Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

Matthew 16:21–28

Class of 2027! Family, and friends, and siblings and parents and all! Welcome today to Boston University, which in a few short years you will come to name, come to call Alma Mater, soul mother, your soul mother. The place where your young self gives way to your own-most self, your first self gives way to your second self, your early self gives way to your later self, where, may it be so, you come to yourself, you find yourself, you become aware, maybe fully for the first time, thanks to your soul mother, of your very soul.

By their fruits ye shall know them. As our President Kenneth Freeman said not long ago, we want to cultivate a sense of gratitude, an encultured sense of thanksgiving. We do so by giving energy and wings to a simple phrase in American English, a lovely tongue, thank you. Say thank you in prayer, in memory, in speech, in note, in letter in cyber text. Let’s give some energy to ‘thank you’ this year.

As our Provost Kenneth Lutchen said not long ago, we are here to form guide and shape others, not only to be an become intelligent people, but also to become intelligent people who go forth to make the world a better place. Intelligent people who go forth to make the world a better place. The founders of Boston University, those Methodists of 1839, would smile to hear him say that.

Every school and college in this BU community of 42,000 souls, has a role to play, and we say our own thank you, in advance, for the freedom, the financial and temporal and special and personal freedom to study, and for the fruit such study will produce:

For the study of education

Whose fruit is both memory and hope

For the study of communication

Whose fruit is truth

For the study of engineering and computational and digital science

Whose fruit is expanding global connection and safety

For the study of management, business and economics

Whose fruit is community

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

Whose fruit is freedom

For the study of social work

Whose fruit is systemic compassion

For the study of law

Whose fruit is justice

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

Whose fruit is beauty

For the study of hospitality

Whose fruit is conviviality

For the study of military and physical education

Whose fruit is security

For the study of medicine, dentistry, public health and physical therapy

Whose fruit is wellness

For the study of theology, the queen of the sciences, and its practices of religion

Whose fruit is meaning, belonging and empowerment

In this year may the family of Boston University—students, faculty, administrators, staff, alumni, neighbors all—become, by grace, thankful, thankful thankful for the freedom of such studies, which may make us::

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

And how?

All the world’s a stage.

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one (person) in his time plays many parts

(W Shakespeare)

And how?

Walk. Listen. Read. (repeat)

Walk

There is a great rush, a wind of life, energy, and hope with which every school year begins. May we not ever miss the privilege and joy of this Matriculation moment. Here you are, having bid farewell to mother and father, and said hello to your roommates. Your own life, your own most life, your second but truly first life now begins, or commences in another way. We should, all, remove our sandals, for this holy ground. ‘I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ In this moment of Holy Worship, Holy Scripture, Holy Communion, let us recall, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts, heaven and earth are full of God’s glory.

Spiritual life in college, as in all life, but in a particularly particular way, causes you to walk, to walk pretty, to walk in a certain way. You will walk in a moment down Commonwealth Avenue, whose more Eastern blocks Winston Churchill called ‘the most beautiful street in America’. He was not wrong. Like the heart beating lub-dub, like spirit and flesh engaged together, like ear and eye, mind and heart, sol y sombra, one two, one foot two foot, hay foot straw foot, you are on the trail. I take my hat off to you, and bow before you, as did St Vincent De Paul before his students, with the dim awareness that in your midst is genius, somewhere someone somehow.

Boston is the country’s best walking city, a pedestrian palace of nature and culture. You know from the SAT the French phrase, ‘flaneur dans le rue’, to saunter down the street with no especial task, just the breathing joy of breathing, and so you are a flaneur of the spirit. Walk. Walk at dawn. Walk. Walk in the mid-day. Walk. Walk in the evening. Walk in the sunshine and especially the snow. But walk. And for those otherwise abled, guide the walkers with a sense of strength in difference. Saunter on Newbury Street, and in the Public Garden, and all the way out the Emerald Necklace.

Come Sunday, that’s the day, walk to worship, walk to church, walk to the Chapel. It is the one walk most needed, on which all the rest in some balefully unappreciated measure does depend. The ordered public worship of Almighty God is not a matter of indifference, at least to the current Dean of Marsh Chapel. You are child of God. Walk here and hear so. And remember what it feels like. Every three months my friend is given an knee injection to relieve pain. On the day of the shot, he says, ‘at least for a time, I remember what it is like to walk pain free’. That is what walking can do, and that is what worship is for, to remind you of who and whose you are.

Listen

Now the spiritual life takes shape. Here you are. Come and listen. Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century set out his orders for his order, beginning with the first and most important. Listen. It is not what you see but what you hear that matters, lasts, counts, gives meaning. Faith comes by hearing not scanning. Hearing comes by the Word of God, not the words on a screen. The keyboard is not the window of the soul. What holds, molds, scolds, folds, for youngs and olds, is in the hearing. We have several regular worshippers, sight impaired, who will remind you, in their faithfulness, of the primacy of the ear. Listen.

Listen for what is not said, for the dog that does not bark. Listen for what engages, and for what enrages, both. Listen to the sounds of silence. Listen for a word of faith offered in a pastoral voice toward the prospect of a common hope. Listen for a word of faith offered in a pastoral voice toward the prospect of a common hope. “Dad, I heard something fantastic the other day. It went like this…’ We have two ears, and one tongue.

What Jesus said in 30ad is written down at last, and with a healthy dollop of interpretation, by Matthew in 85ad. There was a long line of listening, hearing, sharing, speaking, long before the writing. The Scripture offers to hearing and faith the paradox of saving and losing life: you only have, only possess, only truly hold what you have the power, grace, freedom and courage to give away. If you do not have it, you cannot give it. If you give it, truly, you then show you have owned it.   These sayings were written down together in Matthew 16 because they shared a tag word—life. What can you give in exchange for your life?

One side of the message is conservative: hold on, flee false forfeit, prize life now you have it). Whoever saves his life will lose it, and whoever loses is life will find it. The other side of the message is liberal: splash around with generosity, give with no thought of return, take up the cross, follow. The two teachings together are a paradox, an antimony, even, by some measure they are at daggers drawn. Which one for which day on which way will you say? I give you an unusual idiom, out of the freedom of American English: It’s up to you. It’s up to you. Over time you will need them both, the more liberal and the more conservative. Over time, you will need them both. Listen. Tune your ear to God.  To learn which to choose and when demands, requires, the training of the ear

Our dear friend, and ninth BU President, now of blessed memory, who died yesterday, Dr. Aram Chobanian, longtime Dean of our Medical School, the school now named in part for him, could listen. He had the gift, the knack of that physician’s grace, the grace of listening, of the artful bedside manner.

Read

As today, so every Lord’s day, much is read, come Sunday. If you come to church here every Sunday for three years, you will hear the whole Bible, more or less, four lessons per week. Free of charge! You will hear. One will read, read to you. A love of reading conjured in college—for this we pray for one and all.   Not scanning. Reading.  Not speed reading. Reading every word. Reading will take you out beyond and behind the twin towers of your birth. You have come of age in the shadow of the mists of COVID, class of 2027.   You were raised in part in the shadows of anxiety, depression, alienation, loneliness. Masked. You came to age under the aspect of ZOOM. The loss was not face, the loss was voice. The loss of voice to the omnivorous screen. But now you are at last in college, in part again to find your voice.

Read. Thereby you escape the confines of the early 21st century. Are there no other escape routes? No. You read. While other party, you read. While others drink, you read. While others play, you read.   You will come to a great land that has been awaiting your arrival. It is the land of memory. It is the land of hope. See the meadow, bright in the morning! Memory. Hear the chorus of birdsong at dawn! Memory. Now you are ready to move into memory in reading.   Pick a favorite verse. Read it well enough to commit it to memory. One said last week, When you start to memorize you start to notice the things you notice, your own habits of attention, your habits of reading. As the congregation knows by frequent infliction, today’s epistle is one of mine. (Romans 12: 9-13). Reading will take you to a land of memory, the location of a deeper story.

Read. Start with Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. You dwell in the tenth floor of a building whose first three stories were constructed with stolen land and enslaved labor, free land and free labor, for the benefit of anyone who had or used money, then or now.

Read. You have the subsidized freedom, for four years or more or less, to think. Think things through. Think from the top down and the bottom up. Go where others are trying to think, and think with them. Challenge them. Question them. Press them. See what lasts. I am not afraid of the Gospel. It is the power of salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, ‘the righteous shall live by faith’. You remember what the bereft mother of a college age daughter said,in Charlottesville six years ago, quietly, said, gently, said truly, Think before you speak. Think.

Read. Spiritual life—walk, listen, read, think—spiritual life true to your own-most self, is the only primary nourishment you will need for the next four years. Or the next forty. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? ‘We are not simply to bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke in the wheel itself’ (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Our Chapel leadership, Rev. Dr. Chicka, Rev. Dr. Coleman, Dr. Jarrett, Mr. Lee, will invite you: to Create Space on Tuesday afternoon, and to 5pm Monday Dinner, and to Eucharist and Dinner on Wednesday, and to Choir on Thursday (auditions this week). You are not alone. You are not alone. You are not alone.

Amen.

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

posted in Matriculation, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel, Uncategorized on 09.3.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
August 27

A Moment of Inspiration

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 16:13–20

Inspiration.

A moment of inspiration.

Peter was seized by a moment of inspiration.

And you?

Are we?

Are we open to a moment of inspiration?

Have you faith?

Have you faith in Christ?

Are you going on to wholeness?

Do you desire to be made healthy in love in this life?

Are you earnestly striving after it?

Over the years, you, Marsh Chapel, have provided reasoned hearing for moments of inspiration, so not to be conformed, but to be transformed by the renewing of the mind, as Paul has it. Think in four strands.

Some special ones have come as friends or students of ours, a strand of students from BU, as alumni if you will of Marsh Chapel have over time taken leadership in campus ministries near and far. Your inspiration has borne fruit, with colleagues engaging campus life at Bates, at Tufts, at Bentley, at Emerson, at Middlebury, at St Paul at Syracuse, at American, at Emory, at University of Chicago, and elsewhere.

Your inclination to inspiration has borne fruit in voices of truth and love, here, over many years. The historic strand of Methodism. The gift largely of our time, though dating to Anna Howard Shaw decades ago, the strand of women in the pulpit. International, and global strands, ecumenical and interreligious strands, all sharing an inclination to inspiration.

Your inspiration has also borne fruit in a fine, particular African American strand of preaching, dating to Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King (whose ‘Dream’ speech turns 60 tomorrow). I can hear guest voices from that strand, that rich tradition, and picture them in our pulpit. I close my eyes and hear their cadences, their inflections, their pauses, their voices. Bobbie Mcclain. Peter Paris. Lawrence Carter. Cornell William Brooks. Elizabeth Siwo. Dale Andrews. Peter Gomes. Jonathan Walton. Walter Fluker. Christopher Edwards. Robert Franklin. Preeminently Robert Franklin. Ken Elmore. And, after some serious pestering, without pause, of his gracious administrator, a wonderful gracious woman, our former Governor Deval Patrick. (She called on Friday to schedule a talk on Monday, saying…’You will be happy’. Happy indeed!)

For this summer of 2023 the strand was from your extended family, your spiritual children, the children of Marsh Chapel who now lead and teach and preach, whether here or at Harvard or at Vanderbilt or in Rochester. You have cast your bread upon the water, and some has come back to you, this summer. We are still rightly judged by the kind of people we produce. And grateful we are to Jessica Chicka, Soren Hessler, Jen Quigley, Bill Cordts, Stephen Cady, Regina Walton, and Karen Coleman. Marsh Chapel: this summer our own family came home. And they came to inspire us, and to remind us. To remind us, to inspire us by reminding us. Drew Faust, former Harvard President, has just done so with her autobiography, NECESSARY TROUBLE.

Most of us most of the time need more reminder than instruction. So, as you think about discipleship and its costs, say each of these twice every morning…
Faith is not a prize to achieve but a gift to receive.
The gospel is not about success and failure but about death and resurrection.
Cultural, racial and religious divisions are hard and real, today, and in first century Palestine. They must be faced and addressed.
Sometimes the divine voice is and has to be harsh, like when a Father warns his son not to touch a hot stove.
Food matters, really matters, and so, as in the sacrament is at the heart of our faith and faithfulness.
Love brings happiness as those four young men from Liverpool reminded us: all you need us love. Love is the way to happiness. Nostalgia can block out curiosity. Nostalgia can eclipse curiosity.

Love includes. Faith does not exclude. Hope includes. Love, faith and hope are like communion at Marsh Chapel. All are included. Sometimes an anthem can and will interpret the Gospel for the day, alongside the sermon.

You can see and hear these at your inclination, for your inspiration. And, now, thanks to one of our staff, whose name I cannot give you but whose initials are Chloe McLaughlin, you can listen to 799 services on podcast, starting with August 2008. You can listen for 47 days and 7 hours straight. Hm…that might be an ideal requirement for theology students…

Matthew teaches us, as does all Scripture.

We are disciples.  The word means student.  Disciple means student.  Salve Discipuli.  Salve Magistra.   Discipleship means studentship.  The model of faithfulness recommended, particular in Matthew, and especially in Matthew 16, is the model of the student.  Perhaps if we simply said ‘studentship’ rather than ‘discipleship’, we would do better.  Perhaps we should and could see the courageous arrival of the class of 2027 as exhibit a, exemplum docet.

Living right means learning together—in voice, in thought, in conflict, in Scripture.  Learning together.

It is this driving preachment that causes Matthew to eviscerate Mark here.   Matthew in 85ad has taken a passage from Mark in 70ad and turned it upside down.   It is not so much the detail, by the way, of the manner in which Matthew and Luke revise Mark, chapter by chapter, which is important.  What matters is that they have the courage to do so, that they happily re-gospelled the gospel for their own day, to a fair thee well.

No?  No?  Oh Yes. Yes, indeed.  Yes.

(1)Mark in the passage calls Peter ‘Satan’.  Matthew calls him Rock.  (2)Mark has no mention of any church of any kind.  Matthew uses the word, the Greek word for church, ecclessia—not likely something Jesus would have said, and gives Peter keys to the kingdom.  (3)Mark has Jesus tell the disciples—the students—to keep it all secret.  Matthew rejects that secrecy, except for the title, messiah, and says, ‘preach it’.  Why?  Why does Matthew eviscerate, confound, gut, overturn his legacy, this inherited passage from Mark?  Answer:  he and his community are learning together…in a new time…in a different setting.  So they are learning, as are we. From voices.  From thoughts.  From conflicts.  And Matthew sternly tells his people:  for inspiration to take hold, take root and last, for us to become fully human we will need institutional grounding, support, protection, and sustenance:  family, neighborhood, school, church, university, country, globe.  And let me be clear about the church, Matthew’s Jesus adds, for all its troubles in every age:  the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.

And one more thing, as we are learning together in voice, thought, conflict and scripture. Who do you say He is?  In your life. Notice the passage crashes away from the general and the philosophical—what do others say (general) about the son of man (philosophical).  Some say (general), the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the Prophets (philosophical).  Notice the move to the specific and the personal.  Who do you say I am?  Meaning for you today:  how are you going to live?  A life of studentship, or not?  Said Peter, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”  Remember this.  Peter is the one who most needed forgiveness, and full pardon he did receive.  There is forgiveness in life (repeat). And the church is the place where people like Peter, like you and me, who need forgiveness, find themselves forgiven.   That is your legacy in the liberal church.

Matthew teaches us.

That is, the tradition in Matthew 16, of Peter, the rock, on which the church—the commonwealth, the koinonia, the fellowship, the sharing, the community of faith, including right here and right now—is based, in Peter, on one thing. Inspiration. Are you open to a moment of inspiration?

Peter was is called the rock, not for his consistency, not for his pedigree, not for his perfection, not for his physical strength, and certainly not for his swimming ability, where he is the rock as in sink like a rock. Jesus calls him out because he is open to inspiration. He has a moment of inspiration, and in that kind of inspired moment faith and the community of faith are born and bred. ‘You are---the Christ’. An indelible moment, of inspiration. And for such inspiration, come Sunday, come any day, we need the gifts of the church: the gift of quiet, the gift of courage, the gift of others around us to correct and challenge, and then, yes, scripture and architecture and music and liturgy and sacrament and all manner of grace, to keep us within earshot of…breath, the breath of God, spirit, inspiration.

Our experience includes many fallow times and seasons, including these just now waning, if they are waning, from COVID. But there are also powerful Petrine moments of inspiration. That is the good news. That is the gospel. All, especially our arriving 18 year olds, need very much to hear this. Every day invites inspiration. Remember Wilder’s Emily Webb, returning for one day to the land of the living:

‘O Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me.  Mama 14 years have gone by.  I’m dead.  You’re a grandmother Mama.  I married George Gibbs.  Wally’s dead too.  His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway.  We felt just terrible about it–don’t you remember?  But, just for a moment now we’re all together, Mama.  Just for a moment we’re happy.  LET’S LOOK AT ONE ANOTHER’

‘So all that was going on and we never noticed.  Grover’s Corners.  Mama and Papa. Clock’s ticking. Sunflowers.  Food and coffee.  New ironed dresses and hot baths.  Sleeping and waking up.  Earth! You are too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

A long time ago, by grace, a moment of inspiration arrived at the right time, and in the right way. With one child at 18 months, and another on the way in a few more months, the draw toward doctoral studies would not abate. We looked at the usual suspects, Boston and Harvard, Yale and Union, Drew and Duke, but for varieties of reasons nothing fit, nothing worked. Then, one early winter snowy day, looking through the brochures of schools in the village library, a red booklet marked McGill came to hand. And there, snow falling, of a sudden, that real kind of lived inspiration, a moment of inspiration, arrived. The second largest French speaking city in the world, le Europe prochaine, the Europe next door, an excellent faculty, within geographic reach, at least south of the border, for our Bishop to arrange for service in churches there. We could afford it. We could imagine it. We could reach it. We could do it. For all the challenges, it was doable. The world is full of possibilities. Life is full of unforeseen opportunities. An hour of quiet, a different perspective, a little snow to still the soul and open the spirit, and, then, a moment of inspiration. The shadow of Peter, the Rock, is not mainly in the administrative structures of the ecclesia, important as they are. His shadow falls with delicacy and grace on you.

Inspiration.

A moment of inspiration.

Peter was seized by a moment of inspiration.

And you?

Are we?

Are you open to a moment of inspiration?

Have you faith?

Have you faith in Christ?

Are you going on to wholeness?

Do you expect to be made healthy in love in this life?

Are you earnestly striving after it?

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 08.27.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
August 20

What will it take?

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 15:10–28

The text of this sermon is not available at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.

-The Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman, University Chaplain for Episcopal Ministries

posted in The Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman, Chaplain for Episcopal Ministry on 08.20.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
August 13

Sink or Swim?

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 14:22–33

The text of this sermon is not available at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.

-The Rev. Dr. Regina L. Walton, Denominational Counselor for Anglican/Episcopal Students and Lecturer, Harvard Divinity School

posted in Guest Preachers on 08.13.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
August 6

Feasting Together

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 14:13–21

Good morning, Marsh Chapel! I’m glad to be back in the pulpit again for our summer preaching series as we enter into August (it’s August already, can you believe it?)

We continue our exploration of Matthew and the Costs of Discipleship this morning. Last week we heard about the kingdom of heaven in Matthew’s gospel. Through many metaphors, Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven as a mustard seed, as yeast, as a net catching fish, as a treasure that is hidden. As Rev. Dr. Stephen Cady pointed out to us, in using these metaphors, Jesus is teaching us that the kingdom of heaven can be realized on Earth. Jesus comes to us to teach us how to live and in doing so shows us that love is the way of life. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is depicted most strongly as a teacher. He instructs the disciples on how to minister to others. He instructs the world on what the central message of his teaching is, to recognize God’s sovereignty and the importance of love and care of one another.

In this week’s text, Jesus continues his ministry not through parables or metaphor, but through concrete action. Jesus shows us what the kingdom of heaven is actually like using bread and fish. Using compassion and patience. The story of the feeding of the 5,000 is a familiar one to our ears. We’ve encountered it before as one of Jesus’ miracles. In fact, it is the only one of Jesus’ miracles, except for the resurrection, that is recounted in all four Gospels. The writers of the gospels all share this story because it demonstrates a central importance to Jesus’ ministry and the message Jesus is sending to the world through his actions. It also provides many avenues from which we can understand the significance of this story. In fact, some scholars believe that while this may not have been a concrete historical event, its ability to be interpreted through many different lenses offers the opportunity for us to find meaning in a variety of circumstances. Morality, social justice, physical need, and our understanding of the Lord’s supper all influence how we read this text.

For the disciples, this event is a challenge to their understanding of their way of life. The kingdom of heaven pokes its way through into our reality through Jesus’ actions. First, Jesus, although tired and seeking some refuge in time away from the demands of his ministry (something that we should know is necessary to continue to do one’s work well) is drawn back into that ministry by a crowd of people who followed him and the disciples to a deserted place. I’m sure you can relate to how the disciples might have felt in this situation. Who among us has been eager to take a rest, to find a quiet space, only to be drawn back into the world by the needs of another? I know for parents this is particularly true. In this case, he people come, and some of them are sick, so Jesus shows compassion and heals them rather than taking his rest.

There must have been many sick people, because Jesus’ healing work goes into the evening. The disciples, not necessarily out of a desire to get rid of the crowd, but perhaps out of concern for their ability to find food and shelter, ask Jesus to send the crowd away. They are, after all, in a deserted area and while the disciples know they have food for themselves, the likelihood that others have brought food or will be able to find anything to eat where they are is slim. It makes sense then, to let them go back to where they can have food. Jesus’ response to them is almost as if their request doesn’t make any sense. He tells the disciples to feed them, knowing they only have five loaves of bread and two fish.

Now, nowhere in this gospel reading does it say that Jesus somehow makes piles of food. It tells us that he blesses and breaks the bread, but he leaves it up to the disciples to distribute the food to those in need of a meal. While they do so, they find that there are not running out, but that there is enough food for all. So much so that there is bread to spare at the end. Everyone is able to eat until they are full, something that might have been a rarity for the marginalized members of that society. Because the food doesn’t appear suddenly in a big pile, there isn’t some moment where the crowd is amazed by what is happening or in awe of what takes place. Instead, this miracle is happening in real time as both the disciples and the crowd realize that there is more than enough for everyone.

The feeding of the more than 5000 (remember, 5000 was only the number of the men in attendance, we’re told there were also women and children present as well) gives a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven. In the moment when it appears that there is no solution to meeting the basic needs of the people in his presence, Jesus shows that in the kingdom of heaven there is more than enough for all. Trusting in God, having faith in God, allows for this miraculous event to happen. In moments of challenge, Jesus teaches us to discern what’s possible when we look at the world with eyes that are not yet adjusted to the kingdom of heaven.

There are two examples of challenge in our current contexts that tie into today’s gospel nicely, even if at the outset they seem like two very different problems.

One example of how we might see today’s gospel applied to our lives is how we conceive of the church (that’s Church with a big “C” – inclusive of all Christianity) in today’s world. There’s a lot of conversation about what the future of the Church will look like these days. As protestant denominations continue to see a decline in membership and individual congregations face the challenges of limited funds, aging buildings, and shrinking numbers, the options available are, in a word, hard. Some congregations, lacking funds and people, have no choice but to close. Others go through the process of merging with one or two other congregations who share life in ministry together. Most places are having a hard time envisioning what the future will bring for them. The studies and research on religious affiliation aren’t encouraging, either. Younger generations aren’t as actively involved in religious organizations as older generations had been at their age. While younger generations may be willing to identify as spiritual, but not religious, they aren’t actively participating in communities of faith in the same ways as previous generations.

Another concerning aspect of our current global situation is the level of food insecurity found around the world. We see it in our own country and even in our own communities. With inflation increasing the prices of everything, including basic needs like food, food insecurity is on the rise. The latest data from the USDA which is from 2021 indicates that 10.2 % of the population is food insecure with 3.8% having very low food security. These statistics are higher for households with children, those living in metropolitan areas, for black and persons of color households, and for those headed by a single woman.1 Globally, international markets affect the distribution of food to the point that it becomes scarce. African countries in particular share the burden of the most food insecurity.2 The frustrating aspect of all these cases of food insecurity is not that there isn’t enough food to go around to feed the world’s population. No, in fact, we have more than enough food. Global markets and systems which see food as a good rather than a human need prevent access through pricing and distribution.

Both cases of the future of the church and global food insecurity are just two examples of challenges that feel like desperate situations in our current world. While there is a fear of “not having enough” in both situations – either young people to carry on congregational life or “enough” food to go around for those in need – the reality is that there is enough. Today’s gospel teaches us that what might feel like a hopeless situation actually calls on us to live into the kingdom of heaven mentality that Jesus encourages the disciples to experience. Perhaps the church, as it is now, is in the process of changing and in a place where it needs to more actively meet the needs of those marginalized or who have felt excluded. Some of these communities already exist, and their impact is greatly felt by the surrounding community and those whom the church may not usually reach. While we might not be able to affect change on a global level when it comes to food insecurity, there are opportunities to engage the local community in efforts to ease the stress of food insecurity for all.

One such opportunity which ties together both of these issues in a movement within Mainline Protestant denominations within the past 10-15 years. Recently, upon the suggestion of a graduate student here at Marsh Chapel, I read the book We Will Feast by Kendall Vanderslice. In it, Vanderslice, a gastronomist who studied here at BU, explores the dinner church movement as an alternative church experience which centers worship around a meal that involves the Eucharist. Vanderslice also has a keen interest in theology, most recently identifying within the Episcopal/Anglican tradition, but also having experienced other types of worship throughout her life. In her words, her book “explores what happens when we eat together as an act of worship,” through various case studies of churches who incorporate a meal as part of their liturgy (21). As a gastronomy student, she was interested in seeing how food was intertwined with faith and how new communities were forming with feeding people as part of their goals. As she states “..in God’s love for the beloved creation God called it good, and in the narrative that continues through Jesus, humanity received a ministry of meals.” (3) Eating, or feasting, is central to the church’s history, including in today’s gospel.

Vanderslice’s case studies include a variety of congregations – some located in storefronts in urban centers, welcoming all who want a meal and community to join in, and some in actual gardens, where the emphasis on connecting the land and what it produces becomes a bigger aspect of the meal. Instead of the standard stock liturgy she experienced in her regular congregation, she was welcomed into communities which shared the responsibilities of preparing and eating a meal together while also having an opportunity to hear scripture and participate in communion. Every aspect of the meal came from the community – from the bakers who made the bread from scratch to those who would come to set the tables and prepare the food, to those who would cleanup afterward. People were encouraged to have conversation and to share in the intimate act of eating with one another. In Vanderslice’s words “something powerful happens at the table.” (4) People go from strangers to opening up to each other in conversation and taking the time to be fully present to one another during the meal. They share in the bread. They serve each other the wine or grape juice. They provide sustenance, physically, socially, and spiritually. As relationships form, divisions that may have previously existed begin to dissolve and the body of Christ becomes one again.

Furthermore, dinner church changes the way in which one thinks about the eucharist. Eating is a central part of Jesus ministry; It is also a central part of our own worship. Remember that in today’s gospel, we encounter the familiar scene of Jesus blessing the bread and breaking it, which will be echoed in the narrative of the last supper. Tying this act to our own celebration of the eucharist reminds us that we are not only spiritually fulfilled when we come to the table, but that we also have a responsibility to show compassion and care to others to make sure that they are physically filled and able to live full lives.

Will every community benefit from hosting dinner church? No, of course not. Vanderslice herself does not think that all churches would be better off if they became dinner churches. But, she tempers this opinion with a statement:

“I do, however, believe that every church and every Christian should understand the power of food and should expand their vision of what Jesus intended when asking his followers to eat and drink in remembrance of him. And I do believe these examples of worship around the table should inspire thoughtful reflection about who feels welcome or unwelcome in our churches, whom we see and whom we fail to see, who leaves lonely and who leaves grounded in community.” (166)

Jesus’ ministry is steeped in feeding and taking care of those in need. In so much of our holy scripture, God comes to people in moments of challenge through feeding – to the Israelites when they were in the desert longing for food with Moses, to the five thousand in the wilderness with Jesus, to the table at the last supper, when Jesus instructs his disciples to feed others just as he is feeding them.

Today we will celebrate the Eucharist with one another. As we do, I urge you to think about what it means when Jesus tells us to “do this in remembrance of me.” While we are spiritually fed, how can we aid others in being spiritually, socially, and physically fed? Jesus instructs us that when we have some, we should be willing to share with all. That is what the kingdom of heaven is like.

“Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’”

Amen.

-The Rev. Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain for International Students

posted in The Rev. Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain for International Students on 08.6.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
July 30

The Likeness of Being

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 13:31–33, 44–52

The text of this sermon is not available at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.

-The Rev. Dr. Stephen Cady, Senior Minister, Asbury First United Methodist Church (Rochester, NY)

posted in Guest Preachers on 07.30.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
July 23

On the Law

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 5:21–30, 38–48

The text of this sermon is not available at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.

-Mr. William Cordts, MDiv., Alumnus of the Boston University School of Theology

posted in Guest Preachers on 07.23.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
July 16

Summer Camp and the Reign of God

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 13:1–9, 18–23

The text of this sermon is not available at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.

-The Reverend David Romanik, Rector, Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest (Abilene, TX)

posted in Guest Preachers on 07.16.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
July 9

Rest for the Soul

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 11:16-19,25-30

Upon this summer Sunday, let us meditate on discipleship, and its gifts, and its expenses...its costs. Our gospel begins with the playful imagination of children in the marketplace. St. Paul wrote in a similar way to his Corinthian congregation:

God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty

Discipleship costs more than wisdom alone. The walk of faith evokes and involves a rest for the soul, embracing imagination, the free play of insight, the province of children and saints.

What a gift are the parables of Jesus! He taught them in parables, says the Scripture, and without a parable he taught not one thing.

Jesus stands in the marketplace. He sees two warring groups of children. All community is endless contention and intractable difference. One group wants to play a game called ‘weddings’: we have our pipes, we are ready to dance, come and join us, and let us play the game of weddings. Another group wants to play a game called ‘funerals’: we have our tears, our wailing, our gathered mourning clothes and forms, come and join us and let us play the game of funerals. One game for the enjoyment of life preferred by Jesus himself, one game for the dour, self-discipline for life, preferred by John the Baptist. Come and join!

Yet neither group will give way. Groups, as Reinhold Niebuhr taught us in Moral Man and Immoral Society, have a hard time changing direction, or giving way, or forgiving, or summoning an imagination ready for discipleship. That requires a childlike heart. It requires an imagination soaked discipleship. It requires the person whom you are meant to become. And it costs.

Did you ever know and love somebody who was always a bit on edge? I mean a beautiful person with a heart of gold, who was run raw by the gone-wrongness of life? This can be a rough world for a sensitive soul. Someone who has an unquenchable passion for getting things right and for knowing when things are wrong. A little of that can go a long way. If your very hunger is for what establishes, rests, the soul, you can sometimes go hungry.

Imagine with her eyes: Every child in the community was attending a safe, well-lit, quiet school, where virtually all could read at the sixth grade level by the time they finished the sixth grade level. Every sick person in the community had ample medical care, most of it preventive, and all of it shot through with a heavenly infusion of time, talent and money. Every person of color in the community felt confident entering the public spaces—theaters, churches, stadiums, stores—in every corner of the community. Every person is seen and heard as a real human being. That is her—and perhaps your—vision.

But around us, other. Around us a frightfully warming planet. Around us the generations deep effects of poverty. Around us horrific hourly slaughter in Ukraine, without even a single honest report of total deaths 500 days later. Around us the senseless needless shootings, gun deaths, to which we become inured. Around, yes, and within us, the anxieties and distrusts of our time. Imagine with her eyes, and feel with her soul.

Today the gospel offers her, and you, a word of promise, with a note of challenge, a word of challenge with a note of promise. Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden (challenge), and I will give you rest (promise).

Here at the University, at the fountain of youth, we are blessed with intelligence, vigor, freedom, and reason.

We want to be careful, and caring, though, so we pause here. We educators sometimes tend to leave civil society to the rest of society. We have much freedom, but how we choose to use it, in relation to the rest of community and society, is another matter. We after all have that next paper to write, 50 pages of small print not including footnotes, titled with some version of the title, ‘Obscurity Squared’. To do that, one needs a capacity to spend 12 hours a day alone in a library or in front of a computer screen. To do that, to write that series of scholarly papers become books become resume become tenure become professor, can risk leaving aside, if we are not careful, or leaving to others, if we are not careful, the imaginative stewardship of forms of civil society…

Girl Scout cookies. Umpire work for the Little League. Pinewood derby leadership. A seat on the PTA. Sunday worship. Neighborhood watch. Refugee resettlement work. These we have to leave in the hands of others, or at least we think we do, those basic cultural building blocks that rest on a willingness to sit quietly in dull meetings, hoping against hope for the blessed refrain, ‘I guess we’re done for tonight’. In civil society we have the chance to influence others, to be influencers, and to be influenced among others, in lasting, personal ways. You want to speak to others, to convince others, to educate—good. But. You cannot speak to others until or unless you speak for others. To speak to requires first to speak for. Others will not hear or heed you, and should not, in your speech to them, if they do not, with utter confidence, feel, feel, that you speak for them as well. To speak for, you have to be with. At breakfast. Playing golf. In book club. In church. At the YMCA. Then, only then, will you have enough funds in the relational bank when you need to withdraw some to say something that may then be audible. If you want people to hear you, preacher, you have to go and be with people, in visitation, on their turf, in community. If you want to speak to others, educators, you will have to find a way to speak for others, not just to others. This is the whole genius of American civil society, from the time of De Tocqueville. Whether we will find, in the humiliations of an era whose leadership is shredding inherited forms of civil society on an hourly basis, the humility to go out and suffer with and for others, over the better part of the next decade, in order then to speak, is an unanswered question. To get to an answer we may just need some imagination, costly imagination, in our discipleship, and some rest along the way. Finding it, it will find us in receipt of a glorious rest for the soul, one of the real gifts of summers—the point of summer.

Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds, saith the Lord. In challenging promise, and in promissory challenge. Our Gospel lures us and lures our imagination forward, for discipleship. Have we yet learned the lesson that what one meant—by an act, a word, a statement, a vote, say—is not all that such an act means?  We have experienced this lesson this tough truth, in the last several years. The lesson, that is, that what you in your heart meant by an act, a word, a statement—a vote, is not in fact the limit of what that act, word, statement or vote means:  in fact it is a small part, the greater part of the meaning being found in the effect, the impact, the historical influence of the deed. Wisdom is vindicated, known, in her deeds. Said our onetime Boston University Dean Ray Hart, The meaning of a text is found in the future it opens, the future it imagines, the future it creates. So too, the meaning of an act, a word, a statement, a vote, say, is found in the future, bright or dark, which it creates.  What you meant is not what it means.  For that, we have to listen to those harmed, or helped, by it.  Meaning is social, not merely individual, hence our use of words, our developed language, our investment in culture, our life in community.  You may have meant it one way, but its meaning is found along another.  Such hard, tragic lessons, to have to learn and re-learn, in our time. And relearn again, in 2023 and in 2024.

Here, Jesus is our beacon not our boundary. Here Jesus is rest for the soul. Imagination is a costly dimension of discipleship that is waxing not waning, needed not superfluous, crucial not peripheral. Our lessons today, Genesis, Psalms, and Romans, presage the Gospel, and draw our imaginations to forms of authority, and our engagement with them. In Genesis, the authority in ancestry. In Psalms, the authority in government. In Romans, the authority in conscience. In all these, the writers struggle to imagine a way forward, following the promising light of the beacon across the challenge of the boundary.

Our parable brings us an invocation, a summer call to rest, rest for the soul. Pause and meditate a little this summer on your own enjoyment of play. Our esteemed Boston University colleague and beloved mentor, now of blessed memory, Peter Berger did so, in rumination about discipleship, years ago in his little book, A Rumor of Angels. He noticed moments of rest for the soul. I see some too. 1. I see grown men enthralled on a green field following a wee little white ball, which seems to have a mind of its own, for three or four hours in the hot sun. 2. I see grown women shopping together without any particular need, but immersed, self-forgetful, in the process of purchasing, God knows what. 3. I see emerging adults fixed and fixated, days on end, in a large puzzle on a long table. 4. Can you remember playing bridge in college all night long, to the detriment of your zoology grade? Peter Berger: A. In playing, one steps out of one time into another…When adults play with genuine joy, they momentarily regain the deathlessness of childhood. The experience of joyful play is not something that must be sought on some mystical margin of existence. It can readily be found in the reality of ordinary life…The religious justification of the experience can be achieved only in an act of faith…B. This faith is inductive—it does not rest on a mysterious revelation, but rather on what we experience in our common, ordinary lives…Religion is the final vindication of childhood and of joy, and of all gestures that replicate these. Last winter, one sophomore, breaking from study, said: “I played basketball today, on the intramural team—it was awesome.” Rest to, and for, the soul.

A wisdom vindicated, justified by her deeds, is a cost of discipleship. (St. Luke in his version has changed the ending to ‘justified by all her children’—maybe an even closer memory to the marrow of, the history of, the parable.). There is always a possibility of and for good. In every day, there is a possibility of and for good.

Hear again the imaginative wisdom of Boston University’s own one time personalist philosopher, Erazim Kohak, in The Embers and The Stars, with whose epigram we conclude, this summer morning, to kindle and draw on a rest for the soul:

‘Humans are not only humans, moral subjects and vital organisms. They are also Persons, capable of fusing eternity and time in the precious, anguished reality of a love that would be eternal amid the concreteness of time. A person is a being through whom eternity enters time.’ Op. cit. 208

Sursum Corda! Receive the Divine Gift of Rest for the Soul! A challenging promise, and a promissory challenge.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 07.9.2023 at 11:00 am