Sunday
August 30
Liberal Heart
By Marsh Chapel
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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
