Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

Matthew 2: 1-2

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Frontispiece

The gospel is the beauty of a bird in song.

 

We begin.  As J Edwards said, ‘Resolved:  to do nothing I would be afraid to do in the last hour of my life.’

 

I don’t believe I quite heard or overheard your seasonal resolution(s).

 

You still may be hunting, searching.

 

The gospel is the gift of the Christ child to us, God’s gift of faith, of fellowship, of freedom—beyond thought and beyond intuition and beyond demolition.  If God is for you, who is against?  The gospel also is our gift to the Christ child.  Odd, no?  The gospel heard and spoken and lived is our gift to Christ, like the story which Matthew narrates, Mt 2, is his gift to wordflesh.

 

Search and hunt they did, these wise men.  The very presence of the wise at the outset of the gospel is the rejection of fundamentalism near and far.  Swinging like an angel sword before the garden of Eden, here come the magi, making sure that any gospel worthy of the name fears nothing human, fears nothing known or knowable, fears nothing true.  Biblicism be gone, say the kings.  Their presence is the celebration of the liberal gospel, the gospel of liberality, your birthright, Marsh Chapel.  The gospel (not that there is any other) that honors what we know, while admitting what we do not.  The gospel that remembers our history, including its horrors.  The gospel that eschews easy measures of the divine, which by definition is un-measurable.  The gospel that has arms big enough to embrace the big bang, and evolution, and real random chance, and the unknowable God in whose love, alone, we are at all known.  To be good news, the gospel must be true, all truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  Otherwise it is not good, and not news.  Searching can exhaust the searcher, star at night, out to the east, following forever.  Truth. Science. History. Psychology.

 

Our five grandchildren and their overseers visited us at Christmas.  The oldest is five, leader of the pack.  I heard them playing hide and seek.  She taught them a song, a birdsong.  When they ran out of hunting energy, and were stumped, humans at the edge of knowledge, ministers at the edge of energy, she would call out, in song, ‘can you give a little tweet-tweet?’ And repeat, and repeat.  Then, from under the bed, would come the birdsong response, ‘tweet, tweet’. The gospel is not only the Christ gift.  The gospel is our gift to the Christ.

 

 

1. Gold

The gospel is our spoken gift of faith.

 

Every bird sings faith, over the globe, through all time.  Thurman loved penguins, odd and remote.  Listen.  Along the Charles, in the spring, make way for goslings and ducklings.   Mid-island in Bermuda, I hear the song:   Early in the summer mornings, out in the land currently under the death cloud of possible fracking, where we live, at dawn a rooster.  Two eagles—they too mate for life, as in Christian marriage—soaring, I only imagine their music.  The owl at night.  A swan song, a silver swan, who living had no note.  The gospel is a bird in song, and all nature sings.  Even if or when the preaching of the gospel by human imperfection abates, as it does threaten to do, birdsong will carry the tune.

 

Just as there are so many, sorry, reasons to skip church, so too there are many, sorry, reasons, in the space of 4000 earthly Sundays, to skip faith.  Faith is only real gold, real faith, when it is all you have to go on.

 

The first of December was covered with snow.  The next line?  Good night you moon light ladies.  Rock a by sweet baby James.  The next line?  Can you give me a little tweet tweet?

 

Ignatius would love the star, but Luther would mark the voice, the sound, the birdsong of searching, inquiring, wise, questing, serious, real faith: ‘Where is he, who has been born king of the Jews?’

 

The first to find Him are not Jews at all.  Gentiles, they.  Some of our most natural gospel hearers and speakers today are atheists.

 

Matthew, though usually (mis) understood otherwise, is a Gentile gospel.  The magi come first. Light centrally shines, chapter by chapter. The book is written in Greek.  Its mound sermon celebrates greek wisdom and greek discipline. The wise man built his house on rock.  A ruler’s daughter is healed.  The Sabbath is overrated.   The only sign the natives deserve is that of Jonah.  The disciples dish traditions of elders.   The greatest faith is the gentile woman willing to take the dog crumbs that the table guests despise.  The faithful followers will judge the 12 tribes.  And, by the way, make sure to render your taxes to Caesar. (J). Matthew’s endless explanation of kosher requirements is made for greek ears.  I will not even pause to recite the damnation of woe given to scribes and Pharisees.   Its concluding universalism would make Plato blush.  Matthew?  Jewish?

 

2. Frankincense

We begin.  As J Edwards said, ‘Resolved:  to do nothing I would be afraid to do in the last hour of my life.’

 

I don’t believe I quite heard or overheard your seasonal resolution(s).

There are no free-lance Christians.  If nothing else, for sure, the child the wise visit makes space in life for real fellowship.  The church is a working fellowship.

 

Isaiah foretold it.  Here in third Isaiah, who remembers the birdsong of second Isaiah, and carries the tune back into Jerusalem, after the return from exile, after 538, when another wise Persian, Cyrus, set the people free.  The birth of the Christ, by symbol of gold and frankincense, is connected to a universal liberation.

 

We are here to ring the bell, to sing the song, to sound the trumpet, to lift the voice.  You may need, this week, to see the examples in salt and light, of faithful people. Here are some in these Marsh pews.  Kind people.  Kind women.  Kind men.  Doing unto others, as they would have done to themselves.  Seeking.  Seeking lasting wisdom.

 

With joy.  Come on MLK Sunday, and hear our friend Dr Fluker, and on Monday and celebrate the King of Marsh Plaza.  Come February 9 (our usual Ground Hog festival, date and place moved) and ice skate on Marsh Plaza.  Come and sing hymns in the Lynn home of Alice and Yrjo—a midwinter delight!  Come for brunch and the marathon on Patriots day, to our home.

 

Resolve this, 2013:  I will be in church on Sunday.  Wise men still seek Him.  You find faith in fellowship, and vice versa.

 

St. John of the Cross: En una noche oscura…

 

At Marsh we minimize meetings, committees, structures, organization.  We find our fellowship, across the University, as above.  We take our education in the University.  We partner in service with our schools and colleges of the University.  We refuse to sit on a whale and fish for minnows.  Come and join us!  It is a great way to give, to live, to give and live, the gospel.

 

Here gay people are people.  Here lay people are people.  The eight words Methodism will need for survival:  gay people are people, lay people are people.  I refer you to the sermon coming January 27, 2013.

 

 

3. Myrrh

 

We begin.  As J Edwards said, ‘Resolved:  to do nothing I would be afraid to do in the last hour of my life.’

 

I don’t believe I quite heard or overheard your seasonal resolution(s).

 

Resolve, 2013:  to leave behind debt and regret.

 

On January 1, 1863, here in Boston, at the Boston Music Hall, F Douglass and many others sang.  The Handel and Haydn society sang.  One of their members, Harriet Beecher Stowe, sang.  Why their birdsong, good news of great joy? In the cradle of liberty?  Emancipation.  Real change is real hard, but change does come.  Lincoln said (12/62): ‘The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present’

 

Stowe wrote:  he is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave…

Regret is the shortest definition I know of hell.  Let your regrets be few.  Prize your time, your body, your heart.  ‘To thine own self be true’ (that’s Shakespeare by the way, not the Bible).  Let us leave behind the regret of gun violence, the regret of dehumanization of gays, the regret of environmental predation, the regret of children in poverty, the regret of unruly rouge nations, the regret of selfish living. Let your freedom be not only the freedom of the will, but the freeing of the will, to love.

 

Debt is the surest measure I know of hell.  Debt is an actuarial prison.  ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’ (again, Uncle Will, not the Holy Book).  An undergraduate degree is a wonderful thing, but not worth a mountain of lasting debt.  Travel light, cloak and staff.  Go where they will pay you to study, if you can. (J)

 

Yes, I am concerned about national debt.  I am.  A $4T budge with $3T income—this does not compute.  Even churches balance their budgets (I have 35 Decembers of fist fights, I mean finance meetings, to show).  Debt is a bad gift to grandchildren.  But I am even more concerned about your personal debt.    Lord forgive us our debts!

 

Get rid of your debt.  Get rid of your regret.  This year.

 

Find the freedom to live in love.

 

You are hiding out there.  I know you are.  I am hunting for you.  You are out there.  In a Beacon St. apartment. Up on the north shore.  Munching bagels on the Cape. Out in Newton, enjoying the Marsh Choir.  I have been searching for you, for six years.  Against the fierce New England wind of post Christian secularism, righteous anti religious fervor, mixtures of bad Calvinism or Catholicism, Sunday hockey, and a kind of intellectual life that is always just a bit short–of wonder, mystery, and magi wisdom.  I am hunting for you.  But I don’t find you yet. I search,but you are too well hidden.

 

CAN YOU GIVE YOU ME A LITTLE TWEET TWEET?

 

Congregation? Clergy? Choir? Radio?

 

CAN YOU GIVE YOU ME A LITTLE TWEET TWEET?

 

 

Coda

 

The father of neo Biblicism, Karl Barth, said:  ‘the gospel is the freedom of a bird in flight.’

 

We sing it this way, in our faith and our fellowship and our freedom:

 

The gospel is the beauty of a bird in song.

 

The gospel is the beauty of a bird in song.

 

The gospel is birdsong.

 

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

Luke 2:41-52

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Some of you know that I have practiced, for decades, the spiritual discipline of tree climbing. I have surprised neighbors all across the country as I’ve tumbled out of moving vans and immediately ascended my way to a view of the new heaven and new earth on my new street.  It’s a matter of seeking new perspective.

Well, today, December 30^th,  we’ve all  figuratively climbed up to the top of year, and we’re perched way out on the tree limb of 2012, still holding on to the days of Christmastide, remembering the events of this year…the branch sways a bit under weight of both the joys and agonies of these 12 months. From this lofty vantage we can see ahead to new branch of 2013 just over yonder.  With the dropping of a ball and raising of cheer, with the flip of a calendar page we can just about see it.   It is already, but not yet.

Or another metaphor, this one requiring not a courage of heights, but a courage of imagination-  this is a time when we are called to live on the threshold. Abiding in the liminal places, not quite in the past, not quite in the future.  Pitching tent with Emmanuel who comes to camp out with us. Pausing with our sister Mary to ponder many things in our hearts.  A time to recollect back and wonder forward.

This is a day for a gem of a story from Luke, told with dual perspectives.  This is a day where two generations meet, where youth ministers and campus chaplains engage young adults precisely in the context of their journeys, where parents and children perplex and irritate one another- can you imagine! Where professors and students sit in the Temple and wrestle with texts and traditions.

Some of us live today with Mary on the Parental threshold of holding on and letting go- today her 12 year old son Jesus stretches out beyond her protection into a world that she already knows  is piercingly beautiful but piercingly violent as well.  Mary says today, “Kids, they grow up so fast.  It seems like it was just this past Tuesday that Jesus was born!  My baby! And now he’s 12 going on 20.”

Some of us live today with Jesus on the Emerging Adulthood threshold of “hello world, ready or not here I come!”  and  “yikes, this economy, this multitude of options and yet restrictions, hello Parent’s basement, I’m baaack!”  Jesus says today, “Give me some room at the Inn to learn more and become more until I am really ready to launch.”

Let’s climb into our Lukan story and see the world from one another’s perspectives.

Let’s begin with Mary.  Revered Mother of Jesus.  And here in today’s gospel, a very real Mom, one many of us recognize in the mirror or in the family portrait.   Clueless, panicked, relieved, angry, perplexed, astonished, perseverant.  All those experiences of parenthood the owner’s manual never mentions.

In ancient Roman mythology, “Janus” is the god of beginnings and transitions, the god of gates, doors, and thresholds. Janus is depicted as a god with dual profiles, looking at once to the future and to the past. “January” was named in honor of this threshold – inhabiting Janus.  Now, I confess that I know this not because I am a classics scholar.  I know this because I am a Mom and I have a 529 college savings plan with a firm called “Janus Investments,” and this two-faced image of Janus has been stamped on my statements for the last dozen years.  I inhabit a world lately with many conversations including these particular numbers – a sort of secret code of American parenthood: 529. For many years my husband and I have clink clinked our quarters into the savings plate, fretting over its too slow expansion.

Our son Andrew is now a High School senior, living on the threshold between HS and College…. Between clicking “submit” on the Common App and the arrival of satisfactorily large and thick acceptance envelopes in the mail.  With Mary I shake my head and remember my son’s first day of Kindergarten, which seemed like last Tuesday.   On that very first day of the big yellow bus, Andrew was treated to a one on one visit from the school principal.  A kind man who very gently suggested that biting your neighbor’s forearm on the bus-ride to school was not the best start to an academic career.  This I cannot help but remember as my 17 year old stands before me and requests the car keys – himself a Latin scholar, a fine writer,  a person of sterling character, now with advanced bus-riding social skills. The forward facing Janus Mom says, “I’m so proud of you!”  The backward facing Janus Mom cannot resist to comment, “but don’t bite anybody.” Already but not yet.

Mary, today I companion with you as we parent sons so close to stepping into new worlds beyond our doors.   I like to think of Mary as the biblical Soccer Mom. Now, if this has not occurred to you, bear with me for a moment.  Her eldest child is 12, and we know from biblical text that she has at least another 6 children by the time Jesus is an adult.  Four of Jesus’ brothers are named, and references are made to his unnamed sisters.  Before I thought about this fact of Mary as parent of 7 or more children- I admit to a more serene image of Mary-  quietly pondering, piously robed in blue, sitting beside a well-behaved  baby, shining a halo or two in daily housework chores.   But now I imagine she and Joseph busy with all the demands of running a large household bursting with children’s activities and religious practices and carpentry projects.

I can understand how Jesus got lost in the caravan that day, on the annual pilgrimage to and from Jerusalem for the Passover festival. The original HOME ALONE screen play.  It was a 150 mile round trip journey– 3 days there and 3 days back- from the sleepy hill country of Nazareth to the bustling epicenter of the city of Jerusalem, bordering the Negev desert to the south.  2 places so very different from one another.  2 members of one family, having such very different experiences of the same event.

I imagine that Jesus the first born had been declaring his desire for some independence from good ole Imma and Abba for some time- so they  relented on their vigilance and said OK, son, you can travel further back in our caravan with extended family.  Mary probably couldn’t stop herself and called out parting advice, “Don’t bite anybody!”  OK- all you young adults, You totally get to roll your eyes here at your parents for all our awkward comments.

It’s really more the world’s bite that Mary is afraid of.  She knows the reality of injustice and state sanctioned violence.  She knows the powerlessness of being young, poor, female, occupied, from the no-account back country. She and Joseph and baby Jesus fled Bethlehem 12 years ago, narrowly escaping the murderous arm of Herod who commanded that all male babies under age of 2 be killed.  Her family was refugees in Egypt, relying daily on the kindness of strangers, relying daily on the magnificent promises of God.

Mary knows that in 2012 alone over 153,000 refugees fled her neighboring Syria, running from violence and terror. Mary knows that in our country there have been some 30,000 deaths in 2012 from gun violence.  Mary knows that the Slaughter of Innocents is not some ancient biblical tale, but a reality proximate to our lives.  Mary weeps for the innocents. Christmas Eve- next door to my recent home town- Webster NY -  2 first responders to a house fire,  were ambushed and killed by gunshot.  One a 19 year old, covering for older firefighters so they could be home with their families.  Mary weeps for the innocents. Sweet babes at an elementary school in Connecticut, an Oregon shopping mall, a Colorado movie theatre, an off-campus street in Allston. Off campus- our campus. These towns -our towns.  These streets – our streets. These children –our  precious family.  Let us wake up and let our collective tears become a tidal wave flow of change – in hearts and minds and legislation.

And here’s why I Iove Mary.  And here’s how she is a vessel of God’s love.  Mary lives on the threshold of the world, seeing all its pain and darkness and she chooses life.  She chooses to open the door of her heart, a familiar expression of Howard Thurman.  Thurman who prays let the door of my heart be swinging. Secured in place by the axis of identity as a beloved child of God,  yet swinging open, welcoming love, attentive to splendor, open to new insight.  Mary doesn’t hide out in Nazareth, with firmly locked doors to protect her very special child.  She lives.  She trusts.  She reflects. She acts.

Mary sees the bleakness and chooses to light a candle of blessing rather than curse the darkness.  Perhaps Mary is tempted to lock the door and live in fear- to insist that Jesus never leave the protection of Nazareth again.  But Mary does NOT place an armed guard at every threshold we hold most dear- she does not armor backpacks – instead she clothes herself in “compassion, kindness, humility, patience, and most of all love.”

When Mary and Joseph discover that Jesus is missing, they abruptly change all plans and rush back to Jerusalem to find their son.  They are panicked.  They know what can happen out there in the big world.

After 3 days of searching, they find him! In the Temple of all places!  Not in the market squandering shekels on sweet cakes.  In the temple! Sitting there with the elders deep in discussion about matters of Torah.  Holding his own.  Mary’s panic gives way to relief, gives way to anger.  She raises her voice and says “SON!  How could you do this to me?”  And Jesus answers her, “why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I must be in my Father’s house?”  Not without a little attitude.  In this moment, Mary really doesn’t understand her son.   But she pauses.  She doesn’t react, she reflects.  She’s good at pondering life’s mysteries, even when they come in the package of a misbehaving child.

Jesus leaves with his parents, and back home in Nazareth they give him some remedial lessons in the commandments.  Like, hey Jesus, remember # 5 of the top 10?  “Honor thy father and mother.”  Mary continues her stewardship of the home, observing the beauty of each Sabbath eve and day, encouraging her children in the living of the law, trusting the words of the angelic visitor so long ago “FEAR NOT.”  She does her best.  And her son grows in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

But we have climbed our tree today to gaze out in two perspectives.  Jesus also lives in the threshold of emerging adulthood today, almost there but not quite yet.  Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God, Wonderful Counselor, Light of Lights, Hope of the Ages.  Perhaps we’re better versed in the full divinity of Jesus Christ than in his full humanity. But here in today’s treasure of a story we see a young adult some of us recognize in the mirror or in the family portrait – eager, idealistic, curious, confident, hopeful, and determined.

Now, we know most definitively that Jesus is 12 here.  What the text does not say, and we can imagine, is that he is reaching the age of majority, or of recognition as an adult in his religious circle.  B’nai mitzvah- the coming of age of Jewish boys at 13 and girls at 12 is not yet an established practice in first century Judaism.  I suspect Jesus is on the threshold of what we call today becoming a bar mitzvah, a son of the commandments, one with personal accountability for observing the Law.  A bar or bat mitzvah is full of questions and obligated to study biblical passages in depth.  So, just where else would Jesus be, but at the steps of the Temple, taking the rare opportunity to dialogue with and learn from the greatest scholars of his day.  Indeed, when reproached by his mother, “how could you do this to me?,”  he is likewise astonished- do my parents understand nothing about me?  How is this not obvious?

In our era, a new term has surfaced for coming of age, called “Emerging Adulthood.”  It’s generally associated with the ages between 18-29, and is understood not as a generational characteristic particular to the Millennials, but as a new life stage.  Nearby in Worcester MA our colleagues at Clark University are spearheading this research.  Dr. Jeffrey Jenson Arnett and his grad assistant Joseph Schwab have just released their poll on American Emerging Adults, and find that these folks are overall: Thriving, Struggling, and Hopeful.   Sounds a bit like our own emerging Jesus to me.

“Life is not easy for emerging adults,” state the researchers.  We know this. Our own WBUR ran a series in December called Gen Stuck.  Ouch. I learned that 30% of young adults are boomeranging back home to the not-so-empty nest, the highest percentage since the 1950s.  Merry Christmas, young adults, here’s a present called Fiscal Cliff.  Happy New Year!

 

I quote from the Clark report, “Emerging adults have an unemployment  rate that is consistently double the overall rate.  Those who have a job usually make very little money for most of their twenties.  Nearly all aspire to a college degree, but fewer than 1/3 have attained one by ages 25-29. Most move away from the comfort and support of the family home to take on the formidable task of finding a place in the world.  It’s not surprising, given these circumstances, that so many of them say they often feel stressed, anxious, or depressed. “

Hold on, though, recall that 12 year old energy, confidence, and curiosity of Jesus.

“What may be more surprising is that, despite the challenges of the emerging adult life stage, most of them remain hopeful that their lives will ultimately work out well.  Nearly 90% agree that they are confident that they eventually  will get what they want out of life:  almost as many agree that “At this time of my  life, it still seems like anything is possible.”  And, despite frequent claims that they face a diminished future and will be the first generation in American history to do worse economically than their parents, more than 3/4s agree that “I believe, overall, my life will be better than my parent’s lives have been.”  End quote.

Jesus, God with skin on, knows this in-between time.  He stands in the threshold right there. And he is present in the silent waiting years.  From ages 12-30 we know nothing about Jesus’  life.  We can imagine he is home preparing, living faithfully, and getting ready to launch into public ministry – finally at the age of 30.

Young adults- if your Baby Boomer or Gen X parents get a little impatient with your travelling through this life stage, say, “hey I’m  Emerging right on target with Jesus.”

Jesus had a hunger for discovery.  So do the young adults I know and love.

3 dozen Emerging Adults- also known as “Students” gathered at Marsh Chapel  just before finals for a “Reading Retreat” – a day set apart for study and reflection.  We focused our spiritual practices on one of the masters from this holy Temple– Howard Thurman- absorbed his words and wisdom.  Each participant went around room declaring the study intent for the day- and it was fascinating to hear the variety of subjects embraced by 6 of the schools of our university.  I am making my way through a 500 page tome on international relations and the CIA,  I am immersed in my reams of Hebrew Bible class notes for final exam, I am writing a paper about cross-cultural pedagogical implication, I am simulating human voice through a prototype robot I am making, and so on and so on.  Fascinating!

They remind me each day to be a  life-long learner. To appreciate excellence all around.

For instance, our ushers, right here at Marsh Chapel are superb in hospitality.  Each Sunday they are greeting at our doors with smiles and welcoming information for first timers.  Now, I come up the stairs from the lower level  – not in our ushers’ line of duty.  So most weeks I go out the front door, so I can turn right around and come back in. And I say to the usher, I want my greeting!  I want my smile and handshake or hug.  I want to start my day by receiving the excellence of your mission.  And Charles, 7 year old Charles who is head usher of the balcony.  Cannot have a Sunday without a Charles smile and high five.

Friends, this day we look back, we look forward, and we look from many perspectives.  We go out of our way to cross thresholds into places of joy and love.  Let us go into the New Year, with hearts as swinging doors –opening to the comfort of God’s grace, moving out to the needs of the world.

Amen.

 

~ The Rev. Dr. Robin Olson

See: Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults, December 2012: http://www.clarku.edu/clarkpoll/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Luke 1: 39-45

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Preface

A long time ago, a young woman headed out, uphill, into the uplands, the highlands, the hill country.  It is striking that we see her walking alone, given her condition, given the human condition, and given the conditional blessing she carries to us and to others.  She is alone.  There are many forms of solitude, including the joy of birth and the grief of death, and the power of dreams.  You will picture her, in an awkward tunic, walking at dusk, up into the hills.  We know (remember the Good Samaritan) that those roads harbored bandits.  She goes quickly, perhaps for that reason, and with haste enters the home of the husband of a second cousin thrice removed.

Self-Mockery

One thing we learn from these two women, right away, is regard for a sense of self-mockery.  You could say self- awareness, or you could speak of the centered self, but Elizabeth and Mary, like their forebears, Sarah and Hannah, have gone further and have learned to smile at their own fragile limitation.  They model self-mockery. They can laugh at themselves. ‘Who am I that the mother of my Lord should visit me?’

It is possible that their self-abandon gives Elizabeth and Mary the ears to hear a divine promise.  One of the interruptive intentions of Sunday worship is to offer you, and you, and you all, such an awareness.  “Take yourself lightly, so that you can fly like the angels.” (W.S.Coffin).  A little spiritual distance, a little self differentiation, a little non anxious presence—these go a long way when you are hungry and thirsty for a reassurance of meaning, a reassurance in the face of our deeply violent and violating culture, a reassurance that life yet bears meaning.

The Gospel According to St. Luke reverses our expectations.  Those outside are on the inside, when the gospel comes.  The commoner has the inside track in this monarchy.  Who first hear resurrection news twenty four chapters and twenty four  weeks later, come March and Easter?  Women.  Who follow unstintingly, across Galilee and into Jerusalem?  Women.  Who, today, first hear the plan for redemption, the coming birth of the Dream Child?  Women.  (In case you miss the point, Luke brings in the shepherds Monday at 7:30pm).

How could it be?  How could these things be?  Who am I?

Over time, you begin to project less, on the world, and see more.  Projection only gets you so far.  After three or so decades of seeing what you hope to see and want to see, you begin to stop and look and listen, and lessen projection–unless you are one of these women.  Not of them the saying, ‘Too soon old too late smart”.  They get it early, earlier.  Schleiermacher would be proud.  They have that sense.  Some things only the women seem to get right.  They have that feeling.   Do you?  Do you?  However are you going to survive slaughter news without it?  John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth’s womb, at the sound of Mary’s voice, Mary the mother of Jesus.  Good Greek mythology, and helpful to a church trying to keep the Baptists in the pew, at 90ce.

Mary is blessed.  Why?  Because she has believed, had faith. In what?  Here, as in the verse identifying the singer of the psalm, there is some textual doubt.  Is it that she has faith that she has been promised to deliver a child, and now sees that she will?  Perhaps.  I judge the stronger promise to be the stronger, though.  She is blessed because she has faith that these promises WILL BE fulfilled (that is the verb, simple future, not conditional, not subjunctive).  She trusts that a day will come: WHEN THE DREAM CHILD WILL COME AND HIS REIGN WILL NEVER END.  And her faith is ours.  Her faith is the gift of the Dream Child to us at Christmas.  You have the gift of faith and love and hope that–in the teeth of slaughter–you can affirm that one day, one day, one getting up golden morning, one fine dawn day, one glistening day, the dream of the Dream Child will neither slumber nor sleep.  Do you hope for that?  Do you?  Without it, however are you going to survive slaughter news? Mary’s blessing is not the birth of a child but the birth of the Dream Child.

Vulnerability

Another more obvious thing we learn from Mary and Elizabeth and from birth in general is a respect, a healthy regard, for human vulnerability.

I learned this week that there are 120 ‘centers’ at Boston University.  Each is the dream child of some professor, who has an idea about connecting ideas and money, and marrying them up in an academic center.  I may open my own, someday, ‘The Robert Allan Hill Center for Wonder, Vulnerability and Self-Mockery’

I had my first real job, and first real boss.  I ran the water front, under the stern eye of Koert Foster, who ran the campground.  Koert never went to college, but he became President of his Rotary Club.  He never went to college, but he flew and owned a Cessna 172.  He never went to college but he talked theology nose to nose with those who did.  He never went to college, but he was a scratch golfer and a prince of peace.   Here:  when one of the 250 campers per week was injured, he would slow down, as he walked toward the broken arm.  He did not rush to calamity.  He walked, and he walked more slowly than he usually did.  ‘Take your own pulse first”, his slow, steady approach taught me.

Koert was a deer hunter, as were most of the men around whom I grew up in the uplands, hills, hill country of upstate New York.  I went my junior year to Spain—give me another such some lifetime!—to read Antonio Machado and Miguel de Unamuno,  and prepare to teach college Spanish.  One December day a tiny thin aerogram, in my mother’s hand, came to Segovia, to the Campos de Castilla.  ‘Bob, Koert died in a hunting accident.  He was shot by accident by his best friend, the town mailman, on the hairpin turn, halfway to the lake’.

I had not planned to go back to work the followings summer at the summer camp, but Koert was dead, and we all went back, and ran it.  At age 20.  Occasionally a busy Methodist minister would check in to see if things were OK.  They were.  20 years olds can do a lot.  We worked from 6am to 8pm and then, in the twilight went waterskiing up and down that long finger lake, across from the nudist colony.   I was driving the boat, and throwing the ski rope.  Peg, Koert’s widow was the spotter.  ‘God called him home’, she said.  ‘Did God call him home?’ she asked.  Coiling the rope, I shrugged, and hurling the ski rope I said I didn’t think so.  ‘If you go to seminary, figure it out’, she said.

Friends, we need to be clear about not going over the theological cliff, in horrific tragedy.  You were here last week, when we said:

As we sing carols let us soberly remember.  Faith does not exclude us from calamity, but faith prepares us to fight it.  Faith does not give us the capacity to understand, but it does give us the courage to withstand.   Faith is not an answer to every question, but it is a living daily question of ultimate concern.  Faith in God is faith in God, not in another creaturely being.  Our faith in God is cruciform, faith in the crucified God, who has chosen to make our vulnerable condition his own. I know the early church rejected patri-passionism.  But barely.  And developing the capacity to meditate on profoundly unanswerable questions is why three times a fall we go and listen to Elie Wiesel. Faith does not protect us from calamity.  Gravity, bullets, floods and earthquakes respect nothing about faith, and faith from them offers no protection.

By apocalypse, evil shows us a part of who we are.  We are revealed, this week, in Newtown, as a people, to be other people than we pretend and other people than we intend.  We pretend to protect the weak, but we do not.  We intend to protect the innocent, but we do not.  That is, our penchant for acquisition, our desire to acquire rather than to be a choir, makes some other things expendable.  As in a mirror, and not so dimly, a dark inner part of our common life is illumined.  Not just one deranged killer, but a culture of guns and a culture of violence and a culture of acquisition, and a culture of apathy, these are brought to light, in this unfathomably tragic, unspeakably awful, sinfully evil crime. We are reluctant to give up even a slim measure of our power to purchase, to acquire, in order to protect children.  Foolish we are, with a foolishness that brings tragedy.  I think of the years I spent in Canada and the months in England, and I think we have some things to learn from both sibling cultures.  Here in the USA, there is a cheapening and coarsening of life happening all around us, all the time, and we, though sometimes we find the temper to resist, are the worse for it.  A decade of warfare has numbed us, made us tolerant of violence in ways we never were before.  Take a walk with me some day on a college campus.

Over forty years, as a culture, as a people, we have more and more given ourselves over to acquisition.  We no longer preach to the choir, we preach to acquire. To acquire one turns sometimes to violence.  Our culture is drenched in violence.   We from New England need to remember the stern hope in the New England theological tradition from Edwards to Emerson.  Edwards:  “Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.”  Emerson:  “Men are ‘convertible’ and this is the work of education, to awake the slumbering soul from its habitual sleep.” Last week Night came, but unattended by repose. After a holocaust, there is no faith so whole as a broken faith.  We need models of living with a broken faith.  We need to become, one by one, and as the faith community of Marsh Chapel, a model of living with a broken faith.  How?

To begin, in faith, we leave behind who were, and take up our cross, and follow.  Our cross, in our time, as has been steadily acclaimed from this pulpit, includes the hard heavy lifting of ridding this country of gun violence and of protection that does not protect.  Granted that foolish and harmful things are done all the time, we need not participate in them.  Our cross, in our time, as has been steadily acclaimed from this pulpit, includes the hard heavy lifting of growing, improving attention to mental health.  Our cross, in our time, as has been steadily acclaimed from this pulpit, includes the hard heavy lifting of setting aside some cyber-cultural influences.  We shall not cease from mental fight, nor shall our sword sleep in our hand, til we have no guns, mental health and a clean culture, in this green and pleasant land.  You have a voice, you have a wallet, and you have a vote.  Do you know this?  Do you?  How else will we ever face slaughter news?

A digression:  careful limitation of ammunition, requiring of its purchasers what we now require of those taking an airplane ride, full and personal and complete and discomfiting inspection, may be our best strategy.  Buy your guns, if you must, but if you want ammunition for them, that is another story.  If I can be groped at Logan airport to fly to Chicago, you can be checked and monitored, bullet by bullet.  Yes, too, to : bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, tightening rules for sales at gun shows and re-examining care for the mentally ill.  It is a collective self defense, fit for the 21^st century, which we need, not an individual self defense, forged in the 18^th.

A second digression: Fundamentalist readings, harmful and foolish they are, are not limited to readings of Holy Writ.  Fundamentalist readings, equally harmful and foolish, and similar in scope and reasoning, are also given to national writ, constitution and bill of rights.   What words meant in 90ad, in Luke, require current, contemporary, living interpretation.  What words meant in 1800ad, in the bill of rights, require current, contemporary, living interpretation.  What is most novel may oddly be truest to the tradition, and what is least traditional may be truest to the meaning of the tradition.

Wonder

Our heroic women, Mary and Elizabeth, teach us something else, too.  Every day is our last, until the next, and they live so.  They sing so.  They live on tip toe and sing on pitch.  They magnify the Lord.  The world does not lack for wonders, but only for a sense of wonder.  How is it that Luke, 20 centuries ago, eclipsed the men and evoked the women?  How is it that, come Christmas, people who sleep on Sunday will come to worship? How is it that in the candle lit dark of Christmas Eve, 7:30pm, there is a dim, palpable sense of the numinous, so easily forgotten all year?  How is it that the beauty of the carols and anthems and hymns, even against the steady cold wind of the merely material, manages to get through, come December?

All this is true, because of the proper translation of Luke 1:45:  Mary had faith that God’s promise will be fulfilled.  You have that faith, have been given that faith, have been seized by the church’s confession of that faith. Down under, down deep in the American psyche, there is a surging heart felt generosity, unknown, untapped, uninvited, unbidden, unwelcomed by our ostensible leaders.  Ernest Campbell:  “To be mature is to:  build schools in which you will not study; plant trees under which you will not sit; grow churches in which you will not worship”.  Ah, to worship.  Let me end with a little jeremiad about worship, for your consideration as look to 2013.  Think of it as a recommended resolution.

If you do not have one hour, each week, in which to face your own mortality, your own fragility, your own dependence, what is any other hour worth?  Luke alone tells these stories.  Why?  He is struggling, as we are,  to build the church.  Some, inside the church, whom he wants to hold onto, are followers of the Baptist.  So Luke recalls a story that honors not only the Baptist, but also his holy birth.  Others, outside the church, whom he wants to embrace, are Greeks who like their religions sprinkled with birth legends like those of the Greco Roman Gods.  So Luke recalls a story that has an altogether Greek birth miracle, like the Virgin Birth story itself.

A culture of violence will not disappear on its own.  A community of faith will need to erase it.  That means coming to church on Sunday.  A disregard for mental health will not disappear on its own.  A community of faith will need to heal it.  That means coming to church on Sunday.  A homeland sized addiction to firearms will not disappear on its own.  A community of faith will need to bring sobriety.  That means coming to church on Sunday.  To this hard work, you will bring the spirit gift of perseverance.  My friend said:  “90% of life is showing up.  The other 10% is perseverance.”  Show up on Sunday.  Persevere on Monday.

If singing the hymns of faith is not worth doing, what is?  If preaching the gospel of kindness is not worth doing, what is?  If supporting friends in community is not worth doing, what is?  If this one lone Sunday hour is not worth your time, your attention, your commitment, your devotion, just what is your time, attention, commitment and devotion really worth?  If the love of the Dream Child is not worth dreaming about, what is?

Coda

A long time ago, a young woman headed out, uphill, into the uplands, the highlands, the hill country.  It is striking that she is alone, given her condition, given the human condition, and given the conditional blessing she carries to us and to others.  She is alone.  There are many forms of solitude, including the joy of birth and the grief of death, and the power of dreams.  You will picture her, in some awkward tunic, walking at dusk, up into the hills.  We know, remember the Good Samaritan, that those roads hid bandits.  She goes quickly, perhaps for that reason, and with haste enters the home of the husband of a second cousin thrice removed.  We will remember her, as Christmas moves to Christmastide.

When the song of the angels is stilled

And the star in the sky is gone

And the kings and princes are home

And the shepherds are back with their flocks

Then the work of Christmas begins

To find the lost

To heal the broken

To feed the hungry

To release the prisoner

To rebuild the nations

To bring peace among brothers

To make music in the heart

(Dean of Marsh Chapel, Howard Thurman)

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

~The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean

1 Thessalonians 3:10

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To mend your faith, the apostle wrote, to mend, to mend faith…

 

A noun and a verb, faith and mend.

 

Faith is our personal reliance on God.

 

Faith is our willingness, both in doubt and in trust, to live each day.  You honor life by living it.  You find faith by receiving it.  Faith is the state of being grasped by the Spirit, of being grasped by the Holy Spirit in love and justice and truth.  Any real faith has got some doubt in it, to keep it honest.   Faith is the experience of being fully alive, of living with courage, of being willing to risk, to fail, and to start again. Faith is where and who you are when you are your own-most self.  Faith is freedom, real freedom.  Of course we seek the ultimate, the infinite, the divine!  Of course we do!  Whatever else is life for?  This is why I tend to think that everybody, or very nearly so, has some kind of faith.  You may not have it dressed up in fancy linguistic garments.  That’s all right.  You don’t have to be Paul Tillich to have the courage to be.  You don’t have to read his Dynamics of Faith to have faith.

 

And, you have grown up so you know what faith is not.  Not blind trust.  Not knowledge of all mysteries.  Not exception from the laws of nature, physics, gravity, motion.  Not obedience to authority for the sake of obedience to authority, religious or otherwise.  Not capture by false ultimacies like success or nation or even religion. Not protection from calamity. Born, we are old enough to die. Rain falls on the just and unjust.  This is what the cross is all about—the measure and correction of false faith, what faith is not.  Real religious faith is unsparingly self critical.

 

But your faith gives you the courage to withstand what you cannot understand.  Your faith lives in the courage to be, over against all the frightful existential anxieties of sin, of death, of meaninglessness.  On the street, right on the street, where you live. You may be at a point to hear this word, after a week of rending, of tearing, of cuts and bruises and untimely death.

 

Jesus has taught us that we are children of God, heirs of life eternal.  Jesus has made us children of God.  In word and sacrament, today, you are reminded and mended.  Mended.

 

The gospel in this word illumines and inspires.  You will have heard and read our phrase from last week’s lesson, ‘mend your faith’, before.   In a way you heard it again, moments ago, in Luke and Philippians.   The gospel, down under, down in the valley, expects a filling up to come, a kind of geological mending, mountains and hills lowered, crooked ways straightened, rough places smoothed out.  A mending of the earth, of nature, and a right beautiful reading.  The letter, composed in the slammer (add your favorite prison term—pokey, calaboose, hoosegow, grey bar hotel, municipal motel, stir, up the river, the joint), expects a freedom from behind bars, and more, a partnership of the gospel.  A mending of the yoke of bondage,  of history, wherein love abounds, and knowledge too, and discernment too, and excellence and glory! And praise!, and a right beautiful reading. You heard it here, this morning.

 

But you heard it last Sunday, in a sliver of a silver line.  Paul said he hoped to be with his favorite congregation, ‘to complete was is lacking in your faith’.  That at least is what you heard last week, from the NRSV.   A while back, a generation ago, from the RSV, you would have heard, ‘supply what is lacking in your faith’.  And at the building of Marsh Chapel, in the KJV, you would have heard ‘perfect what is lacking in your faith’.   Complete sounds like a final exam.  Supply sounds like an economic theory.  Perfect sounds cold to the bone.  Paul yearns to make things right, and the rendering of his yearning is carried to us in these translations.  Every person of faith, you and he and all, and certainly every minister of the gospel, at our best, yearns to complete, to supply, to perfect.  Because we are so unfinished! Because we are so famished!  Because we are so fragmented!  But there is a better way to render the original verb, better than complete or supply or perfect.  Happily, the concordance and references closely define the word, KATARTISAI, as ‘mend’.

 

Last Sunday before worship some of us sat quietly to read the lessons of the day.  One student quietly read 1 Thess. 3:10.  But he read—not from NRSV or RSV or KJV—but from NEB, another translation.  ‘To mend your faith”, his version read.   The slight change is a sliver of a silver lining.   Our faith needs mending.  Every one’s faith needs some stitching up, now and then.

 

Betrayal tears at the fabric of faith.   Faith needs mending. The former governor of California sat for years over many meals across a shared table, without mentioning that one of the caretaker’s sons was his.   After that, faith needs mending.  The former assistant to John Edwards, who testified energetically against him for his betrayal, knew early about betrayal.  His father, had been the Dean of Duke Chapel, but a sometime visitor at  a nearby Red Roof Inn, in the company of a non-spouse.  That early betrayal cut deeply into the fabric of later life.  Both his dad and his boss had been false.  Sometimes, come Sunday, faith needs mending.  A current leader learns the hard way that no email is ever private, ever.  Put anything you want in email as long as you are glad to have it on your tombstone, or on the front page of the Times.  But the public cacophony is pale, by comparison with the rending of the garment of faith for the loved ones.  Faith for sure, to be sure, will need a stitch or two.

 

And what about the bigger betrayals, when nature and history let us deeply down?  Some mending required.  When violence between middle eastern nations goes on endlessly, generation to generation.  Mending required.  When a good nation somehow quietly slides into  unexamined drone warfare, wherein a man in a blue shirt drives from Manlius to North Syracuse, to sit in a screen room, and push buttons, with deadly consequence, a world away.  And then to stop at Wegmans on the way home, to pick up Cheerios and an extra Christmas ornament—a quiet evening in the suburbs.  Some mending required.  Or, harder and more immediate, when the specter of untimely death descends upon a commonwealth on commonwealth avenue, and an early, unfair, unjust and tragic loss evokes a piercing question: “ Where was God?  I thought God loved us?”  Or, in the nature of things, when a formal and false accusation, untrue but lastingly cutting, maims one we love, we know about needing a needle and a thread and a stitch and a little tuck, a little mending, of our faith.

 

The route to Bethlehem goes through the river Jordan, the icy, cold, real, existential river Jordan.

As my student fellow student of the Bible remembered, Paul was a tentmaker.  He knew about canvass and holes and leaks and cuts and could mend as well as make.  That is what makes the NEB translation so mendingly meaningful.

 

Our son had a stuffed animal for many years.  The animal was a raccoon.  His name was Rooster.  Rooster raccoon.  I have no idea how such a name came to be his but his it was.  Rooster raccoon went with us on vacation.  Rooster—the raccoon I mean—went with us on boat rides, on tobogan rides, on car rides.  Rooster had his own seat in the way back of the van.  He swam at Marconi beach.  He rode over the Mercier bridge into Montreal.  He learned to swim, the hard way, by falling overboard.   He slept outside in a snow fort.   He was the first one up in the morning, and the last one to bed at night.  Sometimes the dog would take him by the collar and run around.  We sometimes asked him to say the grace at dinner.   He would offer a resonant, silent prayer.  After a few years he looked like he was about finished.  For stuffed raccoons, one human year is the same as 14.  By accident, near Christmas, one evening, rooster raccoon found himself seated a little to close to the macaroni and cheese on the stove, and up he went in smoke.  Or at least in part he went up in smoke.  He was left missing the left part of his left part.   I see the child’s hand holding up the smoldering dog eared raccoon, with no words, only tears, and an unspoken question.  ‘Can’t you do something?’  And then a quick, confident maternal murmur:  “Just let me have him.  You wait and see.  He will be good as new.  We can mend it.  We can mend it.”  And she did.  And rooster raccoon was and is the best looking stuffed raccoon, without a left side, that you could ever want.  He is the most oddly named, and now most oddly shaped, stuffed raccoon, this side of the Mississippi.

 

Now you will rightly say that some things cannot be mended.  At least not perfectly, not completely, not with full supply.  ‘Dean Hill, some things cannot be mended’ you will say.  And I will reply:  ‘Don’t I know it’.  The damage is done.   Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is hard to get it back in.  But the longing to mend?  That never ends.  The desire to mend?  That is everlasting.  The willingness to sew and trim and patch and weave and make it do or do without?  That urge to mend the tears in your loved ones’ faith?  That goes from heaven to earth.  And there is something in that wanting, to mend, that, like the Eucharist, brings heaven here.

 

Faith is our willingness, both in doubt and in trust, to live each day.  You honor life by living it.  You find faith by receiving it.  Faith is the state of being grasped by the Spirit, of being grasped by the Holy Spirit in love and justice and truth.  Any real faith has got some doubt in it, to keep it honest.   Faith is the experience of being fully alive, of living with courage, of being willing to risk, to fail, and to start again. Faith is where and who you are when you are your own-most self.  Faith is freedom, real freedom. Your faith gives you the courage to withstand what you cannot understand.  Your faith lives in the courage to be, over against all the frightful existential anxieties of sin, of death, of meaninglessness.

 

“We pray most earnestly night and day to be allowed to see you again and to mend your faith where it falls short” (1 Thess. 3:10)

 

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

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Dean Hill:

The sermon for today is lifted up and out of Our Bach Experience.  In worship and life at Marsh Chapel we engage all the newest forms of communication (see today our website), and we desire to do so with a cloud of witnesses, with the wisdom of the ages, with the faith once delivered to the saints, with words and songs and prayers that last, through the ages.   The high Gothic nave here is meant to affirm what lasts.  The beautiful windows here are meant to enshrine what lasts.  The historic enchanting liturgy of the service is meant to spell out what lasts.  The deliberate preparation and pacing of the sermon are meant to announce what lasts.   We have about 8000 Sundays in a lifetime, 8000 moments in word and music to experience God.  We dare not waste one or one minute of one in pandering, in entertaining, in minimizing, in doodling.  In this 59 poem of worship each week, the 16 musical moments and the 11 spoken moments are offered in the praise of God.  Remember your mortality.  Remember your fragility.  Remember your imperfection.  Remember who you are.  And so remember that you are happily a child of the living God.

 

John Wesley, chiseled in stone above our Marsh Chapel portico, taught Greek, evangelized Native Americans, rose daily at 4am to preach at 6am and throughout the day, changed the course of English and American history, and founded Methodism which itself gave birth to Boston University.  He claimed to be a man one book, ‘homo unius libri’.  For all this we do rightly honor him.  We cherish him.  We revere him.  But, truth to tell, it is brother Charles, the musician, the hymnist, whom we love, especially as we come toward the caroling hour.  Martin Luther, enshrined in stained glass near and far, splintered the church on the anvil of truth, recalled us to salvation by faith alone, withstood physical ailments, mental trials, political clashes, and religious hatreds.  He founded a movement that became the Lutheran church, and gave us the Protestant Principle of the necessary rigorous self criticism of all religion.  We honor him.  We cherish him.  We revere him.  But, truth to tell, it is his musical great grand child, J S Bach, whom we love, especially as we ready ourselves to hear an Advent cantata.

 

We need both the words and the music.  But music lasts even when words fail.  That tune you heard on the radio that took you forty years back in time.  That hymn whose melody was lifted in a high or hard moment, a wedding or funeral.  That new experience—as Bach is for many young adults and others today—that took you by the hand and led you out into the ineffable, the serene, the beautiful, the heavenly, the high and holy.  One of you may have found yourself Thursday listening during the memorial service for Dr. John Silber to the beauty of Brahms. We need both words and music, but the music sometimes finds an opening in the heart, a little crevice into which to maneuver, which would be too small and too angular for the word alone.  “I come mainly to sing the hymns”:  one of you might have said that.  I think one of you did.

 

Our words and music today are folded around several expectant themes.  The themes therein include expectation, prophecy, the coming reign of God, times and seasons, and the emerging recognition of Jesus as Messiah, all good Advent fare.  *Expectation puts us on his shoulder when experience lays us low.  Our undergraduates teach us this, for even when they are brought down by one or another standard young adult trial, and as hard as they fall, they just as strongly get back up, dust off, come to church, and live to write another day.  *Prophecy has kept the darker ranges of apocalyptic and Gnostic fears at bay, or at least has kept them company in the Bible.  Isaiah week by week has been singing you a song your mother taught you as well.  Where there is hope there is life.  *Jesus means more to us now then when we first believed.  In that evolution we have company in the ancient writings and the saints of the primitive church.  We are more aware as we grow, or grow older, that we are in good hands and so we can risk a bit to bear one another’s burdens. *So this season of Advent surrounds us with expectation and prophecy and trust.  In a wee moment we will hear this Advent gospel sung.

 

Dr. Jarrett:

Today’s cantata is indeed one of joyful expectation. One of the happiest cantatas I know, Cantata 140 depicts the Christian soul as a bride awaiting her promised Bride-groom, Christ. Drawing on imagery from the Gospel of Matthew, with text from the Song of Solomon, Bach sets the stage for a beautiful wedding feast. The three verses of Philip Nicolai’s famous chorale punctuate the cantata and establish the structure. There are three soloists: the tenor in the typical role of evangelist, the soprano as the voice of the Bride, and the baritone as the voice of the Bride-groom, Christ Jesus.

From the start the festive nature is apparent with the French overture styled rhythms in the strings echoed by the three oboes. One of the best examples of this cantata style, the chorale tune is set in the soprano part in long tones, doubled by a French horn. You won’t miss it! The chorale tune appears again the central movement, this time sung by the tenors of the choir in unison. You’ll likely recognize this material as ‘organ music’; Bach adapted this movement in 1748 for inclusion in the set of chorale preludes for the organ known as the Schübler Chorales. Nicolai’s third verse concludes the cantata in the familiar four-part setting as found in your red Methodist Hymnal, No 720.

Between these bright movements, Bach unfolds the drama of the woman awaiting her bride-groom. As it says in the Gospel of the day, ‘Watch, therefore; for ye know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of man cometh.’ The tenor evangelist calls to the daughter of Zion, “Macht euch bereit. Er kommt, er kommt! Make yourself ready, He comes! He comes!”

The first of the two love duets follows. Listen for the deeply expressive violin solo, the longing of the woman as she awaits her bridegroom -  in the background the calming voice of the baritone assuring her that he comes.

After the familiar second verse of the Nicolai chorale, the groom arrives to profess his vows. The words of Christ are accompanied by strings, an aural halo familiar from the same practice in the Matthew Passion. These words offer comfort and assurance, and at the end, even the promise of a kiss!

Perhaps the most famous of all Bach’s duets, ‘Mein Freund ist mein’ is completely delightful. With obbligato oboe, parallel thirds and sixths, the frolicsome interplay of melismas, this is one of the best love duets in the entire repertoire.

Vows exchange and love professed, we are invited to join the heavenly banquet with Nicolai’s final verse.

The longing, uncertainty and expectation are present, but this cantata’s focus is much more on the joyful moment when Christ comes to redeem the world. Watch, pray. Pray and watch. Trim your lamps. He comes, he comes!!

Dean Hill:

May the rigors of Advent continue to prod and challenge us.  May this not be an easy season.  May this season unfold with moments in which we are brought up short, put on notice, called to account, and changed.

 

You are a people of faith, so that you are also a people of expectation.  You do not drop your chin at the first mention of bad news.  You do not fold your tents at the first sign of giants in the land.  You stand your ground, singing the music of expectation.

 

You are a people of faith, so that you are also a people of Prophecy.  You do not lie down and weep, only awaiting an unknown and unseen future.  You accept the unforeseen as part of the future, and you take up arms against a sea of troubles, hoping to end them. You let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day, remembering ‘sufficient to the day is the evil thereof’.  You live your eyes, singing the music of prophecy.

 

You are a people of faith, so that you are also a people of Trust.  You know that for anything to get done, trust is the coin of the realm.  You have learned in your experience that the good future requires us not only to work hard but also to work together.

 

Bonhoeffer loved Bach too.  He wrote,

 

Tolstoy once said that the czar would have to forbid Beethoven to be played by good musicians, for he would excite the passions of the people too deeply and put them in danger.

Luther, by contrast, often said that next to the Word of God, music is the best thing that human beings have.  The two had different things in mind:  Tolstoy, music to honor people; Luther, music to honor God.  And regarding music, Luther knew that it has dried an infinite number of tears, made the sad happy, stilled desires, raised up the defeated, strengthened the challenged, and that it has also moved many a stubborn heart to tears and driven many a great sinner to repentance before the goodness of God.

‘O sing the Lord a new song’ (Ps 98).  The emphasis is on the word new. What is this song, if not the song that makes people new, the song that brings people out of darkness and worry and fear to new hope, new faith, new trust?  The new song is the song that God himself awakens in us anew—even if it is an ancient song—the God who, as it says in Job, ‘gives songs in the night’ (Job 35).

 

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

Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music

Revelation 1: 4b-8, Psalm 93, John 18: 33-37

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May we pray.

We praise thee, O God:
we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee,
the Father everlasting.
To thee all Angels cry aloud;
the Heavens, and all the Powers therein.
To thee Cherubim and Seraphim
continually do cry,
Holy, Holy, Holy :
Lord God of Sabaoth,
Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty
of thy glory.
The glorious company of the Apostles praise thee.
The goodly fellowship of the Prophets praise thee.
The noble army of Martyrs praise thee.
The holy Church throughout all the world
doth acknowledge thee;
The Father of an infinite Majesty;
Thine honorable, true, and only Son;
Also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter.
Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ.
Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.
When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man
thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb.
When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death,
thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.
Thou sittest at the right hand of God, in the glory of the Father.
We believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge.
We therefore pray thee, help thy servants,
whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood.
Make them to be numbered with thy Saints in glory everlasting.

O Lord, save thy people
and bless thine heritage.
Govern them, and lift them up for ever.
Day by day we magnify thee;
And we worship thy Name ever, world without end.
Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin.
O Lord, have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us.
O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us
as our trust is in thee.
O Lord, in thee have I trusted;
let me never be confounded. (“Te Deum,” Book of Common Prayer)

Amen.

The great hymn of the church known as the “Te Deum” is perhaps the greatest Christian hymn of praise ever penned.  It is certainly the oldest still in regular usage, attributed variously to Saints Ambrose, Augustine, and Hilary, and to Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana, in any case dating to the fourth century.  The text, in any of myriad musical settings, is frequently programmed in worship services that extol the greatness of God as reflected in the greatness of some human personage.  The election of a pope, the consecration of a bishop, or the canonization of a saint are all highly appropriate occasions for a “Te Deum,” and it has been known to be used on secular occasions as well, such as the announcement of a peace treaty or the coronation of a king or queen.  You may be interested to know, particularly if you are Catholic, that a plenary indulgence is available if you are present in a recitation or solemn chant of the “Te Deum” on New Year’s Eve.

Given the many images of the kingship of Christ in the “Te Deum,” with attendant symbols of judge, governor, and lord, it is also highly appropriate to sing this great hymn today, on Christ the King Sunday.  Thanks be to God for liturgically sensitive church musicians!  Indeed, for the offertory today, the Marsh Chapel Choir, under the direction of Dr. Scott Alan Jarrett, and with Mr. Justin Thomas Blackwell at the organ, will offer a setting of the “Te Deum” hymn by Franz Joseph Haydn.  Commissioned by Empress Marie Therese, wife of Franz I of Austria, this particular setting is notable for being an entirely choral work, lacking in the virtuosic solo lines characteristic of Haydn, and for its setting in the key of C major, often associated with music for great feasts of the church.  Furthermore, this setting is in the hallmark form of the classical era, namely the concerto, with two sprightly passages surrounding a central slow movement.

Okay, end of music history lesson.  What does any of this have to do with anything?  The “Te Deum” is textually a hymn of praise, and this has deep resonances on this day when we extol Christ as king.  The feast of Christ the King is celebrated interdenominationally among Catholics and Protestants on the last Sunday of the Christian year, which is to say the Sunday before the first Sunday of Advent.  Furthermore, Christ as king has deep resonances with the Eastern Orthodox symbol of Christos Pantokrator, which may be translated as Christ almighty or Christ in judgment, and is depicted here at Marsh Chapel in our rose window at the front of the sanctuary.

Praise is, ultimately, the most appropriate response of subjects for their rulers.  This is both because rulers provide so many benefits to their subjects and because rulers are in their very nature majestic and glorious, and thus deserving of praise.  It is little wonder that in the pre-Christian Roman Empire the emperors were understood to be gods.  When Christianity came along, the Judaic emphasis on the sovereignty of God over against all earthly temporal powers meant that emperors, kings, and other rulers could no longer be gods in their own right, but could nevertheless rule by “divine right.”  Of course this also meant that God could, in theory, and according to the historical record apparently in practice, withdraw the divine favor of a particular ruler and bestow it upon another.  This is how you get changes of dynasties in medieval European feudalism.  Kingship in Christendom, as it turns out, has its ups and downs.

Jesus certainly knew about the ups and downs of kingship, as evidenced by the texts read today from the gospel according to St. John and from the Revelation to St. John.  On behalf of Dean Hill, allow me to remind us that these are not the same John!  In the passage from Revelation, we get the upside of the story.  Jesus is king of the kingdom of Christians, and in fact ruler of the kings of the earth, i.e. king of kings.  Here is not the historical Jesus but rather the cosmic figure of Christos Pantokrator, Christ who rides in out of eternity on the clouds in judgment of the tribes of the earth.  In the Gospel of John we get the downside.  It turns out that being a king is a significant part of what got Jesus killed at the hands of the rulers of his day.  The problem, it turns out, is that Jesus finds himself out of his kingdom, and he is not the king of the world in which he finds himself, but this has not stopped people from attributing kingship to him, making the rulers of the world highly anxious.  Let this be a lesson to you kings out there: if you are a king, stay put in your kingdom!

I would hazard to guess that many of you are feeling quite ambivalent about all of this talk of kingship only a few short weeks after we in the United States of America have participated in that hallmark of our democratic republic, namely electing our leaders to office.  Indeed, what could the notion of kingship possibly mean for us in the land that rebelled against King George III?  We noted earlier that kings are to be praised both for the benefits they bestow on their subjects and for their innate majesty and glory.  These notions are nonsensical amidst the logic of our democratic republic.  Surely, here in the USA we believe that people are personally responsible and should pull themselves up by their bootstraps so that they are not dependent on the beneficence of government.  And recently disclosed improprieties of a certain general turned spy-master only serve to remind us that our leaders all too frequently fail to achieve even the standards of basic morality, let alone ever being considerable in terms of glory and majesty.

Or do we?  Do we really believe in rugged individualism and the fallibility of our leaders, or in our heart of hearts do we aspire to something more like the kingship model?

Hanging out in stained glass toward the rear of Marsh Chapel on the pulpit side is the stentorian statesman Abraham Lincoln.  He made it into stained glass here because he fulfilled the abolitionist vision of the founders of Boston University through his work to abolish slavery.  The recently released feature-length film Lincoln chronicles his political machinations and negotiations eventually leading to the passage of the 13^th amendment to the United States Constitution outlawing slavery and involuntary servitude.  The Lincoln memorial in Washington, DC, dedicated in 1922, was designed by Henry Bacon in the form of a Greek Doric temple containing a large, seated sculpture of Lincoln by Daniel Chester French and inscriptions from Lincoln’s Gettysburg and Second Inaugural addresses.  In some states, Lincoln’s birthday is celebrated as a holiday.  Or should I say holy day?

So, is Abraham Lincoln a king?  Applying a strict definition from political theory, certainly not.  The new film is based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography of Lincoln, entitled Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.  The title of the book makes it clear that Lincoln was not a king in the political sense, as it is his ability to get things done amidst competing interests, and despite the limits of presidential power, that makes Lincoln exceptional.  But in other respects Lincoln may best be interpreted as a king.  His rhetorical skill inspired hearts across divisions of race, gender, class, and religion.  His assassination made him a martyr and bestowed upon him mythical status in the United States and abroad.  Looking back across time, Lincoln may be understood as a king in the two senses outlined above.  He achieved great benefit for his people by virtue of his political skill, particularly for slaves, but for the United States as a whole also through his projects of reconstruction and vision for reintegration of the divided union.  And his soaring rhetoric and towering stature have been imprinted on the American imagination as signs of majesty and glory, as evidenced in stained glass, film, and monument.

There are other figures in U.S. history who might be considered under this rubric of kingship: George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr.  It is not the case that any of these men was perfect or otherwise unambiguous.  However, the particular focus afforded by the lenses of history has left us with visions of them that are truly praiseworthy.

I wonder if, political predilections for democratic order aside, there might not be something far deeper in the human condition and psyche that desires a king to rule over us.  I have a sneaking suspicion that there is, and that the “Te Deum” text points to this something deeper in the symbols of judgment, governing, and lordship.  Judgment is the measurement of the difference between the ideal of grace and the reality of sin.  Governance is the ordering of relations such that grace might be maximized and sin minimized.  Lordship is the power to make changes based on judgments and to bring about rightly ordered relationships.  Judicial, legislative, executive.  Far from the supposed American ideal that we do not need government because we are self-reliant and because governments are made up of other humans just as fallen as we ourselves, the “Te Deum” gives voice to that part of us that desires just what we proclaim to deny.

Peter Berger, University Professor Emeritus here at Boston University, wrote forty-some-odd years ago about religion as masochistic.  By this he means that in religious life we give ourselves over to something else, something greater, that can in some way effect an overarching meaning amidst a sea of seeming meaninglessness otherwise.  Indeed, that is at least one of the things that we do when we gather together on Sunday mornings.  We give ourselves over to God, who benefits us by providing us with a sense of meaning, order, and purpose, and who is majestic and glorious, and therefore praiseworthy.  This probably seems at least somewhat okay in relation to God.  Much more troubling for most of us is the fact that we essentially do the same thing with government.  We give ourselves over to a state that we believe can guarantee us some benefit and that seems to us in some way to be glorious and majestic.  This is the social contract.  In the case of monarchies, that glory and majesty is connected to the divine right of royalty.  In the democratic model, the glory and majesty of government derives from the glory and majesty of the human person, perhaps instilled by God.

The problem with a truly democratic government is that in order to fulfill our desire for kingship in terms of justice, governance, and lordship, 100% of the people must be 100% responsible 100% of the time.  In a monarchy, only one person must be 100% responsible 100% of the time, but if he or she screws it up, or at least if people find out that he or she screwed it up, it’s all over.  The problem is that there has never been a single human being, let alone a whole population of them, who has been able to be 100% responsible 100% of the time.  As the apostle to the gentiles tells us in the epistle to the Romans, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  Modern democratic republics have tried to mediate this problem by allowing for minimal levels of irresponsibility that can be counterbalanced by the checks and balances built into the governance model.  Sadly, as evidenced by the general turned spy-master mentioned earlier, we seem not to actually be able to tolerate the minimal levels of irresponsibility our system of government seeks to afford.  We aspire to more.  We aspire to perfection.  We seek a guarantee of order and meaning over against our uncertainty of each other and ourselves.

This past summer we heard a series of sermons on apocalyptic.  The apocalyptic worldview, that says that the guarantee of order and meaning is not possible in this world but is readily available in the next, is one Christian response to the problem of irresponsible government.  Another is the shift from the divinity of emperors themselves to their ruling rather by divine right, which could be taken away.  A third is the perspective that the image of God in human nature is obscured by sin, thus negating the possibility of fully effective human institutions.  In all cases, the Christian witness is that it is God who is our guarantee.  Ultimately, it is God who is our king, who judges us with perfect justice, governs us with perfect wisdom, and rules over us with perfect power, and so who is glorious and majestic.  No worldly power could possibly aspire to God’s perfection.  And so today, Christ the King Sunday, we give our sinful and broken selves over to God who alone can help us, can save us, can redeem us, can lift us up forever, and open the kingdom of heaven to us.

Amen.

~Br. Lawrence A. Whitney, LC+

University Chaplain for Community Life

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We are not always as thoughtful as we could be, not as mindful as we should be…

 

I can bear witness to this in my own experience…

 

Then let us be thoughtful this Thanksgiving.

 

Let us be mindful of the goodness of God, as sung in the 100^th Psalm…

 

Let us be thoughtful this Thanksgiving.

 

Let us be mindful of the blessings of God, as sung in the beatitudes…

 

Let us be thoughtful this Thanksgiving.

 

Let us be mindful of friendship, as was our friend Max Coots…
“Let us give thanks for a bounty of people:

For children who are our second planting, and though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are….

For generous friends with hearts and smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we’ve had them;

For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the other, plain as potatoes and as good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels Sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem Artichokes, and serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;

For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, and who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter;

For all these we give thanks.”

by Reverend Max Coots

 

Let us be thoughtful this Thanksgiving.

 

Let us be mindful of the good earth, of the fruits of harvest, of the fruits of years of labor and love, as one remembered in the figure of her grandmother…

 

Sitting by my window—looking out at the field

This chair has been such a comfort for so many years

Rocking—rocking

All the children were comforted in this chair

All grown and gone now

Babies—growing year after year

‘Til they could go to the field to help

The fields—so green in the spring

Then the plough broke it up into beautiful brown earth

Worked over and over

Until the seeds had a wonderful bed in which to grow

Week after week growing

And then harvest.

We all went to the field for the harvest.

Sunrise to sunset

Day after day

Finished at last

Ready for winter

Now looking across the field at beautiful virgin snow

Like watching a baby sleep.  So peaceful.

Happy for the quiet.

Anxious for the awakening

Start again

Sitting by my window

Rocking Rocking

By Carol Zahm

 

 

Let us be mindful of the faithfulness of God, as we affirm at eventide…

 

 

 

If we believe that life has meaning and purpose

And we do

If we believe that the Giver of Life loves us

And we do

If we believe that divine love lasts

And we do

If we believe that justice, mercy, and humility endure

And we do

If we believe that God so loved the world to give God’s only Son

And we do

If we believe that Jesus is the transcript in time of God in eternity

And we do

If we believe that all God’s children are precious in God’s sight

And we do

If we believe grace and forgiveness are the heart of the universe

And we do

If we believe that God has loved us personally

And we do

If we believe in God

And we do

Then we shall trust God over the valley of the shadow of death

And we do

Then we shall trust that love is stronger than death

And we do

Then we shall trust the mysterious promise of resurrection

And we do

Then we shall trust the faith of Christ, relying on faith alone

And we do

Then we shall trust the enduring worth of personality

And we do

Then we shall trust that just deeds, merciful words are never vain

And we do

Then we shall trust the Giver of Life to give eternal life

And we do

Then we shall trust the source of love to love eternally

And we do

Then we shall trust that we rest protected in God’s embrace

And we do

Then we shall trust in God

And we do.

 

 

Let us be thoughtful this Thanksgiving, mindful of the daily gifts.

 

Let us be mindful this Thanksgiving, as was Howard Thurman, who was a hundred years head of his time fifty years ago.  His poem:

 

 

Today, I make my Sacrament of Thanksgiving.

I begin with the simple things of my days:

Fresh air to breathe,

Cool water to drink,

The taste of food,

The protection of houses and clothes,

The comforts of home.

For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day!

I bring to mind all the warmth of humankind that I have known:

My mother’s arms,

The strength of my father

The playmates of my childhood,

The wonderful stories brought to me from the lives

Of many who talked of days gone by when fairies

And giants and all kinds of magic held sway;

The tears I have shed, the tears I have seen;

The excitement of laughter and the twinkle in the

Eye with its reminder that life is good.

For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day

I finger one by one the messages of hope that awaited me at the crossroads:

The smile of approval from those who held in their hands the reins of my security;

The tightening of the grip in a simple handshake when I

Feared the step before me in darkness;

The whisper in my heart when the temptation was fiercest

And the claims of appetite were not to be denied;

The crucial word said, the simple sentence from an open

Page when my decision hung in the balance.

For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.

I pass before me the main springs of my heritage:

The fruits of labors of countless generations who lived before me,

Without whom my own life would have no meaning;

The seers who saw visions and dreamed dreams;

The prophets who sensed a truth greater than the mind could grasp

And whose words would only find fulfillment

In the years which they would never see;

The workers whose sweat has watered the trees,

The leaves of which are for the healing of the nations;

The pilgrims who set their sails for lands beyond all horizons,

Whose courage made paths into new worlds and far off places;

The saviors whose blood was shed with a recklessness that only a dream

Could inspire and God could command.

For all this I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.

I linger over the meaning of my own life and the commitment

To which I give the loyalty of my heart and mind:

The little purposes in which I have shared my loves,

My desires, my gifts;

The restlessness which bottoms all I do with its stark insistence

That I have never done my best, I have never dared

To reach for the highest;

The big hope that never quite deserts me, that I and my kind

Will study war no more, that love and tenderness and all the

inner graces of Almighty affection will cover the life of the

children of God as the waters cover the sea.

All these and more than mind can think and heart can feel,

I make as my sacrament of Thanksgiving to Thee,

Our Father, in humbleness of mind and simplicity of heart.

 

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

Mark 12: 34-48

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Two weeks after Halloween, 2012

 

My Dear Wormwood,

 

Again it is my pleasure to write your annual review, you devil you.  No uncle was ever prouder of a nephew than I am of you, Wormwood. Look at the excellent, successful year you have had making devilry among the good people of planet earth.  As chief representative of the fallen angels in this part of the universe, I have a close relationship with the Prince of Darkness Himself, our Father below.  You may rest assured that news of your various nefarious victories will sink to his hellish level.  You have a dark future ahead of you, Wormwood.  Congratulations.

 

In particular, your work in the United States of America, over the last decade or more, Wormwood, has been nothing short of masterful.  I take my horns off to you, one devil to another, and salute your negativity.  You have kept them fighting among themselves, morning to night, like children in a marketplace, solely sighting their own interests, assured that the one truth they each hold is the only truth in the box.  Excellent, Wormwood, excellent.  I could not have done better myself, even when I wore a younger devil’s tail.  Keep at it, nephew, keep at it, set them one against the other, a man against his own house, rich against poor, red against blue, radical against fundamentalist, personal ethics against social justice, doing against being.  Oh the thrill we have to observe such mayhem!  Good boy.

 

With this letter, this annual post Halloween performance review, I enclose your official promotion, commendation, and ribbon as sub-demon of the year, with special commendation for inciting needless division.  I bow my horns to you!

 

Now, Wormwood, it would not do for me, your affection Uncle, Screwtape, Superintendent of demons in the near Milky Way, to let you go without a little avuncular advice.  Call it a little devilish Dutch uncle advice, to keep you on your way.

 

Down below they celebrate this weekend, remembering those who protected the great hope of a land of the free, and a home of the brave, a community with liberty and justice for all, a place where those who have much might not have too much, and those who have little might not have too little.  They remember their veterans, their self-sacrificing forebears and relatives.  They reflect on those who road the waves of military service, and they do so with grace and affection.  Ouch!  Wormwood, my little devil.  We cannot have this continue.  It cools the fires of hell to hear such loving rhetoric.  So, here are some bits of wisdom, for your future devilry, sent from your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.

 

Be most careful, Wormwood, not to let any of these groups you have so carefully set upon each other, with daggers drawn, get the idea that wisdom is justified by all her deeds, that wisdom is justified by all her children, that wisdom comes in more than one color.  Make sure the blue stay blue, and the red stay red. Make sure people from Nebraska never talk to people from Rhode Island. Flee the color purple, Wormwood, with its recognition of dialectical thought, its movement toward full truth, its bow before the sin they all share.  Keep them fighting.  Keep the Presbyterians denouncing pride, and forgetting about sloth and falsehood.  Keep the Methodists denouncing sloth, and forgetting about pride and falsehood.  Keep the Lutherans denouncing falsehood, and forgetting about pride and sloth.  Yes.  Excellent.  Purple is dangerous to us.  If the blue start seeing that the red have a point, here and there—your cause is lost.  If the red start seeing that the blue have a point, here and there—your cause is lost.  Keep them shouting at each other, like children in a marketplace, one group wanting to play weddings and another wanting to play funerals, pipes vs. wails, dances vs. weepings. Their Lord really had your number, there, my nephew.  Take the purple out of their crayon boxes.  You want gated communities, the demise of public schools, lines of suburban\urban separation, racial disease and distrust, class separations, ideological fences, and a verbal war of all against all.  Children in the marketplace, as their Savior, said, yes, Wormwood, well done.

 

Here is an example.  I hear the good hearts of their leaders saying many and caring things about children and the poor, those left out.  Like that poor woman in the Bible, who gave all she had.  Wormwood, this is peril for us!  Be on the qui vive!  If that country ever got behind that idea, and every one had medical care, education, and respect—oh, it worries me.  Keep them pinned down, keep their leaders pinned down, Wormwood, in tragic conflict, in financial red ink, in culture wars.  And be vigilant!  Sometimes they get the idea! I read in one of their papers about an 11 year old Boy Scout lost in the mountains.  (Did you have something to do with that, Wormwood?  Creative move there,  my boy).  But after all astute creative devilry, 3000 searchers looked for four days until they found him!  The lost was found.  That really frosts me.  Oh, the joy they had in it, too.  It frosts my preserves, Wormwood.  It is like the joy a Christian has at bringing a friend, relative, or neighbor to church to experience love.  There is no greater joy!  It makes my blood freeze.  The rescuer said, “I feel relieved and happy.”  Oh Lordy.  That really takes the cake.  See, if they really start watching over one another in love, like that old Englishman John Wesley said, we would be out of business in your part of the hemisphere.

 

Another example, Wormwood.  We head devils hate to hear about people moving from poverty to well-being.  All this generosity talk—perish the thought!  All this liberty, equality, fraternity palaver—I thought we rid ourselves of that in the 19^th century.  My boy, we want a permanent underclass, so that we can then use it to foment revolution.  But this country and its churches, especially those pesky Methodists, have always championed social mobility, like that in the churches of Paul, way back when.  His urban Christians were status inconsistent, and so are the living churches today.  That Paul was a thorn in my flesh, that Apostle to the Gentiles, but we got him at last.  We need to keep people in their place.  I tell you, nephew, it bothers me when I read about a young woman, Della Mae Justice, who was a 15 year old foster child living in a hut with a dirt floor, until her uncle came and found her and took her into his own home.  He was an attorney in Kentucky.  She said it was like little Orphan Annie going to live with the Rockefellers. Listen to this Wormwood, and see if doesn’t freeze your blood:

 

“It was not easy.  I was shy and socially inept.  For the first time, I could have had the right clothes, but I didn’t have any idea what the right clothes were.  I didn’t know much about the world, and I was always afraid of making the wrong move.  When we had a school trip for chorus we went to a restaurant.  I ordered a club sandwich, but when it came with those toothpicks on either end, I didn’t know how to eat it, so I just sat there, well, staring at it and starving and saying I didn’t feel well.”

 

Her uncle educated her at Berea College, a school set up especially for hard working, children of the poor who want a fine education.  Now she is an attorney in his firm.  Wormwood!  Be on the lookout!  This kind of story will find its way into a pulpit if it is not snuffed out.  See who have on our side in the newspapers.

 

A story like that brings a tear to the eye, a warmth to the heart, a willingness to give, even if you only have a widow’s might.  Such gospel is our undoing.  A story like that is your undoing, Wormwood.  Come on my boy, have you begun with flesh to end with the spirit?  You can do better, I mean worse, I mean, well you know what I mean

 

What would happen down there if this kind of idea, took hold?  You would have middle-aged parents whose own children have grown up adopting others!  Starting new families!  Taking the poor into their homes!  Giving like that poor widow did! You would have adoption outpacing abortion, so that abortion was not only safe, legal and rare, but rare, rare and rare!  You would have liberty and justice!  There would be understanding and space for gay children! Our lost cause would be lost.

 

Wormwood!  Perish the thought, Wormwood, perish the thought.

 

And this matter of war.  Good bit of work, there, Wormwood.  Now, if you can just keep the purple crayon out of the box.  My own fear is that there will emerge a consensus across the land on how to fix this problem.  Here is my thought:  keep the blue critics stuck in their anger over things, they judge, should never have happened—that will keep them from facing clearly new situations with resolve, humility, and imagination; and keep the red supporters stuck in defense of past confusions, misinformation and misjudgment—that will keep them from finding the resolve, humility and imagination needed to change course to attend to new duties.  Especially– keep them from talking with each other to find the purple ground—divide and conquer, Wormwood, divide and conquer.  Otherwise they may find a way to gather the will of the nations to bring peace to their world and time.  That would be our purple defeat, the defeat of all our devilry.  Confusion, and miscommunication, and mistrust—these are your best allies, my shrewd nephew.  They must not be allowed to remember history and its lessons.   When Elie Wiesel said two weeks ago, ‘we face the enemy with memory’—Wormwood, he is talking about. Get at that work on weakening memory! You help them forget the lessons of the past.  The last thing on earth the Prince of Darkness (who writes my performance review, as you know) is just, participatory, and stable world community.  Peace abroad would let America would be free, purple crayon in hand, to draw a picture of a nation where all, meaning all, have a place.

 

Or look at their stumbling around about their country’s budget.  I have to hand it to you, you young devil you, you have even made them forget that to balance a budget you have to raise more and spend less money!  How did you accomplish that?  But now, I hear rumblings, Wormwood.  I have a sad feeling that they will find a way to work together, to compromise, to see the larger picture, to work for the good of the whole—oh, you know how I despise all this sappy, caring, loving, pragmatic, effective public leadership!  How much more savory, and sour, a fiscal cliff!

 

Let me be blunt, Wormwood.  When you see red and blue talking to each other, get moving!  When you see a red woman and a blue man determined to think together, learn from each other, and work side by side, and they have lunch at a table adorned in purple, burn the restaurant.  We just cannot have that kind of synthesis going on! Thesis, yes.  Antithesis, yes.  But no Synthesis. Red we can stand, blue we can handle.  It is the color purple that is our downfall.  We cannot afford that kind of creativity, new creation, new thinking.  I read that Cornel West and Billy Graham were going to have lunch to talk theology.  That’s what I mean, Wormwood.  Burn that restaurant.

 

Let me be blunter, Wormwood.  When you see a church, the last place people actually gather if they gather at all, that is both red and blue, and putting on a robe with a purple hue, weaken that church.  A denomination that stands for children, for the poor, for social mobility, for justice, but also for personal morality, financial responsibility, moral strength, individual piety–for Biblical, dialectical thought, not just the thunderbolts from far left and right–drain that saving swamp, Wormwood.  What you have done to the Methodists in the Northeast, eliminating half their membership in a generation, you need to do across the country.

 

Let me be the bluntest I have been, Wormwood.  I have one specific request, dear nephew.  Keep your eye on that chapel in Boston, Marsh Chapel.  They look purple to me.  They are growing.  They are building.  They are blue and red together.  They love students.  They are learning to tithe.  They are starting to invite.  Work on them, Wormwood.  Make them fear the unknown. Make them tentative.  Make them forget the student programs.  Make them accentuate gender, race, ethnic, class divisions. Make them disagree wherever they can.  Set them on each other, red on blue, blue on red.  I will check your work at our next annual early November, post-Halloween review.

 

Remember our theme song from William Blake:  When Satan first the black bow bent, and the moral law from the gospel rent, he turned the law into a sword and spilt the blood of mercy’s Lord.

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

Mark 12: 28-34

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

In three days one half of these United States of America will be profoundly disappointed and personally despondent.

 

We just don’t yet know which half.

Half of all advertisement is wasted.  We just do not know which half.  $1 B of the $2 B spent on this Presidential election was, if not wasted, at least offered in a losing cause.  Again, we today do not know which half.

A herd of elephants, a pride of donkeys, a country of these United States, more States and less United, these days.

You will, faithful listeners to Marsh Chapel, on WBUR, and otherwise, you will vote.  I have no doubt about it.  Good.  And you have endured the preaching of the gospel this fall, from a venerable pulpit, and from a fallible preacher.  Those especially who responded to the sermons on Biblical Justice, 9/16/12, and on Generosity, 10/14/12, both in harmony and dissonance, have, like love, ‘suffered long and been kind’.  Thank you for your forbearance.

Given though the division, not to say war, between the states, or better said, within the states, or more precisely put, in the heart of Franklin County, just north of Columbus, Ohio, the home of Ohio Wesleyan University, a small Methodist college for small Methodists and others, incorporated in 1842, we may wonder, come this Sunday, whether the Gospel–love of God and love of neighbor–speaks to our incipient disappointment.

By the way, in case you had not heard, the whole election comes down to the single vote of one persona, of a young mother, a 2001 OWU graduate, with two children, who themselves will soon attend OWU, living in anti bellum home, four bedroom, shared driveway, on North Sandusky street, in Delaware, Ohio, across from the old ATO house, who attends Asbury Methodist Church, and is vice president of the Junior League.  I believe her name is Mary.  Or Martha.  Or both.

Let me suggest that the Gospel speaks, to us, right now, in love.  That is one thing about love, divine and human.  It never ends.  Campaigns will cease.  Candidates will emerge or retire.  Slogans will be put away, to be unearthed again.  War chests will empty.  Celebrations will come and go.  Discouragement will be reborn into denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and, then, it may be, acceptance.  Some who are elected may learn that the position for which they graciously offered themselves is not exactly heaven on earth.  Some who are defeated may discover that in losing they were not so much denied as spared.  Not so much denied something as spared the actuality of it.  We can be proud of those who will offer themselves for leadership and service, knowing the odds against them.  Especially those who come up short, 49% not 51%.  We owe them far more than we usually admit.

What would love of God and love of neighbor look like, Wednesday, November 7, 2012, the day after a national slugfest?

Well, who knows?

 

But, in part, I believe that the Markan Jesus’ summary of the decalogue, evokes something particular in us, this Sunday.  Love.  Love God.  Love.  Love your neighbor.  Love.  Now, there is also a neighboring verse that affirms love of enemies, of contestants and opponents, the consequence of love of God and love of neighbor.

Those who have listened to Marsh Chapel sermons these years, my own and those of my esteemed predecessors, know full well that this pulpit does not take lightly the consequences of political learning or lack thereof, social virtue or lack thereof, and spiritual piety or lack thereof.  I refer you to the sermons just mentioned and preached some weeks ago.  Real, dire, real, dreamlike, real decisive matters are at hand Tuesday.  So, go and vote.  The freedom of the pulpit encourages you, your own true identity in faith exhorts you, today’s Gospel itself leads you.

 

And what a Gospel reading!  As was beautifully rehearsed from this pulpit last Sunday, Mark is a Gospel of Conflicts.  In particular, Mark is a gospel wherein Jesus argues, with vehemence, with disciples and with opponents (scribes, Pharisees, and others).  Since the river Jordan in Mark 1, Jesus has been at daggers drawn with the scribes, in particular. In 1:22, in 2:6, in 3:22, in 7:1, in 11:18, in 11:27.  And we haven’t even gotten to the Pharisees yet.  All of sudden, today, SURSUM CORDA, HEAR THE GOSPEL, Jesus meets a peacemaking scribe, an irenic soul, a kind opponent.  Matthew and Luke will twenty years later erase, as if using an ‘etch a sketch’, this memory of kindness.  Their scribe is a testing, testy type.  But not here in Mark.  In the heat of the battle, there is a quiet, kind conversation.  Like those stories of Union and Confederate soldiers, across the line of battle, pausing to sing Christmas carols together, on Christmas eve. Like a Republican governor and a Democratic President finding something shared, something in common, in the teeth of a great storm.  Something deeper, even than conflict, than power, than hatred, than self, is here.  In the presence of a scribe!  Of whom Jesus says, of this good scribe Jesus says, ‘you are not far from the kingdom of heaven’!  I don’t know about you, but most days, if I could go home with that report card, I would rest my feet and rest my case.  ‘The scribe sees with insight and hears with understanding’ (Marcus, 842).  In love—and the scribe sees this—God is grabbing ahold of the world, and of us, again.  A little Deuteronomy, and a little Leviticus, and a little love of God and neighbor.  ‘Neither tragedy nor triumph, but trust’, we heard last week.  And again today.  ‘Fall in love with the world again’ we heard last week.  And again today.  ‘The healing of our faith is still possible’ we heard last week.  And again today.
Hold onto free speech.  Hold on to your own-most identity.  Hold on to peace, like a river.  And go and vote your conscience.

But after the voting, there remains the living, and, by our gospel, the loving in the living. What can this truly mean, come Wednesday? How shall we love God?  By loving our neighbor.  How shall we love our neighbor?  By loving our opponent.

Let me propose an exercise.  Its details may lack something, one point or another, from your point of view.  Fear not.  Add and delete your own spices and ingredients later.  Remember this:  Jesus and the good scribe talk.  They talk.  They listen, and speak.  The summary of the law they affirm, as we know, was also affirmed by Rabbi Hillel, and as a way to condense to the two tablets of ten, five each, is not unique, or even remarkable, though quite portable, and useful.  What is striking, here, is the relationship between the good teacher and the good scribe.  They relate.  The listen, and speak.  In that manner, vein, and spirit, come Wednesday, consider an experimental exercise:  consider why the other half votes the way they do.

So.  You are a liberal.  Good for you.  I commend your liberality.  But let me ask you something.  Have you given much effort of thought to why half of the humans in the lower forty-eight, plus Alaska and Hawaii, disagree with you enough to vote for the other guy?  For you liberals let me suggest three ‘l’s to consider.  I mean, if we are to love God, love our neighbor, and love our contestant, then we might want to consider why the other side votes the way it does.  Love is for the wise.

Life.  Those more to the right of you in the choir loft tend to have a strong and particular view of the sanctity of life.  Have you, Mrs. Liberal, really heard, I mean really deeply heard, this conviction?  Now, we know there are manifold ways to be pro life, as a columnist well wrote the other day.  But I wonder if, at some gut level, you have yet to appreciate, to approximate, what those to your right in the pew of life, think and say and believe, here?  It will help us, all, down the road, if you can, at least, acknowledge, in detail, that with which you do not agree, in full.

Liberty.  Those more to the right tend to have a fierce and protective sense of freedom, of liberty.  O, I know that liberals love liberty and life too.  My relative asked me once, though, why I thought conservatives did not want taxes taking their money. ‘Because they believe it is THEIR money’, I said. Individual responsibility matters.  Personal holiness matters. Have you, Mr. Progressive, truly heard this?  What you do, justly or not, deserves just response and reward.  He who does not work, let him not eat, 2 Thessalonians.  For freedom Christ has set us free, Galatians 5.  Give me liberty, said Nathan Hale.  Or give me…It will help us all, down the road, if we can, at least, respectfully and sincerely say that liberty is precious.

Limit.  Those more to the right of you in the balcony are suspicious of large bureaucracies and big government.  They see waste, where there should be frugality.  They see ineffectiveness, where there should be fruitfulness.  They see laziness supported, here, free ice cream given, here, a lack of rigor, discipline, and effort rewarded, here.  Who governs least, he governs best, they think.  Most of all, they see debt, endless and dangerous.  They prefer to support private non profit groups, like the Salvation Army, or churches, or private missions.  They have not even usually resorted to quoting John Wesley–get all, save all, give all you can–though they might have done so.  Have you, Messr. Dreyfusard, adequately, honestly sized up the need for limits?

Love your contestant by knowing her view, and affirming the parts of if that you can.

Or.

You are conservative.  Good for you.  I commend your conservation.  But let me ask you something.  Have you given much effort of thought to why half of the humans in the lower forty-eight, plus Alaska and Hawaii, are voting for the other guy?  For you conservatives let me suggest three ‘c’s to consider.  If we are to love our contestant we might want at least to practice saying out loud why they vote the way they do.  Love is for the wise.

Choice.  When the chips are down and hard decisions need to be made, where is the liberty to be placed, where is the confidence to be invested?  Those to your immediate left in the choir loft privilege liberty, in the sense of personal choice.  The same affirmations under liberty, made a moment ago, might simply be inserted here.  We recognize varieties of pro-choice positions.  We know not everyone buys every party line.  But, Mr. Conservative, have you truly, deeply considered what it would mean–I am speaking right now mostly to the men–to have your own health choices, of the most personal and most powerful kinds, made by others?   Just how long, Mr. Mr., would you really put up with that?  At least, can you see, why, from another perspective, choice is a deal maker or breaker?

Community.  Those to your left in the pew tend to have a high view of what the common good should be.  Maybe, way down left, they are reciting lines from ML King about the beloved community.  They believe in building community, in doing things together, in sharing time and space and energy and resources.  Or maybe they just have a memory of when their own family needed housing, needed food, needed health care, needed employment, or suffered through a Hurricane, and they think that the whole is more than the sum of the parts.  They underscore that one’s own health finally requires a healthy population, that one’s own love of country requires a love of all the people, that one’s own security and freedom finally require a modicum of the same, provided for the whole.  These lefties may have had a searing experience, up close and personal, with pain and poverty and peril.  Let those who have much not have too much, and those who have little not have too little, they whisper.  Liberty, yes.  But justice, too.  For all, in these United States.

Compassion.  Those to your left in the balcony emphasize compassion.  Their sense of pride, sloth and falsehood is heightened.  There but for the grace of God, go I, they think.  Their sense of hypocrisy, idolatry, and superstition, is heightened.  They carry an acute memory of where and when things have gone badly wrong, in dispassionate ways.  Children.  Children in poverty.  Children without primary health care, who sometimes become obese.  Children in distress.   Those just to your left, they are willing to forego a bit of frugality for the expansion of compassion.  It matters deeply to them, this fall, whether or not another 40 million people, many of them children, will have access to health care, after Tuesday.  Yes, they would rather spare the rod and spoil the child, if that means all children are fed, clothed, housed, taught, and healed.

Love your contestant by knowing his view, and affirming those parts you can.

Now let me close by moving from preaching to meddling.  Maybe you think I have already been meddling!

Preaching since 1976, and my May 1976 departure from North Sandusky street, Franklin County, Ohio Wesleyan, Ohio, and a year living across the street, in the old ATO house, from the one person, Mary Martha, or Martha Mary, whose single vote will decide this election, my impression is that in practice we liberals are not always all that liberal and we conservatives are not always all that conservative.  Here is what I mean.  So, as a conservative, you believe in limited government, and think the private sector, including churches, should care for the poor.  Fine.  So, do you tithe?  The average pledge in churches is 1% not 10%  If you are so keen on limited government, a worthy goal, and think the civil society can carry the work, then why are you so limited in your giving to the churches and other eleemosynary institutions? (See what I mean about meddling?) So, as a liberal, you believe in community, in communal benefits, in the common good, the good of all.  Fine.  Do you build community? Do you take the time to participate in all those fallible, time consuming groups?  Do you worship?  Do you take the time and energy to build up the community, starting with the community of faith?  Or do you lie in bed, or play golf, or something else, come Sunday.  (See what I mean about meddling?)  Here is what I mean.  Let each be convinced, in his own mind.  But practice what you preach.  That is:  I’ll expect a tithe from the conservatives and 100% worship attendance from the liberals, or, better yet, both from both!  Devotion and service, love of God and love of neighbor, worship and generosity.  Friends, these are things, right and left, over time that will last.  Do these, and you will hear a divine whisper, ‘you are not far from the kingdom of heaven’.

 

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

 

By the way, my name is Bob Hill, and I approve of this message!

 

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