Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

Communion Meditation:  The Food That Endures For Eternal Life

John 6: 24-35

August 4, 2024

Marsh Chapel

Robert Allan Hill

He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity—which it is.

That is religion, and the duck has it.

Donna

Coming to communion you come with a yearning to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

Among the powers that drew us here to Boston, was the chance to labor in the shadow of Howard Thurman and to preach from the pulpit he once filled. Thurman was the Dean of Marsh Chapel, 1953-1965.  This summer, read his autobiography, With Head and Heart.  In the work of grieving and departing from one setting, Rochester, and entering another, Boston, I was telephoned by a friend and parishioner.  She wanted to set an appointment to talk, before we left Rochester. A saintly woman, Donna Adcock, made an appointment, a good formal appointment, to see me.  ‘A chat after church won’t do for this’, she averred. That Wednesday she brought in a poem which she had typed out from an original handscript.  Typing is an ancient technology, no longer in use, but some years ago, even, still around.  (I do not linger to define keystroke, white out, ribbon, carbon paper, or Smith Corona).  ‘This poem Howard Thurman your predecessor at Marsh Chapel recited in a sermon in Kansas City, my home, in 1950’, she said.  ‘I was twenty years or so old, 56 years younger than I am today when that sermon changed my life.  I spent the next 50 years in ‘full time Christian service’, through the YWCA.  I heard something that summer day, in Kansas City, in 1950, that changed my life.  I want you to have this poem.  You do not need to live in New England to love it, but it does help. The fact that I heard it through Howard Thurman’s beautiful voice adds to it for me”.

The ‘little duck’ is a poem about the freedom of a duck floating on the waves, written in 1947 by Donald Babcock. Here are verses from that poem…

There is a big heaving in the Atlantic

And he is part of it

He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic

Probably he doesn’t know how large the ocean is

And neither do you

But he realizes it

And what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it

He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity—which it is.

That is religion, and the duck has it.

He has made himself part of the boundless, by easing himself into it just where it touches him.

I like the little duck.

He doesn’t know much.

But he has religion.

You come to communion yearning to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called…

Charlie

Coming to communion you come with your lost loved ones in mind and heart.  Pause and honor in memory one such.  This week it came to mind again, the day one winter we bade farewell to a father in law, Charlie. When we receive the Lord’s Supper we do so with the communion of saints all around us.  Like Charlie.  Like your beloved in memory. Coming to communion you come with your lost loved ones in mind and heart.  

Charlie was a lover.

He loved nature.  Garden.  Seed time. Harvest. Planting. Weeding.  Watering.  Like the parables of Jesus.  He had a green thumb.  Most plants benefitted by the touch of his hand.

He loved work.  With his hands.  Carpentry.  He had some good company in carpentry, if I remember the Bible that they had us memorize at church camp.  I think of him on summer days. 14 features of our cottage have known the touch of his hand.

He loved the poor and the other.  In his study group. In work with Abraham House, Retired Teachers, and Habitat for Humanity and various churches and causes.  He loved others, and I mean others.  Of other religions, other places, other races, other backgrounds, other orientations.  He loved.  Others, and they felt the touch of his hand.

He loved his country.  He was not a member of any organized political party.  His patriotism, his love of country was not only liberty and justice, but liberty and justice FOR ALL.  And with his own hands he lived that.

He loved his church.  Its committees, its pastors, its building needs, its study groups, its quirks and oddities.  Especially he loved the reading he did with others.

He loved his family, and expressed that love in rocking horses and tools given and evergreens planted and windows replaced and sincere, repeated words of love.

He touched us in the most touching of ways.

He loved God by loving the things of God, the creation of God, the tasks of God, the people of God, the church of God.

He was our ‘dad’ and we learned from him.  

We all need models of personal faith, people who can show us by example the dimensions of spirituality we so desire.

We are in time when there seem to be so many things going wrong, off kilter, problems without solutions.  But those who came before us had such times, maybe even worse ones, and they came through it all.  At communion, in communion with them, with Charlie and the Charlies of your life, we gain some strength.

Congregation

You come to communion yearning to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.  This is especially and keenly true this morning at Marsh Chapel:

            *In the observation of two Sacraments.

            *In the Baptism today.  Beautiful child, part of the community, connected to this University, and to the Chapel, and to the choir, and to the life and leadership of the University, and to the congregation, the congregation of Marsh Chapel.

            *In community.  Come Sunday. Here is where life engages life, and heart, heart.  Where you can learn a name.  Where you can hear a voice.  Where you can make a friend.  Where you can share a need.  Where you can listen to another’s heart.  Where you can know and be known, from Baptism, through Eucharist, all the way to that last morning, and Unction. Where one receives the food that endures for eternal life.  Where one may offer another a path toward where both can find bread.

            *In lighthearted joy and a touch of humor. Hear voices touch home, like Dr. Amerson’s humorous reference to his long ago parishioner, who said, ‘You know, every sermon is better than your next one.’  She meant better than your last one, but said better than your next one.  We will have to check in with Dr Freud about that Freudian slip. (It reminds me of Soren Hessler on Palm Sunday).  That touch of humor happens in community.

            *In the walk up the sawdust trail, down the center aisle, in just a few minutes.

Charlayne

Ten years ago we hosted the memorial service for Dr. Ken Edelin, a medical doctor graduated from BU and one of early, pioneering physicians affirming women, women’s rights, women’s rights to reproductive health care, women’s rights when needed to surgical abortion.  Cecile Richards, Jeh Johnson and others spoke in eulogy.  Marsh Chapel was full.  At one point we asked the congregation to recite together the 23 Psalm.  Family and friends in the first pew did so.  Colleagues and physicians across the nave did so.  Leaders of national organizations near and far did so.  In the balcony, twenty white coated medical students together did so.  Either at that point or another in the service they stood silently together, to honor the life and faith of the deceased.  That day I met a man, a friend and the personal physician of Arthur Ashe, whose life, prowess, faithfulness and service have always so inspired me.  Read again this summer his autobiography, Days of Grace.  “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”

In the collation following the service, Charlayne Hunter Gault introduced herself.  Some will remember her, as we did, from her many and fine contributions to the News Hour, with Jim Lehrer.  She said, ‘I need to talk to you later about the 23 Psalm’.  I was so pleased to meet her, and then so worried that I had somehow offended her, that the collation time passed anxiously.  It needn’t have done.  She wanted to recall a memory.  A memory of her younger self.  At 18.  One of two African Americans first to integrate the University of Georgia.  The daughter of a minister.  Alone in a big place, a strange place, a new place.  Walking home the third night, there were taunts and threats.  The University that day had suggested she might want to go home, at least for a while.   She went into her room.  She closed the door.  She turned out the lights.  And she waited, until quiet came.  And then—it was the only thing that came to her mind—the prayer of David in Psalm 23 came to her.  And she spoke the psalm, alone, afraid, uncertain, at night.   ‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord, forever.’

To lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, like that little duck bouncing along on the waves of the Atlantic…

He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity—which it is.

That is religion, and the duck has it.

The Lord is my shepherd…