Sunday
February 25
Raymond Brown Ordained
By Marsh Chapel
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Preface
In this Marsh Chapel pulpit, from 2007-2016, Lent by Lent, we identified a theological conversation partner for the Lenten sermons, broadly speaking, out of the Calvinist tradition, so important to the first 200 years in New England. With Calvin we encountered the chief resource for others we engaged over ten years—voices like those of Jonathan Edwards (2015), John Calvin himself, (2014), Marilyn Robinson (2013) (whom with gladness we shall greet in the flesh here at Boston University April 11, please come), Jacques Ellul (2012), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a Lutheran cousin) (2011), Karl Barth (2010), and Gabriel Vahanian (2007), and themes like Atonement (2009) and Decision (2008), summarized with the help of Paul of Tarsus (2016).
For the next decade, we have turned to the Catholic tradition, so important in the last 200 years in New England. That is, in this decade, beginning with Lent 2017, the Marsh pulpit, a traditionally Methodist one, turned left, not right, toward Rome not Geneva, and we have preached with, and learned from the Roman Catholic tradition, and some of its great divines including Henri Nouwen (2017) Thomas Merton (2018) John of the Cross (2019), Teresa of Avila (2020), St Patrick (2021), and Dorothy Day (2022), and Augustine of Hippo (2023). In future years, it may be Ignatius of Loyola, Erasmus, Hans Kung, Karl Rahner, or others, one per year. Perhaps you will suggest a name or two, not from Geneva, but from Rome? For those who recall, even if dimly, the vigor and excitement of Vatican II, there may well be other names to add to the list.
Speaking of Vatican II, this year, 2024, we engage the work of Fr. Raymond Brown, the pre-eminent Catholic New Testament Scholar of the 20th century. The openings in life, culture, ecumenism, and ecclesial leadership that emerged from 1962-1965 directly coincided with his own excellent biblical scholarship, and gave voice to those within Catholicism, like Brown, who were champions of historical critical study, not unlike what had been achieved in Protestant biblical studies from the time of the enlightenment. Brown was my advisor for three years at the Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York, from 1976-1979, a chore he accomplished with glad heart and over against much to be desired from his advisee, headwinds of ignorance, diffidence, inattention and sloth. These are three ‘teaching’ sermons. Augustine judged that sermons should ‘teach, delight, and persuade’. Well, this Lent we shall have to hope that by teaching, the sermons carry also some delight and persuasion. It is further hoped that those engaged the dance of teaching and learning, professors and students both of our community, may find something gracious and affirming here.
Scripture
In the midwinter of 1979 Jan at sixth months pregnant became very ill with an ovarian cyst. The physician in NYC told me that he was not sure either—child or mother—would survive, but the surgery was not optional. By the grace of God, both survived, and we moved suddenly away from school to church, to find our way into ministry and life.
That spring, commuting to finish courses, I met my teacher Lou Martyn in the Union Seminary Quadrangle. He handed me a book as gift, one of John Knox’s books on the early church (Knox of 20century not of the sixteenth). I cherish the gift now forty years old, which became a kind of sign for the future, then altogether unforeseen. My advisor, Raymond Brown, gave me no book of this sort, but he gave me, well, The Good Book, he gave me a fascination with the Bible, a love of the Bible, and intrigue in the Bible, a respect and regard for the Bible, and a way of understanding it not only in the sense of what it once meant, but also in the sense of what it now means.
I returned this week to John Knox on Romans. To hear what he did hear, here. Like my later teacher NT Wright, Knox took on the hard passages, including this one from Romans. Like his successor, Raymond Brown, he took on hard passages.
For the students here or listening today, note where your mind is quickened by another’s teaching, where your spirit is enlivened by another’s mentorship, where your life is molded by another’s voice. This week, happily, David Brooks so remembered Isaiah Berlin, though Brooks mistakenly used the word pluralism about Berlin, when the truer. word is liberalism.
I marvel at the beauty and mystery of this section of Romans 4, ‘who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist’ (resurrection first, then creation). Hoping against hope. (such an odd phrase)
I marvel at the phrase, ‘hope against hope’. I marvel at its assertion of a hopeless hope, of hope with no prospect, no rationale, no ready support. Less hope for than hope in. Less hope for than hope in.
I marvel that faith is faith, your faith is your faith, when it is what you are left with, all you are left with, like two young people awaiting surgery, or like an older poet awaiting death.
I marvel that faith is reckoned as righteousness, that what stands up in hope against hope is the faith of Abraham. Abraham before circumcision, Abraham the father of multitudes not just the religious, Abraham the father then of believers everywhere. No one can keep the whole law. Every life includes failure, error, mistake, and misjudgment. All of us stand in need of grace, pardon, forgiveness.
I marvel at the ordering here of resurrection first and creation second, in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Do you notice? For Paul here resurrection comes first, then creation, not in a temporal but in an existential sense. Resurrection is the grounding of creation, the grounding of the ground of being. When Paul writes of God, he writes first of the God who raises the dead, and only second of the God who creates. I marvel at this. Even if Paul has somewhat altered the original meaning of Genesis (Knox: This story of Abraham suits the purpose of the writer to the Hebrews, with his somewhat different idea of faith, better perhaps than the purpose of Paul). The father of faith relies on humble trust in God’s mercy and power, as distinguished from reliance on good works. Hope against hope. To continue to have hope though it seems baseless.
And with this welcoming word, Paul can sing and soar in Romans 5:
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. More than that. We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.
Mark sounds similar:
If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and the for sake of the gospel, will save it.
You recognize that this is the voice of an early preacher, whose words Mark has placed in retrospect upon the lips of Jesus. We see Jesus looking back through the cross, as did Mark. We hear Jesus through the din of the passion, as did Mark. We know Jesus through the rigor of trying to follow after him, even if we are long way behind, as did Mark.
He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word, ‘Follow me!’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.’ (QHJ, 389
Brown
These Lent 2024 sermons rely, for details of Fr. Brown’s life, upon the recent, excellent biography of Brown by Donald Senior.
Donald Senior reveals the unpretentious brilliance of Raymond Brown (1928-1998, in the context of turbulent times in Catholicism. He portrays a complex man of prodigious learning for whom scholarship and church life were mutually enriching. Senior shows us a priest with a rich network of friends and a deep life of faith who nonetheless was burdened by harassment from right-wing critics. His book traces the path by which Vatican officials came to embrace new modes of biblical scholarship; he describes the significance of this scholarship for the church, and for enhanced relationship with Protestants and Jews. As one privileged to have known Raymond E. Brown, I highly recommend this book for the witness it bears to one of the most important teachers of the twentieth century—whose legacy continues to inspire. (Mary Boys, Union).
Fr. Raymond Brown was without doubt a central figure in the development of twentieth-century Catholic biblical scholarship. Combining rigorous historical criticism of Scripture with devotion to the church’s teachings, he produced highly respected works of meticulous scholarship sensitive to their theological implications. Senior’s intellectual biography carefully reviews Brown’s scholarly accomplishments while tracing the history of his influential academic career and recording the controversies within Catholic circles engendered by his embrace of critical methods. Anyone interested in the development of Catholic biblical scholarship since Vatican II will welcome this biography of, as Senior says, ‘the most well-known and most appreciated Catholic teacher of the Bible of his generation’ (Harold Attridge, Yale).
Fr. Raymond Brown was during his lifetime the leading biblical scholar\exegete in the United States. His books were reviewed by the New York Times Sunday Book Review. He helped save what could be saved of the Roman Catholic diocesan priesthood. His thesis on how the Gospel of John, the three letters of John, and the extra chapter in John (chapter 21) all fit together is probably the boldest and most brilliant and satisfying thesis by any American scholar in the field of New Testament studies since the founding of the republic (Benedict Thomas Viviano, Fribourg).
Some few here or listening will remember our remembrance of Thomas Merton in 2018. Within those, some far fewer still may remember that while a student at Columbia, Merton came to a moment of deep conversion, during a service of worship and mass at Corpus Christi parish on 121st street in Manhattan. Thirty years after that inspired moment along Broadway in NYC, several times a week one could see Raymond Brown emerging after noon from that same church, Corpus Cristi (across the street from Union Theological Seminary, and a block away from Jewish Theological Seminary, and by a turn west on 122 street, a block and a half away from Grant’s Tomb. (Who was buried in Grant’s Tomb?()). Brown led worship and celebrated the noon mass there for many years, emerging in his black suit and clerical collar, robe and stole in hand, to return to this UTS office, research, teaching and leadership. It was an embodied reminder of that for which we strive here at Marsh Chapel, in the words of Charles Wesley, to ‘unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety, learning and holiness, combine, truth and love let all men see’. It was an embodied reminder of that for which we strive here across the 47,000 souls, 18 deanships, 3 campuses and nigh 200 year history, born in Methodism, in three words: learning, virtue, piety…learning, virtue, piety…learning, virtue, piety.
Coda
Speaking of February and speaking of Lent, in this spirit, to close, we remember our own Howard Thurman this month, who said, ‘Jesus rejected hatred. It was not because he lacked the vitality or the strength. It was not because he lacked the incentive. Jesus rejected hatred because he saw that hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, death to communion with his Father. He affirmed life, and hatred was the great denial’ (JATD, 88)
‘There is something more to be said about the inner equipment growing out of the great affirmation of Jesus that a man is a child of God. If a man’s ego has been stabilized, resulting in a sure grounding of his sense of personal worth and dignity, then he is in a position to appraise his own intrinsic powers, gifts, talents and abilities. He no longer views his equipment through the darkened lenses of those who are largely responsible for his social position’ (JATD, 53).
The basic fact is that Christianity, as it was born in the mind of this Jewish teacher and thinker, appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed…In him was life, and the life was the light of all people…Wherever this spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them. (JATD, 99)
