Sunday
September 4
Listen To Your Life (Matriculation, 2022)
By Marsh Chapel
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Gracious God,
In this holy moment, a day of new beginnings:
We summon the better angels of our nature to sit quietly before you in gratitude.
For the gift of your love to inspire us in our freshman year, to quicken us to try, to join, to sign up, to get out, we are peacefully thankful.
For the gift of your presence to sustain us in our sophomore year, to strengthen us to continue, to persevere, to stay up, to move on, we are simply thankful.
For the gift or your power to embolden us in our junior year, to encourage us to achieve, to give, to change, to travel, to grow, we are spiritually thankful.
For the gift of your peace to illumine us in our senior year, to steady us to plan, to finish, to complete, to leave, we are personally thankful.
Help us to love what is lovely, to be present to what is real, to find strength in what lasts, and to know peace in what honors, but surpasses, understanding. Help us to listen to our lives, to learn deeply from our own experience.
Inspired by your love, sustained by your presence, encouraged by your power, confirmed by your peace, day by day our life before you flows on in endless song.
Empower us we pray to listen to our lives, with keen care to listen to our lives
For the privilege of these coming few days, these fast four years, we are thankful. Amen.
Beloved children of God, hear the Gospel, so befitting Matriculation, the Gospel According to St. Luke in the fourteenth chapter and the 25th verse.
Count the cost. Ahead of time, count the cost. By way of illustration: in business, and in war. And in everything in between. Count the cost. How could we not think this morning of those suffering the terror of warfare in Ukraine? How could we not think this morning of those—so regularly the least, the last and the lost—suffering the jolts and tides of inflation and coming recession?
Do the arithmetic, study the detail, count.
You, careful listener, you recognize that Luke 14: 25-33 is not Jesus talking, but Luke writing. You realize that Jesus left no written record, like Socrates in that. You recognize that he spoke Aramaic, not Greek, and whether or not he was literate. You recall the arithmetic of his life, death and destiny, the years 4bce to 33ce, and the distance of those from our reading, Luke 14, in 85ce, at the earliest (some would date Luke much later). What we hear this morning is, in the first instance, not the voice of Jesus but the composition of Luke. Of course, and granted, there will be traces of Jesus’ voice, along the way, particularly in Luke 9-19, especially, and especially there in the parables, his own mode of teaching, without which nothing. In all, though, and on the bigger whole, this is not Jesus’ voice but Luke’s writing. This makes all the arithmetical difference in the world, these 50 years and 2 opposed forms of rhetoric.
Now, it may be, gazing again at the bulletin, or ruminating on the remembered reading of the Gospel, the high-water mark of our worship each Sunday, you begin to wonder, to ponder, to question. Good. We learn most from the questions we ask, and most of us most of the time need more reminder than instruction. Sitting in the balcony, seated with your family, pondering whether to join the choir, or whether to return to Chapel for dinner or study. Perhaps these are your questions, or some of them.
Why this discussion of hatred, when the Gospel in other clothing is centrally about love? Why this denigration of family, when the family is one of the protected entities in the Decalogue, the ten commandments: protection of truth, of communication, of speech, of worship, of family, of life, of property, of marriage, of law, and of commerce? Therein, whence the rejection of life itself, when otherwise the Gospel acclaims life, having life, and having life in abundance? There seems to be some counting and accounting needed.
More so: What is the mention here of the cross? Jesus in this narrative, in these chapters, is preaching, teaching, healing, going about in Galilee and Judea a free itinerant prophet. All of a sudden, here comes a word from much later, ‘cross’. Was Jesus making a prediction that only he could see and understand? Or is this a clue to the fountain and origin of this passage, the church’ struggles and the mind of Luke? Cross? Cross? I thought we were sharing parables and blessing children and rounding up disciples. Moreso, the cross is ‘one’s own cross’. The writer seems to assume that all will get the reference, including you, and me, to the cross. How all this talk about the cross when Jesus just now in Luke is teaching in parables and healing the sick, a long way from Jerusalem and ‘the cross’?
Even more so: How is it that all of a sudden, everyone around Jesus is expected to be a monk? Ridding oneself of all, all, not most, not much, but all possessions? All. That’s at a lot, even in an era of tunics, ephods, camels, donkeys, sandals, fishing, shepherding and travel by foot. All? What is transpiring here?
Nor does this seem metaphorical, in a way that some current preaching would likely choose. Hatred—well, you know, not exactly hatred but mature self-differentiation. Life—well, you know, not exactly life in the sense of breath and nourishment, but in the sense of deep meaning. Cross—well, you know, not exactly crucifixion in the bloody and excruciating physical sense, but self-discipline, more in the sense of yoga. Possessions—well, you know, not in exactly the form of car, home, bank account and pension, but in the sense of a general materiality, of not letting your possessions possess you. No, actually Luke 14 does not seem or sound metaphorical at all, regarding hatred, life, cross, or possessions. It sounds literal, actual, straightforward enough.
To faithfully interpret these kinds of verses we shall need in the next generation—your generation—a full and fulsome liberal biblical theology. Maybe one or three of you will invest in such work.
Forgive what is only an interpretative guess, even less than that, yet after many decades of hearing these harsh words, even in Luke–the Gospel of peace, the Gospel of love, the Gospel of church, the Gospel of freedom—these are phrases that sound like the esoteric, ascetic, anti-worldliness of the emerging gnostic movement. It is as if here, in Luke and Matthew, by way of Q, some measure of the enthusiastic pessimism, the bodily asceticism, the turning away from the world which we know in full in full Gnosticism, has grown up alongside the gospel, wheat and tares together sown. There are strong parallels, almost identical, in the Gospel of Thomas, a gnosticizing document of about the same time as Luke. And there are strong parallels in Poimandres, a fully gnostic document of about the same time as Luke (Fitzmeier, Anchor, 1064).
Uncompromising demands regarding self, regarding family, and regarding possessions may well be part of the life of faith, warns Luke out of the gnostic shadows of his sources. He warns us as we come to faith. He reminds us of the gift of faith. Like all serious engagements, this spiritual one is not be entered into lightly, but reverently, discreetly and in the fear of God. ‘Jesus counsels his followers not to decide on discipleship without advance, mature self-probing’. It is as if Jesus is saying, ‘come along, I want to make this for you the hardest decision of your life’.
So. This may mean that the struggles under this passage of Holy Scripture, our sufficient rule of faith and practice, are from 85ad, not 30ad. That there is in the emerging church a set of conflicts that require some arithmetic, some counting and accounting. How much home, how much away? How much kindness, how much honesty? How much self-affirmation and how much self-abnegation? How much materiality and how much spirituality? Before you set out, to go to college or to take a job or to move in together or to get married or to sell the farm or to go to war or to build a tower, well, you might want to…do the math.
St. Luke wrestled with formational questions in the first century: For whom is the gospel? What are the definitive texts? And especially, who shall hold authority? What, How, Where. And Who? Here Luke wrestles with these costs and their accounting. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” said Paul.
Aristotle taught us to attend to the true, the good, the beautiful. In the late fourth century there emerged a good, great leader of the church, Ambrose of Milan. In just eight days he went from unbaptized layman to Bishop. His rhetorical skill, musicianship, diplomatic agility and attention to the preparations for Baptism provided the power behind his lasting influence in Northern Italy.
The greatest teacher of the earlier church, Augustine of Hippo, came to Milan a non-Christian. From the influence of Ambrose, he left baptized and believing and worked a generation to set the foundations for the church over a thousand years to come.
Ambrose inspired Augustine. A quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated person, a plow horse not a show horse. A plow horse not a show horse. A lot of progress can be made when we do not linger too long over who gets the credit.
Some years ago, we went to a church meeting near Canada on a very cold night. It was led by our Bishop. For some reason I was not in a very happy mood, nor was I very charitable in my internal review of his remarks that evening. I do not recall his topic or theme. I remember clearly seeing him help to move hymnals, borrowed from other churches for the large crowd, so they could be returned. Snow, dark, long arms carrying a dozen hymnals into the tundra.
Think of someone you have known who properly counted costs, who lived with heartfelt passion for the common good, who lived in selfless ways, a ‘person for others’, to cite Bonhoeffer.
Every one of us has some influence. If you have a pen, a smart phone, a computer, email, a tongue, a household, a family, a job, a community—then you have some influence.
Who taught you, by precept and example, how to use it? How much of what you picked up needs keeping and how much needs to be put out on the curb?
A simple passion for the common good of the servants of God is at the heart of faithful living. What is new? Here is what I need you to do for me. What should I pray for you? This is what we learn when we listen to our lives.
This was the phrase Frederick Buechner, an exemplary chaplain of another era, who died last week, tried to summarize his hundreds of sermons and 95 years of life: listen to your life.
Gerson wrote: When the late Frederick Buechner — novelist, preacher, Christian apologist — was asked to summarize the single essential insight of his prolific writing and speaking career, he would respond, “Listen to your life”.
“If indeed there is a God,” he explained, “which most of the time I believe there is, and if indeed he is concerned with the world, which the Christian faith is saying … one of the ways he speaks to us, and maybe one of the most powerful ways, is through what happens to us.”… “Pay attention to moments,” he said, when “unexpected tears come to your eyes and what may trigger them.” He was talking about those sudden upwellings of emotion we get from the sublimity of nature or art, when we see a whale breaching, or are emotionally ambushed by a line in a film or poem. We are led toward truth and beauty by a lump in the throat. (M Gerson, WAPO, 8/22/22).
May what Paul wrote of Philemon be said of us: When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus.
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
