Sunday
October 23
A New Opening
By Marsh Chapel
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One Friday on the walk into the office a dear friend caught up and came alongside to walk along with me. As friends do. Coming alongside that is, walking with us that is. The luxurious, languid autumn of New England sometimes allows more outdoor conversation. Conversation is a means of grace. Conversation is a new opening to grace. The river to the right, the buildings old and new to the left, with students and faculty kicking up some leaves along the way.
We had not seen each other to talk since Covid. We talked about exercise and failing knees, about what we done or not in the pandemic. Outdoors, no distance, no mask, no immediate existential worry. Just two friends, a while apart and now again together again. What a simple joy, an authentic moment in the midst of various forms of work, life and service. He like many at this good University gave humble service, over many years.
He then told me that in Covid he would come alone to the Chapel, now and then. You have heard me say already and many times that the very best thing we do at Marsh is–nothing: we do nothing, we unlock and open the doors and invite people come in, bask in the beauty of the nave, sit, relax, snooze, meditate, pray. Yes, he said. I know he said. One day, he continued, I was getting up to leave and decided I would take a video on my phone of—nothing. A video of the empty church. A video of the quiet nave. A video of stone and glass and wood and all. He said, I timed it to one minute. So that, every day, when I wanted to, though I was miles away from BU and Marsh, I could return, return to the simple, the authentic, the quiet. Thank you, he said. It was nothing, I responded, truly nothing, I replied. It was nothing. And that is the best thing we do. Nothing.
Carrying some quiet then from Covid, we meet Jesus this morning on the hinges of the third Gospel, as the flow of the Gospel continues to swing from Lord to apostles. In the announcement of this good news is included a measure of empowerment for each one of us. This is the kind of day on which, for once, for the first time, or for once in a long time, we may be seized by, embraced by, a sense of divine nearness. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. ‘All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted’. (This is the second time Luke has placed this epigram on Jesus’ lips). When that sentence makes a home in a heart, or in the heart of a community, a different kind of life ensues. There might be a new opening, even today, for some, maybe for you.
Now faith may come like a blinding light on the Road to Damascus. It may. But most of the time it rather comes one stumble, one step, one stop at a time, one walking conversation at a time. One step. One step on the walk of faith, wherein it helps to have a friend alongside. As a person of faith. Take a step a day, a step a week. Health, healing, salvation, salvus, wellness, wellbeing come in small doses, occasional, discreet, bit by bit. Some of us like Paul are blinded by a moment on the road to Damascus. Most of us though are seized in faith, brought to healing, in a gradual way, over time, as our teacher of blessed memory Fr. Raymond Brown was used to say. Not lightening but enlightening, being enlightened, day by day. Sermon by sermon we could say. One step at a time. The Gospels tell us so. Faith comes one step at a time. This week can you take a step in faith? The step this week may just be toward simple, authentic service, akin to that of the Lord Christ, our Savior and Lord?
One step in faith comes in service, like the service my friend and conversation partner has modeled. Now let us be frank, a sermon on humility runs the danger of the preacher whose title was ‘Humility and How I Achieved It’, with the subsequent sequel, ‘The World’s Greatest Sermon on Humility’. But the parable today, that of the Pharisee and the Publican, tells us that authentic relationship, real responsibility are a matter of the heart: In conversation, there abides, or lurks, the lasting possibility of heart to heart communication, heart by heart communion. That potential seizes you, not the other way around. There is a saving power, a saving grace in conversation. What are your models for this? Do they include at least a little simplicity, a little steady service? Can you take one step, a step this week, a step of faith, in some manner of service? Perhaps in offering yourself in listening and conversation to another?
The Lukan gospel lessons about living are set in the humble reaches of the lake country of Galilee. There must have been some comfort, some folkloric encouragement for Luke’s community in these polished memories of Jesus teaching along the shores of Galilee. There is beauty along a lake. There is calm along a lake. There is peace along a lake. There is serenity along a lake. Along the lake there is space and time to sift, reminisce, remember, sort. Still waters still restore the soul to stillness. Perhaps the regatta today, right now, outside our Chapel, at the head of the Charles, in its pristine beauty and vigorous discipline, can bring that kind of peace, too.
For Luke is determined to show that there is no real greatness, there is no service worthy of the name, without some humility, none without some anxiety, some struggle, none without a measure of discomfort, none without patience, the patience of Job (who today hears the crushing voice of the Lord from the whirlwind?) none without a caring heart for those who experience the consequences of decisions which others make. If, in your work, you have seen humility, known struggle, felt discomfort, summoned patience, found empathy—for all the cost, take heart. You have taken a step, one step, a step in faith. Good.
There is a true kind of encouragement here, in Luke 18 for us, as we take one step in faith, toward a new opening. My teacher Sharon Ringe: The tax collector’s prayer suggests that he acknowledges with anguish (the divine) assessment of himself—and simply entrusts himself to God’s mercy, simply entrusts himself to God’s mercy. (Ringe, Westminster, 225). Our Gospel reflects the misunderstandings of the disciples, and their reluctance quickly or easily to comprehend in full the nature of faith. It takes them time. That should reassure us. It took them time. And it takes us time. It takes one step at a time. It takes one conversation at a time. Yet that one step, that one conversation, can bring an opening to faith.
You may come to a morning hour, even this one, in which you sense a new opening, a desire to live a life that makes you smile, that makes others smile. To be more loving, in my heart… Step by step it may be, you may become kinder, happier, more generous, more forgiving. This is the purpose of being alive, to speak and act and be in a way that brings a smile to others, perhaps even to the divine countenance. In your own life of service, of work, even of leadership, there may emerge, may be wrought, a fuller, a more authentic, a simpler way. Even a humbler way.
Think of the Shaker community. Drive a couple of hours west on Route 90 and see their former home in New Lebanon. Think of their humility. In their work, their dress, their furniture, their devotion, their relations, the Shakers lived simply. The heart of their simplicity, and ours at our best, is the desire to “lead a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called”. Every renewal in Christian history has had this feature: Paul mending tents, Augustine chaste again, Luther and Erasmus cleansing Rome, Wesley and his coal miners and class meetings, the Civil Rights movement with its various and contending interpretations today, the Latin American base communities, and every spiritual nudging in our own very human community of faith.
There is an authority that is visible in every person who has found the freedom of vocation, the freedom to live with abandon. Look around at the windows in this charming Chapel, following worship, and you will see the faces of women and men who found an authentic simplicity, a way to live with abandon, to take oneself lightly and so fly, like the angels. They learned, over time, to model a daily heartfelt affirmation of the shared good, the common good, the communal good.
Luke 18 is one of the spots in the third gospel at which the emerging institutional needs of the church are visible. And Christianity wrestled with institutional, formational questions in the first century: For whom is the gospel? What are the definitive texts? And especially, who shall hold authority? What, How, Where. And Who? That should reassure us too. They struggled, sometimes with success and sometimes not, to make things go right in shared, communal, institutional life. And so do we. You resist triangles. You reach for I and Thou relationships. You give the benefit of the doubt. Community requires all that and more.
That is, as this passage shows, from the outset it has been difficult for the Christian church to maintain its own authentic forms vested in humility over against the lesser models abroad in every age. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” said Paul. Love, Joel would remind, gives the possibility for dreaming dreams and seeing visions, in real time.
In a time like ours, the very real fears of pollution, Putin, pandemic, politics, pistols, prejudice and pain tend to shove us toward a fearful taste for authoritarianism, here and around the globe. The fears of the day and night can make us afraid of freedom, our birthright, as Eric Fromm showed us, and inclined to align with authoritarianism at all levels, including at the highest ones. Be careful here.
A few years ago, my friend Charles Rice spoke of humility. His story lodges in the memory. He told about an Easter when he was in Greece. He sat in the Orthodox Church and watched the faithful in devotions. There was a great glassed icon of Christ, to which, following prayers, women and men would move, then kneel. Then as they rose, they kissed the glassed icon and moved on.
Every so often a woman dressed in black would emerge from the shadows with some cleanser, or windex, and a cloth and –psh, psh—would clean the image—psh, psh–making it clear again. A humble servant of the servants of God, washing away the accumulated piety before her. Maybe that is part of what we hope for come Sunday, a gentle washing away of accumulated piety, to make room for what is real and what is authentic and what is not simplistic but bright and simple and humble and good.
My friend Charles had a revelation about self-effacing service. As he watched the woman in black cleaning the icon, he realized that this was what ministry was meant to be: a humble daily washing away from the face of Christ of all that obscured, all that distorted, all that blocked others from seeing truth, goodness and beauty. Including, well, a lot of piety. Including pretense and presumption and position. And such service, service that lasts, is both deliberate and also deliberative, it is steady, one step at a time.
Think of someone you have known who provided heartfelt humble service to others, maybe to you. Steady, sincere, even struggling service. Think of someone who helped you once when you needed, really needed, help. And offer a prayer of thanks.
Every one of us has some influence. If you have a pen, a telephone, a computer, email, a tongue, a household, a family, a job, a community, a church—then you have some influence. The question, one that provokes a response and that then allows us to take a step forward is just this: how will you use, render, apply, shape and offer to life what you have?
Our gospel today suggests a response. A humble passion for the common good.
For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. May there be a new opening, for you and me, even today! Sursum Corda! Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved!
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
