Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

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Luke 9: 28-36

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Today is Transfiguration Sunday.  On the mountain, the baffled disciples tried to bear true witness—word, tent, accolade, mystery. What did you see? I saw…

Our passage from Luke 9  is an account developed after Easter, as a way of trying to symbolize Jesus Christ as risen Lord. It has no biographical or earthly valence, nor does it need any, nor does it claim any. It is about seeing, and being transfigured by what one sees.  The disciples see, truly saw, Jesus. “During his lifetime a few of his followers were permitted a glimpse of what he was to become” (IBD, loc cit, 173).

Our witness arrives after a word and before a deed. Transfiguration precedes healing for the shrieking, convulsing foaming at the mouth demoniac, a case that stumped all disciples. (9:37) Transfiguration follows the word of the cross, ‘if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow’. (9:23)

A moment of witness follows a word and forecasts a deed.

You are good and sturdy gospel listeners so you know without elaboration that Moses embodies the law and Elijah the prophets. You know the revelation of wisdom from Moses, the Decalogue. Recite it by memory… You know the audition of love from Elijah. Remember the still, small voice. (… the Lord was not in the wind, earthquake, fire… and after the fire a sound of sheer silence (1 Kings 19)…), Sinai and Horeb, the Law and the Prophets.

Here, it is as if the Gospel of John has spilled ink upon the page of St. Luke. Notice the little things: law and prophets, Moses and Elijah; a prophecy of the cross, called by the term ‘departure’ (did John write this?!?) (the Greek word is ‘exodos’); Andrew absent; Peter confused.

But what of his confusion? The confusion itself is confusing. ‘Not knowing what he said..’ What does that mean? Jesus confuses Peter. Peter confuses Luke. Luke confuses the preacher of the day. The preacher confuses you. There is an opacity here, a stymied utterance. To which, oddly but honestly, Peter bears witness.

There is a cloud here, a cloud of unknowing.  There is a mountain here, a mountain of unknowing.  There is a voice here, a voice of unknowing.There is a countenance here, a face of unknowing. There is a white robe here, a robe of unknowing.  There is a silence here.  This is worship. Enchantment. Not entertainment.  Enchantment not entertainment.  Bear witness.

   Poetry may illumine theology.  Theology can ascend to poetry.

Ours is a scientific not a poetic age.  We follow the science not the poem.  Yet, as Jaspers once remarked, perhaps we need continuously to seek out those who contradict us (NYT 1/9/22).

Our maladies are many.  Planet overheating.  Pandemic marching. Politics infuriating.  Prejudice remaining.  Pockebook straining.  Putin attacking.

And through all: Systems straining.  Inequality increasing. Culture languishing.  Doubts multiplying.  Faith receding.  Our maladies are many.

Yet in and through the long history of the communities of faith, there are, there remain, springs of living water, there remain, pools of quiet calm, there remain, underground currents of life and hope and love.  We for sure and first need all that we can muster to provide physical wellness:  vaccine, booster, testing, tracing, masking, distancing, all.  We do.  But physical wellness alone will not see us through, will not carry us through, will not bring us through.  In tandem with physical wellness, for a future worthy of its name, we shall also and more so it may be need spiritual gladness.  Physical wellness that then leans toward, reaches up for, finds a path toward spiritual gladness.  Wellness alone will not save.  Gladness too, that which makes the heart sing and the mind dance, gladness, a luminous inner eye of spiritual gladness we shall need to cool climate, deter pandemic, heal politics, sustain systems, dampen inflation, encourage culture, doubt our doubts, and find faith.  Worship brings spiritual gladness.  What brings you spiritual gladness?  What gladness does this coming week promise?  Where will you find such?  How will you know it when you see it?  What brings you spiritual gladness?

Two years ago, a week into pandemic, which we then thought might abate by Easter you may recall, my oh my, a friend and member of the Marsh Chapel worshipping community, gave me a book.  This is Dr. Ute Possekel of Harvard, who teaches Syriac there.  She meant it I believe as a symbol of light, a little bit of light, as we then entered COVID dark.  Who would have thought we would be still shadowed so, 24 months later, with more to come?  I am grateful for her faithfulness and her gift, her gift of faith and her faith in the goodness of gifts.  Today’s sermon is simply a reflection on this marvelous gem of a book, a homiletical book report, you might say.

Her gift is The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, by Sebastian Brock (Rome: Cistercian Publications, 1985).  Brock sums up Ephrem thus:  Ephrem is a theologian who employs poetry as the principal vehicle of his theology.  Because of the way in which the study of theology has grown up in the West, we have all too often forgotten that poetry can prove to be an excellent medium for creative theological writing…(as in) “It is not at the clothing of the words that one should gaze, but at the power hidden in the words”…The Syriac poetic medium through which Ephrem works has the added advantage of being completely free from the somewhat deadening literary conventions of the Graeco-Latin rhetorical tradition of late antiquity, conventions that can often seem tiresome to the modern reader. (TLE, 160, 161).

            Some will remember Kathleen Norris’s memoir of twenty years ago, Dakota:  A Spiritual Geography (2001).  She intentionally centered her work on the seemingly contrary terms, spiritual and geography, stayed centered on that mashup, and brought many, a generation ago, to a renewed sense of faith, of depth, of meaning, of grace and of love—all delivered with more than a pinch of humor.  Ephrem does something of the same, throughout a whole lifetime of prayer, study and writing.  Because he wrote in Syriac and focused on poetry, he is not well known especially compared to his fourth century contemporaries (Basil, the Gregories, Athanasius) (13).  He died in 373ce, was raised in a Christian home, and lived on today’s Turkey\Syrian border in the Roman outpost of Nisibis, before moving late in life to Edessa.  He spent much of his life and ministry in organizing relief for the poor, and led ‘some sort of consecrated life’ short of full monasticism.  As you already perceive, there are many similarities here to the lives of John and Charles Wesley.  Ephrem was heir to three major traditions:  ancient Mesopotamian tradition, Jewish tradition, and Greek tradition.  Hence, he is an ideal meeting point between East and West (21). Do we not need more such today, even in this very hour?  With Athanasius, he battled the Arian ‘heresy’ throughout his lifetime.  In the course of his work and writing, both in poetry and prose, several magnificent insights arise, as guides for our own lives.

One of Ephrem’s primary insights is the steady reliance on the primacy of faith: ‘I believe in order that I may understand’.  A second involves his celebration of human free will (‘the nature of our free will is the same in everyone’) (35).  A third, strikingly modern abiding insight is the ‘value of the body’.  In fact, Ephrem repeatedly uses imagery of clothing in his poetry.  This may be related to his abiding dual reliance on Scripture and nature both. ‘God’s two witnesses’ (41).  But all of this pales in comparison to the rhythmic beauty of his theo-poetics:

Your fountain, Lord, is hidden

From the person who does not thirst for You;

Your treasury seems empty to the person who rejects You;

Love is the treasurer

of your heavenly treasure store.

Truth and love are wings that cannot be separated,

For Truth without Love is unable to fly

so too Love without Truth is unable to soar up:

Their yoke is one of harmony.

Most strikingly, Ephrem takes his poetic ‘eye’ into the rendering of meaning in Holy Scripture.  Scripture opens itself to the ‘eye of faith’, and is open to multiple meanings.  God depicted His word with many beauties, so that each of those who learn from it can examine that aspect of it which he likes (50)….So brethren, let prying dry up and let us multiply prayers, for though He is not related to us, He is as though of our race, and though he is utterly separate, yet He is over all in all. (65).

            At the heart of Ephrem’s teaching there lies a beautiful border land, like the border areas in Tillich’s existentialist theology as well. Listen to the poetic spirit: Lord, You bent down and put on humanity’s types so that humanity might grow through your self-abasement (54). A sense of wonder gives rise to faith. (69).  Blessed is the person who has acquired a luminous eye, with which he will see how much the angels stand in awe of You, Lord, and how audacious is man (73).  So that, for Ephrem, life becomes a pattern of listening, obedience and faith.  Give ear to his magnificent poetry, so utterly fit for Transfiguration Sunday:

Luminous Eye

Illumine with Your teaching

The voice of the speaker

And the ear of the hearer:

Like the pupil of the eye

Let the ears be illumined;

For the voice provides the rays of light.

Praise to You, O Light.

It is through the eye

That the body, with its members,

Is light in its different parts,

Is fair in all its conduct

Is adorned in all its senses

Is glorious in its various limbs.

Praise to You, O Light.

It is clear that Mary

Is the ‘land’ that receives the Source of light;

Through her it was illumined

The whole world, with its inhabitants,

Which had grown dark through Eve,

The source of all evils.

Praise to You, O Light.

Mary and Eve in their symbols

Resemble a body, one of whose eyes

Is blind and darkened

While the other is clear and bright

Providing light for the whole

Praise to You, O Light.

The world, you see, has

Two eyes fixed in it:

Eve was its left eye,

Blind,

While the right eye,

Bright, is Mary.

Praise to You, O Light.

Through the eye that was darkened

The whole world has darkened

And people groped

And thought that every stone

They stumbled upon was a god,

Calling falsehood truth

Praise to You, O Light

But when it was illumined by the other eye,

And the heavenly Light

That resided in its midst,

Humanity became reconciled once again

Realizing that what they had stumbled on

Was destroying their very life.

 Praise to You, O Light.

Our poet theologian of the fourth century has carefully preceded us, cutting a trail forward, in our reading of Scripture.  For him, Scripture is a mirror, an ancient mirror, a distant mirror, but the crucial mirror, a figure of the holy preaching of the outward Gospel…There the kingdom is depicted, visible to those who have a luminous eye (77).  The reading of Scripture, including its public recitation in worship at Marsh Chapel for instance, is meant to further a spiritual awareness, a reciprocation, no less, of divine love…each individual’s openness to the sense of wonder, and his or her possession of the luminous inner eye of faith (96).

            Ephrem celebrates the medicine of life, the coal of fire, the pearl of great price, the incarnation, the bridal chamber of the heart, the church as bride, all leading toward what this preacher would call a ‘modified’ (Hill) ascetic ideal:  the ideal of wakefulness, characteristic both of the angels and of the wise virgins, together with that of singleness, would thus seem to be among the most important motivating factors that lay behind the ascetic vision and orientation of early Syriac Christianity (141).  We have in our time the term ‘woke’, but that sense of wakefulness was early and fully expressed ALREADY in the fourth century.

Sebastian Brock, our guide to and through the work of St. Ephrem, challenges us with theological poetry today. He is the Rick Steves of the land of Ephrem. Ephrem represents a genuinely Asian form of Christianity, a great gift especially for those of us largely shaped by, saturated by the European traditions.  Ephrem employs poetry as the principal vehicle of his theology.  While not inclined to eschew the historical, scientific, ethical and moral demands of Scripture, Ephrem nonetheless steadily avers that the interpretation of Scripture comes within the context of faith.  Further, in a most contemporary way, Ephrem’s ecological vision, and his emphasis on the role of the feminine in faith, are for us added gifts in our time.  We are not the first to honor the earth or to celebrate the strength of woman in faith and life.

Coming from the time of the undivided church, Ephrem belongs to the heritage of all Christian traditions.  He speaks to the unlearned and learned alike, to both lay and religious…precisely because his thought and imagery are so deeply rooted in the Bible, his poetry is thereby enabled to participate in something of the perennial freshness of the biblical text itself…the perennial freshness of the biblical text itself. (172). 

May that perennial freshness kindle in us a spiritual gladness this and every Lord’s Day!

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 02.27.2022 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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Luke 6: 27-38

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As Robert Frost wrote of the star:

 It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

In our first years here In Boston, perhaps 2006 or 2007, my sister brought her youth group from Oneida to see Boston, and to check up on her wayward brother.  A gregarious kind-hearted soul from Marsh took them up to the top of the LAW school, next door, to see what they could see.  To take a long, the long view.  It asks of us a certain height…

One of our colleagues did work for some years next door, at the College of Arts and Sciences.  He encouraged students, you, and faculty, me, to come over on Wednesday nights, next door, and go out on the roof to use the telescope.  As a parishioner a long time ago said, speaking of an elderly neighbor with whom monthly he would meet with a telescope, ‘to listen to the stars’. To take a long, the long view.  It asks of us a certain height, so when at times the mob is swayed…

Right now, or after worship, if you are at home, you can go on our website and see the Chapel from the roof of PHOTONICS across the street, right nearby, next door.  We had a parishioner who waved every Sunday morning at 10:55 entering the Chapel so her daughter in Oregon would know she was alive and well.  By video camera, you can lift a prayer, see a friend walk across the plaza, be reminded of BU, Marsh, King, Thurman and LEARNING VIRTUE AND PIETY.  To take a long, the long view. It asks of us a certain height, so when at times the mob is swayed, to carry praise or blame too far…

My wife will sometimes say, as I return, and am reading the newspaper in the evening:  Do you notice anything different around here?  I am not a very visual person.  I then do notice—a flower vase, a painting replaced, a seasonal decoration.   Four times a day now I pass a new building going up in our neighborhood.  And I notice. I look at the new building going up at BU and I am mesmerized, inspired, astounded, by the design, by the craft, by the height.  It is a riveting, impressive edifice. Tuesday, there, I ran into an artist friend, on a 10 degree but bright light day, and we gazed, talked and looked up and thought and observed.  We adjusted our view, to take a long, the long view.

It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

Luke 6: 37, the Gospel of forgiveness, asks of us a certain height, which is a saving grace.  Forgiveness is a view, a long view, the long view, that asks of us, a certain height. Forgive.  Forgive and you will be forgiven (Luke 6: 37)

Relationship depends on the capacity to forgive. There comes a moment in most relationships, when a future of any kind requires forgiveness.

Which is easier, to heal the body or the soul? Which? The wounds of the flesh do often give way to some steady healing. Not always. Yet even antiquity knew the power of healing. And thou? The soul? It is a hard question, a devilish one.

Did you ever see the film Citizen Kane? The depiction of a life, a grand life, rippling for eight decades around the cavernous hurt of childhood. Rosebud. Which is easier, to heal the body or the soul?

Gabriel Vahanian, a strange yet remarkable man, when interviewed in his office by a graduate student 40 years ago, opined, all human activity is a cry for forgiveness.

We can speak pretty fast about forgiveness. But the real thing, the shoreline of the real thing, hovers into view when you are pretty sure that there is no way to attain it. The thing about relationship that leads straight to forgiveness is that relationship means disappointment. When you love, you hope. But no single human is able to bear full, perfect hope, because we are so human. We fail. So, when betrayal, real or perceived, occurs, the loss is great. If your best friend is your spouse and there is infidelity, you know both the need and the extreme difficulty of forgiveness. If your best friend is your neighbor, and there is gossip…If your best friend is your work partner, and there is phony accounting…If your best friend is your colleague, and there is disloyalty…If your best friend is your co- worker and there is betrayal…We can speak pretty fast about forgiveness. But the real thing, the enormity of the real thing, hovers into view only when, on our own, we could not manage it.  They say that leadership is the art of disappointing people at a rate they can handle.  Well, real relationship inevitably and invariably involves disappointment.

For the Gospel of Luke, the star that fixes our gaze, calling out a certain height in us, day by day, is forgiveness. Luke has placed this matter of forgiveness here because the church wanted and needed to trace back to Jesus its own need as well as power to forgive. Every community, every church, soon finds the need of forgiveness, a grace that cannot be engineered, for it is not of human origin. To forgive is…divine.  Pope:  to err is human, to forgive divine.  We have to await its arrival, pray its blessing, hope for its timely intervention.

As the globe sails into the heart of the 21st century, the profound need for the Forgiving Jesus appears devastatingly paramount. It is a verse like Luke 6: 37 that carries the full panorama, the view, of forgiveness that the future will require. If we forever mount up with strength to defend as crusaders the details of our holiness traditions, and will brook no breach of them, our world future is dark indeed. Crusades do not work. ‘A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still’.  Which is easier, to heal the body or the soul?

Reinhold Niebuhr well expressed the historical, political anatomy of forgiveness. If social cohesion is impossible without coercion, and coercion is impossible without the creation of social injustice, and the destruction of injustice is impossible without the use of further coercion, are we not in an endless cycle of social conflict? Niebuhr, unlike other so-called realists, did not stop there. He did see a way forward. It is the way of forgiveness, on a grand scale. One can mitigate the cruelties of conflict. One can remember Garrison, and Ghandi. One can recognize that the evil in the foe is also in the self. One can avoid claims of spiritual superiority. One can work daily to develop a spiritual discipline against resentment. You hear it in Lincoln. You hear it in King. You hear it, every so often, in some unlikely world leader. Some years ago, yet as memorable as yesterday, I heard it in the voice of Michele Bachelete, then president of Chile.  She is a physician. She spoke about healing of body and soul. The way is still there, somewhere out near the truth and the life: Bachelet is a pediatrician by profession. She was, along with her mother, a political prisoner, arrested and assaulted during Pinochet's rule. Her father, an air force general, died in prison after being tortured: "You know I have not had an easy life, but then who has? Violence destroyed what I loved. Because I was the victim of hate, I have consecrated my life to converting that hate into understanding, into tolerance, and why not say it, love."

Before we die, may we feel forgiveness. Before we die, may we feel the fullness of forgiveness.  Even if we feel it by virtue of its absence, a great homesickness for a land of love, still, may we feel it. Even if it is ‘the reality of the vessel as the shape of the void’ within (Lao-Ste).  And if we are so blessed, so graced, so to feel pardon, may we by grace so offer pardon to others.

But be careful. We need to be careful. As with all real height, one must tread carefully here on the precipice of the long view.  Last autumn, mid-pandemic, one sermon addressed the biblical, personal theme of forgiveness in a traditional three-point manner:  God forgives, others forgive, forgive yourself.  The design employed an imaginary trip up into the attic of memory.  Forgiveness is crucial, central, basic, and inalienable to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who, by one account, that in our very gospel of Luke, died on a cross praying, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23: 34).

There were many responses to the sermon from the virtual congregation.  One though, more than several others, lingered in the mind and stayed present in the heart through the year past.  A listener and friend took the time to correspond with the preacher, first to offer thanks for the sermon and to bear witness to its truth, meaning, and lasting importance, but second to raise a question as to whether, at some points and in some situations, forgiveness is not a always a good thing, not even close to a good thing, and should be avoided.  My friend recognized that the sermon was moving in the opposite direction, toward the reception not the bequest of forgiveness. God forgives, others forgive, we can forgive ourselves.  But she took the next step, and also addressed a related quandary, not that of receiving but that of offering forgiveness.  And within that, there lies a serious problem.  Sometimes people should be encouraged not to forgive.  Sometimes people should be warned off from forgiveness.  Sometimes, like the kindness that kills, there is a forgiveness that fails, a forgiveness that falters, a forgiveness that frustrates the gospel witness to health, to healing, to wellness, to love.  Rev. Dr. Anne Marie Hunter wrote:

I'd love to "nuance" the issue of forgiveness to suggest that there are times when forgiveness can be a trap or a barrier to safety. For example, when someone who is abusive says (after an abusive incident), "honey, I'm sorry, please forgive me." And when the person being abused thinks, "I'm supposed to forgive 7 x 700, so I will forgive you." And then the whole abusive incident happens all over again. It may be worse this time. It could even be fatal.

Perhaps we need to have as many words for "forgiveness" as (legend has it) Eskimos have for snow. One meaning could be, "I forgive you, but I'm leaving this relationship because it's not safe." Another could be, "I don't see the need to forgive you because you haven't repented and changed your behavior, and repentance needs to precede forgiveness."

In any case, for survivors of abuse the term "forgiveness" is loaded, and often used to heap guilt and shame on their shoulders. They turn to their faith for guidance about what to do. How can faith leaders and faith communities meet their needs?

My friend was cautioning us to be careful, way up high.  That is, there are times and seasons when all we can do…is pray. That is, there are times and seasons when all we can do…is pray. There are times when the content of forgiveness is limited…to prayer. ‘Love your enemies…pray for those who persecute you’.  And that is all.  Pray, not give in.  Pray, not coddle. Pray, not cave.  Pray, not collude.  When hateful words or acts continue unabated, when personal attacks stand without apology, then your work in forgiveness is fulfilled, only and entirely, in prayer.  ‘Love your enemies…pray for those who persecute you’.  And after that, shake the dust from your feet and move on.

Now, in a week of stories about borders and truckers, let us be honest that we are all equally in the dark as we truck on toward ultimate borders.  Forgiveness is a border crossing of existential freight and might. May we open our lives to its height. Furthermore, the language of forgiveness is a foreign tongue. May we by practice learn its right pronunciation, its grammar and syntax and spelling.

For some years—happy years they—we worked among farmers and truckers and tradesfolk.  I traveled across the northern border of our nation almost every week day, driving down into Canada to study Coptic texts at McGill in Montreal. I never lost completely a sense of anticipation and even dread at the border. One very cold morning, near 5am, down in the dark beyond Huntingdon Quebec, I stopped in the snow alongside a lost trucker. I lowered the window to catch his question “Ou est le frontiere?”. When I had finally translated to myself  the simple sentence, “where is the border”, I leaned back and haltingly replied in French, but before I could say much he caught my accent, or maybe it was my abysmal grammar. Sensing a common soul, and jumping for joy he said, “Buddy, you speak English!  You must be American.” And I could say, ‘you are not far, not far at all from the border’. There is a surprising joyful anticipation, in faith, as we approach the border. At the border, the same language we have used for a lifetime is in use, the language of grace. We cross the same border with every confession of sin and every acceptance of pardon. We cross the same border with every awareness of idolatry and every word of forgiveness. We have crossed over before in the daylight, so that when night falls, we need not fear. We know what the Psalmist meant, “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”  As Frost wrote,

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud—
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says, ‘I burn.’
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

(Robert Frost)

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 02.20.2022 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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Luke 6: 17-26

Romans 12:1-13

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Might we hear a call, an invitation, to faith this morning?  Following the sense of the numinous, the moments, moments of transcendence throughout this Epiphany, a season of light and revelation, might there follow, for one or another, a straightforward invitation to faith, spoken and heard and heeded?

For we are nigh on to two years of COVID: two years of days with limitations and with fears laced into the very simplest of moments—a trip to the store, a decision to meet a friend, a first meal outside or inside, a worried report of a colleague ill.  And other strains have come alongside as well:  planet, pandemic, politics, prejudice, pocketbook.  Our planet will need our attention, our care, well into the future.  The pandemic may become endemic but will not by a moment disappear.  Our raging political discourse, downstream from the losses in culture just when we needed them over these 24 months—gathering, symphony, travel, family, tertulia, worship and assembly and prayer together—will require attentive, disciplined, curative investment of time and mind, not just a quick vote on a November morning.  Our lasting measures of racial prejudice, much on our minds especially this month, continue and cost.  And speaking of cost, gasoline is up 40%.  With all this about us, we may be ready for, and ready to hear in full this Lord’s Day, a robust call to faith, an invitation to faith.  Ours may be a profoundly preachable moment.

Here we may rely on our Epistle, speaking of such moments.  St. Paul leaves speculative, less practical theology and jarringly tells us how to live, in Romans 12.  He outlines a call to faith.  He describes what a life of faith might look like, for you, and for me.

You might not expect such from the author of the rest of the Epistle to the Romans, the one who traced our condition (our sin) from creation through conscience in Romans 1 and 2. Impractical theology there, though most treasured and precious.  You would not expect such from the Apostle who poured out the great watershed (our salvation) from Christ to Cross in Romans 3-5.  Impractical theology there, though pearls great in price, field hidden.  Nor would you expect the 13 lightning bolts of 12: 9 and following from the elliptical, emotional, tent-making, bachelor, spit-fire—what a friend we have in Paul!—who unveiled Spirit, Holy Spirit, in freedom and grace, in Romans 6-8,  who wept and conjured and pleaded about his own extended religious family in Romans 9-11.  Impractical theology, there and there, though the high-water mark of all his writing, a Spirit interceding for weakness, speaking of love and need.  Imagine our shock.  Not sin, not salvation, not Spirit, not synagogue come Romans 12: 9.  Rather, some utterly practical, pastoral, applicable theology.  Say, an Epiphany call to faith, especially for those who may be just a bit ragged, just now.

Romans 12: 9ff, the ‘Pauline 13’ may be your best threshold, liminal line, front door response to the question, ‘Can you help me get going on this?  What does it mean to hear a call to faith?  I mean I would like to think about faith, and the gift of faith, and growth in faith. But how am I to do so?’  We ask:  what does it mean to hear a call to faith?  And the Holy Scripture, in the voice of the Apostle to the Gentiles, responds.

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?  It means to let love be genuine.  All these verses, note well, are plural imperatives, communal commands.   The command in Genesis ‘be fruitful, multiply, fill the whole earth’ is not an individual demand.  Your family doesn’t need to do so alone, though Samuel and Susanna Wesley certainly did their best.  It is communal.  You all.  All you all.  In fact, given our ‘limitations’ (being kind here), there is no way for us individually to accomplish such commands.  Not all love is genuine.  Not all is from the heart, nor true, nor durable, nor real.  But it is our call, together, to be lovers in a post-agape world, and to make that love genuine.

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?  It means to hate what is evil.  Notice the firmness in Paul’s flexibility, the vagueness in his certainty.  In sin, salvation, Spirit, and synagogue he has now confidence that—for our own time, we shall know the place of hatred and the outline of evil.  Implied here:  new occasions teach new duties, as James Russell Lowell wrote, and this month in repetition we note.  Not all of life is good and clean.  Some is, some is not.  We are free, nay called, to hate evil.  You overhear Amos: ‘I hate I despise your feasts’ (5:23). When someone says or does something you hate, something that is wrong, hurtful, damaging, and lasting, not something mild or minor but something real and permanent, then the door closes on that event or act or word, and you are left with disappointment and anger, disappointment that does not dissipate and anger that does not abate.  It is a permanent wound, a lasting, permanent scar, perhaps by grace forgivable and forgiven over long time and disciplined prayer, but not forgettable or forgotten.  It is as if that deed or word or word\deed or deed\word is now locked behind a great oak door, an oak door with heavy iron hinges and a great lock, locked without a key.  You may howl at the door.  Please do.  You may pound on the door until your fingers bleed.  Have at it.  You may knock your nose and forehead against the door until you bleed with profusion.  Go ahead.  It will do you nothing of good.  It is done.  It is said.  It is awful and it is irremediable.  It has only one true first cousin in life and that cousin is death.  Here, just here, right here, is where you need faith.

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?  It means to hold fast to what is good.  Hold fast to what is good! Notice again the firmness in Paul’s flexibility, the vagueness in his certainty.   Of one odd Scriptural admonition, Krister Stendahl said, ‘I believe it is the Word of God, but not the Word of God…for me.’  Time makes ancient good uncouth—again, Lowell.

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?  It means to love one another with mutual affection, brotherly affection, a bond that is fraternal, sororial, militant if not military, visceral and reciprocal.  Real affection is mutual.  Affection wherein one party has all the say and the other does all the work is not affectionate.  It is affectionless, affected, not effective.

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?  It means to outdo one another in showing honor.  Creative generosity, happy hospitality, courage in counting others better, here is our way.  Forebear one another in love.  Light, salt, sheep:  people need to see you giving honor, taste the spice of your commendation and expect willingness to honor to be shorn, clean cut, readily recognizable—not just an afterthought.

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?  It means not to lag in zeal, to be ardent in spirit, and to serve the Lord.  These three dicta largely place before you the directive to get out of bed, into some comfortable clothes, into a prayerfully cleansed mindset, and seated by the radio dial, come Sunday, or to get yourself out of bed, into some clean clothes, over to Marsh Chapel, and be seated in a pew, come Sunday.  A walk in the country or on the beach is good.   Yet the public worship of Almighty God is not a matter of indifference.  Hear a call to faith, and come to worship!  Your sister, here, needs the encouraging support of your zealous presence.  Your brother, here, needs the example of your ardent spirit.  God’s service is perfect freedom, and this worship service is just one hour.  We can become so lackadaisical about worship:  and I am not only speaking of us academics (J).  In a lifetime, you have 4,000 Sundays, 1,000 haircuts, 60 income tax returns.  And 525,600 minutes a year.  Zeal, spirit, service, Sunday:  prize your time now you have it!

Howard Thurman was and still is not only the past Dean of Marsh Chapel, but the Dean of Black preaching, teaching and devotion, 100 years ahead of his time 50 years ago.  My friend Phil Amerson remembers Thurman’s words:  “I say that creeds, dogmas, and theologies are inventions of the mind. It is the nature of the mind to make sense out of experience, to reduce the conglomerates of experience to units of comprehension which we call principles, or ideologies, or concepts. Religious experience is dynamic, fluid, effervescent, yeasty. But the mind can't handle these, so it has to imprison religious experience in some way, get it bottled up. Then, when the experience quiets down, the mind draws a bead on it and extracts concepts, notions, dogmas, so that religious experience can make sense to the mind. Meanwhile, religious experience goes on experiencing, so that by the time I get my dogma stated so that I can think about it, the religious experience becomes an object of thought. (From “An Interview with Howard Thurman and Ronald Eyre, Theology Today, Volume 38, Issue 2 (July 1981)). ”)” Deeper and Wider: Beyond the Two Revivals, Philip Amerson, February 2022 p. 8

To hear a call to faith, and to heed, is to ride the waves, in community, of shared hope and pain and prayer.  Hope carries us beyond pain through prayer.  Pain drives us hard back onto hope in prayer.  Prayer brings us up, out, forward, and through whether in hope or in pain.  When we have hope, we celebrate, as a community.  When we have pain, we endure, as a community.  Be constant, steady, regular, punctual, reliable, disciplined, in prayer.  This is an old saw, but a true one.  A man on Fifth Avenue is asked, How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  The right response:  Practice, practice, practice. And that requires community, a common ground, social holiness as well as personal, and habits:  a prayer a day, a worship service a week, Holy Communion once a month.

(Again Phil Amerson reminds me): “Speaking of the suggestion that individual mysticism was the highest good, John Wesley wrote (in contradiction): Solitary religion is not to be found there. “Holy Solitaries” is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than Holy Adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness. Faith working by love, is the length and breadth and depth and height of Christian perfection. "(John Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739), Preface, page viii.)" (“A Call for Social Holiness | The United Church of Canada”)” Deeper and Wider: Beyond the Two Revivals Philip Amerson, February 2022 p. 8

And sometimes for those trying to live out that social holiness there is high cost.  I keep a quotation from former Republican Senator Jeff Flake in my desk, from almost five years ago, November 2017:  ‘I will no longer be complicit or silent in the face of the president’s reckless, outrageous, undignified behavior…I deplore the casual undermining of our democratic ideals, the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedom and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency…We must stop pretending that the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal.  They are not normal.  Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified.  And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else.  It is dangerous to a democracy…It is often said that children are watching.  Well, they are.  And what are we going to do about that?  When the next generation asks us, why didn’t you do something?  Why didn’t you speak up?  What are we going to say?...There are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles.  Now is such a time.’ (NYT, 10/24/17).  That is, better to lose your job than your soul.

What does it mean to hear a call to faith? The Apostle reserves the two toughest communal challenges for last, one about money and one about time.  Time and money, money and time.  On money:  Rightly, you will take one tithing Christian for every 10 of the born-again variety.  Rightly, you will take one tithing Christian who remembers the ministry of the church in her will for every stadium full of political praying Christians.  You want to see less hat and more cattle.  A Christian vision along our southern border, and we do need borders, say, will include a recollection of the Monroe Doctrine teaching us to care especially for our hemispheric neighbors, a recollection of the Marshall Plan, and what can be done to the benefit of all to reconstitute fragmented nations and communities, a recollection of the love poem of Emma Lazarus at our front door. Contribute to the needs, not the irresponsibility but the needs, of the holy community, near and far.  On time:  Hospitality is to time what generosity is to money.  Hospitality is how you spend your time (such an odd but choice phrase in American English).  Hospitality:  the making of the bed of friendship, the cooking of the meal of companionship, the pouring of the bath of empathy, the cleaning of the linens of suffering, the embrace of the journey through life:  welcome home, how was the trip?,  let’s see your photographs.   Hospitality is to time what generosity is to money.    Practice. Practice!  You will get better at both with time. I would put money on it.  Practice. Practice!  You will get better at both with time. I would put money on it (J).

Here is your Epiphany call to faith, offered with a Methodist handshake.  If this were a Wesleyan revival, we would line this out like a hymn for us to sing.  If this were a Pentecostal church we would call you to response in call and response.  If this were Fenway Park, we would start the wave or sing Sweet Caroline.  But this is Marsh Chapel, so we will just ask you, encouraging your memory, to remember together, entering 2022:  Romans 12: 9-13.

Let love be genuine

Hate what is evil

Hold fast to what is good

Love one another with mutual affection

Outdo one another in showing honor

Never lag in zeal

Be ardent in spirit

Serve the Lord

Rejoice in your hope

Be patient in tribulation

Be constant in prayer

Contribute to the needs of the saints

Practice hospitality

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 02.13.2022 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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Luke 5: 1-11

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Our meditation upon Holy Communion this Lord’s Day centers on the Holy.

A place can inspire the idea of the Holy….

This place
Come Sunday, every Sunday, here at Marsh Chapel:
The Chapel’s gothic nave, built to lift the spirit, welcomes you
The Chapel’s sixty year history, at the heart of Boston University, welcomes you
The Chapel’s regard for persons and personality, both in its Connick stained glass windows and in its current ministry, welcomes you
The Chapel’s familiar love of music, weekday and Sunday, welcomes you
The Chapel’s congregation of caring, loving souls, in this sanctuary, welcomes you in spirit.
So, dear friends, then 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, 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 and heard, a gathered and thus addressable community, you and I and all together, able to respond to Easter.

A song can inspire the idea of the Holy…

Together we can sing. Those in the balcony, our regular closer to heaven balcony crew, can sing.

Those along the back wall, in the last pew, the AMEN corner, can sing.

Those from the east, who regularly sit to the east, who lean left, and those from the west, who regularly sit to the west, who lean right, can sing.

Those in the chancel whom we do not want to cancel, can sing, choir or clergy or other or all.

Those at home, following the bulletin, humming the tunes, imagining a day when they will again be among us in the nave, can sing.

They shall sing of the ways of the Lord

Even in grim reminder of grim remainder of abiding injustice, prejudice, racism, embedded in systems, as the shooting and death of Amin Locke in Minneapolis reminds us. At least we are present, alive, together come Sunday and can recall and remind and name in the moment, not waiting for the taping of the sermon a week later.

Grim reminders. The possible need for shunning in days ahead, of those who would overturn elections, of those who would incite insurrection. We have a hard time seeing, and admitting, just how grim things can become.

A promise can inspire the idea of the Holy…

So Paul teaches us in 1 Corinthians

We are led in faith to the open, and ever new frontiers of what is true, honorable, just, lovely, excellent, of good report. New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth, one must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth. Those who live to the utmost for God’s highest praise are capable of being fearless before change, before newness, before adventure, before truth. This, to my mind, is the lasting meaning of a willingness to try new things. New music, new forms of transport, new technologies (well, at least a few of them), new places, new jobs, new homes, new ways. Truth is itinerant. And such a willingness is a virtue, like all virtues, formed by habit. To quote the Dean of Marsh Chapel, the public worship of Almighty God is not a matter of indifference. Aristotle, Aquinas and Wesley all emphasized: virtues are formed by habit, daily ritual, weekly routine, virtues are formed by habit, as the spirit is nourished by reading a Psalm a day. The past precedes but does not prescribe the future. Biology precedes but does not prescribe destiny. Family of origin precedes but does not prescribe identity. Home, hearth, culture, cult, church, school, town—they precede but they do not prescribe vocation. May we hear this as a word of faith? The past does not determine the future. There is always the open possibility of healing for past hurt. There is always the open possibility of forgiveness for past wrong. There is always the open possibility of liberation from past entrapment. This is what we mean by Christ. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away and the new has come.” In the lasting and large, this is truly what we mean by resurrection. The resurrection of Christ is the new truth of faith made eternal and everlasting across the threshold of death. The resurrection is the power of love transcending the sting of death. Love outlasts death. One day I passed by a boy climbing into a school bus. I saw his parents’ wave. I remember that the bus door closed, a closure to the past and a way to the future. It takes faith to climb on and it takes more faith to wave goodbye, across all our separations and thresholds, all our liminal moments, especially at the River Jordan. I saw the bus driver put her strong hand on the boy’s shoulder. Pause for a moment and sense a Hand on your shoulder too.

A surprise can inspire the idea of the Holy…

So our gospel, of unexpected catch, used by analogy to recall our call to share, call to care, call to offer others love that we have known

Holy, Holy Holy: Presence, Thanksgiving, Remembrance

Frost Star

Psalm 121

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 02.6.2022 at 11:00 am