Sunday
March 6
Communion Meditation- March 6, 2022
By Marsh Chapel
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Jesus meets us today in the fullness of His humanity, in communion with the communion of saints, all the saints including those who from their labors rest. The levels of temptations our Lord endures, as rendered by Saint Luke, begin with the physical (bread), continue to the cultural (power) and conclude with the spiritual (religion). Hunger, avarice, and pride beset us still, in temptations near and far. Our communion meditation this Lord’s Day, for the beginning of Lent, places us in the presence of the humanity of Jesus, in remembrance of His pain within that humanity, and in a grateful if bittersweet thanksgiving for that utter, cruciform, dominical humanity.
Our communion meditation stretches out and back for millenia. We are heartened to recall the refrain, even hymn, of Deuteronomy ‘mighty hand, outstretched arm, display of power, signs and wonders’ …’mighty hand, outstretched arm, display of power, signs and wonders’. Others too have faced in some measure ranges of unsolved troubles as we face ours today in planet, pandemic, politics, prejudice, pocketbook and peril. The gift of freedom, the price of freedom, the protection of freedom have ever been at the heart of faith. We are reminded of this in our experience right now, March 2022. A wandering Aramean was my father, writes the Deuteronomist. We are not the first generation to be faced with peril and price of freedom, and that itself can be a measure of reassurance.
Our communion meditation settles us in faith, the faith which St. Paul can name with precision, located in baptism and belief, in baptism and belief. These are sentences worthy of memorization. “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Confession with the lips and belief in the heart, and we move forward into an open, uncertain, free future, with all its dangers, costs and joys.
From here it is a short step to the song, the psalm of the day, the singing of faith. After 18 months without the chance to sing the hymns of faith together, March 2020 through August 2021, we will not likely ever again take such a simple grace for granted. The psalm brings a communion in meditation on God in whom we trust, God in whom we trust. My refuge, my fortress, my refuge, my fortress. We sang in this sanctuary in hard days past: Fallujah in 2007 and the nadir of a war that was contrary to Christian teaching both pacifist and just war, a Syrian red line held and then not in 2013, the election in 2016 and a prior president’s praise of Putin, and insurrection, insurrection in 2021. Words have lasting meaning and votes have lasting meaning. There are times when you sing songs in the night, with Job. Songs, hymns, are written still, in the moment. For fifteen years we sat in a mid-week service behind a professor, now retired and moved, Cheryl Boots, who writes hymns, and sent one this week. Its third verse:
Spirit who rejects the violence
That your warring children spawn.
You behold the pure and wicked.
When hate strikes what can be done?
Lover of Justice flow down like waterfalls,
put out the fires of sick, human greed.
Do not tolerate the power-mad.
Teach us Love that meets all our needs.
And a friend sent another, earlier this same week, written as pandemic began, by Carolyn Gillette. Its third verse:
May we cherish those around us as we never have before.
May we think much less of profit; may we learn what matters more.
May we hear our neighbors’ suffering; may we see our neighbors’ pain.
May we learn new ways of offering life and health and hope again.
Maybe you could write a three verse hymn this week. You don’t have to be a Methodist to rely on singing, the art form available to the poor, and particularly prized by the poor, but it doesn’t hurt. Even the poor can sing. Everybody can sing, and so, the Psalms. May we learn new ways of offering life and health and hope again, of singing life and health and hope again.
Our communion meditation upon the complete humanity of Jesus our Lord embraces us in the Gospel of Luke, the gospel of humanity, compassion, justice, and love. It is the season of Lent, and again, come this first Sunday in Lent, we meet Jesus in the wilderness. There He resists. In the time-honored tradition of a three-part story, we are given a lesson about making and keeping human life—human. God is at work in the world to make and keep human life human. God is at work in the world to make and keep human life human. Here, as in our other gospels, the Lord faces and masters the various temptations which we also know. They include a kind of will to power, and a sort of pride, and a type of avarice. We come to church with some experience of temptation and resistance. As the song writer says, ‘good experience comes from seasoned judgment–which comes from bad experience’.
We are in worship this morning to attest to something, as human and as fallible and as frail as we are. Faith is the power to withstand what we cannot understand. Worship is the practice of faith by which we learn to withstand what we cannot understand. God is the presence, force, truth, and love Who alone deserves worship, and worship is the practice of the faith by which we learn to withstand what we cannot understand. Worship prepares us to resist. So, just so, we see Jesus again in the wilderness. To resist all that makes human life inhuman. So here you are, come lent, come Sunday, come 11am, today again to walk in the wild, in the wilderness.
But Saint Luke brings a different look. Luke is our gospel guide this year. He asks us, at virtually every turn, to find our way into a meditative communion, communion in Christ with God and with neighbor. So, today in the shadow of our Lord’s temptation, we are invited to a prayerful resistance to the blandishments of wealth, power and fame.
Perhaps you are not ready to resist blandishments. Maybe though, say at age 19, or at age 79, we may be ready, for different reasons, to observe the limitations, the fairly severe limitations, truth to tell, of wealth, power and fame. If nothing else, a worship service, on a sleepy University Campus, in spring break long before spring, in the frozen month of March, as all year, is meant to ring this bell, sing this song, tell this tale, recall in meditative communion that we are utterly mortal and lastingly fragile.
One shall not live by bread alone. You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve. You shall not tempt the Lord your God.
You have noticed that here, as is his duty and custom, Luke has amplified the story of Jesus he inherited from Mark, in accord to some degree we trust with the condition and need of his community. The preaching of Gospel attempts to do the same each Sunday. Luke’s predecessor Mark has only a couple of lines about wilderness, temptation, wild beasts, Satan and Angels. But Matthew and Luke have both added in another story within the story, a spiritual temptation to accompany the physical deprivation. Jesus cites here Deuteronomy 6 and 8. Jesus models spiritual dimensions of spiritual temptation and struggle. He models humanity for humanity as a human among humans. Not bread, alone. Not power, alone. Not glory, alone. Not the blandishments of wealth, power, and fame. But the struggles, the spiritual struggles, the tragedy that lines its way through life. The tragedy that so impersonally and unfathomably upends life, as our globe now sees and feels in Ukraine, with its citizens the victims of warfare that is preemptive, unilateral, imperial, unforeseeable, immoral, post Judeo Christian and wrong. Would that we as a nation had never failed in the same way. But in our past, say Iraq 2003, we have, and we should continue to learn from our past, with both humility and compassion (as David Brooks has argued).
Even as we live in safety in a secure college community, we bear in mind other young women and men, like those now in Ukraine, who defend their homes, land, and families, at great and sometimes ultimate cost. They bear the hard hurt and cost of learning, virtue and piety: learning, to distinguish truth from falsehood; virtue, to distinguish good from evil; piety, to distinguish life from death. We again face the bitter truth Dr. King named: injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. As President Zelensky said last week, ‘our weapon is truth’. For many of us, our thought, feeling and thought-feeling, is that there is more we can and should have done. May we be mindful, at least, of all those near and far, young and old, known and unknown, who face falsehood, evil and death, and all those as well who yet lack shelter, raiment, safety and nourishment. Indeed, and in full, our minds and hearts dwell this day on the children, women and men immersed in the tragic warfare that has been brutally and needlessly unleashed in and on Ukraine. We pray for them and for President Biden and other world leaders working to restore peace and justice. In particular we hold close to our hearts those Boston University students and staff with homes and families in these regions. Utterly realistic about the tragedy and harm now unfolding, we yet hold onto a distant hope for a better day to come, one day. Each one of us has some responsibility and some freedom to bring to bear upon today and tomorrow. And that thought and spirit are around us. Communion meditation includes this call. Love means taking responsibility.
There is a stirring near and far, to reach out and help, somehow.
We had a call one day this week asking whether Marsh Chapel could support a Plaza Vigil on behalf of Ukraine. Our staff made space, found candles, welcomed students, and supported what will not be the last vigil in the face of the lawless brutality, the needless carnage, the carnage and slaughter executed by Putin’s Russia.
There is a stirring near and far, to reach out and help, somehow.
Later in the week, while many and others traveled away for Spring Break, one fraternity set up shop outside the student union. The brothers of Theta Chi distributed information and simply but clearly asked, ‘who you like to make a donation on behalf of those suffering in Ukraine’? It was the best invitation of the semester. ‘Yes, I would. Thanks for giving me the chance.’
There is a stirring near and far, to reach out and help, somehow.
The Questrom School of Business, in the business of business but shepherded by wise leaders who have not forgotten learning, virtue and piety, called together a strategy meeting on Ukraine. They rightly called our University Chaplain for International Students. We have that fine role here, thanks to your support, to bring spiritual advocacy and ministerial support for the 25% of our students who come from overseas, including some from Ukraine. As was preached on Ash Wednesday, liberating others, we liberate ourselves.
There is a stirring near and far, to reach out and help, somehow.
There is an intensity, an earnest interest right around here, an interest in faithful application of good faith, one way or another. Many years ago, right here, as the war in Iraq continued on, we invested ourselves in Refugee support. A young man, even younger then, a chorister become Episcopal priest, David Romanik spent a year between college and seminary working in part on behalf of refugees, through Marsh Chapel. We may need to conjure a way to return to that work, now on behalf of Ukraine. We may need to conjure a way to return to that work, now on behalf of Ukraine.
There is a stirring near and far, to reach out and help, somehow.
There is a stirring near and far, to reach out and help, somehow.
There is a stirring near and far, to reach out and help, somehow.
Jesus meets us today in the fullness of His humanity, in communion with the communion of saints, all the saints including those who from their labors rest. The levels of temptations our Lord endures, as rendered by Saint Luke, begin with the physical (bread), continue to the cultural (power) and conclude with the spiritual (religion). Hunger, avarice, and pride beset us still, in temptations near and far. Our communion meditation this Lord’s Day, for the beginning of Lent, places us in the presence of the humanity of Jesus, in remembrance of His pain within that humanity, and in a grateful if bittersweet thanksgiving for that utter, cruciform, dominical humanity.
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
