Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Matthew 16:21-28

Click here to hear just the sermon

Change can happen.  Real change, for the good, in real time, can come.  There is in the human heart, sometimes dormant but always present, the capacity to turn around, to repent, to move again forward, to change.  Change can come.  Jesus Christ and Him Crucified is at the mysterious heart of All, of Life, and of Change.  Jesus the Son of God, the Word of God, the Lamb of God, the Presence of God, can bring change.  To you.  Simon Peter found his life immeasurably altered by a word or two, fitly spoken.  He found a liberal heart. You can too.  He found a liberal heart.  We can too.  He found his own heart opened, and forever remade, by the liberality, grace, freedom, generosity and love of God.  We can too.  Peter following this change still struggled to appreciate and bring apperception to the Person of Jesus, the Presence of Jesus, the Power of Jesus.  But the change was permanent.  He was given a liberal heart, a heart of wonder, a heart of vulnerability, a heart of self-abandon.  God is calling you to open your heart today to that kind of change, that scope of change, that force of change. Change can happen.  Real change, for the good, in real time, can come.  There is in the human heart, sometimes dormant but always present, the capacity to turn around, to repent, to move again forward, to change.  Change can come.  Let us pray.

Gracious God, Holy and Just
Thou who art loves us into love and frees us into freedom

In the mystery of thy presence we pause at the beginning

 The beginning of a new season, of a new year, of a new adventure

 Thankful for the wise leadership of our University, and for the chance to learn and study together this autumn

 Now at Matriculation 2020 we offer our common prayer

 We pray for safety, health, and wellness for all

We pray to become good stewards of, protectors of, the safety, health and wellness of others, to be our sister’s keeper, our brother’s keeper

 We pray for the disciplines of courage, and of responsibility, and of compassion that together we shall need, and that together we may find

 We remember in prayer those who got us here, who raised us, taught us, loved us and supported us, and who yearn to see us through

 Bless Boston University this year we pray, bless those who study and those who teach, those who lead and those who support, bless each and every one of us we pray

 With a joy in learning, a regard for virtue, and an inclination to piety—a joy in human knowing, a regard for human doing, and an inclination to  human being

 Grant us thy peace, grant us thy peace, grant us thy peace.  AMEN. 

Our Holy Scripture takes flight first this Lord’s Day with Moses’ fear.  The prospect and the present potential for change bring a quaking in the boots, a quaking in the heart, a quaking in the very soul.  You are right to worry and wonder a little bit about a Matriculation Sunday sermon, and whether it might bruise or cut a little bit.  Alma Mater carries the sense of birth, of child birth.  The mysterium tremendum, all about us, the HOLY HOLY HOLY.  And Moses, God love him, first, fears.  For the Divine Presence brings change.  Real change is real hard, but it comes in real time when real people really work at it:   I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters.  I know their sufferings and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.  But there is no theological exam here, nor any doctrinal requirement.  There is just the chance for change.  It is a very broad brush, a big canvass, a wide and wild painting, big enough for cameo appearances by fearful humans, including Moses, and you, and me.

Our Holy Scripture sails and soars second this Lord’s Day with Paul’s wisdom.  These verses you need to memorize. Romans 12: 9ff.  They are neither heavily theological nor pointedly doctrinal.  They are existential.  They include. They involve many, and various, and different and all.   The church survived and grew for 150 years before it had a Bible, from 30ad to 170ad, at least a Bible of the sort we have today.  It had the Law, Prophets and Writings, but no Gospels shared, no Letters agreed upon, no Apocalypses acclaimed.  The Holy Scripture proved itself Holy, over time, in context, with debate, out of friction.  The Godfather of the New Testament was a gnostic heretic named Marcion, in opposition to whose Bible of Luke and some Letters of Paul the Church instead accepted in addition the Hebrew Scripture, in addition the other Gospels, in addition the other Letters, and even an Apocalypse or two.  Scripture came to life in and through life.  So, you would not blithely disparage it.  It comes with blisters and sores and cuts.  Paul finds change in these 13 very simple, transparent advisements, let love be genuine…practice hospitality. 

Our Holy Scripture lands at Peter’s feet, in the call to change, to a change of heart.  What will it profit if one gains the whole world yet loses one’s soul?  Somewhere between world and soul, Peter discovered a liberal heart.  What Jesus said in 30ad is written down at last by Matthew in 85ad. There was a long line of listening, hearing, sharing, speaking, long before the writing. In part we know this because the two saying here are at odds, one offering 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.   The sayings were written down together in Matthew 16 because they shared a tag word—life. What can you give in exchange for your life? (Here the message is careful: 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. (Here the message is caring: splash around with generosity, give with no thought of return, take up the cross, follow). The two teachings are there to balance each other. Which one for which day on which way will you say? It’s up to you. Over time, you will need them both.  Just this week, in the tragedies of Kenosha Wisconsin, Jacob Blake’s mother was doing the same, balancing justice and order, the caring and the careful:  On Tuesday, Mr. Blake’s mother, Julia Jackson, had told reporters that she opposed the sort of destruction that had been left by protests spurred by her son’s shooting.  Ms. Jackson told reporters that she had been praying for the country to heal.“I’ve noticed a lot of damage,” she said. “It doesn’t reflect my son or my family.” (NYT, 8/26/20).  So, Listen. Tune your ear to God.   Life is short.   This high peak passage, Peter’s Confession, rightly evokes the deep heart of faith, of gospel, of Scripture, of change.  It is the keystone, the lynch pin, the center in some measure of the Gospel we preach, we teach, we depend upon in life, in death and in life beyond death. What will it profit if one gains the whole world yet loses one’s soul?

Life

             In September of 1976, forty-four years ago, like many of our young colleagues on arrival this week for Matriculation, I had found my way to another great city—New York, along another great river—the Hudson, to the center of another great urban university—Columbia.  A sermon that week in James Chapel at Union Seminary was brought uptown from the minister near Greenwich Village at Washington Square.  It has stayed with me, because it was true to life, and true to change in life, and especially true to Moses and Paul and Matthew today.  He commended wonder, vulnerability and self-mockery.   Change of a healthy spiritual sort is not primarily theological or doctrinal, though it might become so.  It is existential.  It is life coming alive.  It is a heart become a liberal heart.  Call it a liberal art heart.

A liberal heart radiates wonder.   Borden Parker Bowne:  Philosophy begins in wonder.  G.K. Chesterton: the world does not lack for wonders, but only for a sense of wonder.  Charles Wesley:  changed from glory into glory, ‘til in heaven we take our place, ‘til we cast our crowns before Thee, lost in wonder, love and praise.  Between Matriculation and Commencement there is chance for a change of heart, a chance for the emergence of a liberal heart, a heart open to wonder, charged with wonder, delighting in wonder.  What we will lead us in part away from anxiety, depression, ennui, acedia, loneliness and despond is in part this sense of wonder.   Some ongoing connection with the natural world, a regular walk along the emerald necklace, say, may aid you here.  Some chance to see the ocean, close at hand, on a regular basis, may help you here.  Some occasional visits to the BU rooftop telescope may help you here.  The joy of reading, the thrill of music, the mystery of friendship, all may bring a new rebirth of wonder.  Even in a fallow, covid time:  we watched one 11 year-old neighbor read 35 books this summer.

A liberal heart owns vulnerability.  Death makes us mortal.  Facing death makes us human.  We are utterly vulnerable creatures, from birth to the beyond.  If nothing else, our current pandemic has indelibly placed such vulnerability before us.  The question is whether we will own it.  Whether we will wash and wash the hands, whether we will attain, maintain and retain social distance, whether we will take up and take on the hourly masking that will protect others vulnerability, and our own.  Our physical vulnerability may also, just may bring a Petrine change to our proclivity to pretend invulnerability.   Somehow Peter came to see life from a different angle, not from the vantage point of power but from the perspective of love.  How?  Who can say?  But in some measure it may well have been a readiness, a willingness to admit his vulnerability, even as he curses his Master’s.  We have a shared vulnerability that should shock us into commitments to communal protections.  We will need shared, common behaviors, educational and health investments, global and national planning and spending to get prepared for the next virus, as have not at all been for this one.  That will take the liberal heart to admit vulnerability.

A liberal heart has a measure of self-abandon, of self-awareness, even of self-mockery.  Take yourself lightly, so that you can fly, like the angels.  Take yourself lightly, so that you can fly, like the angels.  The church has loved Peter for so long because he is so human, so prone to mistake, and yet with such a courage to admit error.  Most students will make a mistake or two in their college years.  No one recommends it. All work against it.  And yet.  We learn, to measure we learn most, from our mistakes.  When they come, if they do, take some time to learn from them.  And then get up, dust yourself off, and be able to live with a little lightness, a little self-mockery.

 Change can happen.  Real change, for the good, in real time, can come.  There is in the human heart, sometimes dormant but always present, the capacity to turn around, to repent, to move again forward, to change.  Change can come.  Jesus Christ and Him Crucified is at the mysterious heart of All, of Life, and of Change.  Jesus the Son of God, the Word of God, the Lamb of God, the Presence of God, can bring change.  To you.  Simon Peter found his life immeasurably altered by a word or two, fitly spoken.  He found a liberal heart. You can too.  He found a liberal heart.  We can too.  He found his own heart opened, and forever remade, by the liberality, grace, freedom, generosity and love of God.  We can too.  Peter following this change still struggled to appreciate and bring apperception to the Person of Jesus, the Presence of Jesus, the Power of Jesus.  But the change was permanent.  He was given a liberal heart, a heart of wonder, a heart of vulnerability, a heart of self-abandon.  God is calling you to open your heart today to that kind of change, that scope of change, that force of change. Change can happen.  Real change, for the good, in real time, can come.  There is in the human heart, sometimes dormant but always present, the capacity to turn around, to repent, to move again forward, to change.  Change can come.  Let us pray.

 Gracious God Holy and Just

Thou from whom we come and unto whom our spirits return

Thou our dwelling place in all generations

Rest upon us in the silence of this moment we pray

Dry the tears of those moved to emotion in an hour of separation

Illumine the skyline of opportunity that lies behind the rain clouds of worry

Carry young hearts open to friendship into seas of friendship

Help us hear for our time the voice of the Prophet

‘What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly’?

Help us we earnestly pray to prefer justice to judgment

Help us we earnestly pray to love the merciful more than the material

Help us we earnestly pray to walk humbly not haughtily

May the degrees we earn turn by degrees the wheel of life from judgment to justice

May the courses we choose inspire in choices later a keenness of mind matched by a fullness of heart

May the learning we gain afford us the gain of humility, the honest desire to give credit where credit is due, and not to tip the scale

May the friendships we make in their turn make us less inclined to judgment and more enamored of justice

May the regrets we acquire then incline us to mercy, as we have felt mercy, and not to material measurements alone

May the adventures we bravely pursue give us the wisdom to know our condition, mortal, frail, prone to harm others, frail, mortal

May all our acquisition of knowledge chase us toward justice, toward mercy, and toward humility

And the wisdom to welcome, later, perhaps much later, the recognition that

The larger the body of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of mystery  that surrounds it

The larger the body of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of mystery that surrounds it

Amen.

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

posted in Liberal Gospel: Autumn 2020 Sermons, Matriculation, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 08.30.2020 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Matthew 16:13-20

Click here to hear just the sermon

A healthy institution of any sort, particularly of any religious sort and certainly of any Christian sort, is a community that is learning together.  As Albert Camus said, the healthy society is a circle in which all are seated and each reminds the other: ‘You are not God.  I am not God.  You are not God. I am not God.’  You are the recipients, the inheritors of that liberal tradition, the legacy of the liberal church.  As such, we are learning together, every single day, every Lord’s Day, every one day.

We are learning together.

Moses teaches us.

We learn together from these glorious narratives, offered us week by week in this year, from Genesis—think of Joseph last week—and today from Exodus.  The uncanny, the unexpected, the spirited entrance into life, by and through human imagination and courage, of grace, of freedom, of love.  And Pharaoh’s daughter took a little prophet out of the bulrushes, Moses by name.  There come times when a new Pharaoh arrives, one ‘who did not know Joseph’.  There come times when the odds are set up against the real and true and good.  There come times when it is hard to name a fully good thing from any day or week.  There come times when both nature and history appear to conspire together, against grace.  And then along comes a recollection of the self-giving courage of a mother, setting her basket into the rippling waters of bulrushes along the Nile.  Loving by letting go.  There are some eyes with tears right around here this week, some parents turning away and giving children to the unforeseen future.  No matter the age or stage, it takes courage, it takes the uncanny, the unexpected, the spirited entrance into life, by and through human imagination and courage, of grace, of freedom, of love.  The community of faith knows change, knows itinerancy, knows loss that becomes gain and gain that becomes loss.  That is the legacy of the liberal church.

Moses teaches us.

Paul teaches us.

Here is a sweet memory to share, now more than twenty years old, but it is clear as a bright August morning, even so.  For how happy we were one Saturday in Rochester to hear an excellent sermon on today’s epistle, Romans 12 from our former pulpit, given at a divinity school graduation by the Rev. Mr. Peter Gomes, Harvard Chaplain.  Do you remember The Good Book, his 1996 essay on the interpretation of Scripture?  Really, his hymn of love for the Scripture.  We were really proud to have him in our Rochester pulpit, and to hear his message.

If memory serves, it included some standard homiletical devices—a foundational text (Romans 12:2), a theme (endings are beginnings), repetition, litanies, epigrams, some old and new humor, making use of natural “oppositions” that come to the mind of the hearer and then addressing them, a little poetry (TS Eliot—“Little Gidding”), a quotation or two, and an exhortation to the congregation to be transformed “by the renewing of the mind”.  Be ye not conformed but be ye transformed by the renewal of the mind.

What most appealed was the design of the message.  Following an extended introduction, and preceding a simple conclusion, the preacher offered three memorable points.  Hah!  In the living church, much national debate and new homiletical theory to the contrary notwithstanding, there is—and especially there was on that Saturday—still room for a good three-point sermon, even one that concluded with a poem.  From Aristotle to about 1970, this design had endured, and reports of its death in the last decades have been, in Twain’s term, “exaggerated”.   Three points and a poem still work.

Gomes challenged the graduates, the students, and by reflection the church and by extension all Christians, not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewal of the mind.  How?

First, by noticing the difference between wisdom and knowledge.

Second, by practicing meekness, whose opposite is not strength, but pride.

Third, by protecting space and time for relaxation, prayer, reading.

Now, it would be nice to have the note page on which was summarized the message.  Somehow, though, between the past and present, the paper disappeared.   No matter—his design preserved the message for me—wisdom, meekness, relaxation.  Let us try to remember and, in Justice Holmes good phrase, try to give it the benefit of five great words: “I applied it to myself.”  Care to join me?  That is your legacy in the liberal church.

Paul teaches us.

Matthew teaches us.

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 2024 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 happily re-gospelled the gospel for their own day, to a fair thee well.

No?  No?  Oh Yes. Yes, indeed.  Yes.

Mark in the passage calls Peter ‘Satan’.  Matthew calls him Rock.  Mark has no mention of any church of any kind.  Matthew uses the word, the greed word for church, ecclessia—not likely something Jesus would have said, and gives Peter keys to the kingdom.  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.  From voices.  From thoughts.  From conflicts.  And Matthew sternly tells his people:  to become fully human you will need institutional grounding, support, protection, and sustenance:  family, neighborhood, school, church, university, country, globe.  And let me be clear about the church, he adds:  the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.

Just more thing, as we are learning together in voice, thought, conflict and scripture.   Like Peter Falk used to say, in his character as Colombo, the absent-minded professor-like detective, turning as he left,  ‘Just one more thing…’

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.”  And you?    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.

Moses, Paul, Matthew—they teach us how to live in the liberality of the gospel, wherein we worship God who is loving us into love and freeing us into freedom.  The passages become Holy Scripture, in that they make us more whole, more ourselves, more our own healthy, safe, well, best selves, holy because whole.   Scripture teaches us.  And, so does experience, sometimes both together.

Our long-time friend and virtual, radio congregant, Dr. Kris Kahle, in New Haven, Connecticut, often sends along something of interest, a passage from Camus, say, maybe from THE PLAGUE, or a paragraph from Barth’s Church Dogmatics, which he has been reading alongside his COVID 19 medical practice.  He and family are part of our extended family, an example of so many, far and near, who are with us in spirit, together in spirit, come Sunday. Perhaps you are one such. Grateful we are, thankful we are for Dr. Kahle and others, who share with us at Marsh Chapel, the freedom and love of the church, who share with us at Marsh Chapel, the fellowship, koinonia, commonwealth, partnership of the Gospel.  What began in the bulrushes of the Nile, and then was taught to the Romans by the Apostle to the Gentiles, and then, and now, today, in the Holy Gospel is acclaimed—this is the good news of ‘the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

Earlier in the summer Dr. Kahle took a moment apart from his medical teaching and practice to send me the video of John Lewis’s funeral, or rather, one of the eulogies therein.  We otherwise might have missed it, given the backwoods lack of technological connection—a summer blessing in the main—with which we live or don’t live, in the woods of upstate New York, come summer.  We trail technologically behind the Little House on the Prairie for some of the summer.  So, we would have missed it.  He sent it.  What a gift.

What made President Obama’s eulogy for Congressman Lewis so powerful?  It was a grand, high moment, a soaring eagle moment in American rhetoric.  Was it the reminder of what gracious eloquence can mean in leadership and life?  Yes, but not only that.  Was it the painful but real measure of civil society, of what ground we have lost, much ground, much real and rhetorical and religious ground we have lost in these past few years?  Yes, but not only that.  Was it the sense of the cost of progress, the willingness to work toward ‘a more perfect union’, recognizing, with sober honesty, the myriad imperfections that beset us?  Yes, but not only that.  Was it the generous sense of common hope, that which can sustain the least and the last and the lost, as well as the rest of us?  Yes, but not only that.  Was it the personal honor, in cadence and story and honesty and heart?  Yes, but no only that.  Was it the humanity—recalling Bill Clinton lifting his hand and pointing to the casket of Coretta Scott King in 2006, and stepping off his prepared text to shout, ‘for all these kind fancy words, don’t you forget, there’s a woman in that box.’  Yes, but not only that.  What was it, at depth, that made Barack Obama’s eulogy for John Lewis such a tremendous gift to me from Dr. Kahle?  Let’s cogitate a minute on that while the sermon meanders and unwinds toward its conclusion this summer morning.

What was it that made President Obama’s eulogy for John Lewis so trenchant and true?  Scripture, Holy Scripture, The Church’s Book, The Book on and of the Church.  In the main, along with other ingredients mentioned, the power in his personal ability, rightly to choose and use timely verses of Scripture, the Holy Scripture taught and learned in the learning community of the liberal church.  The setting—Ebenezer Baptist—spoke the same truth, in the languages of architecture, history, pulpit, choir and people.   Yes, the church is both a representation and a distortion of the divine (Tillich).  But if for some reason the church were to disappear overnight, in a cultural tsunami, it would come back.  Even the gates of hell will not prevail against it.  Somehow, we would find a table, and somehow a chair or two, and somehow some bread and wine, and somehow a Bible and an hour or so, and we would start again, as, in a way, we do every Sunday, which is especially and vividly apparent to us now in this pandemic.  We start over.  We would start with Holy Scripture.  It is this Holy Scripture in the Holy Church that rose up like a lion in the Obama eulogy for Lewis, the right verse in the right time in the right way.  James! ‘Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.”  That is the courage of the Book of James. Corinthians!  (SECOND Corinthians, let us be clear), We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; ⁹ persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; ¹⁰ always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.   Acts!  “Do not be afraid, go on speaking; do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” (Acts 18).

It was the right handling of the word of truth that brought power and love, freedom and grace to life.  And it still does.  He concluded in eulogy, summarizing his three points, James, Corinthians and Acts:  And that’s where real courage comes from. Not from turning on each other, but by turning towards one another. Not by sowing hatred and division, but by spreading love and truth. Not by avoiding our responsibilities to create a better America and a better world, but by embracing those responsibilities with joy and perseverance and discovering that in our beloved community, we do not walk alone.

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

posted in Liberal Gospel: Autumn 2020 Sermons, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 08.23.2020 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Matthew 15:21-28

Click here to hear just the sermon

In the 1992 classic movie, The Mighty Ducks, a successful lawyer was sentenced to 500 hours of community service. He ended up coaching a ragtag group of children how to play hockey and how to be a team. In typical Disney fashion, this helped the coach, Gordon Bombay, to connect with the childhood loss of his father. Before the team’s success though, Bombay lost the trust of most of his team. In a pivotal scene of the movie, he revealed to one player that he frequently replays losing the championship game for his childhood hockey team. Bombay was selected to take a penalty shot which he missed and the team went on to lose the game in overtime. He says that he missed the shot by a quarter of an inch. Throughout the movie, the missed shot is shown multiple times and the viewer sees the puck hitting the goalpost.

While missing a shot in a children’s hockey game by a quarter of an inch seems utterly insignificant given everything going on in our world, the movie viewer is given the sense that things might have been different for Bombay if he had just scored the goal. After recounting the missed shot and saying that, a quarter of an inch would have made the difference, one of Bombay’s players says “‘Yeah, but a quarter inch the other way and you'd have missed completely.” Bombay responds, “I never thought of it that way.” Just like that, Bombay’s outlook is re-oriented by this line. This new perspective changes him. He can’t go back and take the shot again, but he has some say in how the memory shapes his life. He permits to accept that he missed the shot and that changing what happened, either for success or for greater failure, was impossible. While a quarter of an inch one way would have led to success he could have just as easily missed completely if it went a quarter on an inch the other way.

Throughout life, we must learn to deal with failure and success, as well as the margin between success and failure. As a hospital chaplain, I consistently listen to stories that people tell me. These stories often contain triumphs and despairs. Part of my chaplain training is to learn to recognize the degree to which these memories shape the present. It is clear to me that the past continues to impact the present. I have learned not to take for granted the impact that memories or events can have, even ones that seem insignificant to others. Unrequited love from 30 years ago, moving to a new state, the loss of a pet, or a missed hockey shot. People respond to events in life differently. We are unique and people interpret life and events out of their individuality. There is no measuring stick by which we can definitively determine how events or memories shape us. There is no measuring stick by which we can definitively determine how much pain or for how long painful events linger.

What is clear is that tragedies and hardships of varying magnitudes, can leave marks on our minds and souls. Some have taken to calling these marks soul wounds. Soul wounds are invisible marks left from traumatic or troubling events. They can be memories that refuse to be integrated into identity. Events that linger far beyond what is considered conventional. Feelings that flood the mind at unwanted times and overwhelm the sense of self. Strung out emotions and isolation pervade as powerlessness and a lack of agency abound. Soul wounds are serious. Sometimes, the wounds are so deep and strong that they make people question their whole understanding of reality. Then, there are times when people are unaware of the potency of soul wounds. Often times because they remain hidden beneath the surface. In these situations, they are hidden but powerful and impactful. Escaping recall and language but shaping reality.

Soul wounds can impact anyone regardless of race, class, or gender. They are not bound by geographical location or education. Numbers 1-9 on the enneagram, any combination of letters from Myers Briggs INFJ, ESTP, anyone can be hurt and that hurt can linger far beyond the initial wound. Recognizing the ongoing impact of soul wounds, of losses and failures would be easier if we could see the scars that these events leave. Unlike our bodies which often retain marks of serious injuries that can be seen by others, soul wounds are invisible. You can ride the T with a train full of people experiencing myriads of misfortune and not know. Certainty, there can be the visible signs drooping heads, sluggish shoulders, and misty eyes but for the most part soul wounds are obscure. Their obscurity helps them persist. Their obscurity also reminds us that soul wounds are often outside of our direct control. Soul wounds can lead to a sense of powerlessness and a lack of autonomy over the self. These wounds though, do not determine who we are nor are we completely defenseless against their impact. Coping tools and resiliency, of which faith can be a major contributor, can help in times of trouble. Certainty, new perspectives, love from others, and other forms of support can mitigate the impact and effects of the wounds. Yet, it is hard when every day it feels like pieces of the self are under threat from various sources.

The encounter recorded in Matthew 15 with the women in the districts of Tyre and Sidon is complicated. The text says that she is a Canaanite woman. Like many of the women of the Bible, her name was not deemed worthy of being written down, after all, papyrus was expensive.

While her name was not worth mentioning, her ethnicity was worth recording. She was a Canaanite. The supposed ancient enemy of the Israelite people. This marker of identity, this label given to her by the narrator, is not polite. It isn’t even neutral. It is downright troubling. It is, to be frank, an ethnic slur. A racist slur. The mistreatment and prejudice did not end with the narrator though. After revealing that her daughter was being tormented, she was ignored. She was not deemed worthy of a response, other than by the disciples who want to send her away. Her suffering was deemed an inconvenience. It was deemed an inconvenience to those with privilege. Even when her suffering was named and put out in the open, there was no compassion from the disciples. “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” They do not even say, heal her daughter and send her away, for she keeps shouting after us. Just send her away. Her shouting, her suffering is bothering us. They did not want to see or hear it. Her wounds, her tragedies, her very life and the life of her daughter were measured and deemed inconsequential.

With all the resiliency and tenacity that comes from living on the margins where a quarter of an inch is the difference between life and death, this woman pushed. In the midst of an unsafe situation where she was outnumbered by a group of men who do not care what happened to her or her daughter, who do not look quite like her, who do not speak quite like her, she risked her life out of love for her daughter. Beloved, if you want to know what Gospel love is, perhaps in Matthew 15 we ought to look at this woman who refused to accept what the world and religious people told her about herself. She refused to accept what the people in places of power said.

If we want to see Gospel love, perhaps it is the insistence that Canaanite lives matter and that when one group has the means and resources to save others, “no” is not an acceptable answer. She refuses to accept “no”, she refuses to accept that the position has been filled, the house has just been sold, or that things will be better for the next generation. She offered her daughter resilient love that would not stay unseen and unheard.

She pushed. We cannot say exactly why but she pushed surely partly out of love and desperation for her child. What loving parent would not push for the sake of their child? We must be careful though not the make her suffering redemptive for that too easily becomes co-opted by power and privilege. There is such a thing as redemptive love and suffering can be redemptive but here we see resilient love. It is not suffering that saves but resiliency in the face of adversity. Resilient love that demands to be seen and demands to be heard. Resilient love that claims a place at the table. Resilient love, not a feeling that comes and goes, waxes and wanes, but a way of being. This is resilient love. Resilient love is Gospel love.

The story is complex. This encounter is complex. People are always more complex than they are made out to be. Jesus is more complex than he is often made out to be. It would be a much easier story without versus 24 and 26. You see, these verses seem to reveal that Jesus bought into the racialized ideologies of the time.  “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” This is not only Israel first, but it is Israel only. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Nevertheless, she persists. She came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” These are not the words of the narrator, these are not the words of the disciples. These are red letters and that does not stop them from being another racial slur. Jesus refuses to heal when he can and refuses to see the women in front of him as a person. “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Sure, the Greek is diminutive which is perhaps more appropriately translated as puppy instead of dog but the inference is no better. He does not see her because he does not have to see her. He compares her sick daughter to a dog.

Michelle Obama, in a recent podcast, shared that she feels the ongoing racial strife, and lack of response to the pandemic in the nation, has left to her experiencing low-grade depression at times. While I do not think that depression and soul wounds can be correlated or equated, there certainly can be similarities. And, her sharing her experience names the wider truth of what is going on across the country and world. Whether it is soul wounds, depression, or trauma the nation is facing a challenging time. People are facing challenging times. A time when a quarter of an inch in any direction can have monumental ramifications. The ongoing water in which we currently swim, the soil in which we are attempting to draw nutrients, provides additional challenges to individual and communal thriving. How can plants thrive when the soil is sick? How can fish swim when the water is poisoned? Although, many of the challenges have always been present and have been unacknowledged by those in places of privilege.

Between the myriad of pandemics the country is facing, and the personal challenges, this season feels a bit like the state of Narnia is C.S. Lewis’ The Lion the Witch and Wardrobe. When the Pevensie children first arrive, they learn that the fictional country of Narnia is in a perpetual state of winter. They are told that it is always winter and never Christmas. We have had summer without beaches and barbeques, virtual fireworks for the Fourth of July, and empty churches for Easter. We have watched death and destruction on the news and streamed on the internet. We are living in an age of dislocation. It is almost as if someone forgot to turn the calendar from Lent to Easter and then to Eastertide. Always winter and never Christmas. Christianity has a place for trauma, tragedy, and soul wounds but we usually prefer it to stay compartmentalized. Death and silence are acceptable topics on Good Friday and Holy Saturday but Easter has come and gone. It is now time for hope, joy, and love. It is now time for the resurrection. But what do you do when it seems like the resurrection just will not come? Perhaps even harder, what do you do when the resurrection has come and gone but it does not seem like anything is different? Is it now a time when it is always lent and never Easter? Sorrow, grief, anguish, despair, and isolation are refusing to be contained and controlled. They are refusing to stay silent. The impact of their discordance is seen across individuals and communities. In the face of such, we must learn resilient love. Resilient love clings to hope in order to fan the flames of change. Resilient love recognizes brokenness, trauma, and tragedy. It does not force joy and triumph before they are welcome but it does not give up.

The power of the cross is a location of redemptive love in triumph but the cross is also a location of resilient love in brokenness. The cross is a symbol of tragedy, and not just triumph. Life is a process of interpreting meaning. There are times when events and situations align. There are times it seems that nothing goes right. Everything seems broken beyond repair. Sometimes the difference between the two is just a quarter on an inch. Faith reminds us that life is meaningful and purposeful in seasons of Lent and seasons of Easter. Faith calls for redemptive and resilient love.

I sometimes wonder how different life would be if people were able to see soul wounds. We can show each other physical scar and wounds. We can see when people are physically bleeding and hurt. When pointed out, people often share the story behind the wound but soul wounds often remain unseen and un-narrated. On the one hand, this protects the agency of the person by preventing unwanted vulnerability, on the other hand, it too often allows the harm that caused the wounds to persist. Would we be more compassionate to each other if we knew the weight of pain and sorrow we bore? Would we bear each other’s burdens with more care if we knew? We cannot see soul wounds but we can learn to be more attentive to emotional, spiritual, and physical needs of those around us, including our own. We can learn to give and receive resilient love.

Like many outside of places of privilege and power, the woman in Matthew 15 learned to survive on crumbs. She learned how to glean on crumbs that others did not want. Crumbs from the masters’ table. This is what she asked for from Jesus. She asked for crumbs and knew that she would work hard to live on less. On the one hand, she gets what so many others miss. That a crumb from the Messianic Banquet is enough to sustain life, on the other hand, her story asks why do some get seats at the table and others crumbs that fall.

 I confess that as a white person, I am tempted to want to celebrate that Jesus changed here. I want to make the story better by saying that the ending ties everything up; however, we must resist such interpretations of texts and life. It is too neat. The change does not negate the harm. It is good that Jesus did change as a result of his encounter with this woman. He affirms her faith. He heals her daughter. There are other sayings and stories that reveal a more inclusive ministry; however, Jesus’ changed perspective may not be what the text is about for us today. This is a story of a mother’s resilience who persisted in the face of prejudice and privilege. This is perhaps a time, where Jesus learned about Gospel love from another person. From an outsider who was written off. This is the Gospel as the resilient love of a mother who advocated through adversity, who refused to accept no as an answer. Thanks be to God for the Gospel of resilient love.

-The Rev. Scott Donahue-Martens

Ph.D. Student in Practical Theology: Homiletics

Boston University School of Theology

posted in Guest Preachers on 08.16.2020 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Matthew 14:22–33

Click here to hear just the sermon

A text copy of the sermon is unavailable.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman, Chaplain for Episcopal Ministry on 08.9.2020 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Matthew 14:13-21

Genesis 32:22–31

Romans 9:1–5

Click here to hear just the sermon

Preface

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful; be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month or a year; it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get into good trouble, necessary trouble.”

John Lewis, 1940 – 2020

Faith is the affirmative answer to the question whether life has meaning.

Faith is the affirmative answer to the question whether love is real.

Faith is the affirmative answer to the question whether struggle is redemptive.

Faith is the affirmative answer to the question whether friendship is nourishing.

The Hebrew Scripture

Our psalm and lesson from the Hebrew Scripture recoil around us to recall for us the place of struggle in life.  In pandemic and pandemonium, in political and presidential reckoning, in personal and familial realignments and choices, we right now may benefit from such a reminder.  After all, why return Sunday by Sunday to ancient writings, if not for a chance to orient our own selves and lives by the light of what our forebears have seen and done?

One the great gifts of Boston University to our life has been the immersion and inclusion in a tradition of struggle, redemptive struggle.  Over dinner, courtesy of the Gotlieb Center, perhaps six years ago, we sat with John Lewis.  Dime con quien andas, y te dire quien eres, say the Spaniards.  Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.  After the meal he quietly told stories which had the aspect, for one who tells stories, of frequent narration, as overtures to good trouble.  In particular it brought a full smile to hear his childhood dream of being a preacher, a story that was new to us, but well known to others, and now to the world.  He would come home and preach to the chickens as he fed them, and baptize them as they were born, and bury them with dignity and the end of their egg producing days.  Hence, Lewis picked up the nick name, Preacher.  Yet it was really his life that spoke, and that commitment to a sense of redemptive struggle.

Now Marsh Chapel, you remember that on May 19, 2018, Mr. Lewis sat right here in the second pew before the pulpit of this nave.  You remember that he sang the hymns of faith, and heard the words of Holy Scripture, and prepared himself to address 20,000 at Commencement.  You remember his lingering among us on the Plaza, as the bus driver nervously waited.  You remember that, like any good preacher, he was willing to take the time to take you seriously.  Said the parishioner, ‘I just wish that the preacher in his sermons would take my life seriously’.  Well, by the echoing hallelujahs sent his way later that day, from the voices of the class of 2018 and others, you could hear that he did.  Take their lives seriously, I mean.  You remember the climax of his address.  Yes, class of 2018, you will get jobs and find work and buy cars and build homes and raise families and take trips.  Good.  But what else?  What else are you going to do?  What else are you going to do in the brief span years you have? Will you help make this world a better place.  And to do that, will get into some good trouble along the way?  In my years at BU Commencements, it was the rhetorical high point, and that’s saying something.  Later, in the President’s gracious lunch, we stood next to him for a photo (I was uncertain whether to interfere so, but Jan said, ‘No, let’s get a picture).  And I looked at it again this morning, from two years ago, and wept. One the great gifts of Boston University to our life has been the immersion and inclusion in a tradition of struggle, redemptive struggle.  What an inheritance, what a legacy, Marsh Chapel, you have to share.

Now recall just a few of the words offered in memorial across the nation to John Lewis:

Moral authority…aggressive yet self-sacrificial…animating a mass movement…non-violent protest grounded in the principal of ‘redemptive suffering’……from the Rev. James Lawson…and Mahatma Ghandi…’something in the very essence of anguish that is liberating, cleansing, redemptive…opens us and those around us to a force beyond ourselves’…the essence of the nonviolent life is the capacity to forgive…’even as a person is cursing you to your face, even as he is spitting on your, or pushing a lit cigarette into your neck’…At bottom, this philosophy rested upon the belief that people of good will—the Beloved Community—would rouse themselves to combat evil and injustice…in March of 1965—Bloody Sunday—Lewis suffered a fractured skull…the voting rights act…was signed into law that summer…the Supreme Court crippled the act in 2013…colleagues…we can best honor his memory by picking up where he left off… (NYT on J Lewis, July 2020)

Now hear the words written by our own congregant, friend, Marsh Chapel community member Kwame A. Mark Freeman, just this last week:

“I had the honor of meeting Mr. Lewis on a few occasions over the years. The last time I spoke with him was at Metcalf Hall in the George Sherman Union at Boston University.

Mr. Lewis was a humble man in the truest sense of the word. He was one of the last living civil rights titans of his generation who more than virtually anyone, had a grasp of the institutional memory of both the turbulent and tragic but yet triumphant period of Black people living in the United States during the period of the civil rights movement. The work Mr. Lewis engaged in on behalf of Black people is indelible and stretches over six decades beginning in February of 1960, at a lunch counter in Nashville, Tennessee.

I want to thank Mr. Lewis for all that he has done for Black and brown women and men living in the United States. Just importantly, I want to thank him for what he has done for all of humanity by his clarion call for justice, both now and until the day and time when -injustice- becomes a fleeting memory and a tragic but yet another triumphant footnote in the annals of Black history in the United States.

 God bless Brother John Robert Lewis, and may his soul rest in peace.”

Meanwhile, back in the Bible, in Genesis Jacob receives a new name, One Who Struggles With God:  Israel.  There is a redeeming quality in struggle, so much so that one’s full identity emerges in a different way, with a different name.  Jacob recalls for us the power of community, the formative range in the struggle of each community, including his own.  We sure need such a reminder this summer, in this summer of uncertainty. The summer, be it remembered of the use of unmarked cars and camouflaged federal agents in Portland.  We are on the brink of lawlessness from the highest offices in the country.  What shall we bring to this struggle?  A little honesty and a whole lot of ownership?  But also, a critical caution, in our choices?

In the spring of 1972, graduating soon from High School, I was watching as various communities were struggling, including that of the USA itself.  My father had bought a pool table that winter, the first of its sort to adorn that Methodist Parsonage.  Looking back, I think he had some idea to try to connect more fully with a teenage son who was about to leave home.  And it worked.  We spent some evenings playing pool and talking about nothing and about everything.  It was down in a pretty dank basement full of the things you throw in a basement.  He would smoke his pipe and I would talk about things I really knew nothing much about.  But I had opinions.  That spring there was a protest against the War in Vietnam, and I had decided to go, and we discussed it.  It was to be held outside his old high school, where he had been elected class president in 1949.  He had gone on to serve in the Air Force as a chaplain, so he was a military person but was himself also and strongly against the war.  Yet when I told him about the protest, well, he did not try to talk me out of it, but he filled his pipe and racked the balls for another game.  I could tell he was trying to tell me something, or teach me something, or something, without being too parental.  Anyway, the gist of his question, as I remember it in the haze of faulty memory and pipe smoke, was, ‘Do you know who is organizing this?  Who is running this?  For what reason?’  Well, we did not argue.  I went ahead and attended the thing, such as it was.  But that careful, critical edge, that question, who is really doing this and why, stayed with me. I cannot begin to number the times, in so many different situations, when that basic question—who is really behind this?—has come back to help me.  And this is still a struggle today, across the land, trying to do and know how to do, the right thing at the right time, in the right way.  Good trouble.  It is almost like that hymn, ‘You Got Good Religion?”  Or not.  ‘You Got Good Trouble?’  Or just trouble?

The New Testament

Likewise, our two New Testament passages, lesson and gospel, guide us in redemptive struggle.  In Romans, Paul is about to launch into two chapters of farewell to his own beloved religious inheritance, his own spiritual legacy, his mother tongue, the law.  Religious faith sometimes means leaving things behind, shaking the dust from one’s feet, and moving on.  In a way, every day has some measure of that leave taking, of saying ‘Thank You’ and of saying ‘Good Bye’.

In our weekly staff work here, we are guided by a set of values, in which we embed our ministry, music and hospitality, and which share a curious quality of leaving some things behind.  We try daily to 1 build trust, to 2 foster consensus, to 3 seek unity (not uniformity) in peace (not dishonesty), 4 to review all communication that speaks to or for the whole  5 to avoid any secrets, surprises or subversion, 5 to live a life that becomes the gospel 6 to speak to others in their presence not of others in their absence, 7 to bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the Christ law, 8 in teaching to search the Scripture, 9 in daily work to reflect on our envisioned mission (‘a heart in the heart of the city’ and our primary foci (voice, vocation, volume)10 in liturgy to be informed by the hymnal and book of worship, by Methodism and the ecumenical consensus 11 in all things to look for charitas, 12 to encourage by example regular worship, tithing, and interpersonal faithfulness, 13 to be punctual, frugal and industrious but not to worship work, for we are saved by what we receive not by what we achieve, 14 to offer attention to outsiders, first, as a matter of course, 15 to remember that the staff supports the mission of the chapel not the other way around.  16 To believe that God loves us into loving and frees us into freedom. 17 In working with staff our reigning interest is:  “Tell me what best exposes your authentic self (baptism) and what unshackles your fiercest passion for life and ministry (vocation)?”  We can build some real future around this. 18 In communications, we hope to model dimensions of spiritual health and honesty, specifically by responding promptly to voice-mail (same day or next day), e-mail (three days), regular mail (one week), interoffice memos (same day if possible). 19 Also, we believe that a good meeting lasts no more than 90 minutes, and preferably no more than 60. 20. We expect to be people who are “happy in God” (Wesley).

That is, we hope, a to find a way into ‘good trouble’, not just trouble.  Our community here at Marsh Chapel will continue to go through changes in rhythm.  Remember that once we thought we would be together again the day after Easter, April 13?  Hm.  With the insight, foresight and hindsight of Paul in Romans, we shall also need, for the long haul, the remembrance of Matthew, the miraculous feeding of the 5,000 with two fish and five barley loaves.  Not much to go on.  And yet, all were fed.  And more miraculously, according the Scripture, not only were all fed, but all were all satisfied.  All were satisfied.  Along with values to guide us, we shall need, Marsh Chapel, the gospel promise to keep us.  Satisfied.  Hm.

In a moment we will hear again the ancient liturgy for eucharist.  We are not together to receive together the bread and cup.  But we are together in relationship, by memory, in hope, through prayer.  And with a little imagination, with eyes closed and hearts open, we might allow the familiar, ancient prayers of communion, to bring us into communion.

So, travel with a little imagination…Imagine Eucharist at Marsh Chapel.  Stand to sing… Pause to reflect… Step out into the aisle… Look at and look past Abraham Lincoln and Francis Willard…Receive cup and bread, bread and cup… Kneel at the altar to pray… Stand in communion with the communion of saints…Here is the bread and cup of friendship…Imagine, if you are willing, your own funeral, say right here, and a congregation reciting together a creed, a psalm, a hymn, a poem.  Imagine, if you are willing, a congregation currently in diaspora, but just now, by the word spoken, a gathered and thus addressable community, you and I and all together. And all were satisfied…e

Coda

Our virtual congregant Milton Jordan in Texas reminded us this week of John Lewis’s words:

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful; be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month or a year; it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get into good trouble, necessary trouble.”

John Lewis, 1940 – 2020

Faith is the affirmative answer to the question whether life has meaning.

Faith is the affirmative answer to the question whether love is real.

Faith is the affirmative answer to the question whether struggle is redemptive.

Faith is the affirmative answer to the question whether friendship is nourishing.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 08.2.2020 at 11:00 am