Sunday
August 27
A Moment of Inspiration
By Marsh Chapel
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Inspiration.
A moment of inspiration.
Peter was seized by a moment of inspiration.
And you?
Are we?
Are we open to a moment of inspiration?
Have you faith?
Have you faith in Christ?
Are you going on to wholeness?
Do you desire to be made healthy in love in this life?
Are you earnestly striving after it?
Over the years, you, Marsh Chapel, have provided reasoned hearing for moments of inspiration, so not to be conformed, but to be transformed by the renewing of the mind, as Paul has it. Think in four strands.
Some special ones have come as friends or students of ours, a strand of students from BU, as alumni if you will of Marsh Chapel have over time taken leadership in campus ministries near and far. Your inspiration has borne fruit, with colleagues engaging campus life at Bates, at Tufts, at Bentley, at Emerson, at Middlebury, at St Paul at Syracuse, at American, at Emory, at University of Chicago, and elsewhere.
Your inclination to inspiration has borne fruit in voices of truth and love, here, over many years. The historic strand of Methodism. The gift largely of our time, though dating to Anna Howard Shaw decades ago, the strand of women in the pulpit. International, and global strands, ecumenical and interreligious strands, all sharing an inclination to inspiration.
Your inspiration has also borne fruit in a fine, particular African American strand of preaching, dating to Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King (whose ‘Dream’ speech turns 60 tomorrow). I can hear guest voices from that strand, that rich tradition, and picture them in our pulpit. I close my eyes and hear their cadences, their inflections, their pauses, their voices. Bobbie Mcclain. Peter Paris. Lawrence Carter. Cornell William Brooks. Elizabeth Siwo. Dale Andrews. Peter Gomes. Jonathan Walton. Walter Fluker. Christopher Edwards. Robert Franklin. Preeminently Robert Franklin. Ken Elmore. And, after some serious pestering, without pause, of his gracious administrator, a wonderful gracious woman, our former Governor Deval Patrick. (She called on Friday to schedule a talk on Monday, saying…’You will be happy’. Happy indeed!)
For this summer of 2023 the strand was from your extended family, your spiritual children, the children of Marsh Chapel who now lead and teach and preach, whether here or at Harvard or at Vanderbilt or in Rochester. You have cast your bread upon the water, and some has come back to you, this summer. We are still rightly judged by the kind of people we produce. And grateful we are to Jessica Chicka, Soren Hessler, Jen Quigley, Bill Cordts, Stephen Cady, Regina Walton, and Karen Coleman. Marsh Chapel: this summer our own family came home. And they came to inspire us, and to remind us. To remind us, to inspire us by reminding us. Drew Faust, former Harvard President, has just done so with her autobiography, NECESSARY TROUBLE.
Most of us most of the time need more reminder than instruction. So, as you think about discipleship and its costs, say each of these twice every morning…
Faith is not a prize to achieve but a gift to receive.
The gospel is not about success and failure but about death and resurrection.
Cultural, racial and religious divisions are hard and real, today, and in first century Palestine. They must be faced and addressed.
Sometimes the divine voice is and has to be harsh, like when a Father warns his son not to touch a hot stove.
Food matters, really matters, and so, as in the sacrament is at the heart of our faith and faithfulness.
Love brings happiness as those four young men from Liverpool reminded us: all you need us love. Love is the way to happiness. Nostalgia can block out curiosity. Nostalgia can eclipse curiosity.
Love includes. Faith does not exclude. Hope includes. Love, faith and hope are like communion at Marsh Chapel. All are included. Sometimes an anthem can and will interpret the Gospel for the day, alongside the sermon.
You can see and hear these at your inclination, for your inspiration. And, now, thanks to one of our staff, whose name I cannot give you but whose initials are Chloe McLaughlin, you can listen to 799 services on podcast, starting with August 2008. You can listen for 47 days and 7 hours straight. Hm…that might be an ideal requirement for theology students…
Matthew teaches us, as does all Scripture.
We are disciples. The word means student. Disciple means student. Salve Discipuli. Salve Magistra. Discipleship means studentship. The model of faithfulness recommended, particular in Matthew, and especially in Matthew 16, is the model of the student. Perhaps if we simply said ‘studentship’ rather than ‘discipleship’, we would do better. Perhaps we should and could see the courageous arrival of the class of 2027 as exhibit a, exemplum docet.
Living right means learning together—in voice, in thought, in conflict, in Scripture. Learning together.
It is this driving preachment that causes Matthew to eviscerate Mark here. Matthew in 85ad has taken a passage from Mark in 70ad and turned it upside down. It is not so much the detail, by the way, of the manner in which Matthew and Luke revise Mark, chapter by chapter, which is important. What matters is that they have the courage to do so, that they happily re-gospelled the gospel for their own day, to a fair thee well.
No? No? Oh Yes. Yes, indeed. Yes.
(1)Mark in the passage calls Peter ‘Satan’. Matthew calls him Rock. (2)Mark has no mention of any church of any kind. Matthew uses the word, the Greek word for church, ecclessia—not likely something Jesus would have said, and gives Peter keys to the kingdom. (3)Mark has Jesus tell the disciples—the students—to keep it all secret. Matthew rejects that secrecy, except for the title, messiah, and says, ‘preach it’. Why? Why does Matthew eviscerate, confound, gut, overturn his legacy, this inherited passage from Mark? Answer: he and his community are learning together…in a new time…in a different setting. So they are learning, as are we. From voices. From thoughts. From conflicts. And Matthew sternly tells his people: for inspiration to take hold, take root and last, for us to become fully human we will need institutional grounding, support, protection, and sustenance: family, neighborhood, school, church, university, country, globe. And let me be clear about the church, Matthew’s Jesus adds, for all its troubles in every age: the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.
And one more thing, as we are learning together in voice, thought, conflict and scripture. Who do you say He is? In your life. Notice the passage crashes away from the general and the philosophical—what do others say (general) about the son of man (philosophical). Some say (general), the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the Prophets (philosophical). Notice the move to the specific and the personal. Who do you say I am? Meaning for you today: how are you going to live? A life of studentship, or not? Said Peter, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Remember this. Peter is the one who most needed forgiveness, and full pardon he did receive. There is forgiveness in life (repeat). And the church is the place where people like Peter, like you and me, who need forgiveness, find themselves forgiven. That is your legacy in the liberal church.
Matthew teaches us.
That is, the tradition in Matthew 16, of Peter, the rock, on which the church—the commonwealth, the koinonia, the fellowship, the sharing, the community of faith, including right here and right now—is based, in Peter, on one thing. Inspiration. Are you open to a moment of inspiration?
Peter was is called the rock, not for his consistency, not for his pedigree, not for his perfection, not for his physical strength, and certainly not for his swimming ability, where he is the rock as in sink like a rock. Jesus calls him out because he is open to inspiration. He has a moment of inspiration, and in that kind of inspired moment faith and the community of faith are born and bred. ‘You are—the Christ’. An indelible moment, of inspiration. And for such inspiration, come Sunday, come any day, we need the gifts of the church: the gift of quiet, the gift of courage, the gift of others around us to correct and challenge, and then, yes, scripture and architecture and music and liturgy and sacrament and all manner of grace, to keep us within earshot of…breath, the breath of God, spirit, inspiration.
Our experience includes many fallow times and seasons, including these just now waning, if they are waning, from COVID. But there are also powerful Petrine moments of inspiration. That is the good news. That is the gospel. All, especially our arriving 18 year olds, need very much to hear this. Every day invites inspiration. Remember Wilder’s Emily Webb, returning for one day to the land of the living:
‘O Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama 14 years have gone by. I’m dead. You’re a grandmother Mama. I married George Gibbs. Wally’s dead too. His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it–don’t you remember? But, just for a moment now we’re all together, Mama. Just for a moment we’re happy. LET’S LOOK AT ONE ANOTHER’
‘So all that was going on and we never noticed. Grover’s Corners. Mama and Papa. Clock’s ticking. Sunflowers. Food and coffee. New ironed dresses and hot baths. Sleeping and waking up. Earth! You are too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
A long time ago, by grace, a moment of inspiration arrived at the right time, and in the right way. With one child at 18 months, and another on the way in a few more months, the draw toward doctoral studies would not abate. We looked at the usual suspects, Boston and Harvard, Yale and Union, Drew and Duke, but for varieties of reasons nothing fit, nothing worked. Then, one early winter snowy day, looking through the brochures of schools in the village library, a red booklet marked McGill came to hand. And there, snow falling, of a sudden, that real kind of lived inspiration, a moment of inspiration, arrived. The second largest French speaking city in the world, le Europe prochaine, the Europe next door, an excellent faculty, within geographic reach, at least south of the border, for our Bishop to arrange for service in churches there. We could afford it. We could imagine it. We could reach it. We could do it. For all the challenges, it was doable. The world is full of possibilities. Life is full of unforeseen opportunities. An hour of quiet, a different perspective, a little snow to still the soul and open the spirit, and, then, a moment of inspiration. The shadow of Peter, the Rock, is not mainly in the administrative structures of the ecclesia, important as they are. His shadow falls with delicacy and grace on you.
Inspiration.
A moment of inspiration.
Peter was seized by a moment of inspiration.
And you?
Are we?
Are you open to a moment of inspiration?
Have you faith?
Have you faith in Christ?
Are you going on to wholeness?
Do you expect to be made healthy in love in this life?
Are you earnestly striving after it?
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
