Sunday
January 17
Angels of God
By Marsh Chapel
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It is not only an ethical imperative that directs us to love our neighbor. To feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, heal the sick and visit the prisoner. Should we do these things? Yes, we should. Is it our Christian duty to do them? Yes, it is. Is this a moral imperative for us, to follow the teachings of Jesus? It is so. Then is this the gospel, the good news for today, for the Lord’s day? Well, we might say it is not the whole of the Gospel. In the Gospel, not only an ethical imperative, but also, and more so, a divine gift awaits us in Jesus the Christ. You will see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. You will see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
Let us receive the divine gifts of this day, in the midst of all manner of personal, communal, national and cultural challenges.
Over the last 15 years, in concert with a tradition dating back several years before, we have honored the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. upon this Sunday. Often, though not this year, this is also the Sunday at the opening of Spring term, a kind of winter Matriculation. Year by year, we have tried to probe the depths of our legacy, our inheritance, here at Boston University and here at Marsh Chapel, of the voice, mind and heart of Dr. King, whose beautiful, unique and aspirational monument greets us upon Marsh Plaza. Over the years, voices in concert with his have been lifted here, on the third Sunday of January, prophetic, true, and loving voices: those of the Rev. Dr. Walter Fluker (four times), Mr. Christopher Edwards, Esq., the Rev. Dr. Jennifer Quigley, the Rev. Dr. Peter Paris, Ms. Liz Douglass, the Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Siwo-Okundi, the Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman, and also the Dean (three times), including last year, January 2020, in our service celebrating the opening of the Howard Thurman Center (along with Dean Kenn Elmore and Director Katherine Kennedy). (April 2018 also included 10 days of events and services, fifty years after King’s assassination, culminating in sermons here at Marsh Chapel by Cornell William Brooks and especially of Governor Deval Patrick.) For Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday this year, this fifteenth year, we listen solely to the voice of King himself, in words all, including every undergraduate, should want to read and know and hear, out of Martin Luther King’s 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail.
The work of ethics can open a world us to a world of angels. When you feed the hungry, then you may be christened. When you clothe the naked, you yourself may be given a confirming gift. When you welcome the stranger, it may be own joy in eucharist that emerges. When you heal the sick, you might just find your own anointing and absolution. And when you visit the prisoner, it is your own soul that is fed. We are directed ethically to the periphery of life (hunger, nakedness, loneliness, illness, abandonment) so that our ethical zeal can carry us higher. John knew well, perhaps best in Scripture, that morals and ethics only take us to the foothills. There is a great high mountain before us. We find our way toward this height when, by surprise, in the midst of our work and duty…we are accosted by God, by the angels of God.
So, it is, for those who will hear, some nearly sixty years later, words from Martin Luther King, in the finest document remaining from the civil rights era, his Letter from Birmingham Jail. Those in prison, from Paul of Tarsus to Nelson Mandela, have long had wisdom to share. They have time to think, and so, something to say. The finest document from the civil rights era, now nearly sixty years past, is this letter. Its burden of truth, carried in soaring prose, is largely conveyed in these words: impatience, justice, time, love, disappointment, and hope. In the quiet of this winter weekend, with all that swirls about us across this great land of the free and home of the brave, let us carefully meditate together on the gospel as heard through these words from Birmingham. For we too, now in January 2021, sorely need the nourishment of impatience, justice, time, love, disappointment, and hope.
As we enter the next chapter of American history, the central, lasting, troublous, challenging matter of race, of racism, of anti-racism meets us head on and head long. This is not only an ethical set of issues. Rightly seen, rightly heard, this can be a gift of God to us. Perhaps, at Marsh Chapel, as a University pulpit, we have both the responsibility and the opportunity to place some of this near future work in the context of angelic words, none finer than those of Letter from Birmingham Jail. On completing the Ph.D. I went to our neighborhood college, a young Jesuit school, and asked to teach. The Religion Chair, a wonderful woman and Tillich scholar, a former religious, said, ‘You want to teach?’ So, she assigned me the Introduction to Religion Course, which I taught for two decades there, everything you never wanted to know about World Religions, Judaism, Christianity and yours truly. I asked about the curriculum. That is up to you, she replied. Except here (she looked over at a photo of Daniel Berrigan) we always require the Prophet Amos, and Augustine’s Confessions and…Letter from Birmingham Jail. Wise counsel.
- Let us meditate on impatience:
For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear… with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant ‘Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God- given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark jab of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six- year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children…then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and (we) are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
- Let us meditate on justice:
One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all”.
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust… Paul Tillich said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression ‘of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?
- Let us meditate on time:
I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.”
Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of (those) willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation…Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
- Let us meditate on love:
Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?
- Let us meditate on disappointment:
I have looked at (our)beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: “What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices…
Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? l am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great- grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.
- Let us meditate on hope:
Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom…They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.
I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny…We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
Angels of God, ascending and descending…Hear the Gospel in the voice, the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr., meditation on impatience, justice, time, love, disappointment, and hope. You and I will need some measure of divine impatience with what is wrong, in this next year. You and I will some measure of divine justice to seize what is right in the next year. You and I will need some measure of time, Kairos time not just Chronos time, to do the right things in the right ways at the right times in the next year. You and I will need some measure of love to bring meaning to work in the next year. You and I will need some honesty about disappointment, and its depths, to endure the challenges of the next year. And most of all, you and I will need some measure of hope, that which we do not see but wait for with patience, in the next year. May God bless us all.
Let us pray:
In a season of stagnation, dear Lord, make us impatient.
In a season of unfairness, dear Lord, help us yearn for justice.
In a season of delay, dear Lord, cause us to prize our time.
In a season of decay, dear Lord, inspire us by love.
In a season of disappointment, dear Lord, grant us courage to be.
In a season of desire, dear Lord, may we hope for what we do not see.
Amen.
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
