Sunday
August 2
Good Trouble
By Marsh Chapel
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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
