Sunday
April 16
A Quickened Life
By Marsh Chapel
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Preface
“God, who gives life to the dead, and who calls into existence the things that do not exist”
The gift of resurrection is faith. The rightness of God, is given, from faith to faith, from the faith of Christ, the faithfulness of Christ, to you. In the darkness, light. A quickened life by faith, of faith, in faith.
St. Paul, in his magnum opus, Romans, beckons by faith to faith your faith and my faith. Some of us have been auditing the course in life and faith long enough. This is Easter. It may be time for you to quit auditing the course, and sign up and register and pay the tuition go to class and do the homework and sit for the final and receive a grade. I’ll settle this morning for attendance and tuition, Sunday worship and tithing, to start. However will you hear faith without worship? However will you find faith without community? However will you know faith without study? However will you receive faith without giving in faith? Let this be your first Sunday of worship over the next year, not the last.
A Quickened Life by Faith
Some years ago, well before winter dawn, I had crossed the border into Canada, driving north and east, 90 minutes, in the driving snow, in pursuit of a McGill PhD, and headed for the Mercier Bridge—such a nice name for such a rickety bridge—‘prier pour mois, je conduit sur le pont Mercier’. At the border there were pronounced the usual four questions. Your life, your faith, bring answers to them, every day, one way or another. Life is short. We will leave to Dr. Hobbes the question whether life is also and more so ‘solitary, nasty, poor, and brutish’. Short, no doubt. And another day, and the border questions, including Easter Morn: ‘What is your name? Where are you from? Where are you going? Do you have anything to declare?’ One day, in full, we shall answer. Today, Easter day, we answer in part, affirming our faith.
That 30 below zero snow cascading morning, those foolish enough to drive did so with care, inching along beside the St. Lawrence river. Ahead loomed the headlights of a tractor trailer. The lights flashed, and the truck slowed to stop, and the driver opened his window. ‘Pardone moi: Ou est le frontier?’ Glad to see some other lights in the tundra, glad to have tracks in the snow road to follow, glad to hear a human voice, I picked through my meager basket of French words to cobble up a response. ‘Bon, Le Frontier est prochaine, ouest…’ But before I could finish my soliloquy, worthy I expected of Marcel Proust at his dour best, the driver smiled and laughed and said, ‘Oh, buddy, thank goodness, you’re an American! I can tell by the way you don’t speak French! Excellent. How do I get out of this wilderness?’
The gift of resurrection is faith. The rightness of God, is given, from faith to faith, from the faith of Christ, the faithfulness of Christ, to you. In the darkness—surprise!–light. Romans announces the Gospel. The Gospel reveals itself only through faith, and it leads to nothing other than faith. Think slowly through the Gospel, in the full letter to the Romans:
To bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations
I am not ashamed of the Gospel. It is the power of God for 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’
God gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.
Therefore, since we are justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…Suffering produces endurance, and endurance character, and character hope, and hope does not disappoint us because of the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by faith through the Holy Spirit.
Hope that is seen is not hope. Who hopes for what he sees? We hope for what we do not see, and wait for it with patience.
‘What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed, by the renewal of your mind.
Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Never lag in zeal. Be ardent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in your hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the saints. Practice hospitality.
A quickened life, by faith.
A Quickened Life of Faith (Romans 4: 17b)
And of faith—a quickened life of faith.
This month, among other pursuits, the icy back roads of an utterly foreign dominion, The Epistle to the Romans, have beckoned, coming to Easter. Paul has something to say to us at Easter. Something about faith. The resurrection frees up the church’s gospel preaching, the offer of the gift of faith. Have you faith? Do you know God to be a pardoning God? Are you moving on to wholeness? Do you expect wholeness in this lifetime?
Tucked away in the winding, ice laden back roads of Romans, you come upon a sharp, almost a U-Turn, at Romans 4: 17b. The next stretch of highway is no picnic, either. You tell me what it means to believe ‘in hope against hope’, for example. But here, in an astonishing curve, Paul lets slip a side angle view of God. Tell the truth, said Dickinson, but tell it slant. Slant Paul says it here. The verse, one must honestly admit, as does your preacher this Easter, finally resists at depth a final rendering. That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace…in the presence of the God…(get ready for it)…who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Pause for just an Easter second right here. Paul spells God by resurrection first, and creation second. Paul names God in resurrection first, and creation second. Greek, like German can abide varieties of sentence word orders (In German all is fair as long you remember the verb at the end of the sentence to put!) Here, Romans 4: 17b to be exact, Paul at the pinnacle of his powers, cedes the first word about God to the resurrection, and makes creation a sub-set of resurrection. Who raises the dead, and creates out of nothing.
Your resurrection is too small, to paraphrase JB Phillips. A quickened life is a faith life of height and breadth and depth—resurrection above all, resurrection in all, resurrection under all! Here you are given a fatter Easter, a more robust raising, an ampler hope, a wider mercy. I love the word ‘stout’. Here is resurrection, stout. Bigger than…all outdoors. I wonder if our resurrection faith could stand a little expansion, a bigger suit size, 42 not 40 long, say, another notch out in the belt, say, an un-hemming of the hem, say?
On closer inspection, Romans 4: 17b that is, there is more. For an unexplained reason, Paul does not use his usual go-to verb for raising here, eigeiro, which everywhere else in letter he does. He uses another, zoapoiountos. This means enlivens, quickens, gives life. And there is more! The rest of the verse, ‘non-being into being’, is a reckoning, beckoning, harkening to the creation ex nihilo, the creation from nothing. Under every frosty evergreen, along every pre-dawn snow belted path, in and through all creation is the power of something from nothing which is best known in resurrection. The Easter is not an add on to whatever other remarkable things one can hear in life, learn in college, and remember in dotage. Resurrection is everywhere, everything, all the time, without measure, itself subsuming the creation, as does the creation of the creation. Alkier: ‘Faith…without any validation. Barth (ETTR): ‘faith brings the known condition and status of human life into relation with the unknown God.’…
Paul speaks sparingly but stoutly of resurrection in Romans (e.g.1:4, 4:24, 6:5, 7:4, 8:11).
Resurrection stands up faith. Be upstanding, faithful ones, be upstanding. As we stand for the Gospel every Sunday here at Marsh Chapel, you be upstanding in life, abstaining evil, practicing good, worshipping God. Go to church on Sunday and tithe, for starters. And great ready to cross the existential border!
A quickened life, of faith.
A Quickened Life in Faith
And in faith—a quickened life in faith.
What is your name?
Our name is given in baptism.
In baptism. One part cross, one part resurrection.
In baptism. Recall the trials of the week past. Betrayal (Judas). Denial (Peter). Judgment (Pilate). Struggle (bearing the cross). Pain (Crucifixion). Trauma (Crucifixion). Humiliation (Crucifixion). Suffering (Crucifixion). Injustice (Crucifixion). Defeat (Crucifixion). Torture (Crucifixion). Despair (Why?). Rejection (burial). Scorn (burial). Death (burial).
In baptism. Today is Easter, the day of resurrection. We celebrate with gladness Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, in concert with the church universal, the church militant, and the church triumphant. Our hymns evoke gladness, our prayers hope, our gatherings promise. Today in faith we affirm the triumph of the invisible over the visible. We hear the voice that is no voice, the words that have no hearing, the range of declaration that stretches out through ‘all the earth’, as our psalm says. The resurrection of Jesus makes possible the preaching of the church.
We all have ways down the road we can learn and teach, teach and learn, the care of the earth. Someone gave you a name, in baptism and in birth.
Where are you from?
We are from, out of, a cloud of witnesses, the church, the church militant and the church triumphant, the church of the majestic brass—militant, and the church of the lilies in honor and remembrance—triumphant.
The church. Hunsinger: Indicative not imperative; gift not possession; conformation not imitatio Christ; resemblance not equivalence; suggestive not technical; ecumenist not ‘modernist’
The church. (Theater) gets us in a room, breathing the same air, thinking about how to be human together (NYT Laura Collins-Hughes 4/10/17).’ Worship does the same, along with other things.
The ‘church’. Abraham Heschel: “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ….get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” …“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
The church. My father-in-law Pennock, Malone NY, 1965, preached on the theme The Need of Intensity. And he is here today?
Where are you headed?
We are on a journey, headed for a promised land, earthly and heavenly. We are walking on a journey together.
A journey. Our baccalaureate speaker last year, heard the resurrection music in the hallway downstairs, and went on to run the peace corps. The Baccalaureate talk last spring by Peace Corps director Carrie Hessler-Radelet (CAS’79, Hon.’16), who called on BU graduates to “embrace the cause of humanity with optimism and enthusiasm.” (BU Today, June 2016).
A journey. Arts of Democracy: Active listening; Creative conflict; Mediation; Negotiation; Dialogue; Evaluation.
A journey. Think of Eugene Lang, PS 121 NYC, who paid for college for any of the 6th graders he spoke to at their graduation, 1981. Half of the 69 6th grade graduates went to college.
Do you have anything to declare?
Out of the marathon bombing horror in 2013 came acquaintance, friendship, love and marriage. Hope springs eternal in the human breast. Roseann Sdoia (lost leg 4/16/13) met Michael Materia (took her to hospital). ‘He was kneeling on the ground, trying to hold me from sliding, trying to hold himself, and trying to hold the tourniquet. And then here I am, telling him to hold my hand. So the poor guy had a lot going on’. After a couple of months, a friendship between the two bloomed into romance. ‘There was an interest growing in each other, kind of quietly, until we talked about it’ (Roseann). Nantucket, 12/4/16 engagement. Then, in full gear he, and slow and steady leading with the left leg she, climbed 1576 steps to the observation deck of the Empire State Building, 86th floor. We’ve spent a lot of time together and from that we got to see each other’s characters and really just bond. (NYT, 12/16).
Coda
The gift of resurrection is faith. The rightness of God, is given, from faith to faith, from the faith of Christ, the faithfulness of Christ, to you. In the darkness, light. Faith is a quickened life. A quickened life, by and of and in faith.
St. Paul, in his magnum opus, Romans, beckons by faith to faith your faith and my faith. Some of us have been auditing the course in life and faith long enough. This is Easter. It may be time for you to quit auditing the course, and sign up and register and pay the tuition go to class and do the homework and sit for the final and receive a grade. I’ll settle this morning for attendance and tuition, Sunday worship and tithing, to start. However will you hear faith without worship? However will you find faith without community? However will you know faith without study? However will you receive faith without giving in faith? Let this be your first Sunday of worship over the next year, not the last.
“God, who gives life to the dead, and who calls into existence the things that do not exist”
– The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.
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