

In Methodist circles and beyond we often talk about John Wesley’s Aldersgate experience. Wesley’s journal entries record the moment, and his words have been edited to a catchphrase of sorts for the conversion experience. I’m sure you know, that evening May 24, 1738 when John Wesley felt “his heart strangely warmed.” The phrase is a darling of the theological left and the right, it is beloved as his conversion moment. We really focus on it. On May 24, 1738, John Wesley went to a meeting, and on hearing Luther’s Preface to the Epistle on the Romans, he felt his heart strangely warmed.

What happened the next day? What did John Wesley do when he when he went home that evening? What about when he woke up the next morning? Wesley writes that he went home that evening to pray, but soon felt the nagging question in his head, “This cannot be faith; for where is the joy?” He continued to pray late into the night. The next morning, he woke up, went to church, and sang a hymn. Again, another nagging question.  He writes, “If thou dost believe, why is there not a more sensible change? I answered, “That I know not. But, this I know, I have ‘now peace with God.’ And I sin not today, and Jesus my Master has forbidden me to take thought for the morrow.” The next journal entry comes over a week later, June 7, when John writes that he has decided to go to Germany, to spend some time with the Moravians.  He writes the following, “And I hoped the conversing with those holy men who were themselves living witnesses of the full power of faith, and yet able to bear with those that are weak, would be a means, under God, of so establishing my soul that I might go on from faith to faith, and from ‘strength to strength.’”

John Wesley’s Aldersgate moment, his coming to a deeper and truer sense of his own faith, his conversion moment did not mean that he never doubted again. It did not mean that he woke up a saint the next day, and it certainly did not mean that his work as a Christian was done because he had felt assurance. He had to wake up the next day and take the next step. Faith began the hard work, faith empowered him for the hard work, the cutting and gluing and pasting of the wings of his new life. After Aldersgate John Wesley continued to pray, he went to church, he sang hymns, and he went and found others to accompany him on the journey of “establishing his soul.” Wesley had begun the process of sanctification. Soon he would be establishing Sunday school s so poor children could learn to read, soon he would be preaching to crowds in the field, soon he would be riding all over the countryside, establishing meetings, working with the urban poor. These were the next steps in John’s lifelong process of growing in faith and faithfulness. And this is what the Lenten journey is all about. Lent is a time of fasting, remembrance, and hopefully, growth. Lent is about the long life-process of faith, it is about the next day, the next step.

Far too often in the church we act like a bunch of normal looking ducklings. We don’t own up to our status as ugly ducklings, we don’t concern ourselves with the work of cutting, gluing, pasting, and glittering our new wings. On the theological right, we demand that all ducklings must look alike to be real ducklings. Our faith cannot be genuine unless we meet certain the ideological litmus tests about certain social issues, unless we have a very particular conversion experience, unless we offer a convincing testimony of that conversion. We peck at ducklings that don’t look like we do, who don’t fall into perfect line with all the other ducklings. Our feathers get ruffled too easily. We don’t connect our concern for personal piety with a continued dedication to our social holiness. We content ourselves with one set of wings, because we don’t put in the work to make a new pair.

On the theological left, we pretend our own feathers will never molt, that we will maintain the same, idealistic adorable yellow fluff for the duration of our worship, avoiding difficult topics such as sin or evil. We think our faith is enough because we offer a moving experience through our music, our worship, our preaching, because we have the “right” experience. Or, we set out in a cute duckling line to save the world before receiving our police escort, a la Make Way For Ducklings back to our ecclesiastical island in the middle of the Public Garden. We peck at ducklings that don’t look like we do, who don’t fall into perfect line with all the other ducklings. Our feathers get ruffled too easily. We don’t connect our concern for social holiness with a continued dedication to our personal piety. We content ourselves with one set of wings, because we don’t put in the work to make a new pair.

If there was one theological doctrine that John Wesley caught the most flack for, it was Christian perfection. John Wesley believed so much in the continued process of growth, healing, and restoration in our lives of faith.  He believed that God, working in us, could truly “take away our bent to sinning,” as his brother’s hymn phrases it. In critiquing this doctrine, people focus too much on the telos, the goal, on the perfection. Wesley never claimed to get there himself, but he really emphasized the life-long journey of sainthood, of working hard to become just a little more holy every day. That is the discipline of the Christian life.

Discipline. Disciple. Both words come from the Latin discipulus which originally, before it gets caught up in Christian Latin, refers to a student. Someone who follows a teacher, learns from them, imitates them. When we are called to be and to make disciples, we are called to be and make students, life-long students of Christ.  You may come to Marsh Chapel or tune in on the radio because you like the preaching or the fellowship or the music, and those are all good and true things. But I imagine that there is something also drawing you to a community of faith grounded in a place of learning, Boston University. There is something invigorating, enlivening, transforming about working with, worshipping among, and listening to college students. Maybe it reminds you of your own student days, maybe it connects you to a child or grandchild you have in college. Beloved, whether you are a freshman or coming up on your 50^th high school reunion, your student days are not behind you! You are called to be a life-long student of Christ, to continue to learn and grow in faith and wisdom, and to participate in the learning community that is the Church.

It’s a little ironic, to be sure, but the very best description I have ever encountered for our sanctification comes not from John or Charles or any one of the Wesleys, but from a Baptist preacher and teacher, a lifelong student, the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman. The Rev. Dr. Robin Olson used this quote as the focus of our Marsh Chapel winter reading retreat, and I just could not get it out of my head. In The Inward Journey, Howard Thurman writes,

“There must be always remaining in the individual life some place for the singing of angels-some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful and by an inherent prerogative, throwing all the rest of life into a new and creative relatedness-something that gathers up in itself all the freshets of experience from drab and commonplace areas of living and glows in one bright light of penetrating beauty and meaning-then passes. The commonplace is shot through with new glory-old burdens become lighter, deep and ancient wounds lose much of their old, old hurting. A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear. Despite all the crassness of life, despite all the hardness of life, despite all the harsh discords of life, life is saved by the singing of angels.”

A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear. We must always open ourselves for the transcendent – the singing of angels.  But those moments pass, and then we have some growing to do to reach for that crown.

This Lent, stand up a little straighter. Try for a little more discipline in your life, with your money, your choices, your consumption. Grow a little taller. Pray a bit more, imitate someone whose example you admire, find a spiritual accountability buddy, an accountabilabuddy. Reach for that crown. What is that next step in your faith life? Where is your spiritual comfort zone, and how can you get out of it? Try having a chat with someone outside your age bracket after church today. What is their vision for the Church, for Marsh Chapel, for the life of faith? Begin to trace out for yourself a new pair of wings.

I am increasingly convinced that people come to faith, they shadow the walls of our churches, they tune in and sit up, when they see sanctification being modeled. There have been plenty of Christian experiments focusing on justification, on the come to Jesus moment. I am convinced that we are not being honest with people about what it means to be a Christian unless we are telling them about what comes next, unless we are modeling what comes next through our own discipleship, our own process of sanctification. What is the next step for you as a disciple? What is the next step for Marsh Chapel’s discipleship? How are we cutting, gluing, pasting, and glittering our way to greater holiness, to help create the sort of wings that can bear people up so that they are not dashed against the stones of life?

People come to faith when they see a community that models sanctification.  This is not an excuse to be holier than thou, but it is, I believe, a truer invitation to a lasting relationship. Beloved, how are we continuing to learn together as a community of faith, as disciples? How are we, as the body of Christ, being conformed to the body of His glory? This Lent, beloved, may we take those next steps toward discipleship, toward holiness in our lives. When we do, both on the mountaintop and back in the messiness of the city we will be astounded by the greatness of God.

Amen.

~Rev. Jennifer Quigley, Chapel Associate for Vocational Discernment

 

Romans 10

Luke 13

Psalm 31

Click here to hear the full service.

Click here to hear the sermon only.

 

Frontispiece

 

There come wintery episodes in the course of a snow battered lifetime that place us deep in the shadows.   If the shadow is dark enough, we may not feel able to move forward, for our foresight and insight and eyesight are so limited.  We may become frozen, snowed in.

 

You may have known this condition—of confusion or disorientation or ennui or acedia.  You may know it still.  The death of a loved one can bring such a feeling.  The loss of a position or job can bring such a feeling.  The recognition of a major life mistake can bring such a feeling.  The recollection of a past loss can bring such a feeling.  The disappearance of a once radiant affection, or love, for a person or a cause or an institution can bring such a feeling.  The senselessness of violence inflicted on the innocent can bring such a feeling.

 

(Over the years I have grown frustrated by my own mother tongue in various ways.  English places such a fence between thought and feeling, when real thought is almost always deeply felt, and real feeling is almost always keenly thought.  We need another word like thoughtfeeling or feltthought. When C Wesley sang ‘unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety, learning and holiness combined, and truth and love let us all see’ he described something so bone marrow close to my own life, happiness, hope, ministry, faith.  And he also I think was wrestling with the limits of our beautiful language.  Anyway, you by nature and discipline live the thoughtfeeling gospel, and for that I am lastingly thankful.)

 

Be it then thought or feeling or thoughtfeeling, there do come episodes, all in a lifetime, that place us, if not in the dark, at least well into the shadows.  You may have known all about this at one time.  You may know it still.

 

Come Sunday, some snippet of song, or verse, or preachment, or prayer, it may be, will touch you as you meander about in the dim shadow twilight.  Hold onto that snippet.  Follow its contours along the cave of darkness in which you now move.  Let the snippet—song, verse, sermon, prayer—let it guide you along.  So you may be able to murmur: ‘I can do this…I can make my way…I can find a handhold or foothold…I can abide in this shadow…For now I can abide here…I can make it for now, at least for now, for the time being.’

 

This Lent we shall await a word about war and peace, about drones and defense, about our beloved country in this year of our Lord.  We will rightly desire a word of interpretation about a passage in Scripture—Old Testament, Gen. 22, or Epistle, Rom 10. or Gospel, Luke 4.   This Lent we will rightly desire a communication about how to live, in discipline and obedience and faith, during a time of penitence and preparation and we will want a word from our Lenten conversation partner Marilynn Robinson.  All in due time.  Today , first, though, the word, near to us, on our lips and in our heart, is a word of faith, the given courage to abide in the shadow. Health is such a word, and very salvation, for those who are stumbling a bit and stumbling about in the dark today.  On this plea for faith all our other attentions depend.  So says the 91 Psalm.

 

Today the psalmist lifts a hymn of faith, a song of courage in the face of adversity.  He speaks from his experience.  He teaches, like a grandfather teaching a grandson.  Spinning a fishing fly.  Boiling the sap down in the sugar house.  Watching a basketball game.  Watching the sun set.

 

Given the wintery snares, cold air illness, icy night terrors, and snow bound disease, noonday destruction, evil, scourge, wild beasts of this very day, it could be that a sober reading of the 91^st psalm, a trusting hymn of a faithful heart, will sustain us this morning.  In this psalm we are promised divine deliverance in five ways…So…

1. Deliverance from snares…

Our singer is a person of simple faith.  He has one, and only one, word for us:  You are covered.  Abide in the shadow.

We could make many complaints about this hymn and its singer.  He has a dangerously simple view of evil, especially for the complexity of a post-modern world.  He has a way of implying that trust, or belief, are rewarded with safety, a notion that Jesus in Luke 13 scornfully dismisses, and we know to be untrue.  He has an appalling lack of interest in the scores of others, other than you, who fall by the wayside.  He seems to celebrate a foreordained, foreknown providence that ill fits our sense of the openness of God to the future, and the open freedom God has given us for the future.  He makes dramatic and outlandish promises not about what might happen, but about what will be.  As a thinking theologian, this psalmist of psalm 91 fails.  He fails us in our need to rely on something sounder and truer than blind faith.  He seems to us to be whistling past the graveyard.

And yet… for those who have walked past a February graveyard or two, for those who have walked the valley of the shadow of death, for a country at war for a decade now, for a world searching to match its ideals of peace with its realities of hatred, for you today if you are in trouble, and who are worried today about others and other graves and other yards, and who have seen the hidden traps, unforeseeable dangers, and steel jawed snares of life, there is something encouraging about this simple song:  “he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler”.

2. Deliverance from illness…

Our writer is not a philosopher.  He is a musician, perhaps, but not a systematic thinker.  He has one interest:  getting by, getting through, getting out, and getting home.  So he does not worry about the small stuff.  In fact, I have a sense that the psalmist is desperate.  His song is one for that point on the road when you just have to go ahead and risk and jump.  You have made your assessment, you have made your plan, you have made your study, then you have prayed.  Yet you see all the pestilence about you in homes and institutions and nations, so you wonder, is it worth the risk?  You are not sure.

This hymn of the heart is one you sing when you are not sure, but you are confident.  Not certain, but confident.  You can be confident without being certain.  In fact, a genuine honest confidence includes the confidence to admit you are not sure.  Faith means risk.  Isn’t that part of what we mean by faith?  Our writer is at that point, the point of decision.  Once you are there, you have to choose between walking forward and slinking away.  It becomes very simple.  Either God lives or not.  Either God is in Christ or not.  Either God in Christ touches us by Spirit or not.  Either we move forward in faith, or not.  Choose.  And the Psalmist wants his student or grandson or parishioner to choose in faith.  So he urges:  abide in the shadow of the Almighty … “He will deliver you from the deadly pestilence.”

3. Deliverance from night terror…

Our psalmist is speaking just here to our immediate need.  Fear not the terror of the night.  Go about your discipleship:  pray, study, learn, make peace, love your neighbor, agree to disagree agreeably, every one be convinced in his own mind.  The night is not as terrifying as you fear…”You will not fear the terror of the night”.

4.  Deliverance from noonday destruction…

It is in the heart of the Psalm that one senses the singer’s desperation.  There is an irrational side to his message.  ‘Thousands will fall but you will be spared.’  It will not help us to ask about the ethics of this promise.  Nor will it help us to question the sense of destiny involved here.  I hear this psalm in another way.  I hear it as a father’s prayer, or a mother’s dearest hope.  I cannot help but think that this psalm perfectly captures the hope, the visceral hope, which this decade has been on the minds of our own parents of soldiers and sailors.  Noonday destruction will not come near you.  I pray that noonday destruction will not come near you.

I remember a Day Care center where I used to see notes pinned to the coats and sweaters of daycare toddlers.   This psalm is a note pinned to the shirt of a loved one heading into danger.  When there is nothing else we can give our daughters and sons we want them to have faith.  Faith to go forward, bravely, without being sure of what they will find at noonday.  And we are passionately desperate for one hope: that they will come home.  And we sing the song without any chords of doubt, because we want to admit none.  We make no uncertain sound because we want our beloved to carry no worry, but to be armed with the confidence of the Lord.  This is a battle hymn.  It is the kind of song you sing to yourself when all about you there is mayhem.  If I were a chaplain it is the kind of psalm I might give to a soldier to memorize by day and recite by night in the face of mayhem.  “You will not fear the destruction that wastes at noonday.”

5.  Deliverance from evil…

The teacher implores his student to make God his place of dwelling, his home.  To rest in God, so that all else is secondary.  Evil will not befall, or at least will not define, such an one.  How can someone escape all evil?  We know better.  We know that evil touches us all.  But this misses the meaning of the poem.  The writer is praying!  In the same way we pray, every Sunday.  Deliver him from evil!  Not from some, or most, almost all evil, but from evil!  Religion is a matter of the heart before it is a matter of the head.  As Wesley said, the mind is the bit and bridle, but the heart is the great horse, the mighty steed of faith.  “He will give his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways.  On their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

Coda:  “I will deliver him…”

Deliverance from snares, illness, terror, destruction, and evil.

Our psalm ends, as does this sermon, at the edge of a remarkable announcement.  Like lightening flashing over a darkened sky, or like a burst of sunlight separating clouds, the voice of the poem shifts.  God speaks directly to the human heart.  It is a shift devoutly to be desired.  All of the speaking, from teacher to student and grandfather to grandson, all of the instructional lines are now interrupted, and on a grand scale, and on a profound scale.  Like Yahweh addressing Job, the psalm ends with a divine word.  It is a shift, yes, devoutly to be desired.  It is what we hope will happen with every one of our children.  It is what we hope will happen in every one of our worship services.  Frankly, it is what we hope will happen in every sermon.  All the rest gives way to…God.  Now the fumbling voice of the teacher is replaced by a divine voice. Now the Lord speaks in the first person, and his word is a lasting joy:  “I will deliver him…I will protect him…I will answer him…I will be with him…I will rescue him…I will honor him”

When we have nothing else to go on, there is something irreducibly solid, something strong and good—the divine voice in the faith of Christ—to which we may cleave and cling.  Finally, this is what brings you to the pew and me to the pulpit and us to the church, the hope that something may be said and heard that is divine, saving, satisfying and true.  In the silence that follows all our speaking, like the priestly verses that follow the human voice in this psalm, we may hear something that changes everything.  So Charles Wesley, as ever, in perfect pitch:

Let us plead for faith alone

Faith which by our works is shown

God it is who justifies

Only faith the grace supplies

Active faith that lives within

Conquers hell and death and sin

Hallows whom it first made whole

Forms the Savior in the soul

 

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

 

Click here to hear the full service.

Click here to hear the sermon only.

 

For those new to our service of worship, present here or listening from afar, we warmly offer an especial word of grace and welcome, on this blizzard weekend Sunday.  Your own church may have been closed today, and so you are listening.  Your hockey game, or neighborhood gathering, or personal commitment may have been cancelled due to weather, and so you are with us.  In other words, snow, like grace, may have interrupted or intervened or interceded into the otherwise well laid plans of life.  Good! Welcome.

 

New to all this, you may not have heard our regular dialogue sermons, come Bach Cantata Sunday.  Allow, then, a brief explanation.  Our envisioned mission at Marsh Chapel, to be a ‘heart for the heart of the city and a service in the city’, extends by radio and internet to the whole globe, the heart and service of the city of the whole earth.  We lift the praises of God with the guidance and support of JS Bach.  Why Bach?  Because Bach is the best.  Bach is world regarded as the very best.  In Europe, in Asia, in the Americas, around the globe, Bach is the best, and we want the very best for our service of worship.  Bach brings the globe together.

 

In order then to make the Holy Scriptures read for the day, and the Cantata for the day, as meaningful and accessible as possible, to as many as possible, from the 19 year old undergraduate in the third pew to the 89 year old widower listening in Scituate, Dr Jarrett and I have over several years now offered a dialogue sermon on these Cantata days, meant to merge music and word in the very Gospel, the word of God.  This form of preaching is, if not unique to our Marsh work, at least unusual and special, and in that we take great joy.  It is one gift we lay upon the altar, in heart and service.

 

Today we bring you a word of faith, a word about faith, a word in faith for those who may, like the Samaritan of old, feel themselves outside of the formal community of faith.  Faith is God’s gift to you today.

 

Yet if there are 60,000 people now listening to our radio broadcast service, 40,000, it may be, well identify with a phrase from this past week’s Washington prayer breakfast.  The speaker (President Obama) inclusively addressed those of various faith traditions, and those ‘of no faith that they can name’.  It could be that 2/3 of our listeners faithfully and honestly understand themselves as people ‘of no faith that they can name’.  Of a faith that has no name.  Is that you?

 

This past Wednesday many of us gathered, undergraduates with the Dean of the Chapel, to discuss ‘God on Campus’.  If there has been a more spirited, honest, and enjoyable conversation among 20 people recently, in this area, that would be news.  One young woman, speaking for thousands, said, ‘I just don’t have that kind of rote faith anymore’.  It could be that 2/3 of our students faithfully and honestly understand themselves as young people ‘of no faith that they can name’.  Of a faith that has no name.  Is that you?

 

Over the course of ministry in four decades, nine pulpits, one brief superintendency, one briefer presidency, and one delicious deanship (the best job anywhere by the way), various defeats and victories, and Thursday evening meetings of the cradle role committee, the greatest thrill and joy has come from those who are just outside the visible community of faith.  Prospects, constituents, the unchurched (such an uncharitable phrase)…call them neighbors.  To spend time with those just outside the bounds of religion so called is the pure joy of ministry.  It could be that 2/3 of our neighbors, from Brookline to Bar Harbor to Bangladesh, faithfully and honestly understand themselves as people ‘of no faith that they can name’.  Of a faith that has no name.  Is that you?

 

It could be that 2/3 of our actual and virtual congregation faithfully understand themselves as people ‘of no faith that they can name’.  Of a faith that has no name.  Is that you?

 

Outside Israel there lies Samaria.  Along the road from religion to life, from Jerusalem to Jericho, there lies a man in pain.  Love lifts him in the person of a person of no faith that he can name.  The hero of our cantata this Transfiguration morning, the Samaritan, later called GOOD, stands, in this passage, as a person of a faith that has no name.  In a moment, the waves of musical beauty will roll over us.  What, we may wonder, shall we hear, shall we listen for, shall we await….?

 

To the faithful, honest, prayerful agnostic, to the various goods and various Samaritans around about, we offer, in brisk and brilliant revelation, come Transfiguration, a way of thinking and feeling, a thought feeling, a felt thought, a form of faith where there is no faith.

 

Our experience of the Samaritan, as his gift of love attends us, is the faithfulness of God.  Where others profess too much and too quickly, where others believe blindly and shallowly, where others pronounce themselves holier, humbler, more religious than thou, where others rush in where angels fear to tread, behold the goodness of the northern Samaritan.  His life, in loving and giving, in knowing and loving, in giving and knowing, has become his faith, a faith that has no name. Yesterday he shoveled the widow neighbor’s walk, uncovered a neighbor student’s car, brought milk and eggs to a homebound neighbor’s kitchen, chipped ice from an elderly neighbor’s roof, included in family sledding a busy neighbor’s son.  Come blizzard weekend,  a faith with no name may be the truest faith of all.  Is that faith yours?

 

A generation ago, our dear teacher Paul Tillich called such faith the state of being ultimately concerned.  Are you deeply concerned?  Do things concern you? When we come upon a man whom bandits have stripped and beaten and left by the side of the road for dead, does your heart quicken?  You see this victim of violence, harmed by others who have since disappeared, as with wily politicians who are ‘eager to dominate but reluctant to offend’ (so, FDR, NYRB, 1/13).   Before gun violence, or unfettered drone flight, or children untutored, or wayward greed, or amoral sexuality, or steady drunkenness, or moral indiscretion—somewhere the road from religion to life, from Jerusalem to Jericho—are you concerned?  Your concern is your faith.  In deep concern you discover grace and freedom and love.  Your concern is your faith.

 

But now Tillich is long dead, and his concern may not fit twenty year olds.  In our generation, then, we might call such a state of faith the state of being ultimately connected.  Are you deeply connected?  Does life connect you to others?  When you come upon a man whom bandits have stripped and beaten and left by the side of the road for dead, does your heart quicken? When a fog surrounds you brought on the collision of the warm winds of love and frosty glacier of wrong—what?  Do you connect?  Do you text, then, or tweet, then, or post, then, or email, then, or call, then, or write, then, or visit, then?  Does the plight of another move you toward others?  Along the road then from religion to life, from Jerusalem to Jericho—are you connected?  Your connection is your faith. In your deep connection you discover grace and freedom and love.  Your connection is your faith.

 

Live your faith.  Live your faith.

 

No other God, no graven image, no name in vain

Remember Sabbath, honor father and mother

Do not kill, commit adultery, steal, witness falsely or covet

Live your faith.  Live your faith.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind and strength.

And thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself

 

As did the Samaritan….

 

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

 

Click here to hear the full service.

Click here to hear the sermon only.

 

Snow makes things slow

As R Warren wrote in her new poem: ‘a silhouette rimmed in snow-light’, we too follow Christ, our beacon not our boundary

Its tactile and visual embrace gives us a winter grace

With Jeremiah, come winter, we may pause to listen

Not to do, but to be

To listen for the divine in the word, as did the ancient prophet who labored until the fall of Jerusalem (snipped from our reading) and then some

I will touch your lips, saith the Lord, who called a young man, another young man, as would occur again, later, in Nazareth

We learned in a bucolic age, to spill water and freeze it, to shovel snow and clear it, to skate, backwards and forwards, to play, stick in hand, to learn, when Colgate finished its Reid Athletic Center that hockey could be played indoors too

An old flexible flier, veteran of the snow ice hillsides

Skiis, boots, goggles

An old black and white photograph of snow drifts above the telephone lines

Winter is the season of spirit, Summer the season of flesh

Those who taught us more by example than precept to be:

Trustworthy

Loyal

Helpful

Friendly

Courteous

Kind

Obedient

Cheerful

Thrifty

Brave

Clean

Reverent

At 10:30 every Sunday, here in the nave, you may join others, with Rev. Holly, in silent prayer

Listen…

David too, or the psalmist, had his memories of youth, which brought laughter and song

O LORD upon you have I leaned from my birth

When we are affronted, confronted with misery in mystery, as some today,  we too take our refuge in continuous praise, song and laughter, in WHOSE presence there is fullness of joy

A rock.  The home of wise man.  A rock.  Thou art Peter.  A rock.  A mighty refuge.

Even Ground Hog Day offers something solid, something good.

Every heart has secret sorrows

Monday’s child is fair of face

Tuesday’s child is full of grace

Wednesday’s child is full of woe

Thursday’s child has far to go

Friday’s child is loving and giving

Saturday’s child works hard for a living

But the child that is born on the Sabbath Day

Is happy, witty, bright and gay!

After church next week you may want to sing with the Thurman Choir, under the baton of SAJarrett…

Laugh and Sing…

Snow makes things slow

Paul offers his teaching to us, if we learn from him

About love

Love is God

Because I am loved, I can love

Behold the superiority, the nature, and the permanence of LOVE

The religious norm, the norm of faith is love, joy of heaven to earth come down

Trustworthy, loyal, helpful….

Learn to love

Come and join our undergraduates, confer with them and others

Learn, by day, by night, by day, to love

Learn…

Now the community of Jesus’ growing up years cannot fully accommodate his grown up voice

There is a wintery harshness in the moment he leaves

In love, directly, he says they are not special, not unique, except as is every snow flake, and they are angry, and he departs.

Every departure foreshadows the last

We are more mortal than we regularly realize

Our own departure, our ability to leave, to leave this frozen earth, this or another community, our families and family, in the bleak winter quiet, the austere winter quiet, we may passingly, suddenly recognize our omega point, dimly perceptible, afar

Jesus chooses two stories in which prophets take care of outsiders.  Blessings are to fall, not on the home town community, but on outsiders—Syrian, Syrophoenician, the ritually unclean, non-Jews

Now the community of Jesus’ growing up years cannot fully accommodate his grown up voice

There is a wintery harshness in the moment he leaves

In love, directly, he says they are not special, not unique, except as is every snow flake, and they are angry, and he departs.

Cyril Richardson had taught at Union Theological Seminary for 50 years.  His course on Patristics was famous, the finest of finely honed hour long lectures on Clement, Ireneaus, Origen, Athanasius.  He sat to teach.  He would cast about, and mention P Tillich, whom he described as if Tillich were still a promising but odd graduate student, from the continent, who would have benefitted from better early church history (‘Athansius was there before Tillich was’).  Out of order I appealed to take his course, my first term.  ‘Who knows how long he will teach?’, one said.  There is a living relationship between the 45 minute lecture and the 22 minute sermon.  If one lives, both do.  Richardson brushed aside the fads of the day—team teaching, contextual education, liberation theology, praxis—and lectured with a winter grace.  He died with one lecture only to go.  Mr Ruppe, his assistant, read the faded penciled yellow pad lecture, with tears.

I am proud to have been Richardson’s student.

At his funeral, the Episcopal priest demurred to preach, and read instead a sermon of Richardson’s own, delivered at the death of a friend.

In it the deceased, now quoted, had said, simply, what disturbs us about death is the prospect of the deaths of our loved ones, on the one hand, and the death of our dreams, on the other.  Let us face both prospects, he said.

It is a winter grace to face our fleshly limit.  To prepare, Sunday by Sunday, to prepare to leave, as one day we must, one day we shall.

There are no ordinary days, no insignificant holidays.

You will remember that she and George were graduated from High School in Grover’s Corners.  On the basis of a frank talking to over a soda, in which Emily criticizes George for being less than fully humble, George decides not to leave home, not to go to college, but to start working an uncle’s farm right away, and to marry Emily, the girl next door.  You remember their wedding.  “ A man looks pretty small at a wedding, all those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure the knot is tied in a mighty public way.”   You remember that Emily, after just a few years of profoundly happy marriage and life, tragically dies in childbirth.  You remember that George finds no way to manage the extreme grief of his loss.  Simple Yankee English.  Simple reckoning about love, life, death and meaning.

Maybe you also remember, in the playwright’s imagination, Emily from the communion of saints looking out on her young husband and wanting to go back.

Others warn her away from the plan:  “All I can say Emily, is, don’t…it isn’t wise…(If you must do it) Choose an unimportant day.  Choose the least important day of your life.  It will be important enough.”

She chooses February 11, 1899, her 12th birthday.  She arrives at dawn.  She sees Main Street, the drugstore, the livery stable, and breathes the brightness of a crisp winter morning.  Simple.  She looks into her own house.  Her mother is making breakfast, her father returning from a speech given at Hamilton College.  Neighbors pass in the snow.  Simple.  She sees how young and pretty her mother looks—can’t quite believe it.  It is 10 below zero.  There is fussing to find a blue hair ribbon—“its on the dresser—if it were a snake it would bite you”.  Simple.  Papa enters to give a hug and a kiss and a birthday gift.  And others from mother and the boy next door. Simple.  “Just for a moment now we’re all together.  Mama, just for a moment now we’re all together.  Just for a moment we’re happy.  Let’s look at one another.”

Simple.  This is the gospel of Ground Hog Day, the best holiday of the year, the holiday of the extraordinary ordinary, of the uncommonly common, of the sunlit winter, of the eternal now.  Simple.  Grover’s Corners.  Papa. Mama.  Clocks ticking.  Sunflowers.  Food. Coffee.  New ironed dresses.  Hot baths.  Sleeping.  Waking up. “Earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you.”

Reverence for Life is the beginning of wisdom, as Schweitzer said.

Jesus left Nazareth

Jeremiah left Jerusalem, David left Israel, Paul left Judaism, Jesus left Nazareth

We too shall leave

This table is opened to your comfort

As we take our leave

As we prepare to leave

To leave…

Remember your creed…

 

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

Luke 4: 14-21

Click here to hear the full service.

Click here to hear the sermon only.

 

Preface

Today we hear from a prophetic text, Luke 4, regarding Jesus and his home town community, and we hear it following a good week of good words about a modern prophet, a patriot preacher, Martin Luther King, our BU alumnus.  As Ernest Freemont Tittle said, ‘the preacher can find always something innocuous to talk about’, but do not time and text require some prophetic word for us, from us today?  If we are to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly, we shall then need to summon the courage to listen and speak with courage, and to do so regarding not only the endless circle of concern around us, but also the smaller circle of influence, the community in which we live.

I will bear witness.  Born a Methodist, ordained to the Methodist ministry, I will die a Methodist, a superannuated Methodist preacher. All the lastingly good things of my life have come as gifts of grace, in and through this very church.  Name in baptism. Faith in confirmation. Community in Eucharist. Deepest friendship in marriage.  Job in ordination.  Daily pardon in prayer.  Eternal hope in unction.  I am a singing Methodist and will continue to greet life with an openhanded Methodist handshake.   And my grandaughter’s  mother, grandmother, two great grandmothers, and great great grandmother  all married Methodist ministers.  I love my church and I am part of a multi generational investment in its preaching ministry!

That is, I pray to speak as one who speaks for my people, and so, I hope, has earned the right to speak to my people.  If you speak for people, then you can speak to people.  God is for us, so God’s word can speak to us.   I love the Methodist church.  Any church though is human, very human.  As Tillich wrote long ago, ‘the church is always both a representation and a distortion of the divine’.   This past year has proven that again.

Some background.  Methodism lives on four levels, or through four forms of conference.  (A conference, incidentally, is a time and place in which to confer with one another.)  Each of the four has one discreet, specific task.  Our general conference, 1000 global delegates gathered once every four years, is responsible to write and rewrite our Book of Discipline, our church law.  The jurisdictional conferences, split up regionally across the country, meet every four years to elect general superintendents, our bishops whose job is to appoint clergy.  The annual conference, a smaller gathering of representatives from hundreds of churches, in each jurisdiction, has the single job of recruiting and retaining ministers, and ordaining them every year.  Our charge conference, our local church, is in the work of making disciples, people of faith who love and give in the spirit of Jesus.   Disciple, Minister, Bishop, Discipline:  these are the products of our conferences.

A. And Are We Yet Alive?

One:  Our general conference met in Tampa, in late April.   Rather than affirming the full humanity of gay people, and granting the 10% of children who are gay all the graces I have happily received (see above), the Conference wrote a Discipline that excludes them from marriage and ordination. We have learned the horrific habits in this country, of finding ways to fractionalize the marginalized.  It has been heavy lifting over decades to affirm that all people are people, imbued with integrity by the grace of God—former slaves, women, the poor, people of color, the stranger, the otherwise abled, all.  Integers not fractions. The US constitution before amendment accounted some as 3/5 human.  No wonder that great Boston abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, called the document, ‘a compact with the devil and a covenant with hell’.   I wonder what he would say about our 2012 General Conference and Discipline?  But I must ask, in reflective discernment:  where did Tampa come from? Some of Tampa, our General Conference, came from the results of the other conferences, over many years.

Two:  Some of it came from our Jurisdictional conferences.  In July, our jurisdictional conferences met in five cities across the country to elect general superintendents.  In some cases they were chosen on the basis of proven ability, leadership experience, measures of churches grown or people rescued or dollars raised or buildings constructed, ministers from strong churches and significant pulpits, who had shown the ability to speak well to large groups and to lead complex organizations.   But in some cases   elections were based not on ability or proven strength, but on representation, to show a ‘rainbow’ of representative general superintendents, apart from preparation or capacity to do the job, and, ironically, even tragically, in consequence, whether or not their tenure will have any positive impact for underrepresented others.  The gospel is about redemption, not representation.   Now I will continue to speak for, and so to, the inclusion of all at every level of church life–that is part of the redemptive work of the Spirit in the church.  But in what other walk of life do we select significant leadership on a narrowly representative basis?  Dentists?  Pilots? Surgeons? And what good will it do to open up the church, especially for those most in need of such openness, if the church itself shrinks, ages, weakens and dies, for lack of building up?  Our jurisdiction has off loaded 60% of its membership since my confirmation at age 13 in 1968.  The chief reason for this is poor leadership, starting with the top.   It is not somehow God’s will to shrink the church we love.  That is a direct consequence of our poor leadership:  moribund preaching, mediocre pastoral care, and unimaginative congregational life.

Three: Some came up from our annual conferences.  My own annual conference, a new and unformed body across New York State, met in June.   Two overarching issues should have been engaged, because they affect dramatically the present and future quality of the clergy.   Other than my questions, posed in the few minutes still allowed at annual conference for conference, that is, for a time to confer, no one addressed them.  The first is the proposal, supported, let it be starkly recalled, by every north eastern bishop, to eliminate the security of appointment, or guaranteed appointment,  a modest form of tenure, for ordained clergy (who have 4 years of college, 3 years of seminary, 3 years of supervised work—all before ordination;  who earn a modest annual salary plus housing; who agree to move, potentially every year, at the direction or whim of the general superintendent and cabinet; who are responsible to raise apportionment dollars equivalent to 25% of their church budgets (even the Mafia is kinder in percentage pickup); and who will work, if they are to be effective, 60-80 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, for 40 years:  and we cannot even tell them that they somehow, in whatever tiny rural parish or other, will at least be able to feed, house and care for their children?)  The second is related.   Unwilling to invest in elders, the superintendents are driven to hire non-elders, people who are not trained, not educated, not ordained, not in covenant, not traveling elders.  In our yet to be fully born conference, this means that 540 of 931 pulpits are occupied, occupied by good hearted people, but people who have not studied the Bible in depth, do not know the history or teaching of the church, have had no preparation in counseling, in sacramental understanding, in worship and preaching, in administration, in pastoral care.   It is one thing to have laity Sunday once a year.  But every Sunday?  Do you go to laity Wednesday when the emergency room lets people who would like to be doctors administer drugs, set bones, and use ct scanners?  Do you go to laity Friday when people who would like to be bankers get to open and close the vault,  establish accounts, and make investments of your savings?   How about housing?  Do you sign up aspiring carpenters, who think they might have some talent in digging foundations and setting roof lines to build your house?    Is it OK with you if the principal of your daughter’s junior high school never graduated from high school himself?   Granted: education alone is not enough.  Heart and head we need together in the influential, delicate, personal, salvific work of pastoral care and preaching.   Not 540, but 40 non-elders is all we should accommodate.   Have the elders preach multiple times:  better one good sermon preached 7 times, than 7 bad ones once each.   Our annual conference provides everything but the one thing needful—a chance to confer.  Our annual conference attends to everything except its job—providing excellent clergy.

Four:  And some came too from our local charge conferences. I went for worship this summer to a beloved church.  In 1995 this was a vibrant congregation, 230 in worship in 2 services, a 7 day full building, the second strongest salary in the conference, a warm formal worship service not unlike ours here at Marsh, and, most proudly, a fine parsonage.)  What did we find that Sunday?  We found a worship service that is hardly a worship service, at least to my mind, with 60 present, and learned that the church was in the process of selling the parsonage.  They need the money and lack the vision to hold on to it.  And worship? I grieve to ask:  Is it worship when the minister roves the sanctuary (ceiling paint peeling, by the way) with a microphone, like Phil Donahue?  Is it worship when beautiful four part hymn harmonies are ditched in favor of follow the bouncing ball screen pseudo music?  Is it worship when the sermon is a potpourri of miscellania, unrelated to text, to setting, to mission, or to soul?  Is it worship without a choir, without order, without reverence, without silence, without offering, without a sense of Presence?  No, it has become a hodgepodge of vain attempts to be entertaining, which are not even entertaining.  And enchantment?  Gone.  People do not need the church to be their Rotary Club, their neighborhood cookout, or their reality TV show.  They need the word of God rightly preached, the sacraments duly administered, and service rendered to the poor.  When this happens, Sunday by Sunday, then churches grow.  You cannot preach without theology, and you cannot worship without preaching.  In short the general conference in Tampa had wellsprings, of sorts, in jurisdictional, annual and charge conferences.

B. Methodism 2013

So what are we in my beloved church to do in 2013?

After Tampa, in May, I determined to spend six months in prayer, and visitation.  By phone or in person I spoke with 31 trusted friends. I meditated on their counsel, and came to only four fairly meager conclusions. 1. We need steady ongoing conversation, conference among elders, in season and out. 2.  We need to follow the money. 3. We need to focus on pastoral care for gay people.  4. We need to focus on pastoral embrace for lay people.  Many young elders are leaving the church.  Many middle age elders want to split the church.  Many older elders are using covert, hidden means to address the situation. I will not leave, split or dissemble.  So that means finding another path.  I will have to go deeper.  Four thoughts.

One: There is something in this journey that will call me out and down further into faith.  The language of the psalms fills my heart.   I prayed and heard this:  You will have to go down deeper.

Two:  One part of the path is in regard to our ministry, the other part, regards money.  In a way, the first part is easier.  That is, most churches over time can come close to doing what we do regularly here at Marsh Chapel:  marry gay people, hire gay clergy, minister directly to the gay community, and speak frankly, as today, about the full humanity of gay sisters and brothers.  The second part is harder, about money.  We will need means to keep from sending money, by apportionment, to fund the dehumanization of gay people, whether in America or in Africa.  Fortunately, our general funds are several, not single, and local church treasurers, at the direction of the lay vote in the charge conference, can send to some and not to others.  This will take some careful planning.  My own investment will be to continue to lift my voice, to continue in eight words that form the future for my church: Gay people are people.  Lay people are people.

Three:  Gay people are people, at least 5/5 human, endowed by their creator, and ours with Life, liberty, happiness—they deserve to enjoy these too, including ordination and marriage. Jesus can teach us this if we will let him.  Remember he said to consider the lilies of the field, and how much God loves even these slight floral creatures in God’s garden.   Gay identity is creation, not fall, God’s gift, not human sin, as is straight identity.   Love the Lord your God, and your neighbor as yourself.  Try to imagine what it must be like to be a 9 year old, who knows he is in the sexual minority. Paul can teach us this if we will listen to him.  Paul?  Yes, Paul.  He places the pinnacle of the good news at Galatians 3:28:  ‘in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, no male and female’.  And no gay and straight.   The gospel is about redemption, not about tradition.  Gospel finally and ever trumps tradition.  Gay people have integrity, are beloved, by God’s grace, just as you are and just as you do. John can help us, if we will read what he says.  He says there will be another advocate, even a spirit of truth, which will lead us, lead us out into further truth, which is not in that gospel, or, even, in the Bible.  There is a self-correcting spirit of truth loose in the universe.  Truth involves continuity with past teaching and also discontinuity through new insight, by the gift of the spirit of truth.  Our failure regarding gay people is theological.  Our doctrine of creation could use a recollection of Jesus.  Our doctrine of redemption could use a re-reading of Galatians.  Our doctrine of the Spirit could use the voice of John.  Gay people are people: the Bible tells me so.  This is not only an issue of justice, nor only an issue of clerical integrity, nor only an issue of theological truth.  It is most profoundly an issue of pastoral care. The physician has responsibilities to many institutions—her practice, her board examinations, her hospital, and her community.  But in the end, all these and others are eclipsed by the care for the patient, the health of the patient.  The pastor also has many responsibilities to institutions, or conferences—charge, annual, jurisdictional, and general.  But in the end, all these are eclipsed by the requisite care for the parishioner, for the 8 and 9 year old children who are among the sexual minorities.  Gay people are people.

Four:  Lay people are people.  Beloved, it will do us no good only to open up the church.  We also have responsibility to build up the church.  The needs, longings, reports and voices of lay people count, matter, last, and have meaning.   The church exists for mission, as fire for burning.  Fishing and planting, evangelism and stewardship—these are the joy of faith.  And the fun, too.  Lay people deserve and desire enchanting worship.  We have every reason to provide vibrant, warm, ordered, traditional worship.  Sixty minutes of fire and love, every Sunday.  We will want to draw on the deep well of tradition—not traditionalism but tradition.  Listen to the lay people.  They have no need for bongo drums, shallow hymns, neglected liturgy, or bad music.  They respond to excellence. They deserve it.  Traditional worship is what we owe them.  Likewise, lay people deserve loving, intelligent, devoted, competent pastoral ministry and preaching.  We once knew that so deeply we needed no reminder.  Traveling preachers, taking grace and freedom and love from post to post—this is what we once did best.  Please:  no more lay pastors, local pastors, deacons than absolutely necessary.  Give us excellent ministers, educated and ordained, the brightest and the best!  And are some of these local pastors excellent?  Excellent!  Then educate them and ordain them.  Put up or shut up.   And lay people deserve the best that money can provide, and the best exemplary teaching about money we can provide.  If nothing else, our tradition provides stellar disciplines about giving.  Our people need to be taught, by the example of the clergy, to tithe.  Well led, they will and do well follow.  Tradition in worship, Traveling elders in the pulpit, Tithing all day long—I cannot begin to tell you how much difference these three currently neglected features of spiritual life make when they are practiced, and especially when they are practiced together!

Coda

Let us open up the Methodist church by living the gospel:  Gay people are people.  Let us build up the Methodist church by living the gospel:  Lay people are people. I plan to slog ahead.  I will find means to advocate for the disciplinary inclusion of all people, like the ministry we have here at Marsh.  I will gather a group at some point for further conference.  I will find ways to encourage the real leadership of the church to be identified and selected for leadership, just as we are doing here at Marsh.  I will find words to convey my ongoing respect for the noble calling, the challenging adventure, that is, gospel ministry, in my annual conference, in the same fashion we do here at Marsh.  And I will continue to grow the churches of the church, to live up to the Harry Denman evangelism award, and to appeal to all who have received seven helpings of faith, once in while to think of inviting a neighbor who has not had the first course of the religious meal, to come worship at Marsh.

I take heart from voices I overheard this week.

Walter Fluker:  ‘We need fresh water to swim in.’

Melvin Talbert (quoting Burke): ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing’.

Sonya Chang-Diaz:  ‘When you pray, move your feet.’

Deval Patrick:  ‘People may be of limited means, but of limitless possibilities’.

Elizabeth Warren:  ‘When (the President) makes his solemn oath, I will make my own silent one in my heart’.

Barack Obama:  ‘Freedom is not just for the lucky, nor happiness for the few…From Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall…our journey is not complete…we must act knowing that our work will be imperfect’

Rev. Luis Leon:  ‘Que Dios Os Bendiga’

So that one day, as was said of old, it may be said, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’. (Luke 4: 21)

 

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

 

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Click here to hear the full service.

Click here to hear the sermon only.

 

Good morning.

 

Let me first begin by thanking Bob Hill for the opportunity to be with you today as your preacher.  The dean is away this week, and I pray for traveling mercies as he returns for the first Sunday of the new academic term next week.

 

Today, in Luke’s gospel we hear the story of Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan by his cousin John, and we are called to remember our own baptism.  Like Jesus, we are baptized by water and the Spirit.  The ordinariness of the water is an outward sign of the extraordinary inward working of God in each of our lives.  In hearing and recalling Christ’s baptism, we recall our own baptism and seek renewed relationship with God.

 

Students, staff, and especially faculty are well aware that this week marks the beginning of the Spring term of the academic calendar here at Boston University.  To all of you, welcome back from break and welcome back to school.  However, you may not be aware that tomorrow also marks the beginning of a new season of the church’s liturgical calendar: “ordinary time.”  Rarely do the rhythms of academic life and liturgical life align, but today we celebrate Jesus’ baptism and with it comes the end of the church’s celebration of the Christmas season.  To those still recovering from Christmas, welcome back to ordinary time.  We celebrated Jesus’ birth less than three weeks ago, and tomorrow the church returns to “ordinary time” to focus on Jesus’ life in ministry.  Reflection on Jesus’ first thirty years is condensed to just three short weeks in the church calendar.  Jesus’ birth, the visitation by the magi, and his baptism as an adult, which we celebrate today, are all part of the Christmas season.  Next week, our weekly lectionary gospel texts return to attestations of the signs and miracles of Jesus’ ministry.  Soon, we will remember Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding feast in Cana at the behest of his mother.  However, this month-long period of remembering the signs of Jesus’ ministry is just a brief interlude before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, in mid-February, or in academic lingo, mid-terms, followed by an all-too quick lead up to finals.

 

As we transition from the Christmas season into ordinary time, we change our vestments from the white and gold of the Christmas celebration to the more plain, green vestments.  Certainly there is nothing commonplace about the miracles recounted in the gospels, but the church recognizes that there is something especially special about the miracle of Jesus’ baptism, which we mark today.

 

Just as the church keeps the celebratory vestments of the Christmas season out for this Sunday which celebrates Jesus’ baptism, we are called to remember that our own baptism is significant and special.  Sometimes, however, the church does not do a good job of communicating the specialness of the sacrament, the fact that we are baptized by both water and the Spirit.

 

This past week my wife and I had the opportunity to vacation in Puerto Rico, and spent most of the week in Old San Juan.  The walled city is 500 years old, and has a particular affinity for the Epiphany, the visitation of the magi to the young Jesus, perhaps in part because the city was spared an English invasion on that feast day more than 200 years ago.  By January 1^st, US retailers remove their Christmas regalia and Christmas music disappears from the airwaves.  The Christmas season is over, as far as the American retailer is concerned.  But in the church calendar it is still Christmastide, and in San Juan, Christmas is still in full swing.  Christmas lights are everywhere, and the Spanish-English radio stations favored by our taxi drivers are still delivering a variety of Christmas music.  Instead of milk and cookies, children leave grass for the pack animals of the magi in hopes of receiving presents from the three kings on Epiphany.  The familiar, bearded Santa Claus who poses for pictures with children is replaced by three bearded men in royal attire.  This Christmas season fervor culminates on the Epiphany last Sunday with an island-wide party; many businesses are closed, and the Monday following is a state holiday.  Yes, it seems that another religious holiday is commercialized in Puerto Rico, but in Puerto Rico, this special emphasis on the Epiphany makes it readily apparent that we, and the church, remain in the spirit of the Christmas feast through this week.  Your tree might have dried out weeks ago and you might have put it out for pick up on December 26, but how can we as the church here in the US mark the fullness of the Christmas season and mark the transition back into ordinary time on this feast of the baptism of our Lord?

 

While my wife reads four languages, Spanish is not one of them.  I took a Spanish course or two, or three, in college, but together we still sometimes had a difficult time navigating a menu or navigating the city.  Nevertheless, we managed to visit each of the historic churches in the old city, all but three are Roman Catholic.  The others are Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and Methodist.  As a United Methodist clergy couple, it was delightful to see the vibrancy of the Iglesia Metodista as the cross and flame greeted us on the side of many churches as we traveled throughout mainland Puerto Rico and the island of Culebra.  In one church in the old city, whose denominational affiliation shall remain nameless, just inside the entrance was a large, stone baptismal font.  Its mouth was over a meter wide, and it was covered in centuries-old elaborate carvings.  But inside, the font was not brimming with water but contained what appeared to be a small brown doggie dish with just a bit of water.  The grandness of the font, which was designed to remind the viewer of the importance of baptism and the presence of the Spirit, was dwarfed by the lowliness and ordinariness of what it contained.  The doggie dish did not call to mind the life-changing nature of baptism.  The majesty of the font seemed to be reduced to a few ordinary drops of water in a very ordinary container.  Now, I am not trying to enter the debate about the amount of water necessary for baptism, sprinkling or full immersion, marble font or backyard swimming pool.  This is simply to say that baptism sometimes seems to be just ordinary, just another part of ordinary time, not a part of the Christmas season.

 

And unfortunately the importance of baptism seems to be lost in many of our churches today.  This last Sunday of the Christmas season ought be a special time to remember the sacrament, an opportunity to reaffirm the vows of our baptism or the opportunity to explore receiving the sacrament for the first time.  Baptism marks a transition in the liturgical season because it is a sacrament which equips us to live our day-to-day, “ordinary” lives as Christians.  Today, I encourage you to renew your commitment to walk with God or to think about making a new commitment to living a renewed life through Jesus.

 

In Jesus’ time, there were many people preaching forgiveness of sins and baptizing people, or at least using water for ritual purification purposes, which is one possible explanation of the practices of the Qumran community.  John, himself an ordinary man, baptized a great number of ordinary, observant Jews, but in Jesus’ own baptism, as our gospel author recounts, something extraordinary happened: “the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus” and Jesus was recognized as God’s Son.  Jesus’ baptism is about much more than water and welcome into a community of faith; it is about God’s promise of the divine presence in our lives through the Holy Spirit.

 

Now I have been to a great many baptisms in my life and I have yet to see the heavens opened and a dove descend on the individual being baptized, but we, as a Christian community, have faith that in the outward sign of baptism, namely water, we are affirming God’s love for the individual and each and every one of us, and God’s promise to be with us.  John Wesley, the 18^th century reformer of the Anglican Church, upon whose teachings the Methodist Church would later be founded, affirmed the Anglican sentiment that baptism, like communion, is “an outward sign of inward grace, and a means whereby we receive the same.”  John Wesley’s theological heritage lives on in countless churches and institutions in America and abroad, including here, Marsh Chapel and Boston University.  We believe that in every baptism, no matter how ordinary it seems, something extraordinary happens.  We may not see it, but we believe that the Holy Spirit is fully present with everyone baptized in the name of Jesus and that in baptism an individual is recognized as a beloved child of God.

 

In baptism, we recognize all three modes of God’s grace.  We need not see a dove descend on an infant whose head is sprinkled with water because we affirm God’s love for us and desire to be in relationship with us even before we recognize God or seek to be in relationship.  This prevenient grace is God’s presence with us, through the Holy Spirit, from our birth to our death.  Baptism itself is a means of justifying grace, a sign of new life in Christ.  It is an expression of our desire to be in relationship with God and God’s continued commitment to be in relationship with us.  Finally, baptism also invites the community of faith in which an individual is baptized to be in intentional relationship with the person as he or she is perfected in faith and perfected in love for God and one another.  Sanctifying grace is God’s transformative gift to us through which we become better people.  Baptism marks an individual’s initiation into a life-long process of sanctification, upheld by the prayers and presence of a community of believers, like this chapter community here at Marsh Chapel.   Baptism equips us for the life of faith.

 

The last several decades have seen a revival of the sacraments and of a sacramental life among Protestants.  Here at Marsh Chapel in recent years, especially under the leadership of Dean Hill, there has been a renewal of devotion to sacramental life as well.  Baptisms have become more regular, and for several years, communion has been offered weekly while academic classes are in session.  Among the opportunities to receive communion is a 7-minute liturgy, Common Ground Communion, on Thursday afternoons at 12:20 on Marsh Plaza, which will resume this coming Thursday.  It offers an opportunity for students to receive the sacrament and tangibly experience the presence of God and God’s grace between afternoon classes.  But the opportunity is not limited to students.  The communion table here at Marsh Chapel is open to all: students, staff, faculty, people unaffiliated with the university, straight and gay, United Methodist, Presbyterian, Christian-curious, and un-churched alike.  The opportunity to experience God’s presence and grace through the sacrament of communion is always available at Marsh Chapel.  Should you wish to receive, and there is not a communion service planned, contact a chaplain or a member of the ministry staff, and we will be more than happy to provide the opportunity to receive the sacrament.

 

Unlike the sacrament of communion, which the church urges us to seek regularly, if not constantly, baptism is a one-time only occurrence.  It marks, as I said, a change in our lives, a commitment to be in relationship with God and a commitment from a faith community to be in relationship with us.  It marks a turning point in our life-journey.  For many this is a conscious decision we make as youths or adults, but for many others, baptism was a commitment made by loved ones that we would be nurtured in the church and guided to accept God’s grace for ourselves.

 

In either case, we are asked to earnestly repent of our sins and seek God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of our neighbors.  Moreover, in baptism we commit to seek better patterns of life, that we might be closer to God and neighbor.

 

We seek a baptism by water which washes us clean of sins, a baptism by the Holy Spirit in which we commit ourselves to God and recognize God’s relationship with us, and a baptism by the fiery passion of God’s grace which frees us to new life through Jesus Christ.

 

John Wesley taught that in baptism a person was cleansed of the guilt of original sin, initiated in to the covenant with God, admitted into the church, made an heir of the divine kingdom, and spiritually born anew.  A lot is going on in the few moments of baptism.  We receive absolution from sin while also committing ourselves to new relationship with God and neighbor.  Moreover, we only need to do it once.  Certainly we need to reaffirm the relationship with God we recognize in baptism, but that relationship never leaves us.

 

Sometimes we don’t realize the full wonder and mystery of the sacrament.  Sometimes we need the visual cues of the church to help us identify the importance of our actions and the stories of the scripture.  Like the etched-stone, baptismal font I encountered this week in Puerto Rico, sometimes it helps us to have a visual or tactile sign of the mystery of the sacrament.  Sometimes it helps us to identify the specialness of the sacrament and to remember the moment of our baptism to touch water or remember being enveloped in water.  This week, if you are sitting in the nave of Marsh Chapel, you see a large clear bowl filled with water sitting on small wooden table at the front of the nave.  I encourage you during our prayer time following the sermon or during the offertory to come forward and touch the water and remember your baptism.  Or perhaps you are sitting on the cape, sipping your coffee.  Later this afternoon, take a stroll on the beach, and run your hands in the water.   Perhaps you are driving home from your own Sunday morning service: I encourage you to recall the wonder of water, perhaps a beautiful beach or a wondrous waterfall.  I think of La Mina waterfall near El Yunque in Puerto Rico, where my wife and I swam in the cool mountain water as the thirty-foot, strong falls washed over us or Playa Flamenco, a horse-shoe white-sands beach with warm, gentle waves.  Remember a time when you were immersed in the wonder of water and remember that you are similarly wrapped in God’s glory and clothed in the Holy Spirit.

 

We trust that in the Spirit, whose presence we accept in baptism, God will be our constant companion and supporter.  God does not abandon God’s covenant with us, even if we wander from it.  The Spirit remains steadfast, chasing after us as a tireless friend even when we turn away.  The church provides opportunities for us to remember our own special relationship with God.  While I was preparing this sermon this week, my wife quipped in the Dunkin Donuts-desolate land of Old San Juan, that “American runs on Dunkin, and the Church runs on dunkin munchkins.”  Now, of course her remark was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but at the heart of the mission of the church is telling the story of Christ and offering opportunity for women and men of all ages to develop deeper relationship with God.

 

Perhaps you wish to renew that relationship with the God today.  Perhaps you wish to think more about accepting the gift of relationship with God for the first time.  If you have not received the sacrament of baptism and feel moved to closer relationship with God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and seek to experience God’s grace through the sacrament, I encourage you to speak with me or another member of the chapel staff following the service or to call or email the chapel office this week and ask to speak with a member of the ministry staff about receiving the sacrament.

 

For those who have received baptism and who wish to renew their relationship with God, I invite you to renew your baptismal vows now and to come and touch the water during our prayers of the people. I invite you to recommit yourself to God and to accept the presence of the Spirit in your life anew.  If you have a United Methodist Hymnal in front of you, you may wish to turn to page 34 to read the vows of baptism.

 

Brothers and sisters in Christ:

Through the Sacrament of Baptism

We are initiated into Christ’s holy Church.

We are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation

And given new birth through water and the Spirit.

All this is God’s gift, offered to us without price.

 

Through the reaffirmation of our faith

We renew the covenant declared at our baptism,

Acknowledge what God is doing for us,

And affirm our commitment to Christ’s holy Church.

 

On behalf of the whole Church, I ask you:

Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness,

Reject the evil powers of this world,

And repent of your sin?

 

If so, please respond, “I do.”

 

Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you

To resist evil, injustice, and oppression

In whatever forms they present themselves?

 

If so, please respond, “I do.”

 

Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior,

Put your whole trust in his grace,

And promise to serve him as your Lord,

In union with the Church which Christ has opened

To people of all ages, nations, and races?

 

If so, please respond, “I do.”

 

According to the grace given to you,

Will you remain a faithful member of Christ’s holy Church

And serve as Christ’s representative in the world?

 

If so, please respond, “I will.”

 

We remember our baptism and are thankful.

 

May the Holy Spirit work within us,

That having been born through water and the Spirit,

We may live as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ

And be assured of God’s love for all people.

Amen.

 

 

~Soren Hessler, Chapel Associate for Leadership Development

 

John 13:21-26

John 19: 25b-27

John 20:1-10

John 21: 7, 20-24

 

You might wonder about the selection of passion, death and resurrection texts for a marriage homily. Aside from the fact that marriage is about as important as death and resurrection, I have a different point in mind for these texts, namely, what they say about the love between Jesus and the Beloved Disciple.

Most people articulate the depths of their identity in terms of stories to which they relate.  Children relate to the stories of their parents and their roles in the community.  People define themselves in terms of the stories of their friends, of their neighborhood, of their livelihood, and sometimes of their historical situation.  Christianity has long claimed that the most important story to relate to is that of Jesus.  Among the most important things about us is that we are sinners judged by him and redeemed by his love.  I remember being told as a small child that if I sat on Jesus’ lap he would love and cuddle me, along with all the other children, even if my parents were put out with me.  The stories of Jesus tell us how to relate to the strong and the weak, the wise and the innocent, the hypocrites and the desperate seekers.  John’s stories of Jesus in particular focus on how he would have us love one another and bear up under stress and betrayal.  Although the stories of Jesus say very little about sex, the Church from early on took Jesus’ story to be that of the bridegroom of the Church itself.  Christians corporately and individually are to find our deep identity by imagining ourselves to be married to Jesus, a stretched metaphor if there ever was one!

Gay men and women have been frustrated in the attempt to understand their own narrative in terms of the stories of Jesus because the Church has taught in so many times and places that same-sex desire is bad, idolatrous, unnatural, sick, or something else that deserves to be condemned as impure.  Those negative teachings about same-sex desire have now been debunked biblically, philosophically, psychologically, anthropologically, medically and in every other way except in the disgust reactions of some people who have been brought up poorly.  But it is time for people whose deepest identity includes same-sex desire to be able to find their story in the story of Jesus.  For the Church not to offer this is for it to deny the full humanity of gay men and women, and all others whom it puts off with bigotry.

So I want to speak about the part of Jesus’ story that has to do with his boyfriend, the Beloved Disciple.  Of course we know very little for sure about Jesus’ sex life, or about the sex life of most of the other characters in the New Testament, for that matter.  But I bet there is not a person here who by the age of ten had not wondered about Jesus snuggling on the dinner couch with the man called the Beloved Disciple.  When I was growing up, this was not talked about, and the Beloved Disciple was mentioned only as the traditional author of the Gospel of John because of the remark in the last of the texts I read that he wrote down a lot about Jesus. The tradition of authorship is no longer viable among scholars even though it lingers in the iconography that represents the author of John as young, beardless, and attractive, as in the Marsh Chapel statues, a resonance with the part of the story of the Beloved Disciple reclining on the breast of Jesus.

We don’t really know who the Beloved Disciple was.  Obviously not Peter because they are often depicted together.  The other major disciples such as James and John, Andrew, Philip, and Thomas are referred to in John’s gospel and likely would have been named as the Beloved Disciple if they fit because they were important in the later Church. People have speculated about Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, Lazarus, and the young man in Mark’s gospel who flees arrest naked, but we just do not know.

But we do know some things about the Beloved Disciple if not his name.  First of all, he was accepted by the inner circle of disciples as Jesus’ special friend.  They accepted his position with Jesus on the dinner couch and in fact looked to him for pillow-talk information about Jesus, as in the incident of Peter asking about the identity of the betrayer. The disciples were not homophobic.  Second, the Beloved Disciple did not compete with the others for leadership in the community, as James and John, and Jesus’ brother James, did with Peter.  Peter was the acknowledged head disciple and the Beloved Disciple showed no interest in a leadership role.  Third, the Beloved Disciple was on good terms with Peter and they did things together; this suggests to some that the Beloved was Peter’s brother Andrew, but you would think he would be so named.  Fourth, the Beloved Disciple was not a source of any special doctrine speaking for Jesus, did not ask famous leading questions like several other disciples did, and was not mentioned at great revelatory moments such as the Transfiguration (which is not recounted in John’s gospel, the only gospel that mentions the Beloved disciple), in the dialogue of the Farewell Discourse, or Thomas’ post-resurrection confession. He may have been there but was not mentioned.  It seems that the only role the Beloved Disciple played in the gospel story was to be the one Jesus loved in a special way, his boyfriend.

What do we learn from our four texts?  In the first, the identification of the betrayer, the most obvious lesson is the intimacy of the Beloved, reclining on Jesus’ chest, leaning forward to talk with Peter, then falling back on Jesus to ask him about the betrayer.  Jesus does not answer directly but says, “Watch what I do—it’s the one I feed.”  The Beloved obviously did not relay the message to Peter, or Peter would have stopped Judas from leaving.  The text has another message as well.  Judas the betrayer is within a hand’s reach of Jesus, surely at the next couch, when Jesus feeds him.  The point is that the people close to you, perhaps closest, can be betrayers.  But the Beloved is with Jesus all the way, closer than Judas, and closer than all the other disciples who will abandon Jesus when he is arrested.  The point for a marriage homily is that you two should be closer to each other than to all the others in your respective public careers with their ups and downs, successes and disappointments, colleagues and betrayers.  And you can talk with one another about all these hopes and despairs, jealousies and pettiness.  Think of yourselves as reclining on one another, leaning forward to engage the public world, and then leaning back to take stock together.

The second text is the crucifixion scene.  The Beloved Disciple is at the foot of the cross with Jesus’ mother and aunt and with Mary Magdalene.  No other male disciple is around.  Jesus sees him and, most remarkably, tells the Beloved Disciple to take Jesus’ mother as his own, and tells his mother to take his Beloved as her son; she moves in with the Beloved Disciple from that day on.  What is remarkable is that Jesus had plenty of brothers, and also sisters, and at least one aunt, who could take care of his mother, all as part of the natural extension of his family.  But he creates a new, non-kinship, family for his mother and Beloved.  It’s as if Jesus and the Beloved were married and, with Jesus’ death, the Beloved takes over the responsibility for the mother-in-law.  Jesus was the first son, and so care-taking responsibility for the parental generation falls on his spousal family; the Beloved Disciple takes up that role when Jesus gives it to him.  The first century was a long time before Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage.  But if there were an analogue for a same-sex marriage in Jesus’ time, one major test of its solidity would be acceptance of responsibility for in-laws.  The point here for a marriage homily is that you two are adopting each other’s respective families into your own new and fragile one.  The other side of this point is that the in-laws accept your family by coming into it.  The point is unremarkable for heterosexual marriages, a commonplace even though it is difficult to live up to even there; you know the jokes about in-laws. The public validity of same-sex marriages finds its strength in intergenerational acceptance and support.

The third text is about the Beloved Disciple and Peter running to the tomb after Mary Magdalene had told them it was empty.  The Beloved races ahead, doubtless frantic with worry and confusion, but he cannot bring himself to look for his lover’s bloodied body.  Take-charge Peter goes right in and says the body is not there and everything is cleaned up so the Beloved can finally go in. This gives some clue as to what the Beloved Disciple must have been feeling, watching his lover be arrested, tried, whipped, and crucified, writhing against the nails and dying finally by suffocation.  Grief, rage, hurt, panic, helplessness, helplessness, helplessness.  I pray that neither of you will ever have to watch the other suffer grievously.  But if you do, know that it’s ok to feel grief, rage, hurt, panic, helplessness, and not have to be in charge.  That’s how Jesus’ Beloved felt about him and if it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for you.  You do not have to be strong, only unfailing in the love that clings to the breast.  Another marriage homily point.

The final text is from the resurrection story of the Last Breakfast.  The Beloved Disciple is offshore with the others on the fishing boat when he recognizes Jesus as the man who had been giving them instructions about casting their net.  After fixing them breakfast, Jesus goes off with Simon Peter to reinforce his love and to give him instructions about leading Jesus’ community.  The Beloved Disciple is walking behind, just out of earshot.  The text specifically reminds us that the Beloved Disciple is the one who ate reclining on Jesus whom Peter asked about the betrayer. Peter asks Jesus, “What about him?”  Jesus answers three things.  First, that it is Jesus’ will that the Beloved remain until Jesus comes again.  Second, that this matter is no business of Peter’s.  And third that Peter should follow Jesus and attend to his own public ministry.  When this was reported later on, some people in the community thought that Jesus would guarantee that the Beloved Disciple not die until he returned, but obviously he did.  Jesus only said that it was his will that the Beloved Disciple not die, meaning presumably that he wanted to continue their special relation upon his return.  Surely that is what Jesus would be expected to hope for his Beloved, but who knows what will happen?  The point here for a marriage homily is that your marriage in the last analysis is a private matter and at some point you might have to tell others to back off.  Of course a marriage is also a public legal arrangement, witness this ceremony.  We invoke a community to support your marriage.  It extends out into a much larger set of families.  You two will function as a couple in many contexts relevant to your careers.  The line between the public and private in a marriage is ambiguous and sometimes tense to draw.  But in this final scene of Jesus’ story, when he charges Peter to invent the Church to feed all those people hungry for love and God, Jesus’ last words were to remind Peter that what Jesus and the Beloved Disciple had going between them was their own affair.  According to John’s Gospel, Jesus’ last words were about his special Beloved, whom we may call his spouse.  This is my last homiletical point about marriage.

In matters of sex, love, and marriage, let me affirm as a priest of the Church that you can find your story, the story of your heart’s desires, the story of your union together, in the story of Jesus.  All those who would deny you his story, let them be anathema!  May Jesus’ love of his Beloved be a song in your hearts all your days!  Amen

 

~The Rev. Dr. Robert Cummings Neville