Sunday
October 27
Luke on Health and Humility
By Marsh Chapel
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Merciful Delay?
What drove Luke, alone, to remember or construct these marvelous parables, Luke 9-19? Only Luke has them, and how we would miss them without his composition! What molded them near the year 85ad? The lengthening years, without ultimate victory, since the cross? The long decades of living without Jesus? The uncertainties of institution and culture and citizenship and multiple responsibilities? The daily stresses of managing a budget? It is the primitive church that can give an example to an America waiting to meet disease with patient justice, to meet anxiety with hope. They waited for Jesus to return. And he delayed. And he delays, still. And there is rampant, hateful hurt, across God’s green earth.
Though with a scornful wonder we see her sore oppressed
By schism rent asunder by heresy distressed
Yet saints their watch are keeping their cry goes up ‘how long’?
And soon the night of weeping will be the morn of song.
Luke’s parables confront disease with health and anxiety with humility. At Marsh Chapel, we try to do some of the same. On a day in which we receive new Chapel members, a word then about Marsh.
Marsh Membership?
What is participation in ministry about here?
As a University Chapel and Deanship, Marsh Chapel has some significant structural differences from a local church, some of which are outlined in the document, ‘Forms of Ministry in our Midst’. While there are many ways of entering ministry at Marsh, the Chapel otherwise operates, administratively, as any other deanship on campus, reporting to the President, and funded in large measure by the Provost.
Marsh Chapel is a discreet Christian community of faith, and, if I may, in my pastoral experience, including nine other pulpits, a real gem. Theologically and spiritually, we are broad church; liturgically and musically, we are high church; communally and relationally, we are deep church, in the sense of encouraging vital fellowship and friendship. The simplest way to describe all this is to walk through the sanctuary, and notice the stained glass, of the church through the ages, and of the church in the Methodist tradition.
We are not a Methodist congregation, but our history and lineage, from 1839 to the present, are out of that Religious, Christian, Protestant, English tradition, which emerged under the leadership of John Wesley through the course of the 18th century. Mr. Wesley stands above our portico at the front door. Our hymnal is the Methodist hymnal, though we are not confined to it, and generally operate out of a dual adherence, both to Methodism and to the ‘ecumenical consensus’ (a simple way to see this is to note that we have, distinctively, both wine and grape juice available at communion). Our dean is usually a Methodist minister (and, oddly, 4 of 6 have been named Robert!). We are thus ‘possibilists’ in the Wesleyan sense of an openness to the future in faith, and an interdenominational, international, and even interfaith congregation (both present on Sundays and especially listening via radio, we have for example a number of Jewish participants). Jesus is our beacon not our boundary. You will see that the sanctuary has no permanent cross, but does have a star of David—both fairly substantive ecumenical moves in 1949.
When people join Marsh Chapel, as will happen again in today, we use a part of the ritual for new members in the hymnal. When children are baptized, as will happen again on November 3, at 2pm, we use the order for the Sacrament in the same hymnal. Our members come from a very wide range of religious backgrounds, and in many cases, of no particular religious background. We do not use a single creed (though we are inclined, now and then, to recite one or another in the course of a sermon now and then). We simply ask people, in brief, whether they want Marsh Chapel to be and to be known as their spiritual home. There are of course some down sides to such breadth, but this has been our heritage since Daniel Marsh finished the chapel, and the Trustees named it for him, long ago. Marsh’s book, The Charm of the Chapel, we have here, and one of our staff could get you a copy, should you want one.
To answer in more detail your fine question about doctrine, I will need to give a few points of reference. As with coming to know Martin Luther, the first step would be to read through the sermons (now found easily on our website, from 2003 on). As with coming to know John Calvin, the second step would be to read through the books, here the decanal books. Mine our found in the narthex. Those of my predecessors are also readily available: the two most voluminous collections being those of Dean Neville, 2003-2006 (present almost every week in chapel, and my only living predecessor) and of Dean Howard Thurman, 1953-1965. I recommend from Dean Neville God the Creator, and from Dean Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited. Dean Robert Hamill (1965—1973: he died just weeks after his Christmas sermon of 1972) wrote two short books of sermons, but is best captured in his column for Motive magazine in the 1960’s. Dean Franklin Little (1952-3) brought the academic study of the Holocaust to America, and his book, The Crucifixion of the Jews, is stellar, and still in print. Dean Robert Thornburg (1978-2001) published very little, though his denominational leadership was significant. As with coming to know John Wesley, the third step would be to look at what the chapel actually does, week by week (found in the term book, on the website, and in the bulletin—including the weekly Dean’s Choice). You will find, I think, in broad terms, in the sermons and books and works, that we are a theologically liberal church with a spiritually liberal pulpit, again broadly construed, and in congruence with the history of Boston University, and, indeed, of Boston itself. In sum, with Mr. Wesley, we would affirm ‘that which has been believed always and everywhere by everyone’ (the ecumenical consensus, where there is such); and we would affirm, ‘if thine heart be as mine, then give me thine hand’; and we would affirm, ‘in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity’.
Spiritual Not Religious?
But what if I am more spiritual than religious? What is they healthy humble balance of these two terms?
Well, the distinction, spiritual vs. religious, would not have been intelligible to St. Luke, whose gospel we have been reading these past several months. Whether or not the distinction—spiritual\religious—is one you understand or affirm, it is in its framing at least a modern lens, and to foist it upon the New Testament would be fair in no direction.
Luke is a teacher, like Matthew, whose own gospel is a didactic one. Matthew is organized around five narratives and lectures. Including a long lecture from a mountain. Affirming the jot and tittle of the law. Honoring disciples and discipline. Matthew sees the world and its human inhabitants, to the moment of its audibility for you and me, as a school room filled with students. He is a teacher, and he wants us to learn, as does Luke.
In principle, then, as all learners both larger and smaller and older and younger, we are in conversation with our evangelist. Preaching is interpretation, interpretation of Holy Scriptures, holy out of use and history and function and love and inspiration, whose opening to the ear is meant to teach, as well as to delight and finally to persuade. Learn something from every sermon. Teach something in every sermon. Teach and learn in every sermon. What would Luke and Matthew help us to learn about this current, modern, popular distinction: ‘I am spiritual but not religious’?
It happens that at the heart of the New Testament, there is, one could say, a parallel problem, a similar distinction, at work, being worked, being worked out. That is the problem of Christianity emerging from Judaism. For the readers of Paul. For the students of Luke. For the listeners to Marsh Chapel in the past decade. For these and others, this is not a new story. One of the two great and deep mysteries of the 27 New Testament books is this one. How did a religious and spiritual movement begun in Palestine, led by a Jew and other Jews, born out of the history and theology and society of Judaism, and relying on the whole of the Hebrew Scripture, become, in less than 100 years, entirely Greek?
The New Testament witnesses, it should be strongly asserted, had as a group no disinclination to follow spiritual truth over against the dictates of religious tradition. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, after all. The tearing of Christianity away from Judaism was in part a spiritual revolt against a religious authority. The Lordship of Jesus, the way of faith, the announcement of the resurrection, the advances into the highways and byways, the preaching of the gospel, especially to the gentiles, left religion, of one form, in the dust. One is commanded in fact to ‘shake the dust from one’s feet’.
On the other hand, and perhaps more powerfully, the New Testament writers have every disinclination to celebrate an individualized spiritual perspective, ‘Sheilaism’, ‘bowling alone’, or the new atheism which often dresses in the simple garb of introversion and social, conversational, and relational isolation. The 27 books of the NT, if nothing else, revolve around a steady development of a new community, a beloved community, a community of faith working through love, and are themselves children of and witness to the emergence of that set of communities, the church. Even the Gospel of John, the most spiritual and least institutional of the documents, nonetheless, from its radical angle, forcefully acclaims the experience of love in faith, the love of ‘one another’. The dismantling of one religious structure requires the responsibility to replace it with an improved model (Methodists take note). In this sense, the New Testament would be the polar opposite and spiritual contestant of spirituality today.
Biblical Theology?
And how, kind sir, in your own life and work does this paean to health and humility matter?
Well, remember our ride up the Matterhorn a few weeks ago?
The ride is short but terrifying. At the top, mid-July, thick snow, hard ice, brisk wind and a coldness of cold await you. As does the mesmerizing thrall of the mountain. The Matterhorn. Step gingerly out of the old open rail car. Get your footing, your mountain sea legs. Raise your gaze. Raise your gaze. Raise your gaze. There. A new way of seeing, and so of thinking, and so, then of being. Health and sanity may impel or compel you to higher ground.
My sixteenth book will be published this fall, a collection devoted in part to the New Testament, in part to preaching, and in part to ministry—Bible, Church, World as we in the halcyon younger days of the World Council of Churches intoned. None of the sixteen is a best seller, none a game changer, none found in every home. All but two are still in print, and several in both print and cyber forms. They are the work of Zermatt. Fine. The view from Zermatt is fine. You can share it in physical comfort and communal fellowship. The Matterhorn! Just before you. But. But. But.
As an acrophobe the rail car ride up is not appealing. But it is time for me to move on up, to take higher ground, to climb on to Gornergrat. Ice. Snow. Cold. Wind. That means the prospect of one more, a very different book, for a very different look. A different look takes a different book. It will be, here, for me, the work of the next decade, in pulpit and study. As you cannot get to Gornergrat but through Zermatt, this project depends in full on all that came before: books on the New Testament (John), on preaching (Interpretation), and on ministry (prayer and practice). The next climb is up on to craggy cliff village—ice, snow, cold, wind—of an overture to A Liberal Biblical Theology. Here is a marriage of Rudolph Bultmann and N.T. Wright., a partnership of Paul Tillich and (the early) Karl Barth, an aspirational possibilist (that is Methodist) correlation of history and theology, Bible and Church, accessible to the average reader. Our climate, nation, and denomination, all in peril, hang in the balance.
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
–The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
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