Sunday
February 20
A Certain Height
By Marsh Chapel
Click here to hear the full service
Click here to hear just the sermon
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
