Sunday
January 29
For The Time Being
By Marsh Chapel
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Preface
He is the Way
Follow Him through the land of unlikeness
You will see rare beasts and have unique adventures
He is the Truth
Seek Him in the kingdom of anxiety
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years
He is Life
Love him in the world of the flesh
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.
For the Time Being
For now. For the time being. Whether or not ethics are situational, they are certainly epochal. Each time, each season brings another climate for decision, for life.
New occasions teach new duties
Time makes ancient good uncouth
One must upward still and onward
Who would keep abreast of truth
A woman in pregnancy knows for sure the arrival of another epoch—for the time being. A student in the struggle winter of freshman year, when novelty has given way to normalcy, and autumn to snow, knows for sure the arrival of another epoch—for the time being. A nation which has swung by political pendulum from liberal left to hard right, on the basis of 77,000 votes along the country roads of three states, knows for sure the arrival of another epoch—for the time being. A man in Shakespeare’s seventh stage, or nearing it, sans sight sans hearing sans agility sans memory sans sleep sans energy, knows for sure the arrival of another epoch—for the time being. Our conditions condition our decisions, epoch by epoch—for the time being.
For the time being, we shall want daily to recall Emma Lazarus and Martin Neimoller, to remember who and whose we are, in promise and in warning.
Lazarus:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door
Neimoller:
First they came for the (Communists, Socialists, Trade Unionists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews ) and I did not speak out because I was not a (Communist, Socialist, Trade Unionist, Jehovah’s Witness, Jew )
Then at last they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out
We have left St. Luke, now, to follow the trail of Jesus’ life, death and destiny, this year, in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew relies on Mark, and then also on a teaching document called Q, along with Matthew’s own particular material, of which our reading today is an example. He has divided his Gospel into five sequential parts, a careful pedagogical rendering, befitting his traditional role as teacher, in contrast to Luke ‘the physician’, whose interest was history. We have moved from history to religion, from narrative to doctrine. Matthew is ordering the meaning of the history of the Gospel, while Luke is ordering the history of the meaning of the Gospel. You have moved from the History Department to the Religion Department. Matthew has his own perspective.
Every word is meant for a particular time, but not for all time. For all time, and for our time, we have the staggering responsibility to fit the teaching to a new era, another epoch. Whether or not ethics is situational, it is certainly epochal. Our response and resistance to a megalomaniacal regime can be guided by but not directed by these precious verses of Holy Scripture. Their application is, to use a marvelous American idiom, ‘up to you’. And this will be difficult. Policies we can adjust. Fear mongering we must resist.
‘A literary work or a fragment of tradition is a primary source for the historical situation out of which it arose, and is only a secondary source for the historical details for which it gives information’ (45). (Wellhausen.)
Some of that perspective involves a developing and developed Christology, an understanding of Christ. Matthew is apparently fighting on two fronts, both against the fundamental conservatives to the right, and against the spiritual radicals to the left. In Matthew, Gospel continues to trump tradition, as in Paul, but tradition itself is a bulwark to defend the Gospel, as in Timothy. Matthew is trying to guide his part of the early church, between the Scylla of the tightly tethered and the Charibdis of the tether-less. Our forebears taught us so. That is, with Matthew, they wanted to order the meaning of the history of the gospel. They aspired to do so by opposition to indecency and indifference. They attempted to do so by attention both to conscience and to compassion.
For example: we enter now a reading and rendering of the Sermon on the Mount, perhaps the most beloved and best remembered of Jesus’ teachings. At the outset, we face a raging river to cross. For when were these teachings meant? For all time, for Jesus’ time, for Matthew’s time, for our time—for the time being?
It Means What it Does
In July of 1976, a small congregation gathered just up the hill from New Hope Mills, a pancake flour maker, an old grist mill. That Methodist church had endured the fumblings of an untrained, unordained minister all summer. One Sunday he mistakenly, errantly left his sermon, titled, ‘Forgiveness’, across the road in the parsonage. Mumbling something about forgiving and forgetting, he left the pulpit and hustled across the road to retrieve the homily, as the choir, four in number, soprano in voice, sang several favorite verses of In the Garden, in any case a weekly occurrence. A cow mooed in the field beside the church. Later that week, he stopped to see the young family of the volunteer Fire Chief in New Hope. It happened that short comment, innocuous, had been made about fire protection, in the sermon. To what remarkable end that illustration may have been sent out, we know not, remember not. Said the wife, “John and I heard your sermon very clearly on Sunday, and, taking it to heart, have decided that he will quit his role as chief and resign from the department”. The sermon, sadly, meant nothing of the kind, in the preacher’s intention, in his heart of hearts, in his preacherly imagination. But the sermon means what it does, not what its intention meant. The preacher is responsible, not for what he says, but for what he is heard to say. What it means is not what it meant but it what it does. We clarified in conversation, what was misspoken in homily: a note to the wise about the critical importance of visitation, and the critical homiletical need to avoid misunderstanding if at all possible. The sermon’s meaning is not in the purified intentions of the preacher, but in what it means—what it does—in life. Are children thereby baptized? Do any learn to tithe? Do newcomers receive welcome into worship? Is God glorified? Have you fruit? But Mr. Wesley, I meant well. But did you do well?
‘What it means is what it does’—act, word, speech, deed, all. This year has provided an expensive way for 340 million people to learn a first lesson in biblical hermeneutics and theological interpretation. You voted. You may have meant one thing. The meaning of your word or deed is something else. The road to hell is paved with—good intentions. We don’t need to recount as much as we need to recant. Jeremiah, it appears was right: you only learn humility on the far side of humiliation.
And now, for the time being, we will simply have to live it through. Not all order is godly, especially when purchased with the counterfeit currency of oppression and injustice. But a quiet and peaceable life itself requires order, and when we have such, we are right to give thanks. Especially in the later New Testament writings there is preserved for us a mature recognition of the value in things done ‘decently and in order’. The body. Birds of the air. Lilies of the field. Reminders of what Marilyn Robinson might call ‘the givenness of things’.
A Common Longing
We offer a common prayer, a prayer that our warming globe, caught in climate change, will be cooled by cooler heads and calmer hearts and careful minds.
We offer a common prayer, a prayer that our dangerous world, armed to the teeth with nuclear proliferation, will find peace through deft leadership toward nuclear détente.
We offer a common prayer, a prayer that our culture, awash in part in hooliganism, will find again the language and the song and the spirit of the better angels of our nature.
We offer a common prayer, a prayer that our country, fractured by massive inequality between rich children and poor children, will rise up and make education, free education, available to all children, poor and rich.
We offer a common prayer, a prayer that our nation, fractured by flagrant unjust inequality between rich and poor children, will stand up and make health care, free health care, available to all children, poor and rich.
We offer a common prayer, a prayer that our schools, colleges and universities, will balance a love of learning with a sense of meaning, a pride in knowledge with a respect for goodness, a drive for discovery with a regard for recovery.
We offer a common prayer, a prayer that our families, torn apart by abuse and distrust and anger and jealousy and unkindness, show kindness and pity to one another.
We offer a common prayer, a prayer that our decisions in life about our callings, how we are to use our time and spend our money, how we make a life not just a living, will be illumined by grace and generosity.
We offer a common prayer that, over time, and by hard experience, we may learn that the meaning of a word, a deed, an act is not found in the sentiment or feeling in which it was uttered or offered, but just in what it does for others, not in what we meant by it, but in what it does to others.
We offer a common prayer, a prayer that our grandfathers and mothers, in their age and infirmity, will receive care and kindness that accords with the warning to honor father and mother that you own days be long upon the earth.
We offer a common prayer, a prayer that women—our grandmothers, mothers, sisters, daughters, granddaughters, all—granted suffrage less than 100 years ago, will be spared any and all forms of harassment and abuse, verbal or physical, on college campuses, in homes and families, in offices and bars, in life and work, and long having suffered and now having suffrage, will in our time rise up to be honored, revered, and compensated, without reserve, but with justice and mercy.
We offer a common prayer, finally a prayer not of this world, but of this world as a field of formation for another, not just creation but new creation, not just life but eternal life, not just health but salvation, not just heart but soul, not just earth, but heaven.
Coda
For the time being…our Holy Scripture, including our beloved Sermon on the Mount, the most cherished of the Lord’s remembered teachings, may guide us but cannot direct us.
Brueggeman: not just moving people from outsiders to insiders, but also moving people from forgetters into rememberers and from beloved children to belieful adults (Biblical Perspectives…94). You need to read.
Hoekendijk: The first task of the church is not to speak but to be the church, a community, where object lessons in Christian life and faith are given unintentionally…The effective way of evangelism is to be the church and to pioneer in the field of social relationship and community service. The gospel is not good advice, but good news. You need to worship.
One specific: join us tomorrow on Marsh Plaza at 3pm in support of our Boston University Arabic Society, or say a prayer, read a psalm, send a note or check at 3pm
In sum, while our blessed Sermon on the Mount can and does guide us, it does not direct us, in the end. We are charged, challenged and required to make sense of our own epoch, and by faith to live in faith. While this is exhilarating in its freeing of the will, it is staggering in its requirement of the man or woman of faith.
You may feel empty. Note the fullness promised emptiness in the Beatitudes. ‘The reality of the vessel is the shape of the void within it.’ (Lao Tze)
Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him. 2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
– The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.
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