Sunday
February 16
Faith in the Shadows
By Marsh Chapel
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Faith in the Shadows
1 Corinthians 15
February 16, 2025
Marsh Chapel
Robert Allan Hill
Vaccine
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
The appearance of a brilliant Easter gospel lesson, 1 Corinthians 15, amid the pre-Lenten snows of New England, and its core sentence upon ‘this life only’, conjures faith, a faith that can live even…in the shadows. Faith in Christ in the shadows of national turmoil. Faith in Christ in the shadows of personal ennui. Faith in Christ in and within the shadows of mortal proximity, of the proximity of our mortality. Faith in Christ, over against the current state of affairs. Faith is living for, living in, living toward something better. Your faith is about living for something better, better than this current life only.
Part of our problem with vaccines is that we do not any longer have among us in full measure those who could see and did see what came before. Other generations had no difficulty understanding the dread of polio, for instance. They lived with it. They saw the wretched hurt brought to their childhood chums, their third-grade best friends, their neighbors down the street when polio struck. And those, Salk and Sabine and all, who developed the vaccines, did so out of a human hope, a resurrection hope, out of a faith over against the shadows, that such misery could be eradicated. They did not live for this life only, and they did not work for this life only, but labored for a hope for something else, something better. As do our many Boston University physicians and researchers and scientists, who labor in love for forms of life we do not yet see. To have their brilliance accosted by the current ignorance in Washington, to have their hope belittled by the current mendacity and malignancy in Washington, elected by Republicans, sadly becoming the party of cruelty, near and far, is an unspeakable offense to God and man both. Read and re-read the sermons from this pulpit since 2016. We have been warned.
My parents’ generation knew polio from the street, the swimming pool, the classroom, the Sunday school. Mitch McConnell’s memory of such this week bears witness, McConnell who was treated at Warm Springs Georgia at the same time as was President Roosevelt. But that memory, that visceral, gut memory is now largely gone, gone with that generation gone. On a snowy day sometime in 1959, if memory serves, I was driven up the road a few towns to receive a vaccine. The details sadly are dim. I believe my mother drove me alone, out from the little village of Hamilton, and due north, looking down from the edge of the Allegheny plateau, into the smaller still village of Stockbridge. There was and still is there an elementary school built by FDR during the depression, schools that dot the towns of that region in every direction. Solid stone, with arched openings left and right. We pulled up, with my mother dressed in a long coat, and wearing a flattened hat, and gloves. At least as I remember. I am sure I was every bit an ornery rascal at age 5 as you can imagine. But we made our way. Then something unusual and a bit terrifying happened. My mother, a very stoic soul in all regards, especially in public, burst into tears. We did not discuss it. It made the impending vaccination all the more terrifying, I imagine. But, whether Salk or Sabine, we got through it. Here is what I think. I think she was overcome by the recognition that her children, now beginning with the oldest, would be spared polio, spared what she had seen her classmates suffer. By vaccine. Because some scientists had faith that over against the shadows, there was a resurrection betterness out there, waiting to be embraced. Not this life only, as we now have it, but a fuller, richer, safer, better life, under the resurrection power of new life, and finally, of eternal life.
Healing is a sign of resurrection.
Wiesel
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
Our disinvestment in memory, in shared memory, in history, across the land, has somewhat gotten now the better of us just now, for a time. But there is history to be had, and made, and honored. It is all around us, right here. It is rich with the sacrificial lived memory of those who have suffered. Last week, I stopped to buy a newspaper (New York Times 2/5/25, A21), and walking along, read on the bottom of the death of Marion Wiesel. Jan and I first met Elie Wiesel in New York City in 1978, over dinner, in the living room of our teacher, of blessed memory, Robert McAfee Brown. Wiesel had just come to Boston University as a University Professor. Marion and he married in 1969. Both had survived the Holocaust. She worked alongside him, translating his writing from French to English, in elegant style, including her 2006 re-translation of NIGHT. One said, ‘In the alignment of stars that helped make Wiesel the international icon he became, his marriage to Marion was among the most significant.’(J Berger). On this BU campus, and across our multiple and serious differences, we shall need and want to remember and evoke, from all sides, those who have brought out the best in us, the memories of whom, again from all sides, may guide us to a better future, one that is fuller, richer, safer, one that carries the resurrection power of new life, and so brings resurrection faith along with us, even into the deepest shadows.
When my father died in June of 2010, now nearly 15 years ago, two days after his burial, I received a note from one of our choristers, Ondine Brent, who worked as Elie Wiesel’s administrator (partly I am sure because of her own excellent French): Dean Hill, Professor Wiesel asked me to send you the following message: ‘Dear Friend, my deepest condolences. In our tradition we say: may you be spared further sorrow. Elie Wiesel. Such a kindness. I have kept and cherish the letter. In autumn 2013 I had been scheduled to introduce him on October 21, for his first lecture of the usual three that year, all annualy attended by 800-1,000 people, on TRAGEDY AND ITS LITERATURE IN THE BIBLE. Sadly, he became physically unable to do so, nor was he ever able to do so again before his own death in 2016. Not so long ago, up and down the sidewalks of Commonwealth Avenue, we had here at BU a capacity to reach out to one another across serious differences, and to engage with and learn from each other, even in the teeth of dire disagreement. I would say that such is the best of the Methodist part of our BU Methodist heritage. My prayer and hope is that some of that, and the wisdom therein, will emerge and re-emerge, in the face of what is the deplorable contemporary tragedy, itself of Biblical proportions, in the Middle East. Marsh Chapel has, does, and can continue to provide some measures of such engagement. May it be so. For who hopes for what he sees? We hope for what we do not see, and wait for it with patience, hoping not only for what this life alone can offer, but for what the life and light of eternal love, the resurrection itself, can offer. The harbinger of resurrection is kindness, a foretaste of eternity.
For there to be any global future worthy of the name, there will need to be investment in memory, of what works, what matters, what counts, and what lasts.
Kindness is a sign of resurrection.
October 7
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
Over this past academic year, the night I had least sleep was that before October 7. There were to be, and were, gatherings and protests that day and through that week. But contrast, we offered here in Marsh Chapel an 8am universal, ecumenical service of prayer for peace. Leadership included women and men from many traditions, including Methodist, Episcopal, Jewish, Muslim, Presbyterian, and Catholic, with special music guiding us. The service was not heavily attended (even though I prevailed on my Monday 8am Gospel of John to come, and survival rates among them were high!), but our senior University leadership and some several others did grace us all with their presence. In smaller gatherings, including that one, and bit by bit, including this last week, we are beginning to see some slow emergence of some common ground.
Our Muslim Chaplain, Nagla, very new to the campus, and to our community, particularly offered a sonorous and poetic prayer, to guide us toward a a shared hope for peace, a shared sense of possibility, a shared sense of common ground, which with the other prayers made of that morning a limited but lasting acknowledgement of all that we cannot see or know, and all that for which yearn together, in a common hope. We were able at 8am to pray together.
There, therein, is a footprint in the snow, a sign of lasting life, a Rosebud memory and hope. Now you don’t believe, do you, that only Methodist will be in heaven, in the resurrection. What about Presbyterians? An Episcopalians? And Baptists? And Lutherans? And what about non-Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox and all? And…what about Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Bahais? And what about non-religious folks, and others, and all? I mean, is resurrection merely an eternity of Methodist hymn sings, prayer meetings, garage sales and tithing? Prayer, when it is universal, not just particular, is hope that carries beyond this life.
Prayer is a sign of resurrection
February 11
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
Recall ThorntonWilder’s OUR TOWN Emily Webb returning from the dead. She asks, just once, to return to Grovers’ Corners, to see and hear and taste and touch and feel. “Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.” She picks her 12th birthday, at dawn, early in the morning.
Three days snow, in Grover’s Corners. Main Street, the drug store. Mr. Webb coming home on the night train from Hamilton College. Howie Newsome, the policeman. Mrs. Webb (“how young she looks! I didn’t know Mama was ever that young”). 10 below zero… and the morning banter…
I can’t find my blue ribbon
Open your eyes dear. I laid it out for you. If it were a snake it would bite you.
The milk man arrives. Mr. Webb kisses Mrs. Webb.
Don’t forget Charles it’s Emily’s birthday.
I’ve got something right here. Where is she? Where’s my birthday girl?
Breakfast, early in the morning, in New Hampshire: ‘A very happy birthday to you. There are some surprises on the kitchen table. But birthday or no birthday I want you to eat your breakfast good and slow.
I want you to grow up and be a good, strong girl.
That blue paper is from your Aunt Carrie
And I reckon you can guess who brought the post-card album
I found it on the doorstep when I brought in the milk–George Gibbs.
Chew that bacon good and slow. It’ll keep you warm on a cold day.’
‘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.
Wonder is a sign of resurrection.
Healing, kindness, prayer, wonder. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. Healing, kindness, prayer, wonder. May our faith guide us in the shadows, on toward Him who is the first fruits of those who have died.
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.
