Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the full service

Isaiah 40:21-31

Romans 12:1-8

Matthew 16:13-20

Click here to listen to the meditations only

It’s a privilege to be with you today, in the presence of both this university and the broader listening community. In gratefully accepting Dean Hill’s invitation to preach today, I had no idea that it would coincide with the first category 4 hurricane to hit the Texas coast since before I was born. My heart is heavy with concern for many friends whose churches are closed this morning and who might not even be able to tune into this broadcast for lack of power. I ask you to keep the communities of the whole Gulf Coast and inland areas in your prayers, not just during this service, but in the long rebuilding time to come. And now will you pray with me?

I am the product of two United Methodist-related institutions—Emory University in Atlanta for seminary and Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, for my bachelor’s degree. I’m a trustee of Southwestern now, and it’s been interesting to watch its relationship with the church change, even as the role and place of the church in our broader society has also shifted. You may be acquainted with those in the world around us who are way too smart to find themselves in church. You also may be acquainted with churches you are too smart or too nice a person to be a member of. It is an interesting time. But it is not a time in which the church is exactly sure of what to do with itself. What used to be clear isn’t anymore, and the word “decline” hangs as a dark cloud over our heads.

Yet we are here, in body or earshot, because we still believe there’s something to all of this. The church reacts to its changing context, either by trying out new venues and songs and language, trying desperately to crack the code and reach old and new generations of people who either stopped listening to us or never started. Or we hunker down and sing old songs with fingers in our ears, hoping the place stays open long enough to do our funerals. But there has to be something more to what we are about, doesn’t there? Something underneath and above and in the middle, a truth we could not have made up for ourselves. Even as the ground shifts beneath our feet, we hope, we believe, there’s a deeper foundation still.

In today’s gospel, Jesus calls Peter a rock, the foundation for the whole church, which is kind of funny, knowing what we know of Peter. A rock? Really? Peter is, among other things, bone-headed and selfish, and on his worst day, he denied knowing Jesus at all. Yet Peter on this day knew one thing, the one important, true thing, which was who Jesus really was. And somehow Peter’s knowing, combined with the strength of that Jesus truth, was itself enough. Peter, with all his failings and fear and short-sightedness, was able to serve as the foundation for the church, because there was something bigger and better at work in him, despite himself, and he knew it. We are heirs of that foundation, that rock, that truth. Today, this moment, is a time when we as church in this country need to get clear about what that inheritance is and how it lays claim to us. And here in a chapel on a university campus, at the intersecting point of faith and knowledge, we sit in a good place from which to ask ourselves, “What do we know? What is true? What is the living word we have received and which Christ calls us to pass along, as challenging as the times may be?”

\My story of what I know starts with being a preacher’s kid and getting a full, early dose of church. By the time I arrived at college, I was trying on my own adult life, putting intentional space between my parents and myself. I struggled with profound feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt. I studied political science, history, and Spanish. I worried about all the nuclear weapons we and the Russians had pointed at each other, and I hoped to help find a way to work for peace. I had serious questions about the faith I had inherited. I wondered whether the story of Jesus might have been a fairy tale written to help us live better lives. I learned in college anthropology and then later again in seminary that it’s very natural for humans to figure out ways to make meaning, to interpret the world around us beyond our control, and that religion is one response to that impulse. I took philosophy courses and tried to decide whether I was a hard or soft determinist; I considered that it’s very possible that most of what we call reality is something we’ve made up.

Yet every Thursday, I sat in chapel, in a place very much like this. I sang with the University Chorale my whole time in school, and sometimes we had to be there for worship. But I came even when I didn’t have to, drawn in by that space, set apart—its height and color, dark and light, cool and quiet, the sound of the organ, even the smell, which in Texas includes the aroma of bats. That chapel to this day feels to me like the embodiment of an alma mater, mother of my soul, always somehow pointing me up and out, while at the same time reaching in, deep, and bridging the distance between the two.

That’s actually one way I could describe my whole education—an ongoing process of connection and communication between the deepest place in me and the wild wonder, the out-there-ness of the world. And as we turn to today’s Old Testament text, I hear this same deep and wide soul connection in the reading from Isaiah. This prophetic word was a message of hope and consolation to the people of Israel, exiled in the 6th century BCE from their land and seemingly from their identity. They despaired over what would become of them and what it meant that their life in the Promised Land had been so violently cut off. They must have wrestled with the accusations and judgment of the early prophets, who called out the power structure of God’s people as unjust and brutal toward the poor. It was a tough and traumatic time, as they tried to figure out who they were now in relation to their covenant God.

The 40th chapter begins a long section that announces consolation for the people and hope for the future. As a pastor I can tell you that the first verses of Isaiah 40 are used today by the church as readings for Advent, while its final verses, which we read today, are common in the funeral liturgy. This is a big chapter, an important word resonating across the centuries for people who doubt or wonder or suffer, for whatever reason. And the consolation of this word comes in part through the message that God is life, at a cosmic level—stretching out the skies as you would pull open the drapes in the morning. Princes and rulers, those with power to wage war and exile whole nations—these wither under the breath of God, these of shallow seed and fragile root. No matter what trouble the people faced, the prophet proclaimed, God was bigger.

We live in a context very different from the one in which this particular text was written, yet much also remains the same. It is intriguing, for example, to consider the rulers of this day as withered shoots, blown away by a stiff wind. The crazy roller coaster of news that hurtles us through every week, leaders here and elsewhere, ones you agree with and ones you don’t—all blown away by the breath of God. Then there are the oppressive burdens borne by so many in our nation and the world—racism, both blatant and unacknowledged; systemic poverty, held in place by law and practice; state brutality, civil wars that terrorize the most vulnerable; journeys of fear and flight from one land to another, families seeking refuge on foreign shores, often without finding it.

And just as troubling, somehow, in the midst of so much suffering, we have become unable or unwilling to experience each other’s reality. Especially in this country, we have created bubbles of homogeneity and deafness for ourselves, unfriending and categorizing and writing each other off based on yard signs and Facebook posts. We’ve begun to believe that there’s something fundamentally wrong with “those people.” We’ve armed ourselves and taken sides and crafted narratives that explain the guilt of the other, without challenging or calling ourselves to account. And the weak and the long-oppressed continue to suffer, discounted as one more special interest group. How we might wish a hurricane like Harvey might wash it all away. It doesn’t happen that way, though.

So why, then, do we hope? From the perspective of the heavens, we are grasshoppers of a sort, scattered across the land, small and vulnerable. There is much about this complex life I—and we—do not know. But what I do know, I have learned in part from a community of people rooted in a God vision, not ready to be conformed to this world, not ready to say “uncle” in the face of great, destructive power, even when that destructiveness lies within ourselves. I have learned what cannot be proven, in the scientific sense, but what I have come to believe within the deepest fibers of my soul—that there is something bigger than me and us in this life, and not just bigger things that can hurt us. There is a different power at work for good in us and the world, and we know it because we experience it; we’ve seen it transform people and even whole communities.

The power to which we point as people of faith is that found in the final verses of today’s passage, words of comfort for generations of Jews and Christians and all kinds of people who have wandered into funeral parlors. Because you know it happens; hard things happen—youth do sometimes faint and grow weary; young ones do fall exhausted, to say nothing of older ones. Maybe it’s happened to you or your community; maybe it’s happening even now. But our proof of power lies in the strength that comes to us from outside ourselves when we are weak. Perhaps it comes through people gathered together, through music or quiet or the stars strewn above our heads. We may see it when what looks like randomness takes on pattern, or when selfishness becomes sacrifice. But it comes. Life and trouble, death and evil continue, but strength also comes, and it makes all the difference.

One name for that kind of power is love. It is love to which this text testifies; love in the eye of the Holy One without equal, who sits above the circle of the earth; love that Christians receive and proclaim in Christ Jesus; love that centers so many other faith traditions, too. It is love that breaks opens hearts and minds to the new idea, the different perspective, the stretch that true learning and listening require. It is love that allows us to take seriously testimonies of experiences we haven’t had, and to lay down power and privilege on behalf of people who are unaccustomed to either. It is love I have always found in spaces like this one and at the gracious table of Jesus Christ—welcoming, feeding, moving me up and out.

As church, as university, it is the power of love to which we should witness. In this brilliant world, traveling at breakneck pace; in this culture, which has trouble remembering what was important five minutes ago; in a land where human hearts are as selfish as forever yet also yearn beyond words for fullness of life—in this moment we must strive to create disciples of Christ who will testify to love and its power in their lives and communities. We must be and invite and form people who know there’s something important that’s bigger than they are, who sit upon the earth like tiny grasshoppers but who yet use their compound eyes to take in and know the world, and use their legs to sing a song of praise. We must testify to being lifted up as on eagle’s wings, humbled and empowered by strength that is not our own, and inspired to walk and serve and speak out on behalf of others and ourselves. We must be and invite and form mature, moral citizens, compassionate neighbors, people with what we call emotional intelligence, in addition to all that other intelligence y’all practice around here. From where I sit, I don’t know what to call that but love.

21 Have you not known? Have you not heard?

Has it not been told you from the beginning?

Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

28 The Lord is the everlasting God,

the Creator of the ends of the earth.

God does not faint or grow weary;

God’s understanding is unsearchable.

29 God gives power to the faint,

and strengthens the powerless.

We have inherited a word, a vision, a deep knowledge, a solid rock of truth as our foundation, and our work is far from finished. May God bless us with the joy and opportunity of sharing what we know, even in this uncertain and troubling time, as people transformed by love.

– The Reverend Laura Merrill, Assistant to the Bishop for Clergy Excellence

posted in Guest Preachers on 08.27.2017 at 11:00 am
Tags: guest preacher

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the full service

Deuteronomy 30:11-14

Ephesians 3:14-21

Matthew 8:5-13

Click here to listen to the meditations only

Conversation is part of the fabric of human interaction. Our words can hurt or heal, divide or unite, create community or chaos. The recent violence in Charlottesville has sparked conversation about free speech, racism, antisemitism, national leadership, and the inherent values of our nation.

Robert A. Brown, the President of Boston University sent a letter to the community this week in which he said:

“As we seek in our democracy and our academic community to appreciate and understand difference, we speak of tolerance and the fundamental importance of free speech and respect for diverse points of view.  But tolerance doesn’t necessarily imply or entail acceptance or approval.  Palpably evil acts, such as occurred in Charlottesville, invite the challenging question about what is and is not tolerable or morally acceptable in speech and accompanying deeds.”

President Brown’s letter continues: “I believe it is a view that is broadly shared in our community, that a claim of inherent racial or ethnic superiority is abhorrent.  We must, I believe, explicitly denounce white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups that make such claims.  The obligation of our community must be to hold fast to the values that are in our Boston University DNA.  As we participate in broader conversation in our society, we should seek to set a standard of civility and generosity of spirit in discourse that perhaps over time will be an illuminating counterpoint to the hate speech that threatens the very fabric of our republic.”

In this time in our country when there is so much division and hurt, we do seek deep conversations that help move us into awareness and actions. Persons of faith also seek spiritual strength to guide us in our conversations and actions.

In Ephesians 3, St. Paul asks God to strengthen us by his Spirit—“not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength.”

Paul says: “And I ask God, that with both of your feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.”

Today I want to talk about 3 conversations that help bring us into the fullness of God, so that we can serve in a fragile world with inner strength and love.

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen is a pioneer in integrative medicine and relationship centered care.  Dr. Remen writes books, practices medicine, teaches and works with helping professionals and activists who are burned out, feel like they have given all they can give, are tired, annoyed or resentful, and don’t want to do it anymore.

In her workshops, Dr. Remen takes participants through three questions.

What positive thing surprised you today?

What touched you?

What inspired you recently?

All of three questions are directed at what we call the heart.

In Hebrew scripture, the heart is the place where human beings connect with God.

These vivifying questions open up the heart, the place of aliveness, compassion, energy, connection love, deep understanding. The Psalmist knows about the importance of opening the heart.  The Psalmist says:

Create in me a clean heart O God,

and renew within me a right spirit.

Let’s examine each of these questions starting with the question:

What surprised you?

In the healing story of Jesus in Matthew 8, Jesus is approached by a Centurion (a high ranking Roman military official) who says:

Sir, my servant  is home, paralyzed, racked with pain and paralyzed.  

Jesus responds without hesitation: “I will come and cure him.”

The Centurion says:

I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. You are the great healer. Just say the word and my servant will be healed.

Scripture says that Jesus was astonished. Really, really, really surprised.  For one thing, a centurion would never say that he is unworthy.  He had a power position. Jesus said, “Nowhere I have found such faith. Go home and so let it be done for you according to your faith. And the servant was healed in that hour.”

What does being surprised do?  Surprise wakes us up. Surprise almost has a gasp quality to it. Our perception of how the world works shifts, making way for a new reality that has unlimited possibilities.

In that new reality I ask myself, is my faith that bold? Am I willing to trust that all will be well?

For example, I would never say that if you have enough faith in Jesus you don’t need health insurance.

But I do have great faith in working as a team across party lines for our nation’s healthcare system in a way that brings equity and healing to all. And I do treasure the saying:

Everything will work out in the end.

If it doesn’t work out, then it is not the end.

And I am surprised how the healing stories of Jesus always make me think.

“What surprises you?” is a vivifying question.

Another surprise story is not in the Bible, but like many stories, it points to the gospel message:

Some frogs were hopping in the forest, and suddenly two of the frogs fell into a deep hole. They jumped and jumped trying to get out of this almost impossible situation.

The other frogs looked into the hole and shouted: “You should have been more careful, give up, you are already as good as dead. Stop jumping so much, your struggle makes us uncomfortable.”

Exhausted and dispirited one frog lay down and died, but the other frog put forth a super-frog effort and by a miracle, jumped out of the hole.

The observer frogs were shocked: “Why did you continue jumping when we told you it was impossible and why did you continue jumping when you knew it made us uncomfortable?”

Reading their lips now that he was close, the frog explained them that he was deaf. When he saw their gestures, he thought they were cheering him on.

The surprise ending is beautiful: It is astonishing that encouragement, companionship, just being there for each other has so much power. How can that be?

In the end, it is not about the words.

It is about the power of what we call the Divine presence.

We are surprised about the simple power of encouragement.

Jesus was surprised that the Centurion really got what Jesus was teaching about the true power of God. I think Jesus spent his life giving a message that people couldn’t take in.  And when they did, He was deeply touched.

Let’s examine the second question: What touched you today or recently?

What was so beautiful or so powerful, that you were humbled by it, opened, connected, heart-filled?

I am always touched by the story of Moses at 120 years old, in the wilderness giving his final lecture to the people of Israel who would have to enter the Promised Land without him.

FINAL lectures or sermons are so touching when people sum up years and decades of wisdom and give it to us as a parting gift.

Deuteronomy 30: 11. The commandment (commandment to love and obey God), I lay on you this day is not too difficult for you, it is not too remote.  It is not in heaven, that you should say:

Who will go up to heaven for us to fetch it and tell it to us, so that we can keep it?

No - it is a thing very near to you -- on your lips and in your own heart so that YOU can do it.

The story of Moses’ last lecture touches that deeply vulnerable place in us where we feel like we can’t go on, we can’t recover from loss, can’t turn our country, our world, our planet around.

Moses says to the gathered people: God has given you everything you need to keep moving forward towards the promise. That is God’s covenant with us. But remember, Moses said that to the gathered tribes, not just one person.

The story is touching because it touches a place in each of us that is afraid; and says to the fear: As a community, you have everything you need to create a Promised Land.

A second touching story is from the Islamic faith tradition. It has been a really horrific year for the Muslim community in our country and parts of our world.  So I want to honor this tradition,  this faith, by telling one of their ancient stories that always warms my heart.

Shuaib received a magnificent horse from his brother as a present.  The next day Shuaib came out of his house, and saw a street urchin walking around the powerful beautiful animal, admiring it.

“Is this your horse sir?” the ragged child asked.

Shuaib nodded and said “Yes, my brother gave it to me.”

The boy was astounded. “You mean your brother gave it to you, and it didn’t cost you nothing?  Boy, I wish….” He hesitated.

Shuaib knew what he was going to wish for.  The street boy was going to wish he had a brother like that. But instead the boy said:

“I wish I could be a brother like that.”

We are touched by acts of selflessness. We are all longing to be lifted out of ourselves. Out of our egos that want more and more, the ego constantly compares ourselves to everything and everyone, and labels things as good or bad, less than, more than. It is exhausting to live racing around in a pool of self-absorption or self-loathing, which is simply the other side of the coin.

We long to be surprised, touched and inspired to higher ideals, authentic relationships, deeper healing.

What Surprised you? What Touched you?

 Dr. Remen’s third heart-opening question for us is: What inspired you?

The word inspiration is from the same root word spirit, breath, life.  Inspiration implies that our spirit is alive, breathing, awake.

Inspiration opens us up to the divine life force that is always and everywhere around and within us.

A family took care of a 96-year-old Mom who was dying of weariness and Alzheimer’s, and inability to swallow.  It was a long arduous journey. It was smelly and not fun. They really wanted to be there for her and with her, but they were wearing down.

One day the son came across an article about how Japanese tea bowls are repaired.  The Kintsugi method is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powered gold.

Basically, you fill the cracks and chips with gold.  The bowl is not thrown away, but becomes more beautiful because of the events in its life that occurred as it served us.  The cracks are honored rather than disparaged.

The image of the old bowl, its cracks and fragility honored with gold, inspired him, and reawakened his desire to serve and love in the face of the great challenge of taking care of a dying, non-communicative elder.

What surprised you, what touched you, what Inspired you?

These questions take us to the place of the heart, the place where God is able to speak to us, energize our spirits and motivate us to move forward and create a world that benefits all of God’s creation.

I close with St. Paul’s hopeful words to the Ephesians and to us:

^“God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.” Ephesians 3:20-21

Surprising, Touching, Inspiring.

That is the good news of the Gospel. And how will you bring those three golden elements to honor and encourage a chipped and cracked world that needs them so much?

-The Reverend Rebecca W. Dolch United Methodist Minister Church of the Upper New York Conference, Ithaca, New York 

posted in Guest Preachers on 08.20.2017 at 11:00 am
Tags: guest preacher

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the full service

Acts 9:36-43

John 14:1-3

Click here to listen to the meditations only

Testimonials always get my attention.  I love to hear people tell stories about what works for them. Diet testimonials are the best: “How I lost 96 pounds and transformed my life.”

Children give testimonials all the time. A three-year-old said:

“I was really, really scared, and then I put my special blue blanket over my head and now I’m not scared anymore.”

The Tabitha story is a testimonial of the early church telling how Peter resurrected Tabitha from the dead, this devoted woman who helped the poor.

I’m convinced that we can all benefit by becoming more comfortable hearing and telling stories about death. Every single one of us is going to die, and if we live a very long time, we’ll have to deal with the death of most of our friends and family.

In addition to death, we have hundreds of other kinds of losses. Like people moving away, the world falling apart, families falling apart, health and health care falling apart, society and the climate acting crazy and out of control, and everything changing all the time. All losses prepare us for the next loss and the biggest ones, especially if we give testimonials, stories from our own experience about what makes loss bearable, and how we have grown and learned from loss.

Today, I will continue to talk about Tabitha, and I want to share 8 testimonials from Mom’s passing.

TESTIMONIAL #1: Death is Normal

Note: our family is far, far from ideal, but Mom and Dad were superstars about talking about death.

Death was kind of like a distant relative we would finally get to meet and when we did, it would be very wonderful.  The Best. Safe, Fun, beautiful.  Quite soon everybody we knew and loved would join us.

As children, we went to the calling hours of our parent’s friends and relatives from the time that we could behave.  I remember mother and Grammy looking at my Great Aunt Lilly in the casket and straightening her dress, and talking about her.

They answered my 7-year-old questions: “Can she hear us?” No, not like we hear people.

“Can I touch her?”  Yes, but her body will be very cold, and her spirit isn’t in it any more—it is with Jesus. Her spirit can visit us in our hearts, when we think about her, but it doesn’t live here any more. It is not scary. Just different. God has it figured out; we don’t have to worry about it.

TESTIMONIAL #2: The Bible Speaks

Picture this: I was 12, sitting at my grandmother’s funeral. The preacher got up and read from John 14.

Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.

Believe in God, Believe also in me.  In my father’s house are many rooms; If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

At that moment the Word was so profoundly real that I knew it was true in a mysterious kind of way, and I also knew from that day forward that the Bible could speak to you like a close friend, and tell you things you needed to know. When people read stories about what Jesus said, Jesus was talking directly to you.

TESTIMONIAL #3: Cremation

I remember the struggle that Mother had years ago, deciding to be cremated instead of buried, because she loved the casket traditions she grew up with.

Daddy reminded her that at one of the churches he served the cemetery had to be dug up and moved. When they excavated, they saw that at the bottom of each grave was a simple layer of earth that had once been a body a hundred+ years before.  Mama said in her southern voice:

“Well, I guess I might as well be cremated and get it over with.”

TESTIMONIAL #4: Humor and Sorrow

Mom and Dad were OK about death, knew it would come, and Dad made jokes about it all the time.  When we was really sick, he’d say: ”I made honorable mention in the obituaries this morning.”  When he began to lose mobility he said: “keep moving and they won’t throw dirt on you.”

They made funeral arrangements early on, talked about it, and dealt with death a lot.  They had such a positive feeling about death, but they weren’t naïve. Dad lost two siblings in childhood, Mom lost her mom and dad and six brother and a sister, one of them dying by suicide. They lost their oldest son. Dad always told the story of how a soldier on each side of him died in World War II. They weren’t immunity to tragedy, heartbreak, unfairness, horror.  But still: Death was normal and God is in charge.

TESTIMONIAL #5: Saying Goodbye

We were with Mom when they took out the breathing tube they had given her until we could all arrive in North Carolina. Her brain aneurism had made it impossible for her to breath on her own at 85 years old. She lived about 10 minutes and then in one last long exhale, she was gone. He essence vanished and left her sweet old body looking like a beautiful sculpture, not a living being.

Just the night before, I talked with her on the phone.  Her last words were what she always said at the end of a phone call:

Bye bye darlin’ I love you.

I’m telling these stories, because I think it is important to give testimonials about death and dying. Death is normal.

Telling the stories of this precious season called the end stage of earthly life is healing. Sharing our faith and trust in the eternal presence of God is comforting.  And it is important to remember to say something like “bye bye darlin’ I love you,” every time.

TESTIMONIAL #6: Memorial Services

As a pastor for 40 years, I have performed hundreds of Memorial services, and I have loved doing them. But going to Mother’s service as a daughter, not the minister was different.

I wasn’t talking about someone else’s death.

I was experiencing my Mama being gone, and her spiritual presence being with me. It wasn’t like the Bible story of Tabitha being raised from the dead when Peter prayed.

But for me it was a small scale subtle experience of resurrection. Mama is gone. And the great mystery is: Mama’s spirit is still here.

We didn’t do anything grandiose at mother’s service. We talked about how great she was with laundry. She never, ever washed socks with dishtowels. She started teaching adult Sunday School at age 80 when she finally got over a fear of public speaking.

Steve, Her former next-door neighbor of 20 years drove 2 hours to the service, came up front, and said:

“Jean knew that my partner and I were gay. She called us “the boys next door.” And she treated us like her boys. She gave us the key to her house in case we ever needed to get in. She was a wonderful neighbor.”

I just want to say that the town where Mom’s memorial service was held a decade ago was not a place where you talk about being gay, certainly not in church. But that is what happened at Mother’s service.

A Memorial service is a chance for God to use us one more time to make an impact on the people in our orbit.

A memorial service is a way of making all of us who are still alive, more aware of the small ordinary things that make a difference:   keeping things and relationships really clean, being neighborly, kindness, making lots of people your family.

So don’t let me hear about any of you saying:

“Oh no, I don’t want anything. No service, nothing at the burial.”  You’d be denying your friends and your family and maybe even some strangers, a chance for the healing of the Holy Spirit. That happens when our hearts are opened by love and grief.

Your memorial service or funeral is not for you.  At your service, the rest of us have a chance to frame the relationship we had with you during life and start to piece together the relationship we have with you when you leave this earthly plane.

It is a time when we start picturing you with the angels--a new picture that needs developing.

 TESTIMONY #7: Kindness

 We had the calling hours at Mom and Dad’s house. People showed up with food and flowers and hugs and love and stories. All these people simply sharing kindness in the face of grief.

I started sobbing over the four chocolate meringue pies that showed up, because Mother always made Daddy a chocolate Meringue pie for his birthday. It was a symbol of 65 years of love, and marriage, and seeing it opened my heart, and I connected with the love, and with the loss, and with my Dad.

At the time of death or loss, or grief, people are more willing to be vulnerable, intimate with you if you create some space for that.

In the Bible story we read, that is what the women did for Tabitha. They came to her house to prepare her body, they brought the clothes that she had made for them and showed everyone and talked about her other acts of charity and devotion .

That Bible story in Act 9 give us guidance about how to go through the death of a loved one.  They wept. They helped. They reached out for guidance.

We had calling hours at Mother and Dad’s home. Their neighbor, Mr. A.J. Dexter sat beside me and told stories about growing up as a sharecropper’s son. The sharecroppers were the next to the lowest on the social scale in rural N. C. in the 1940’s.

Sharecroppers were kind of like the women in the Bible that Tabitha served – poor women who didn’t have decent clothes until Tabitha made them and gifted them.

Mr. Dexter shared that his mother made his clothes from feed sacks.  He stuttered so badly that all the kids made fun of him.

I asked Mr. Dexter, how did you get over stuttering?  He answered quietly, with great authenticity, looking me in the eye:

Rebecca, I gave it over to the Lord in prayer.  And the Lord gave me a 10^th grade teacher who worked with me every afternoon after school before football practice, until I could talk. It was a miracle, he said, a miracle of prayer and conviction and her kindness.

That is what Peter did in the Bible Story.  He prayed for Tabitha, this woman who has served God by serving the widows who had no resources. The story about Tabitha became a testimonial of how God can do what we think is impossible. Open-hearted testimonials like Mr. Dexter’s and Tabitha’s friends and her healing, open our hearts.

The pay-off of an open heart is the experience of being empowered by kindness, fueled by tears, strengthened by pain, and connected heart to heart with other beings – strangers who tell sweet stories at calling hours, characters in the Bible, and all the people you know. The open heart connects us with the divine mystery that Jesus proclaimed: “Where I am you will be also.”

Here is a summary:

Death is normal, God is in charge, talk about death, use humor, grieve, celebrate life at the time of death, kindness is the greatest gift, and God works in ways that seem impossible. Bear witness to this truth.

TESTIMONY #8: Life/Death/Life

My brother died of cancer at age 46. The night he died our whole family was there: his wife and three teenage sons, Mom and Dad, my other brothers and their families, and my own. When he breathed his last, we called in the Chaplain, who was wonderful with children. We talked about important things, and then all piled into one elevator. Just before it closed, one of Kelly’s sons let out the biggest belch ever heard, and everybody started laughing like crazy. Couldn’t stop. It was the type of laugh that released years of tension and sorrow.

A woman was running to catch our elevator, but when she got there and saw these crazy laughing people, she decided to take the next elevator.

We filed into the lobby, laughing, crying, hugging and talking about logistics.  Logistics ground us at a time like this. The elevator opened again, and out came the woman we saw before.  She came over to my Mom and my brother Jim and asked this question: “Has there been a birth?”

They answered at the same time: “Yes, there has been a birth.”

We are born. We walk together. We suffer, laugh, die, and we are given a new birth into what Christian call the resurrection and the life everlasting. God is with us the whole time. Thanks be to God!

And that is the good news of the Gospel.

-The Rev. Rebecca W. Dolch, United Methodist Minister Church in Upper New York Conference, Ithaca, New York 

posted in Guest Preachers on 08.13.2017 at 11:00 am
Tags: guest preacher

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the full service

1 Corinthians 2:1-12

Matthew 5:13-16

Click here to listen to the meditations only

The point of salt is to be salty.  We are the salt of the earth.

The point of light is to shine. We are the light of the world.

The point of life is to love. We are alive.

I.[1]

Jane was a traveler, and as happens to travelers from time to time, one day she found herself in a new city—the City of Everywhere.  Perhaps you’ve been there.

Jane had not, but being a city girl at heart, having grown up in the land of the bean and the cod, she was open to the experience.

After all, the City of Everywhere was beautiful; the streets were clean, the architecture was appealing, and the people were so friendly.  There was just one thing, one tiny detail that, as Jane walked down the street, she thought was a little strange.

You see, no one, not a single person that she passed was wearing shoes.

Strange, Jane thought, as she ducked into a coffee shop.

As she was waiting for her iced latte, looking around at all the shoeless people, her curiosity finally got the better of her and she said to the manager, “Excuse me, manager.  I’m new to your city.  What a wonderful place, the streets are so clean, the architecture so appealing, the people so friendly.  I just have one quick question.  Tell me, why doesn’t anyone wear shoes?”

The manager gave her a knowing smile and offered in a thoughtful voice, “Ah, that’s the question, why don’t we?”

“Right.” Said Jane, “That’s what I’m asking, why don’t you wear any shoes? Don’t you all believe in shoes?”

“Believe in shoes?!” said the manager, “Of course, we believe in shoes, that’s the first article of our creed—shoe wearing. Oh, think of the suffering shoes prevent; think of the sores, the splinters, the stubs avoided by those wonders of wonders—shoes.”

Jane, a little freaked out, smiled and nodded her head and quietly left the coffee shop. (With her iced latte of course.) As she walked down the street, she was in such a state of consternation that she almost missed the beautiful stone building in front of her.

It had a spire that reached to the sky and colorful glass windows with pictures in them. As she was staring at it, an old man said to her, “Beautiful isn’t it?”  “Yes,” said Jane, “What is it?”

“This?” said the man pointing to the beautiful building, “Ah, this is our pride and joy. This is our shoe manufacturing establishment.”

Surprised, Jane responded, “You mean you make shoes there?”

“No, no, no,” laughed the man, “don’t be silly. No, this is where we talk about making shoes.  We have a staff of people we pay to speak to us each week about shoe wearing.  We broadcast the message live on the radio for thousands to hear and there are moments when the speakers are so persuasive about shoe-wearing that people weep and commit to wearing shoes in the week ahead.”

Sneaking a peak at his feet, Jane asked the man, “You go here?”

“Every week!” said the man, “and even when I miss I tune in on the radio or listen to the podcast or read the blogpost later in the week.”

“Well, why don’t you wear shoes, then?”  said Jane.

The man, looking her in the eye, nodded with a knowing smile, “Ahhh, that’s the question, why don’t I?”

Just then, over the man’s shoulder, Jane noticed a small cobbler’s shop across the street.  She excused herself to the older man and crossed the street into the shop. Though the sign said “open,” there was not a single customer there. Interrupting the cobbler as he was putting the finishing touches on a beautiful pair of shoes.  Jane asked the cobbler, “Why is your shop empty?”

The cobbler responded, “As you can see, I have plenty of shoes, but people around here just want to talk about shoes. No one actually wears them.”

Then Jane had an idea. Surprising the cobbler, Jane bought as many pairs as she could carry and ran across the street to the man she had just left and said to him, “Sir, good news, I have shoes for you.  They are different shapes and sizes, but surely there is a pair that fits you?  Isn’t there?”

The man, looked down at the shoes and then up at Jane, then back down at the shoes and back up at Jane and his faced turned a little crimson, “Thank you miss, that’s very kind, but you see, it’s just not done.”

Said an exasperated Jane, “Why don’t you wear shoes?”

Said the man, “That’s the question, Why don’t we?”

And as Jane traveled back from The City of Everywhere to here, that question resonated in her mind, “Why don’t we, why don’t we, why don’t we?”

II.

Jesus was standing on a hill giving the sermon of his life before he gave his life as the sermon.

He began poetically, perhaps you’ve heard it, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek,” and so on and so forth.

And then, according to Matthew, he got to the meat of the sermon…or at least the seasoning.

Looking at the disciples, he said, “You are the salt of the earth.”

Now if we’re honest, that’s sort of a weird thing to say, but setting the strangeness aside for a moment, we should recognize what he was doing.

He was pausing in the middle of the sermon at the beginning of his ministry, to remind the people gathered around him of who they were, of why they were important.

“You are the salt of the earth.”

To be clear, he was not speaking literally, he was speaking theologically.

He was saying to the disciples and in turn to us that we are people of worth.  By virtue of our very being we have worth.

Not because of the things we do, but because of who we are.

And sometimes, as we know, we could use the reminder.

After all, we live in a world that from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed tries to convince us that we are not enough. That who we are is not enough. That our worth comes from how we look or who we know or who knows us.

But friends, it’s not true.

We are more than our tweets, more than our Facebook or Instagram likes. We are more than the way the world perceives us, more than our jobs, our grades, our bodies.

We are the salt of the earth.  In other words, we matter not because of the things we do, but because of who we are.

And for those who may have forgotten between last week and this one, let me say it again, you are as I am a child of God.

But accepting that, friends, is only the first step.  We also have to live like it matters.

Jesus continues, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste (its saltiness) how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

In other words, friends, the point, the entire point of salt is to be salty.

We know from our own experience that when we lose our proverbial saltiness, when we forget who we are in the eyes of God, when we try and find our worth in those fleeting things of life, money, sex, accomplishment, it can feel like the world is walking all over us.

The good news is that even then, we have worth.

You see, not only was salt an important preservative of the ancient world and a form of currency, (hence something not being worth its salt), it was also frequently used as a leveling agent for the most common fuel for outdoor fires of the time: manure.

That’s right: manure.  Salt helped manure patties to burn longer, hotter, and more evenly, and then, when they were done, the solid charred remains were used on roads to help absorb mud.

In other words, they were literally trampled upon…and still had worth.

And while that doesn’t sound particularly pleasant, think for a moment about what it would mean for us to be leveling agents for the world.  What would it mean if we took seriously the call not only to preserve the message that Jesus was sharing—to not only talk about loving—but to be the agents who helped spread that message evenly. To all. To spread it in such a way that long after we are gone, the love we shared made the path a little easier for those who come after us.

Or said another way, friends, what would it mean if we wore the shoes we talked so much about?

Let’s be honest, Christians haven’t always done this well…if at all.

When was the last time Christians made the news for their love? Think of the last year alone and all of the fear of refugees, of immigrants, of our Muslim brothers and sisters.  What has been the Christian voice?

The entirety of the Christian faith is predicated on the notion that we are to welcome the stranger in our midst—to love our neighbor as ourselves. It’s not a part of our faith, it is our faith.   And yet, when our voice is needed, we’ve been silent at best, and complicit at worst.

Friends, salt is meant to be salty.  We are the salt of the earth.

But just in case the salt metaphor is not working, Matthew has Jesus switch to a new one…light, though the point is the same.  He says, “A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basket, but on a lampstand so that it may give light to all in the house.” In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good works and give glory to your father in heaven.
Do you hear?  Let your light shine before others.

The point of light is to shine.

So, in case we’ve missed it, here’s the point—we are not people who get together to just talk about light, we are people who shine it. We are not people who talk about shoes, we wear them.  Or, to drop the metaphors for a moment, we don’t just talk about life, we live it…and the only way to do that is through love.

I give you a new command, love one another.

Sometimes we can get really cynical about this whole faith thing. We look at it and shake our heads and think, this is all a bunch of manure.  And most of the time, we’re right.

The truth is, our faith is only as good as the people willing to live like it matters.

We have spent too long convincing ourselves that our faith is about what happens when we die.  But the opposite is true…it’s about what happens when we live, not at death, but right now.

And the only way to life is through love.

Friends, what is it in your life that is worth dying for?  Isn’t it worth living for as well?
As Howard Thurman said, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive then go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

And if changing the world seems too hard, let’s start with the part we have some control over—ourselves…our interactions with each another.  If we can make those relationships a little more loving, if we can practice forgiveness and grace and compassion in those, if we can make a little kingdom of heaven here, then there just might be hope for The Cities of Everywhere.

And if there comes a time in our travels through life when we look in the mirror and discover that we don’t love as we should, then we owe it to ourselves to ask the hard question: Why don’t we?  Why don’t we?  Why don’t we?

-The Reverend Doctor Stephen M Cady II, Senior Minister from Asbury First United Methodist Church in Rochester, New York.

[1] This allegory is based on “The City of Everywhere” by Hugh Price Hughes which I first discovered in the writings of Howard Thurman.

posted in Guest Preachers on 07.23.2017 at 11:00 am
Tags: guest preacher

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the full service

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

Romans 7:15-25a

Luke 17:20-21

Click here to listen to the meditation only

The kingdom of God is among us.

Many years ago, there was a man who worked in a pottery factory—a large man, a quiet man… Let’s call him Joe.[1]

Like so many of us, every day, Joe came to work, kept his head down, did his job to the best of his ability and then went home.

Now, as happens in most factories, there was always something extraneous to the process that was left over at the end of the day; nothing much: a piece of glass, a bit of ribbon, a shard of broken pottery—you know, trash—the result of human error along the production line.

Most of those items would be discarded, thrown away, sent to a landfill somewhere never to be seen again, but not all of them.

You see, before he left for the day, much to the bemusement of his coworkers, Joe went around silently sifting through those extraneous pieces, those scraps of the industrial process, the things that everyone else had thrown away. He would search until he found at least a couple of items to add to what most considered a pile of junk now occupying a rather comical portion of his locker.

But the snickers from his coworkers didn’t stop Joe.

No, every day, either staying late or coming in early, Joe found some time to do something with that junk. Every day Joe E worked with those scraps to make something new, not always large or complex or artful, but new so that he always had something colorful or unique to bring home.

You see, Joe had a son at home whom he knew from his birth would never leave his bed.  His “wee lad,” as he called him, spent each day in his small bed in his small room in a small house.  And large Joe, though he couldn’t always find ways to express it with words, loved his “wee lad” more than anything in this broken world.  And though it meant a little extra time at work, he brought something home every day that he knew, if only for a moment, would make his son’s face light up.

Every day he pulled together scraps that others had discarded in the name of love.

The kingdom of God is among us.

Once, according to Luke, some Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God was coming. We don’t have much context for the question in Luke’s Gospel, we’re just told that once—that is, at some point—they asked it.

And if we’re honest, we get it.  After all, it’s a question we’ve asked from time to time as well.  If not always in those words.

Perhaps some of us have done so this week. As we look around at the political mess we find ourselves in, as we get increasingly terrifying news alerts on our phones, as we witness the saber rattling our leaders, as we learn of the ice caps breaking apart, of meetings with Russian lawyers, of health care without the care, of nobel peace prize winning dissidents dying in prison, it might be only natural to pause and ask ourselves…is this the end? Is the kingdom of God finally upon us?

The Pharisees had similar question.  They were concerned with timing.  Who knows? Maybe they wanted to get invitations out in time for the party.  More likely, they wanted to prepare themselves for the end; for that time when God would come in final victory and their hard work would be rewarded.

Now to be fair, Luke, like Matthew and Mark, also seemed to believe that the Kingdom of God was imminent; as each of those gospel writers said in their own way, they believed that not a generation would pass before the Kingdom would be upon them; hopeful words for those first century Christians to whom they writing.

Those early Christians must have heard these gospels and taken comfort that the kingdom of God was right around the corner, that the uncertainty and alienation and exclusion of their present age would soon pass…that they needed only to bide their time.

But, as we know, Luke, like Matthew and Mark, was wrong.   John, writing at least a generation later, had to deal with their misunderstanding in his gospel, but friends, no matter how we dice it, the kingdom of God didn’t come about within a generation. Nor, as it turns out, in the hundreds of generations since.  The truth is, we’re still waiting for that uncertainty and alienation and exclusion to pass.

In other words, the gospel writers were wrong.

Now, on the one hand, it’s comforting to know that even the gospel writers could be wrong every once in a while…after all, we know the feeling.  On the other, though, it’s a little disconcerting.

Here, they had been waiting for something to happen, longing for something to happen, promised that something would happen, and then, it didn’t.

And now we, nearly 2000 years later, are left to ask, “Why?”  Another question with which we have more than a passing familiarity. Why?

Fortunately, we get by with a little help from our friends.

In our case today, we receive some help from the Gospel of Luke itself; from a quirky little passage that speaks about the Kingdom of God in such a different way than the rest of the gospel that its authenticity to Luke has been questioned.

You see in our passage today, when the Pharisees ask Jesus when the kingdom of God is coming he surprises them by saying, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “look, here it is,” or “there is it!” for, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”

Do you hear? Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is among you,” or as might better be translated, “within you.”  The Kingdom of God is among us.

That changes some things, doesn’t it?  At the very least, it shifts our attention from the sky to the mirror.  Not that that makes it easier, it doesn’t, but it does make sense.  It makes sense to us that the Kingdom of God is not something that happens to us, but rather something that we take part in.  It’s not passive, but active.

Friends, the Kingdom of God is not some apocalyptic vision about the end of the world, but rather a hope for a world in which we all finally and fully live as God commands.

And fortunately, we know the gospel writers didn’t get that part wrong.  We have the rest of Scripture and our own experience to affirm it: in the end, we know how we are called to live.  We know that as a people of faith we are really only called to do two things: to love God and to love our neighbor.  Or said more succinctly we are called to love. Full stop.

“I give you a new command, that you love one another.”

For some of us, that means staying a little late at the factory.

For some of us, it means letting go of a broken relationship, or workplace, or heart.

For some of us, it means changing the way we spend our time or money or life.

The truth is, we don’t love in the abstract, we love in the concrete.  Human to human, person to person, heart to heart.

Friends, the kingdom of God is among us and is revealed one relationship at a time.

The good news is that we don’t have to figure it out on our own.  That’s why we’re here, that’s why we’ve tuned in this morning, isn’t it?   To get a little help from our friends?

The purpose of the church universal is to help one another find better and fuller ways to love.  And though we’ve made it more complicated and at times missed the point entirely, that’s really the only purpose we have.

Friends, we are called to keep reminding each other that each person we encounter is someone of worth, a child of the same God.

All of us, young and old, black and white, gay and straight, male and female, rich and poor, broken and whole.  All of us are God’s children, which among other things means that we have an awfully big family to care for.

It means we have an awfully strange family to care for.

It means that we collect the scraps that everyone else thinks of as trash.

But we don’t do it alone.  And as we know from hard experience, we can do an awful lot if we know we don’t have to do it alone.

As Howard Thurman said, we have each, by the grace of God, been given a crown to grow into…a crown which we did nothing to earn and, thank God, can do nothing to take away. A crown of grace which means that whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not, the kingdom of God is within us.

Friends, Luke believed that the Kingdom of God was coming soon. He believed that it would not be long before the barriers that we use to divide ourselves, the walls that we build would finally and fully be taken down.  After all, it’s hard to love your neighbor through a wall.

Perhaps he was more optimistic than he should have been, but the good news, friends, is that the Kingdom of God is just as close today as it was when Luke was writing.

The kingdom of God is not a place.  It’s our hope for a world in which we each recognize the crown we have been given and then help others to do the same.

Do you hear? The kingdom of God is among us.

And sometimes it only takes one act of love to change this broken world.

Nobody quite knows how Joe’s co-workers found out about his “wee lad,”—no one ever spoke about it.

Nevertheless, one by one, the other pottery workers began to collect scraps of their own.  And soon, a couple times a week, Joe would return to his locker to find a little cup with wheels or a painted piece of scrap, or an engraving in wood, and he understood.

Over the next few months, the culture of the factory began to change.  The workers were said to grow quiet, becoming gentle and kind, swearing less frequently, even if not altogether.  Then, at some point they noticed the increasingly weary look on Joe’s face and knew that the inevitable shadow was drawing nearer.

They began to do a piece for him every day and put it on a sanded plank to dry so that he could come in later or go home earlier.

And so it was that when the funeral bell tolled and that small boy finally left that small house in a small procession, there stood a hundred stalwart workers from the pottery with clean clothes on, having taken the day off for the privilege of walking alongside Joe and the “wee lad” that not one had ever seen in life.

Do you see? They couldn’t take away Joe’s pain—that’s a part of love.  But in the end, they could remind him that he was not alone.

Friends, neither are we.

The kingdom of God is among us…let’s not leave each other waiting.

-The Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Cady II, Senior Minister from Asbury First United Methodist Church in Rochester, New York.

[1] This is my adaptation of a story found in Howard Thurman’s The Growing Edge.

posted in Guest Preachers on 07.16.2017 at 11:00 am
Tags: guest preacher

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the full service

posted in Baccalaureate, Guest Preachers on 05.21.2017 at 11:00 am
Tags: Baccalaureate, guest preacher

By Marsh Chapel

 Matthew 28:1-10

Romans 6:3-11

    The resurrection discovery accounts are flashy made-for Hollywood events: thunder and lightning, an angel or two (depending on the Gospel), frightened women who hold up better than the guards, the nearly fatuous admonitions to be not afraid, Jesus accepting worship of his person for the first time (or, in the case of John’s Gospel, ducking away from worship), instructions for the women to tell Jesus’s “brothers” (no mention of sisters) to go wait for him in Galilee or, again in the case of John’s Gospel, in Jerusalem. This Vigil time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday morning is a good venue to cool those stories and think about the backstories that make them more than flashy episodes. Holy Saturday, which this Vigil concludes, symbolizes being lost, with the Vigil a search for finding ourselves.

The most important backstory is that of creation, of God the creator relating to the world of creatures. Matthew’s Gospel, with its special attention to the Jewish background of Christianity, would suppose creation as described in the two creation stories at the beginning of Genesis. Paul would have those in mind too, but insisted that the Gentiles also knew about creation and should be held accountable for failing to live up to what this entails morally and religiously. The force of the backstory of creation is to understand the difference between God as creator and human beings as creatures. God as creator is due our pure worship and gratitude.

The second most important backstory for the events of Jesus’s death and resurrection is human sin. Sin is one of the most popular topics of Christian thinking, preaching, and practice. Since the beginning of the Christian movement, the content of sin has been a matter of contention. By the time of the Desert Fathers in the fourth and fifth centuries, sins of all sorts were classified as deriving from seven primary and deadly ones: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. This theological preoccupation with the seven deadly sins runs from John Cassian, born in 360, to Robert Allen Hill, who last Sunday gave us a litany of them complete with instructions for how to commit them. In our own time, the question whether homosexual and transgender lives are sinful has preoccupied Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Put aside issues of the content of sin for the moment, however, and look to the root of sin.

According to the Bible, the root of sin is idolatry in the particular sense of human beings wanting to be like God, confusing the difference between the Creator and the creatures.  Satan tempted Eve and Adam to eat the apple by telling her that it would make her like God in knowing the difference between good and evil. Now we might think that the knowledge of good and evil is itself a good thing. Indeed, should we not try as much as possible to be like God? Christianity has a long tradition including John Wesley of treating sanctification as theosis, becoming as like to God as we can. Not so in the view of Genesis. In the primal innocence of Eden we could just do what comes naturally so long as we are proper creatures, obedient to God in our creaturely roles. To our late-modern ears, obedience to God’s command not to eat the apple sounds arbitrary. But I take God’s command to be a metaphor in a rule-bound culture for accepting the human place as creatures in relation to the creator God. We find ourselves in situations where our alternative choices have different values. What we choose actualizes those values. Moreover, our choices determine our moral characters as the ones who choose the values we chose. Because we can know a lot about the different relevant kinds of goods and evils, if we just choose naturally so as to bring about what seems the best, we do not have to know anything special about good and evil, only about responding well to the world in which we are created. The Daodejing says something like this in proclaiming the innocence of following the Dao and warning that when concerns for righteousness arise, you know you have already departed from the Dao. Adam’s and Eve’s choice to disobey God’s command was the first level of rejecting their creaturely status, and their desire to have God’s knowledge of good and evil was their second level of rejection. It lost them the innocence of living in Eden doing fine by doing what comes naturally. Significant idolatry is not worshipping statues. It is putting ourselves in the place of God, or trying to do so. Once you do that, everything goes wrong.

St. Paul began his epistle to the Romans by condemning idolatry as the root of sin. You remember that God punished idolaters by giving them same-sex passions. Paul had no conception of homosexuality as a gender orientation. For him homosexual passions were neither a condition of birth nor a matter of choice, as we frame the debate today: they are God-given. The reason he thought it was a punishment was that he and his culture believed that all sex acts require one party to be dominant and the other submissive. Men were supposed to be dominant and women submissive. Like many cultural habits, this one had come to seem natural. Therefore, for Paul, same sex passions and acts caused suffering as unnatural because one of the men had to submissive like a woman and one of the women had to be dominant like a man. So he thought.These acts were not sinful: they were caused by God and they constituted punitive suffering for the idolaters God afflicted. What is important for Paul is the idolatry that brings down God’s wrath in the form of imposed same-sex passion. You see how complicated the discernment of the content of sin is.

Nevertheless, let’s return to the backstories. What about death, the precondition for resurrection? In the Genesis story, Adam and Eve were created to be mortal in the Garden of Eden. God wanted to keep them that way. So after their eyes were open to good and evil, God and his fellow gods banished them from Eden in order to keep them away from the tree of life that would have given them immortality. The gods wanted to keep immortality for themselves and mortality as the natural state of humans. Here was another instance of Adam and Eve wanting to be like God, a matter of idolatry, or so the gods feared. The Genesis story is delightfully fanciful in its anthropomorphic mythic depiction of God and his divine friends. Expelled from Eden, our situation is like trying to make do with some flawed knowledge of good and evil, with responsibilities for running things as best we can, sort of like minimally competent kings trying to run a country under difficult circumstances. You see why, as such klutzy kings, we are prone to pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth and all the other sins that follow from these.

Between the time of the composition of Genesis and the first century, significant cultural changes had taken place. Whereas polytheism lurked around the edges of the former, Judaism (including Christianity) in the first century was solidly monotheistic. Whereas covenantal fidelity to Yahweh oriented Judaism in the former, apocalyptic thinking from Persia colored the latter. Whereas human beings were assumed to be rightly mortal and created that way by God in the time of Genesis, many people in the first century, especially Pharisees, believed in immortality, a family of notions sponsored by Hellenism. Diverse immortality assumptions included reincarnation of one soul through many lives, the natural immortality of a soul separable from the body that had to go somewhere after death, to hell if not heaven, or purgatory, or limbo, and also the notion that people naturally die and that some of them but not all get resurrected to new life, for instance if they believe in Jesus. Some people believed that, although people naturally die, a just God needs to resurrect everyone so as to punish the wicked in hell along with rewarding the good in heaven. All these backstories about life after death were in the air in the first century; they are not consistent but I doubt many people sorted them out. The reincarnation theory did not go far in Christianity, though all the others did beginning in the first century and remaining through the middle ages up until the Enlightenment.

In the early years of Christianity, the rhetorical center of gravity thus took death as the ultimate evil and new life after death as the greatest good, or salvation. Seeking to be immortal like God was not idolatry for the Christians, as it was for the audience of Genesis, but rather the very center of the desire for salvation. What then was idolatry for the early Christians? It was the twin failure to recognize God as almighty creator and the failure to accept the humility of creatures. As to humility, Jesus preached against hypocrisy, pride of place, and the failure to for the least of people. As to God as creator, Jesus preached the sovereignty of the creator beyond good and evil, sending sun and rain on the unjust as well as the just. Of course, Jesus preached many other things not easily compatible with these points, and Dean Hill has a whole year until the next Easter Vigil to straighten them out.

When it came to understanding Jesus’ death, the early Christians made a mighty theological move. They associated Jesus with God, as the only Son of God, second Person of the Trinity, at God’s right hand in the highest heaven except for a descent to Earth as a slave—a whole host of images that the fourth and fifth centuries tried to sort, unsuccessfully. The early Christians construed Jesus’s death as the death of the real God, except that the creator, having created death as well as life, could not be ended with death. God conquered death by raising the divine Jesus from the dead. Jesus’ resurrection was different from all those other resurrections performed by the prophets and Jesus himself, as well as the early disciples. The resurrection of Jesus was God’s resetting the default on creation. In God’s creation, life triumphs over death. Death as the worst evil was broken. For believers, believing in Jesus as the crucified Son of God triumphantly raised from the dead removes idolatry. To know Jesus as God is to know God as God and not to confuse our own pretensions with God. Paul and many other early writers thought that believers, no longer being idolaters, would themselves be raised from the dead, either soon, as Paul thought, or later, or at some apocalyptic ending of the world. Believing Christians do continue to sin, as we do. But sin does not bind us with any idolatry. Paul said Christians continue to sin more or less out of habit and should just change their ways; get on with sanctification. Sanctification is not salvation, which is the promise of immortality; it is rather how to live our quotidian lives without being idolatrous. Salvation is the faith in Jesus as the true God, faith that destroys idolatry and restores a right relation to God. This faith is not our own work, said Paul, but comes from God’s grace as part of creation. Christians have long disagreed about whether, and if so why, God graciously gives faith to some and not others; let’s skip that problem for now.

Skipping over those problems, with those backstories we can now see how the early Christians, including Paul and Matthew, centered salvation on the death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul pointed out that Jesus’s cosmic restoration of a non-idolatrous way for us to live before God and with neighbors is open to us with our participation in Jesus’s death and resurrection. He said, “Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” We have new life. Paul also said, “The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ.” Matthew’s Gospel ends with Jesus commissioning the disciples to go live the life of preaching that baptism. Our celebrations of Easter are glorious songs in the lyrics of death and resurrection.

Nevertheless, our times are different from those of the early Christians. We know too much about how all the functions of the human mind, soul, and spirit depend upon the brain. Many today find it difficult to take seriously the immortality assumptions of the first century, except in some symbolic way. We also know too much about other religions with similar avatars and other ways of understanding saved life to be comfortable with the attribution of unique cosmic status to Jesus of Nazareth, except in symbolic ways. We are somewhat suspicious that concentration on salvation as an afterlife distracts our proper attention as creatures to deal with the issues in the world God has created for us. The triumphalism of some literal understandings of Christ’s victory over death looks fishy in light of unhealed trauma and continuing tragedy.

Therefore, we look for the symbolic ways in which the death and resurrection of Jesus can convey the gospel that gives us new life, free from idolatry and properly attentive to our creaturely responsibilities. The resurrection of Jesus to new life, however we might balk at the cosmic metaphors, sharply symbolizes that God creates everything, and for no reason of a worldly sortt. The death of Jesus construed as God symbolizes that within God’s creation God creates death too, and death does not destroy God’s creation. The comfort of the resurrection of Christ and the promise of ours does not consist in more life after death, “more of the same” under the conditions of finitude; that really would not help. The comfort of the resurrection rather symbolizes that even with death, and with unhealed pains, sorrows, tragedies, failures, loss of young innocents, loss of lifetime innocence, and the failure to make a moral world-- even with all that, the creation is good and the creator is to be praised. Celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection points to the peace that passes understanding. This peace accepts the world as we find it and our flawed efforts to live out our place. That peace accepts these flaws as part of our place. To expect perfection of ourselves is idolatry. To expect the creator to be like a just king and treat us better is idolatry. To expect the world to be just rather than a swirl of cosmic gasses clumping briefly to give us our ambiguous lives and morally freighted choices is idolatry. To construe God in our image, inflated to a perfect kingship, is idolatry. To celebrate the creator in the death and resurrection of Jesus is to rejoice in the fact that everything, whatever it is, comes from God’s creation. Our personal comfort is in the eternity of creation from which time derives and in which we dwell most concretely. We sometimes lose track of that eternity and try to reconstruct it as a temporal process of creation, which is idolatry. This leads to sin, despair, and spiritual death. But when we are reminded by Easter that God is the absolutely free creator of whatever is real, and that this includes us with our varied lives to live as well as we can, and that this is what we are created to be, then we have new life. We live with the joy of the salvation that bears all things including death and from which we can never be separated. We live with powerful courage to undertake the tasks of our watch without regard for winning. We live with the comfort and confidence of our eternal identities in the divine life. We can say to the world, Bring it on! Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

 -The Reverend Dr. Robert Neville 

posted in Guest Preachers on 04.15.2017 at 7:30 am
Tags: guest preacher

By Marsh Chapel

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Psalm 116: 1-2

Psalm 116:12-19

John 13: 1-17

John 13: 31b-35

     Usually, when you are about to be betrayed by someone, your natural response is not to wash their feet, or buy them food, or care about their well-being in any way.
If someone mocks you behind your back, your first thought is not to buy them froyo.
If someone steals your essay and says it is theirs, the last thing you look to do is offer to help them with another assignment.

If someone is about to sell you out to be executed on a cross, you likely won’t consider washing their feet.
And yet, here you see, in John 13, Jesus does that.

You might be able to brush it off if someone is being rude; there might be serious academic consequences if someone turns in the same assignment as you, but whether results are simply unpleasant or truly dire, we have an example from Jesus in John 13 that teaches us how to react to betrayal.

Both Jesus’s footwashing and the supper after creates the chance for renewal, the possibility for a fresh start. Jesus’s love and service extends even to those who are about to hand him over and deny him, and offers renewal even in the depths of betrayal.

In washing the feet of his disciples, Jesus appears to be in a position of little power even though he is the most powerful individual in the room. Through his service and dedication to others he evokes the power that makes Mary drop to her knees and use her hair to wash the feet of her savior. She sees that he is truly God. Jesus is The Word fulfilled. Jesus fulfills the purpose of the Law, and shows us God in action.

His action reflects the full manifestation of the Love of God, which seems weird and impossible for us to also reflect. Contemporary poet Jermaine Cole writes in his work “love is wanting more for someone than they want for themselves.” Taking this definition from Jermaine Cole, Jesus loves a lot. Jesus’s love wants more from us than we want from ourselves.  Jesus wants us to be able to love even those we don’t want to love. Despite his impending death, Jesus wants those who are about to fail him to love more. Jesus wants that of us, too.

The odd thing about the way Jesus is portrayed in John is that his actions seem not only weird to us, but they seem impossible. It’s hard to live like Jesus.

 I mean, like, can we do what He does? He’s Jesus. I am not Jesus.

This idea of being Christ-like seems impossible for anyone who is imperfect, and we as human beings are imperfect -- at least I know I am. His actions seem unnatural, impossible, for us.

            So I am left with this internal conflict. I am called to live like Jesus, but I am not Jesus. I am just a simple, imperfect human being.

            But Jesus is also human. In this passage, he does very human things like spending time with friends, washing, and eating. He is a human being, and his actions tell a brighter, more beautiful tale about what it means to truly be human.

In making our beloved Christ more human in this passage, the author is not making a commentary by playing Jesus down. Rather, he is bringing all of humanity up. Despite all of this messiness and betrayal happening here, this passage is optimistic about humanity. It forces a tension about what is precisely impossible for humans. Is it really impossible? I mean, Jesus does say in John 14 “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” In believing in this optimism, we can genuinely attempt to live like Christ, and this is what the disciples are called to do.

      Jesus washes the feet of everyone present. The footwashing is an act of love that breaks down the barriers between Jesus and his disciples. Peter is so human; he isn’t able to see the big picture, to see who Jesus is and what he’s doing. But Jesus breaks down this barrier of misunderstanding. Judas is so human, because he succumbs to the pressure and gives in to weakness, pursuing the temporary instead of the eternal. Jesus breaks down this barrier of betrayal, and he performs the same act of love for Judas.

As Jesus cleanses their feet, he recognizes their humanity and loves them despite their failures. In many ways this action seems unimaginable. However, this love that Jesus exemplifies is what he calls us to show to a flawed world.

Though the love Jesus Christ shows to his disciples is a high standard there are moments when ordinary people can exhibit this love. These moments can take many forms, but they typically include the radical choice to love despite the boundaries between them

        1.2 miles of Commonwealth Avenue divide the students who live in West and East campus here at BU. In fact, the opposite sides of campus encompass very different lifestyles. East campus enjoys delicacies served by The Late Night Kitchen while West settles for lukewarm pitas served until 2 am. An East Campus student’s workout usually consists of running to the Fitness and Recreation center while West campus students prefer using the treadmills provided inside the facility. West campus residents generally set their alarms 30 minutes early in order to make it to their classes in CAS on time, whereas East Campus students roll out of bed and find themselves just outside of their classroom doors. At times, it seems as though students in East and West campus only share the distinction of being sleep-deprived scholars of Boston University. But it is here at Marsh Chapel, the midpoint of East and West campus, that we share a brief hour together on Sunday mornings. We meet in the middle of our differing residences, perspectives, and beliefs to share in love as a united body, just as Jesus did with his disciples.

        But what exactly do we mean by love? It is a powerful word but it is also ambiguous. In English, the word "love" encompasses affection, admiration, appreciation, attraction, infatuation, care, passion, and even friendship. English puts a lot of ideas under that single umbrella term love, but Greek, the language of the New Testament, has four words to describe different types of love. From the tenderness you feel for your sister or brother, who may drive you crazy once in a while, to the way you feel toward the friend who has known you since birth, remembering that one story you’d rather forget. To the physical and romantic attraction we feel for those we put a part of ourselves out there for. But the pinnacle of love is a term called agape. Agape refers to an unconditional love that flows between the Divine and humanity and transcends boundaries among people. When Jesus says, "Just as I have loved you, you should love one another," he uses the word agape twice. The first time he uses it speaks to the unconditional love that Jesus has for his disciples, and by extension the love that the Divine has for all of humanity. The second time he uses agape, however, it takes on additional meaning. Now agape stands for an unconditional love between people as well, not just love from the Divine. When you think about it, Jesus' last commandment to his disciples carries a difficult task with it: to love each other unconditionally, just as Jesus loved them. He is asking them to take something from their relationship with the Divine and apply it to their relationship with other people. This is difficult because human relationships are often messy. Each of us may love one another, but we also disagree with, misunderstand, and hurt each other. How can we love one another unconditionally, when the ones we are supposed to love might be people we don't know, or even people who have hurt us?

      This kind of love can be the most difficult to spot on a regular basis, because so often it appears in small acts of kindness. It comes with students who stand out on the plaza on Fridays to give hugs to anyone who would like one. It manifests in a stranger taking time out of their day to help you when you’re injured, lost, or when you’ve dropped all your belongings on the ground. At the same time, agape appears in moments of deeper connection with people. It emerges when you sit down and listen to someone you strongly disagree with to have a conversation, and you both walk away with increased respect and understanding for each other. And perhaps even a changed perspective. Agape is the love that arises if you come to terms with someone you’ve had a falling out with years ago, and you both are able to forgive each other.

Agape is a love that respects, a love that listens, and a love that heals rifts between people.

Loving one another unconditionally can start with small actions, actions that respect the light and humanity that exists within all people. This could be anything from acknowledging the complaints of a coworker who always just seems to get on your nerves to simply smiling at people as you pass by them (something that is difficult to do in New England, I realize). These small actions can build to larger ones, such as starting a conversation with someone you haven’t spoken to in years, because their comments or actions have deeply hurt you in the past. Importantly, showing agape toward each other does not mean you love others unconditionally without loving yourself, nor does it mean that you should ignore or forget the harm that others have done to you in the past. Agape involves recognizing the humanity that exists in all people (yourself included), and caring about that humanity through your actions, however small they may be.

         Jesus gave his disciples a commandment, and with that commandment he gave them a challenge: how do you overcome potential conflict and pain that humans experience to show love for them? One tool that we have to overcome this challenge is our ability to understand one another's emotions. Empathy helps us to take on someone else's perspective, and in the process develop an understanding of what their experiences and emotions feel like. The word itself, when broken down, means "feeling in." When you are empathizing with someone else's experience, you are literally "feeling into" their perspective. In that process, you are attempting to acknowledge that they are a also a human being just like you with thoughts, feelings, insecurities, cares, and desires. You are feeling into the common humanity you share and the different experiences you and they have had, and in the process you are validating both. This is the part of agape that can heal divides between different people, while acknowledging those differences.

         This healing and transcending of divides was experienced by our colleague Kasey Shultz on her Alternative Spring Break trip this past March. She writes, “Over spring break, I traveled with 8 other BU students and one staff member to Macon, GA to work with an organization that performs housing repairs for elderly and disabled residents. The trip was meaningful in many ways but the thing that stands out to me the most is the way in which this trip bridged divides--divides within BU but also larger divides in society: Personally, as a second-semester senior, I don’t interact with sophomores, like, ever but by the end of the trip, I had spent more time in close proximity to the seven sophomores on the trip than I had in close proximity to some of my BU friends that I’ve known for years. We had students from both west and east campus, from Questrom and the College of Arts and Sciences, from the west and east coast. We also bridged more contentious gaps, as a group of liberal millenials from the Northeast worked with conservative baby boomers from the South. In our evening reflections as a group, we talked about how our stereotypes were being challenged and marveled at the extreme hospitality that we were experiencing. Throughout the week, those boundaries that we had clung to so fastidiously were dismantled one by one This trip reminded me that life is never black and white and that it’s a lot easier to separate ‘us’ from ‘them’ when we never get to know exactly who ‘them’ is.

In this passage from John, Jesus does not call us to tolerate, he does not call us to surround ourselves with people we agree with, he does not call us to stay in our comfort zones, he does not call us to try to improve the people around us--he calls us to love. And he does not call us to love ‘them’—he calls us to love one another. Because when we truly love—deeply and without reservation or judgment—those boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ melt away.”

          As made apparent by walking down Commonwealth Avenue and crossing the BU bridge, or even looking around here in the Nave, we are not one homogenous group of people. We have different backgrounds both ethnically and religiously. How does that play into love? Does it matter? Quite frankly, in an interreligious setting: absolutely.

Our limited ability to conceptualize the magnitude of our reach inhibits us from realizing that our Christian neighbors are just one street in a collective of neighborhoods that create a global religious community.

In the soon to be published “Free Text to Life: Religious Resources for Interreligious Engagement” Jennifer Howe Peace writes: “Love is a profound and remarkable resource for interfaith work. It often clusters with a whole host of other dispositions that enable authentic engagement across lines of difference: humility, curiosity, forgiveness and hope to name a few. It allows us to say, as this story illustrates, ‘I may not agree with you, but I love you so I’m listening.’”

           Love permeates the divide between groups. Loving someone selflessly does not mean you have to ignore or disregard past differences between you and them. You love them by acknowledging and taking on these differences in an attempt to understand them.

There are two extreme ways to deal with conflict or differences in understanding. There’s reacting with pure feeling -- you know, where we love those for whom we feel love and we hate those for whom we don’t. Conflict and differences provoke strong emotions in us.

The other extreme is to just give up and not care at all. The differences between us and them are just too big and overwhelming, so why bother even acknowledging their existence? The conflict is too much, so it’s better to just avoid it.

These are the very human tendencies we have, and they both lead to stereotyping and stigmatization. But agape love, while extreme in it selflessness, is a happy medium between feeling everything and feeling nothing. This kind of love helps us overcome the pain of conflict and difference by acknowledging and bearing it. This kind of love is something in between, it’s about understanding the differences you have with someone else and loving them anyways.

           If you were to engage with someone who has never met a Christian before, what would you want their immediate impression to be of you? Ignorant, indifferent, simply tolerant? No. That person should remember you for your love.

Our Marsh community tries to be a real, loving heart in the heart of the city, an inclusive center for all, including gay, straight, bi, trans, queer, or unsure. You hear this most Sundays and it is predicated on love. As your feet are washed today, or as you wash someone else’s feet today, recognize that these are acts of love for all who wish to follow the example Jesus sets for us. The motivation behind Jesus’ initial act? Agape. Love.

-Tom Batson, Matthew Cron, Devin Harvin, Nick Rodriguez,

Kasey Schultz, Denise-Nicole Stone & Ian Quillen 

Boston University Marsh Chapel Associates

posted in Guest Preachers on 04.13.2017 at 6:00 am
Tags: guest preacher, Marsh Associates

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the full service

Luke 12:49-56

Click here to listen to the sermon only

There is currently no text available for this sermon. We apologize for the inconvenience.

- The Rev. Susan S. Shafer, Senior Minister (retired), from the Asbury First United Methodist Church, Rochester, NY

posted in Guest Preachers on 08.14.2016 at 11:00 am
Tags: guest preacher, no text

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the full service

Luke 12:13-21

Click here to listen to the meditations only

The text is currently unavailable for this sermon. We apologize for the inconvenience.

-Rev. Dr. Mark Y.A. Davies, Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics, from Oklahoma City University, Oklahoma City, OK

posted in Guest Preachers on 07.31.2016 at 11:00 am
Tags: guest preacher, no text