Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

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Dean Hill:

The sermon for today is lifted up and out of Our Bach Experience.  In worship and life at Marsh Chapel we engage all the newest forms of communication (see today our website), and we desire to do so with a cloud of witnesses, with the wisdom of the ages, with the faith once delivered to the saints, with words and songs and prayers that last, through the ages.   The high Gothic nave here is meant to affirm what lasts.  The beautiful windows here are meant to enshrine what lasts.  The historic enchanting liturgy of the service is meant to spell out what lasts.  The deliberate preparation and pacing of the sermon are meant to announce what lasts.   We have about 8000 Sundays in a lifetime, 8000 moments in word and music to experience God.  We dare not waste one or one minute of one in pandering, in entertaining, in minimizing, in doodling.  In this 59 poem of worship each week, the 16 musical moments and the 11 spoken moments are offered in the praise of God.  Remember your mortality.  Remember your fragility.  Remember your imperfection.  Remember who you are.  And so remember that you are happily a child of the living God.

John Wesley, chiseled in stone above our Marsh Chapel portico, taught Greek, evangelized Native Americans, rose daily at 4am to preach at 6am and throughout the day, changed the course of English and American history, and founded Methodism which itself gave birth to Boston University.  He claimed to be a man one book, ‘homo unius libri’.  For all this we do rightly honor him.  We cherish him.  We revere him.  But, truth to tell, it is brother Charles, the musician, the hymnist, whom we love, especially as we come toward the caroling hour.  Martin Luther, enshrined in stained glass near and far, splintered the church on the anvil of truth, recalled us to salvation by faith alone, withstood physical ailments, mental trials, political clashes, and religious hatreds.  He founded a movement that became the Lutheran church, and gave us the Protestant Principle of the necessary rigorous self criticism of all religion.  We honor him.  We cherish him.  We revere him.  But, truth to tell, it is his musical great grand child, J S Bach, whom we love, especially as we ready ourselves to hear an Advent cantata.

We need both the words and the music.  But music lasts even when words fail.  That tune you heard on the radio that took you forty years back in time.  That hymn whose melody was lifted in a high or hard moment, a wedding or funeral.  That new experience—as Bach is for many young adults and others today—that took you by the hand and led you out into the ineffable, the serene, the beautiful, the heavenly, the high and holy.  One of you may have found yourself Thursday listening during the memorial service for Dr. John Silber to the beauty of Brahms. We need both words and music, but the music sometimes finds an opening in the heart, a little crevice into which to maneuver, which would be too small and too angular for the word alone.  “I come mainly to sing the hymns”:  one of you might have said that.  I think one of you did.

Our words and music today are folded around several expectant themes.  The themes therein include expectation, prophecy, the coming reign of God, times and seasons, and the emerging recognition of Jesus as Messiah, all good Advent fare.  *Expectation puts us on his shoulder when experience lays us low.  Our undergraduates teach us this, for even when they are brought down by one or another standard young adult trial, and as hard as they fall, they just as strongly get back up, dust off, come to church, and live to write another day.  *Prophecy has kept the darker ranges of apocalyptic and Gnostic fears at bay, or at least has kept them company in the Bible.  Isaiah week by week has been singing you a song your mother taught you as well.  Where there is hope there is life.  *Jesus means more to us now then when we first believed.  In that evolution we have company in the ancient writings and the saints of the primitive church.  We are more aware as we grow, or grow older, that we are in good hands and so we can risk a bit to bear one another’s burdens. *So this season of Advent surrounds us with expectation and prophecy and trust.  In a wee moment we will hear this Advent gospel sung.

Dr. Jarrett:

Today’s cantata is indeed one of joyful expectation. One of the happiest cantatas I know, Cantata 140 depicts the Christian soul as a bride awaiting her promised Bride-groom, Christ. Drawing on imagery from the Gospel of Matthew, with text from the Song of Solomon, Bach sets the stage for a beautiful wedding feast. The three verses of Philip Nicolai’s famous chorale punctuate the cantata and establish the structure. There are three soloists: the tenor in the typical role of evangelist, the soprano as the voice of the Bride, and the baritone as the voice of the Bride-groom, Christ Jesus.

From the start the festive nature is apparent with the French overture styled rhythms in the strings echoed by the three oboes. One of the best examples of this cantata style, the chorale tune is set in the soprano part in long tones, doubled by a French horn. You won’t miss it! The chorale tune appears again the central movement, this time sung by the tenors of the choir in unison. You’ll likely recognize this material as ‘organ music’; Bach adapted this movement in 1748 for inclusion in the set of chorale preludes for the organ known as the Schübler Chorales. Nicolai’s third verse concludes the cantata in the familiar four-part setting as found in your red Methodist Hymnal, No 720.

Between these bright movements, Bach unfolds the drama of the woman awaiting her bride-groom. As it says in the Gospel of the day, ‘Watch, therefore; for ye know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of man cometh.’ The tenor evangelist calls to the daughter of Zion, “Macht euch bereit. Er kommt, er kommt! Make yourself ready, He comes! He comes!”

The first of the two love duets follows. Listen for the deeply expressive violin solo, the longing of the woman as she awaits her bridegroom –  in the background the calming voice of the baritone assuring her that he comes.

After the familiar second verse of the Nicolai chorale, the groom arrives to profess his vows. The words of Christ are accompanied by strings, an aural halo familiar from the same practice in the Matthew Passion. These words offer comfort and assurance, and at the end, even the promise of a kiss!

Perhaps the most famous of all Bach’s duets, ‘Mein Freund ist mein’ is completely delightful. With obbligato oboe, parallel thirds and sixths, the frolicsome interplay of melismas, this is one of the best love duets in the entire repertoire.

Vows exchange and love professed, we are invited to join the heavenly banquet with Nicolai’s final verse.

The longing, uncertainty and expectation are present, but this cantata’s focus is much more on the joyful moment when Christ comes to redeem the world. Watch, pray. Pray and watch. Trim your lamps. He comes, he comes!!

Dean Hill:

May the rigors of Advent continue to prod and challenge us.  May this not be an easy season.  May this season unfold with moments in which we are brought up short, put on notice, called to account, and changed.

You are a people of faith, so that you are also a people of expectation.  You do not drop your chin at the first mention of bad news.  You do not fold your tents at the first sign of giants in the land.  You stand your ground, singing the music of expectation.

You are a people of faith, so that you are also a people of Prophecy.  You do not lie down and weep, only awaiting an unknown and unseen future.  You accept the unforeseen as part of the future, and you take up arms against a sea of troubles, hoping to end them. You let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day, remembering ‘sufficient to the day is the evil thereof’.  You live your eyes, singing the music of prophecy.

You are a people of faith, so that you are also a people of Trust.  You know that for anything to get done, trust is the coin of the realm.  You have learned in your experience that the good future requires us not only to work hard but also to work together.

Bonhoeffer loved Bach too.  He wrote:

Tolstoy once said that the czar would have to forbid Beethoven to be played by good musicians, for he would excite the passions of the people too deeply and put them in danger.

Luther, by contrast, often said that next to the Word of God, music is the best thing that human beings have.  The two had different things in mind:  Tolstoy, music to honor people; Luther, music to honor God.  And regarding music, Luther knew that it has dried an infinite number of tears, made the sad happy, stilled desires, raised up the defeated, strengthened the challenged, and that it has also moved many a stubborn heart to tears and driven many a great sinner to repentance before the goodness of God.

‘O sing the Lord a new song’ (Ps 98).  The emphasis is on the word new. What is this song, if not the song that makes people new, the song that brings people out of darkness and worry and fear to new hope, new faith, new trust?  The new song is the song that God himself awakens in us anew—even if it is an ancient song—the God who, as it says in Job, ‘gives songs in the night’ (Job 35).

~The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel

Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music

posted in Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, The Bach Experience, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 12.2.2012 at 11:00 am
Tags: Bach Experience, Robert Hill, Scott Jarrett

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 21: 23-32

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Dean Hill:

Beauty opens the world to grace.  Beauty may prepare you for the gospel of faith, the faith of the gospel.  Beauty is a ‘preparatio evangelium’, a preparation of the gospel.  Bach is a prelude to faith.

You will recognize the two sons of today’s parable.  One strong and one weak.  One secular and one religious.  One defiant and one compliant.  One directly negative and one indirectly positive.  One comes to faith.

Nineteen year olds, strong and secular and stepping away from their primary identity, recognize our gospel’s dilemma.  Whether to say a meek ‘yes’ to cradle religion, when the heart is steadfastly in the ‘no’ column, or whether to speak up, to rise up, that is, to stay away, to stay in bed on a Sunday morning, and so be honest to God, if not happy in God.  I walk past snoring dorms full, brother, every Sunday morning.

Forty one year olds, conditioned and religious and doubting in the pew, recognize our gospel’s dilemma.  Whether to say a meek ‘yes’ to Biblicist religion, when the mind stays steadfastly in the ‘no’ column, or whether to rise up, that is, to step away from the fundamentalism that has swamped American religion today like a hurricane turning good cities into mud, or to stay put, to smile, to murmur Sola Scriptura, and so to be dishonest to God, as well as unhappy in God.  For thirty five years I have served in churches among such struggling souls, every Sunday morning.

Sixty five year olds, who have avoided pride and falsehood since 1968, but when it comes to faith have succumbed to sloth, to a kind of personal laziness, a deadly personal ennui, recognize our gospel’s dilemma.  Whether, having said a good, honest, heartfelt ‘no’ some years ago, whether to look real hard at what condition your condition is in, and then whether—HOW HARD THIS IS—to think again.  About what?  About love, about meaning, about eternity, about God, about faith.  It takes a leap. And the leap takes some preparation.  Yes, when it comes to faith, there is always a leap involved.  And that leap requires some preparation.  What preparation, Dr Jarrett, do we receive in today’s glorious cantata?

Dr. Jarrett

Today’s cantata is for those who have chosen to go into the vineyard – maybe they’re our newest students entering the vineyard of Boston University this autumn – maybe they’ve just moved to begin a new job – or maybe they’ve just taken on a new leadership role. For Bach, the vineyard workers are the newly elected mayor and town councilors of Mühlhausen where Bach was organist at St. Blasius’s Church. The text, drawn variously from Psalm 74 and Second Samuel, depicts the old and the new, and the charge for those working in the vineyard.

From the title of the cantata, we can understand that Bach intends to remind the new town council of who’s really in charge – God is my King, and so it has been in ages past. The realm of God’s power knows no boundary. God alone determines the order of all things – the sun and planets take their course from God alone.

Bach reminds those taking up any work in the Vineyard that faith and trust in God alone will bring peace, salvation and prosperity.

Written when Bach was only 23, Cantata 71 is one of his earliest attempts at a larger choral/instrumental form, and it’s his first use of festival forces. Today we hear not an orchestra with chorus, but many choirs of instruments and voices in concert – trumpets and timpani, a choir of strings, oboes with bassoon, and the sweet sound of two recorders with cello. And as Bach’s primary responsibility in Mühlhausen was as organist, there is a prominent part for organ obbligato in the second movement.

Bach includes another special indication or grouping in the score that separates vocal soloists from their section. Today you’ll hear the Choral Scholars of the Marsh Chapel Choir as a small group, joined intermittently by the full Chapel Choir.

As we begin a new semester at Boston University, students, faculty, staff and all within our voice are reminded by Bach to go to the vineyard, accept the charge, but do so only with the full mantle of faith and trust in God.

Dean Hill:

Faith, the leap of faith, requires preparation.  Our colleague Peter Berger has written about this preparation: “I can find in human reality certain intimations of (God’s) speech, signals, unclear though they are, of His presence…joy, expressed in (great music) which seeks eternity…the human propensity to order which appears to correlate with an order in the universe…the immensely suggestive experience of play and humor, the irrepressible human propensity to hope, the certainty of some moral judgments, and last, but not least, the experiences of beauty…”(Questions of Faith, 12).

Beauty prepares us for faith.  Bach is a prelude to the gospel.

When you stand before your grandchild, in the hour of birth, you might think about that.  When you look into your father’s eyes, as he lies critically ill, you might think about that. When you realize that you have a real friend, one real friend, you might think about that. When you look at your beautiful country, in a mess, and wonder whether you should bestir yourself to write a check or make a phone call, you might think about that. When a sunset seizes you, when a poem teases you, when a sermon freezes you, you might think about that.  It takes a leap.  Faith takes a leap.

The beauty of our gospel, in part, is found in its silence about what caused brother one to take his leap, to turn around, to come back, to seize, I mean to be seized by, Love.  We do not know.  Only Matthew tells this story.  His telling is misremembered in five different versions in its textual history.  Its challenge and promise are the same: “the irreligious can often be awakened to a realization of their spiritual need, while those who are actually more righteous are sometimes impervious to the gospel and make no progress beyond the formal morality which they already possess” (IBD, loc. Cit., 510).

Something beautiful may have prepared our brother.  Bach may prepare you today.  Bach may lift your soul beyond youthful grunge.  Bach may raise your soul out of religious hiding.  Bach may sear your soul with beauty, and call you out of forty years of spiritual sloth.  It would not be the first time.  Today we hear a song of thanksgiving, a grateful and beautiful anthem. “Bach’s cantatas, in fact, were conceived and should be regarded not as concert pieces at all, but as musical sermons; and they were incorporated as such in the regular Sunday church services”. (The Cambridge Companion to Bach, 86).  I wonder whether the beautiful holiness of this music will touch you?  I know that you swore an oath one day at the Vietnam Memorial that you had turned your back on all that, all this, all gospel, all God.  In a way, once, I did the same. But I wonder whether there is preparation this morning for your return.  I believe there is.  I know that the flat building, shallow music, one dimensional fundamentalism you hear as faith has soured you.  I know.  It did me too.  But I wonder whether there is a preparation this morning for your return.  I believe there is.  I know that the lonely, awkward wastelands of freshman year can make you question anything lovely and lasting.  I know.  They did me as well.  But I wonder whether there is a preparation this morning for your return.

“Son, Go and work in the vineyard today.”  And he answered, “I will not”.  But afterward, he repented and went.

~The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel

Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music

posted in Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, The Bach Experience, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 09.30.2012 at 11:00 am
Tags: Bach Experience, Robert Hill, Scott Jarrett

By Marsh Chapel

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Mark 9: 2-9

Rev. Quigley: This morning, we join the apostles; as they ascend the mountain, we climb the steps of Marsh Chapel’s gothic nave. We join Peter, James, and John; as they take some time apart with Jesus, we turn up the dial in our car radio, or pour a second cup of coffee in the quiet of our kitchen. We follow their gaze up the mountainside as they wonder what they will see; our eyes, or our mind’s eyes, are drawn up and up through the sanctuary, from sacred places to sacred faces, and finally to the great openness of the vaulted ceiling above. This is Transfiguration Sunday.

There is an anticipation, an excitement, a buzzing about a vibrant church on a Sunday morning: chatter from small study groups, the rustling of robes as choristers dress, the caffeine-rich scent of coffee brewing, the rhythmic sounds of worship leaders saying a brief prayer before service begins. You will find all this and more at 735 Commonwealth Avenue any week, but a few Sundays of the year this atmosphere has even more heightened energy, on holy days such as Christmas and Easter, of course, but also for the few Sundays annually in which the rich sounds of a Bach cantata anchor our service of worship and praise.

Elisha, too, is full of energy, and anxiety this morning. Along his last walk with his mentor, standing as signposts of the spectacle to come, companies of prophets like a Greek chorus foretell of a vision of an ascension. Like Elisha, we have our own company of prophets with us today, who with their voices and instruments will summon us to keep watch, and to perk up our ears, to hear the message that Bach can bring to us today.

1 Corinthians 12 says that each of us is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good; some are given the gift of tongues, and others the gift of interpretation of tongues. Now, music is its own language, so as is our custom, we have our Director of Music,

Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, with us this morning to interpret for us what we are about to hear.

Dr. Jarrett, what signposts will we hear this morning?

Dr. Jarrett: Thank you, Rev. Quigley. Today’s cantata is one of Bach’s great musical triumphs, first performed in October of 1725 for Reformation Sunday. The opening movement depicts the triumph of the new way – Luther’s way, that is – in a most exuberant, muscular – even militant – display of counterpoint and brilliance. The opening orchestral material, extending for an astonishing 45 measures before the chorus entrance, introduces all the thematic material of the movement, including a broad march and a strictly treated three-voice fugue. The cantata features some of the most difficult horn parts in Bach’s entire output, depicting the glory of the battle won. Perhaps the most surprising element of the opening movement is the unrelenting presence of the timpani in a most extraordinary part. The timpani’s rambunctious pounding calls to mind Luther’s bold and precocious nailing of the 95 Theses on the Wittenburg church door.

The second movement, sung today by Gerrod Pagenkopf, proves Bach’s ability to set a similar text in a completely different fashion. The meter of the music with the oboe obbligato present us with a relaxed, elegant pastoral image of God as protector. For the third movement, Bach seems to have recognized that we haven’t yet heard one of Luther’s great hymns. But he delivers a tour de force like no other. The horns and timpani return with their triumphant music from the first movement as the choir and orchestra sing that most famous hymn, ‘Not thank we all our God.’

After the chorale, the cantata takes the anticipated introspective turn for how we continue to fight the battle each day in our contemporary lives. Like the disciples with Jesus on the mountain top, the baritone praises God for the revelation of truth through Word and Incarnation. The recitative concludes with a prayer for hope of salvation from those who do not yet know God. The duet introduces the only elements of doubt in the entire cantata. Here the soprano and bass lines, sung by Kira Winter and Thomas Middleton, cling to each other amid the threat of the darting unison violin line. Only once do they lose each other as the text depicts the harsh raging of the enemy. The cantata ends with a standard four-part chorale setting, but with the two horns and timpani crowning the movement.

Though a Reformation cantata, we find resonance with today’s liturgy and texts. We hear the steadfastness of the apostles at Jesus’ side on the mount in the staunchness and assurance of the opening movement. The presence of the fugal material reminds us of the law of Moses and Elijah. And the presence of the fugue with the broader homophonic music reveals the fulfillment of the prophesy and Jesus appears with Moses and Elijah. We detect Elisha side by side with Elijah in the soprano and bass duet. As we recall the Reformation story, and revisit in the mind’s eye a burgeoning movement toward religious freedoms, we sing again ‘Now thank we all our God.’ Our convictions are transformed, transfigured, and renewed in the grace and redemption of God’s love and might.

Rev. Quigley: Transfiguration is not quite like the class taught at Hogwarts by Professor McGonagall; it is not about turning a cat into a teacup with the flick of a wand. Transfiguration in our gospel reveals the divine within the human, the extraordinary within the ordinary. As in our cantata, we see the different modes of Christ, both the triumphant and the pastoral. This is not unlike our gospel today. The author of Mark, more so than his fellow gospel-writers, portrays for us a down and dirty Jesus. This Jesus has a tendency to spit when healing, he has a strange affinity for dirt, he touches lepers, he curses out fig trees, and he falls asleep in the back of boats. But today, Mark reminds us that Jesus is also the Christ, by foretelling the glory and power of the resurrection.

I think that many of our most powerful spiritual experiences are little transfigurations. We hear a familiar, beloved hymn tune sung in a full-chorused and orchestrated cantata. It reminds us of singing in our home churches, and the new, bright assurance of faith washes over us more powerfully than it first did decades ago. After three, fifteen, fifty years of marriage, we look across the table at our spouse, and the light catches them just right. They are not as beautiful as the wedding day, they are more beautiful, because we have caught a tiny glimpse of the divine spark of our Creator in them. A single conversation at work or at school, and we finally see that we can make an impact; all the callouses (on our hands or on our minds) can change people’s lives, and perhaps for the first time, we discover the intersection of our passion and the world’s need in our sense of vocation.

So this morning, we sit transfixed, receiving Bach’s inspired gift even as he sits beside us, contemplating the same divine majesty. We will have to come down the mountain soon enough, and then we will have to go back into the rhythms of our lives. But something will be different, and even though we know words will fail us, we know something will have to change. Something will have to be shared with others. Mark knows this; Mark’s gospel is known for what biblical scholars call the “messianic secret.” Jesus does something spectacular, and then he demands it be kept secret until after the resurrection. The purpose of the messianic secret in the gospel is much debated, but I find a little Markan humor in it, that the news about Jesus is too good not to share, and time and again people cannot keep the secret.

The irony of life’s transfigurative moments is that no words will properly describe them, but they are so powerful they demand to be shared with others. So this morning, we sit, with the disciples, and with Elisha, and with Bach, unsure of what we will experience and even less sure what we will do afterward. But we sit, transfixed, and know that we are about to experience something of the divine, of the extraordinary revealed within the ordinariness of our lives.

Amen.

~The Rev. Jen Quigley, Chapel Associate
Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music

posted in Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, The Bach Experience, The Rev. Dr. Jennifer Quigley on 02.19.2012 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

posted in Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, The Bach Experience, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 11.6.2011 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

posted in Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, The Bach Experience, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 09.25.2011 at 11:00 am