Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

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The text for this sermon is currently unavailable.

~The Rev. Stephen Bauman

Senior Minister, Christ Church (UMC), New York

posted in Guest Preachers on 07.14.2013 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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~ Rev. Dr. Christopher H Evans

Professor of History of Christianity and Methodist Studies, BU School of Theology

posted in Guest Preachers on 06.30.2013 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the service, including the Baccalaureate Address.

Click here to watch the video from BU Today.

Boston University’s 2013 Baccalaureate speaker was Bishop Peter D. Beaver, Retired Bishop of the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church. Additionally, he served on the Board of Trustees of Boston University from 2004-2012. For more information, please see the BU Today article.

There will be no sermon text posted for this Baccalaureate address.

posted in Baccalaureate, Guest Preachers on 05.19.2013 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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Introduction (Nico Romeijn-Stout):

Three days before Life triumphed over sin and death, Jesus, knowing what was about to happen, took the time to gather with his closest community to celebrate a ritual meal.  His disciples thought that they were present to celebrate the Passover, but the evening did not unfold as any of them had imagined.  Instead their time together in the Upper Room was full of new experiences, of new rituals.

Here tonight we will embody three ancient Christian traditions associated with Maundy Thursday: foot washing, communion, and the stripping of the sanctuary.  This worship service can become a bit overwhelming with so many rituals back to back.  We challenge you, as we navigate this service together, to be mindful of the reasons for the rituals.

As we hear in today’s Gospel lesson, during the meal Jesus got up, took off his outer robe, and washed his disciples’ feet.  The Teacher and Lord humbled himself in service to his disciples.  Jesus set for them and for us an example, a pattern of service which we should emulate.

In that same meal, Jesus also set for us an example of how we should eat as a community.  In the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup, Jesus gave us a pattern by which to remember him.  When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are reminded of the Life and Covenant through Jesus Christ.

Tonight we also follow in ancient Christian tradition by stripping our sanctuary of all decorative and liturgical objects as a reminder of both the barrenness of a world without Christ, and also to make room for the new Life we find in the resurrection of Easter.

Jesus, who is the path to Life Eternal, recognized that we would need nourishment in order to thrive.  And so he gave us Life-giving rituals to sustain us.  Tonight we remember those rituals.

Stripping (Caitlin White):

Stripping of the altar is an ancient tradition that Christian communities celebrate in many different ways. Some, like Marsh Chapel, believe that this is a time of reflection on the weighty emotions and issues of the passion and resurrection. Here at Marsh Chapel, we strip our sanctuary of liturgical decorations to reflect the barrenness of a world without Christ. We make the space to reflect on the worst of human deeds on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Ours is a theological position that allows people to embrace whatever truths they might find in their own reflection- whatever personal narratives relate for them, whatever view of sin and redemption they understand, whatever beauty or disgust they behold in the crucifixion- it makes room for the truths of many people.

Many communities with a similar understanding of the ritual also strip the sanctuary of everything but leave a single cross shrouded in dark cloth, a symbol of the spiritual weight and mourning of the season.

Many Christian communities are much more fixed upon the notion of atonement- the idea that Jesus had to suffer and die for us to be forgiven. Many strip the altar to remember how Jesus was stripped of dignity, clothes, and finally his life, but that may not be a theology that all of us embrace. At least, that might only be one aspect of all that the cross can be for you.

As Dean Hill reminded us in his meditation on the Passion this past Sunday, “Easter defines Holy Week, and not the other way around. The resurrection follows but does not replace the cross. The cross precedes but does not overshadow the resurrection. It is Life that has the last word.”

My challenge therefore to those who hold an atoning, sacrificial way of thinking about this ritual is not that I necessary disagree, but that Christians in our culture (myself included) have a poor understanding of sacrifice, of waiting and of loss. How can we? In a world of fast food, fad diets, and disposable everything, we have forgotten patience and the seasons of life.

Perhaps the question for us today should be: What are you being stripped of? Why did we just do Lenten reflections?  Why give up chocolate – is it just a way to not gain weight in time for spring break and the beginning of summer, or is there something more there? I often think we get caught up in the altar mentality- we give up things because it is hard, not because they are wiser left behind.

Any good gardener knows that the first thing you must do in the spring is pull up all the weeds that have taken over your soil. If anything good and intentional is to take root, it can’t be bumping into other forces, other agendas that rob it of the resources to survive.

The purpose of our ritual should be to root out what distracts us, those noisy things that rob us of positivity, purpose, and connectedness to God, ourselves, and one another. We need to give our time, resources, and communal creativity to something that feeds our spiritual growth and brings more light into the world.

Communion (Nico)

An incredibly intelligent 9 year-old named Becca, in order to be allowed to recieve communion, explained it like this:   Jesus knew that his friends would miss him. He also knew they had to eat every day. So, he told them to remember him when they ate and that they should eat together. That way they'd be able to be friends and get through anything.”

The communion liturgy I am most familiar draws upon 1 Corinthians 10:17 in which Paul writes “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”  Elsewhere in 1 Corinthians, Paul chastises members of the community for the way in which they are eating their communal meals – a practice probably tied closely to practices of communion.  What was happening was that some members of the community were beginning to eat before others had even arrived, causing a rift in the body.

You see, from Paul’s first-century pen to Becca’s twenty-first century lips, Christian understandings of communion have always been founded upon community.  When we gather at the table, we are united in this meal.  When we break bread, we are one body.  This is a meal to cast off divisions, to cast off hierarchies and inequalities and simply to come, in unity as one body.

In the tradition of Marsh Chapel the communion table is open.  All are welcome to come forward and receive communion.  But the question we must ask is not so much who is welcome, but who is invited? And that question must begin to be asked not in the middle of a service of worship, but rather after  the service, when we leave the sanctuary, go into the streets of Boston, into our neighborhoods.  It is a question we must carry with us as we prepare to gather again every Sunday for ordered worship.  It is a question which must dwell as much with pew-dwellers as with pulpit-dwellers.

The ritual of Holy Communion is a life-giving ritual.  It is a meal in which we may be physically and spiritually fed.  Jesus gave us this ritual of community, a ritual to sustain the lives of his followers.    Given its life-sustaining nature, perhaps we should interpret communion in light of the example-giving life Jesus led.  In his life, Jesus gave us the example by which we should be in community, by which we should feed ourselves and others.  In his life, Jesus gave us the example by which we should live, and by which we should serve.

Foot washing – service (Caitlin):

The service of foot washing- that moment you have all been waiting for, grooming for, wondering how many days your neighbor has recycled those heavy wool socks for. It isn’t a very common spiritual practice for many people and I will be the first to admit that it can be awkward. I will also tell you that it can be thought provoking and spiritually enriching as well- precisely because it is uncomfortable. So why of all the ways to display service did Jesus chose this strange ritual? Why did Jesus choose a ritual at all?

Psychologist, speaker, and activist, Staci Haines might have some insights for my questions. In 2011, I attended a Calling Congregations conference offered by the Fund for Theological Education where she spoke to a crowd of both clergy and laity who seek to renew the church particularly by involving and equipping its young people. She challenged them with the findings of psychology that in recent years has begun to understand that our memories are really in our muscles. The body, in time of panic and adversity, will bypass logic and emotionalism and shortcut to whatever patterns we have trained our muscles for. Aristotle was right- we are what we habitually do. Our problem in the church, she observed, is that our vision- our ideals- our mission statements do not sync up with our practices. We want to put an end to suffering and hunger but we treat service like an event, not a life style. We want to throw our doors open to everyone with love but we haven’t gotten to know anyone who doesn’t look, act, and live like us in so long we’ve forgotten how. We have to retrain our practices to look more like our hopes.

Perhaps, Jesus also understood that rituals can retrain our bodies and our practices. So he took this last chance to serve his disciples.

In tonight’s service, we sing hymns, read lessons, and receive communion, all before foot washing. Honestly, that is because we think it is gross to touch feet and then food. However, in the Jewish custom of Jesus’ time, foot washing would have been the first event of the evening. Ritual cleaning is how you prepared for a meal, for Jesus’ breaking of the bread, to hear his message… Jesus started the evening with service. In times of danger and doubt, serving others was his first reflex, his instinctive response. And he asked them to imitate their Lord- to learn to serve one another in the same humbling way.

Of all the things Jesus could have saved to say for that moment- that last meal- he said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another… Just as I have loved you.” At least that is how the writer of John reports it to us. But was it really a new commandment? Didn’t that whole love other people concept show up a few times by then? I’m not convinced that it was all that groundbreaking for Jesus. I suspect that this has a lot more to do with our human tendency to need reminding.  And given how absentminded the disciples are portrayed throughout the gospels, I’d guess that they were no exception to the rule. Jesus knew that we need practices that Remind us that love was the way of Christ- Remove us from old habits to try-try again until service is our first instinct- AND Reform our vision for the future so that we might live into it more fully.

Conclusion:

(Nico) In removing us from our old habits of living in isolation from our neighbors, isolation even from those who sit at the table with us; in reforming our vision so that we may see a future in which we are all more fully alive, Jesus has shown us the way.

(Caitlin) In showing us the way, Jesus last teaching to his community was love – and so it should be ours as well.

(Nico) We walk in the footsteps of Jesus when we… Love others.

(Caitlin) We walk in the footsteps of Jesus when we… Serve others.

(Nico) We walk in the footsteps of Jesus when we…Break bread with community.

(Caitlin) As we are stripping the sanctuary, we are stripping it of things, not of people.  As we prepare to remember the death of Christ, let’s not strip Jesus’ message of Life.  It is Life that has the last word – and that word is Love.

~Nico Romeijn-Stout and Caitlin White, Ministry Associates

posted in Guest Preachers on 03.28.2013 at 6:00 pm

By Marsh Chapel

Luke 2:41-52

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Some of you know that I have practiced, for decades, the spiritual discipline of tree climbing. I have surprised neighbors all across the country as I’ve tumbled out of moving vans and immediately ascended my way to a view of the new heaven and new earth on my new street.  It’s a matter of seeking new perspective.

Well, today, December 30^th,  we’ve all  figuratively climbed up to the top of year, and we’re perched way out on the tree limb of 2012, still holding on to the days of Christmastide, remembering the events of this year…the branch sways a bit under weight of both the joys and agonies of these 12 months. From this lofty vantage we can see ahead to new branch of 2013 just over yonder.  With the dropping of a ball and raising of cheer, with the flip of a calendar page we can just about see it.   It is already, but not yet.

Or another metaphor, this one requiring not a courage of heights, but a courage of imagination-  this is a time when we are called to live on the threshold. Abiding in the liminal places, not quite in the past, not quite in the future.  Pitching tent with Emmanuel who comes to camp out with us. Pausing with our sister Mary to ponder many things in our hearts.  A time to recollect back and wonder forward.

This is a day for a gem of a story from Luke, told with dual perspectives.  This is a day where two generations meet, where youth ministers and campus chaplains engage young adults precisely in the context of their journeys, where parents and children perplex and irritate one another- can you imagine! Where professors and students sit in the Temple and wrestle with texts and traditions.

Some of us live today with Mary on the Parental threshold of holding on and letting go- today her 12 year old son Jesus stretches out beyond her protection into a world that she already knows  is piercingly beautiful but piercingly violent as well.  Mary says today, “Kids, they grow up so fast.  It seems like it was just this past Tuesday that Jesus was born!  My baby! And now he’s 12 going on 20.”

Some of us live today with Jesus on the Emerging Adulthood threshold of “hello world, ready or not here I come!”  and  “yikes, this economy, this multitude of options and yet restrictions, hello Parent’s basement, I’m baaack!”  Jesus says today, “Give me some room at the Inn to learn more and become more until I am really ready to launch.”

Let’s climb into our Lukan story and see the world from one another’s perspectives.

Let’s begin with Mary.  Revered Mother of Jesus.  And here in today’s gospel, a very real Mom, one many of us recognize in the mirror or in the family portrait.   Clueless, panicked, relieved, angry, perplexed, astonished, perseverant.  All those experiences of parenthood the owner’s manual never mentions.

In ancient Roman mythology, “Janus” is the god of beginnings and transitions, the god of gates, doors, and thresholds. Janus is depicted as a god with dual profiles, looking at once to the future and to the past. “January” was named in honor of this threshold - inhabiting Janus.  Now, I confess that I know this not because I am a classics scholar.  I know this because I am a Mom and I have a 529 college savings plan with a firm called “Janus Investments,” and this two-faced image of Janus has been stamped on my statements for the last dozen years.  I inhabit a world lately with many conversations including these particular numbers – a sort of secret code of American parenthood: 529. For many years my husband and I have clink clinked our quarters into the savings plate, fretting over its too slow expansion.

Our son Andrew is now a High School senior, living on the threshold between HS and College…. Between clicking “submit” on the Common App and the arrival of satisfactorily large and thick acceptance envelopes in the mail.  With Mary I shake my head and remember my son’s first day of Kindergarten, which seemed like last Tuesday.   On that very first day of the big yellow bus, Andrew was treated to a one on one visit from the school principal.  A kind man who very gently suggested that biting your neighbor’s forearm on the bus-ride to school was not the best start to an academic career.  This I cannot help but remember as my 17 year old stands before me and requests the car keys – himself a Latin scholar, a fine writer,  a person of sterling character, now with advanced bus-riding social skills. The forward facing Janus Mom says, “I’m so proud of you!”  The backward facing Janus Mom cannot resist to comment, “but don’t bite anybody.” Already but not yet.

Mary, today I companion with you as we parent sons so close to stepping into new worlds beyond our doors.   I like to think of Mary as the biblical Soccer Mom. Now, if this has not occurred to you, bear with me for a moment.  Her eldest child is 12, and we know from biblical text that she has at least another 6 children by the time Jesus is an adult.  Four of Jesus’ brothers are named, and references are made to his unnamed sisters.  Before I thought about this fact of Mary as parent of 7 or more children- I admit to a more serene image of Mary-  quietly pondering, piously robed in blue, sitting beside a well-behaved  baby, shining a halo or two in daily housework chores.   But now I imagine she and Joseph busy with all the demands of running a large household bursting with children’s activities and religious practices and carpentry projects.

I can understand how Jesus got lost in the caravan that day, on the annual pilgrimage to and from Jerusalem for the Passover festival. The original HOME ALONE screen play.  It was a 150 mile round trip journey– 3 days there and 3 days back- from the sleepy hill country of Nazareth to the bustling epicenter of the city of Jerusalem, bordering the Negev desert to the south.  2 places so very different from one another.  2 members of one family, having such very different experiences of the same event.

I imagine that Jesus the first born had been declaring his desire for some independence from good ole Imma and Abba for some time- so they  relented on their vigilance and said OK, son, you can travel further back in our caravan with extended family.  Mary probably couldn’t stop herself and called out parting advice, “Don’t bite anybody!”  OK- all you young adults, You totally get to roll your eyes here at your parents for all our awkward comments.

It’s really more the world’s bite that Mary is afraid of.  She knows the reality of injustice and state sanctioned violence.  She knows the powerlessness of being young, poor, female, occupied, from the no-account back country. She and Joseph and baby Jesus fled Bethlehem 12 years ago, narrowly escaping the murderous arm of Herod who commanded that all male babies under age of 2 be killed.  Her family was refugees in Egypt, relying daily on the kindness of strangers, relying daily on the magnificent promises of God.

Mary knows that in 2012 alone over 153,000 refugees fled her neighboring Syria, running from violence and terror. Mary knows that in our country there have been some 30,000 deaths in 2012 from gun violence.  Mary knows that the Slaughter of Innocents is not some ancient biblical tale, but a reality proximate to our lives.  Mary weeps for the innocents. Christmas Eve- next door to my recent home town- Webster NY -  2 first responders to a house fire,  were ambushed and killed by gunshot.  One a 19 year old, covering for older firefighters so they could be home with their families.  Mary weeps for the innocents. Sweet babes at an elementary school in Connecticut, an Oregon shopping mall, a Colorado movie theatre, an off-campus street in Allston. Off campus- our campus. These towns -our towns.  These streets - our streets. These children –our  precious family.  Let us wake up and let our collective tears become a tidal wave flow of change – in hearts and minds and legislation.

And here’s why I Iove Mary.  And here’s how she is a vessel of God’s love.  Mary lives on the threshold of the world, seeing all its pain and darkness and she chooses life.  She chooses to open the door of her heart, a familiar expression of Howard Thurman.  Thurman who prays let the door of my heart be swinging. Secured in place by the axis of identity as a beloved child of God,  yet swinging open, welcoming love, attentive to splendor, open to new insight.  Mary doesn’t hide out in Nazareth, with firmly locked doors to protect her very special child.  She lives.  She trusts.  She reflects. She acts.

Mary sees the bleakness and chooses to light a candle of blessing rather than curse the darkness.  Perhaps Mary is tempted to lock the door and live in fear- to insist that Jesus never leave the protection of Nazareth again.  But Mary does NOT place an armed guard at every threshold we hold most dear- she does not armor backpacks – instead she clothes herself in “compassion, kindness, humility, patience, and most of all love.”

When Mary and Joseph discover that Jesus is missing, they abruptly change all plans and rush back to Jerusalem to find their son.  They are panicked.  They know what can happen out there in the big world.

After 3 days of searching, they find him! In the Temple of all places!  Not in the market squandering shekels on sweet cakes.  In the temple! Sitting there with the elders deep in discussion about matters of Torah.  Holding his own.  Mary’s panic gives way to relief, gives way to anger.  She raises her voice and says “SON!  How could you do this to me?”  And Jesus answers her, “why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I must be in my Father’s house?”  Not without a little attitude.  In this moment, Mary really doesn’t understand her son.   But she pauses.  She doesn’t react, she reflects.  She’s good at pondering life’s mysteries, even when they come in the package of a misbehaving child.

Jesus leaves with his parents, and back home in Nazareth they give him some remedial lessons in the commandments.  Like, hey Jesus, remember # 5 of the top 10?  “Honor thy father and mother.”  Mary continues her stewardship of the home, observing the beauty of each Sabbath eve and day, encouraging her children in the living of the law, trusting the words of the angelic visitor so long ago “FEAR NOT.”  She does her best.  And her son grows in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

But we have climbed our tree today to gaze out in two perspectives.  Jesus also lives in the threshold of emerging adulthood today, almost there but not quite yet.  Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God, Wonderful Counselor, Light of Lights, Hope of the Ages.  Perhaps we’re better versed in the full divinity of Jesus Christ than in his full humanity. But here in today’s treasure of a story we see a young adult some of us recognize in the mirror or in the family portrait - eager, idealistic, curious, confident, hopeful, and determined.

Now, we know most definitively that Jesus is 12 here.  What the text does not say, and we can imagine, is that he is reaching the age of majority, or of recognition as an adult in his religious circle.  B’nai mitzvah- the coming of age of Jewish boys at 13 and girls at 12 is not yet an established practice in first century Judaism.  I suspect Jesus is on the threshold of what we call today becoming a bar mitzvah, a son of the commandments, one with personal accountability for observing the Law.  A bar or bat mitzvah is full of questions and obligated to study biblical passages in depth.  So, just where else would Jesus be, but at the steps of the Temple, taking the rare opportunity to dialogue with and learn from the greatest scholars of his day.  Indeed, when reproached by his mother, “how could you do this to me?,”  he is likewise astonished- do my parents understand nothing about me?  How is this not obvious?

In our era, a new term has surfaced for coming of age, called “Emerging Adulthood.”  It’s generally associated with the ages between 18-29, and is understood not as a generational characteristic particular to the Millennials, but as a new life stage.  Nearby in Worcester MA our colleagues at Clark University are spearheading this research.  Dr. Jeffrey Jenson Arnett and his grad assistant Joseph Schwab have just released their poll on American Emerging Adults, and find that these folks are overall: Thriving, Struggling, and Hopeful.   Sounds a bit like our own emerging Jesus to me.

“Life is not easy for emerging adults,” state the researchers.  We know this. Our own WBUR ran a series in December called Gen Stuck.  Ouch. I learned that 30% of young adults are boomeranging back home to the not-so-empty nest, the highest percentage since the 1950s.  Merry Christmas, young adults, here’s a present called Fiscal Cliff.  Happy New Year!

I quote from the Clark report, “Emerging adults have an unemployment  rate that is consistently double the overall rate.  Those who have a job usually make very little money for most of their twenties.  Nearly all aspire to a college degree, but fewer than 1/3 have attained one by ages 25-29. Most move away from the comfort and support of the family home to take on the formidable task of finding a place in the world.  It’s not surprising, given these circumstances, that so many of them say they often feel stressed, anxious, or depressed. “

Hold on, though, recall that 12 year old energy, confidence, and curiosity of Jesus.

“What may be more surprising is that, despite the challenges of the emerging adult life stage, most of them remain hopeful that their lives will ultimately work out well.  Nearly 90% agree that they are confident that they eventually  will get what they want out of life:  almost as many agree that “At this time of my  life, it still seems like anything is possible.”  And, despite frequent claims that they face a diminished future and will be the first generation in American history to do worse economically than their parents, more than 3/4s agree that “I believe, overall, my life will be better than my parent’s lives have been.”  End quote.

Jesus, God with skin on, knows this in-between time.  He stands in the threshold right there. And he is present in the silent waiting years.  From ages 12-30 we know nothing about Jesus’  life.  We can imagine he is home preparing, living faithfully, and getting ready to launch into public ministry – finally at the age of 30.

Young adults- if your Baby Boomer or Gen X parents get a little impatient with your travelling through this life stage, say, “hey I’m  Emerging right on target with Jesus.”

Jesus had a hunger for discovery.  So do the young adults I know and love.

3 dozen Emerging Adults- also known as “Students” gathered at Marsh Chapel  just before finals for a “Reading Retreat” – a day set apart for study and reflection.  We focused our spiritual practices on one of the masters from this holy Temple– Howard Thurman- absorbed his words and wisdom.  Each participant went around room declaring the study intent for the day- and it was fascinating to hear the variety of subjects embraced by 6 of the schools of our university.  I am making my way through a 500 page tome on international relations and the CIA,  I am immersed in my reams of Hebrew Bible class notes for final exam, I am writing a paper about cross-cultural pedagogical implication, I am simulating human voice through a prototype robot I am making, and so on and so on.  Fascinating!

They remind me each day to be a  life-long learner. To appreciate excellence all around.

For instance, our ushers, right here at Marsh Chapel are superb in hospitality.  Each Sunday they are greeting at our doors with smiles and welcoming information for first timers.  Now, I come up the stairs from the lower level  - not in our ushers’ line of duty.  So most weeks I go out the front door, so I can turn right around and come back in. And I say to the usher, I want my greeting!  I want my smile and handshake or hug.  I want to start my day by receiving the excellence of your mission.  And Charles, 7 year old Charles who is head usher of the balcony.  Cannot have a Sunday without a Charles smile and high five.

Friends, this day we look back, we look forward, and we look from many perspectives.  We go out of our way to cross thresholds into places of joy and love.  Let us go into the New Year, with hearts as swinging doors –opening to the comfort of God’s grace, moving out to the needs of the world.

Amen.

~ The Rev. Dr. Robin Olson

See: Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults, December 2012: http://www.clarku.edu/clarkpoll/

posted in Guest Preachers on 12.30.2012 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Mark 15:33-41

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It seems all we have is a promise and open hands.  Yet I suspect Jesus would understand.  When he cries out on the cross, he laments before God his being abandoned:  “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  The words he uses are the familiar words of Psalm 22.  In that moment, we see Jesus sharing in the most radical, Godforsaken state of what it means to be a human being in the face of injustice, abandonment, and death.  Yet as Adela Yarbro Collins points out, absolute despair is a retreat in silence. Jesus shouts, yes, but he shouts to God.  Jesus cries out, yes, but he cries out to God.  Jesus speaks words of Godforsaken-ness on the cross, yes, but he speaks them to God.

In doing so, his lament itself is a form of holding on to the promise.  His complaint to God makes no sense unless he holds up the promise to God and asks:  is it still good?  Is it?  The cry, the shout, the Godforsakenness all belong there—because lament is the flipside of a life lived according to promise.

In his book Meditations of the Heart, BU’s Howard Thurman expanded this idea even further to include human encounter with death as a whole.  Thurman writes:

...the glorious thing about man’s encounter with death is that fact that what a man discovers about the meaning of life as he lives it, need not undergo any change as he meets death.  It is a final tribute to the character of an individual’s living if he can die “unshriven” but full-blown as he lived.  Such a man goes down to his grave with a shout.

At Jesus’ death, at his apocalyptic death things are revealed as they really are.  It is not about nobility or virtue.  It is about the turning of the ages, the strange mysterious place that speaks from death and yet bears witness--shouting witness--to the promise.  It is a strange, shadowy place…of God’s new creation.

~Rev. Dr. David Schasa Jacobsen

Professor of Homiletics, Boston University

posted in Guest Preachers on 08.19.2012 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Mark 1:1-15

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Mark’s Gospel begins with this simple superscription in chapter 1:  “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.”  The word “good news” is the same as “gospel.” It is not a literary designation, as in “the Gospel of Mark;” rather it is a word, euaggelion, which means good news.  When the person we call Mark begins writing, he intends to communicate euaggellion, the good news of Jesus Christ.

But Mark’s good news is not the kind of chirpy news you would find nestled in a Reader’s Digest. It is not that warm and fuzzy feature that the networks tuck in at the end of the nightly newscast either.  Mark’s gospel of Jesus Christ, his good news, is apocalyptic.  He offers an apocalyptic gospel.

Now to us in this great liberal chapel, such news may not sound good at all.  We late moderns may be inclined to think of apocalyptic not as good, but as primitive--perhaps some detachable feature of early Christianity that we can take or leave.  For those of us used to a Christianity that is reasonable or plausible, apocalyptic sounds more like the crazy relative we keep hidden away in the attic.  We know we are related, but he/she seems just a bit too crazy to take seriously, let alone talk about in public.  So when Mark offers the beginning of his apocalyptic gospel of Jesus, we might be inclined to demur.

However, a century of critical Biblical scholarship has been consistent on this point.  The high water mark of 19th century liberalism believed that the Kingdom of God, the gospel Jesus preached (Mark 1:15) was about the inexorable march toward progress of the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God.  But the critical work of Biblical scholars like Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer made that liberal view untenable.  These scholars reminded biblical interpreters that Jesus’ gospel was not a cover for the liberal myth of progress.  Jesus’ view of God’s kingdom and its gospel was apocalyptic—something strange to our modern ears. Decades later, the great Biblical scholar Rudolf Bultmann conceded so much.  Our scientific world had no room for miracles or three-tiered universes of heaven above, earth, and hell below.  Faithful Christians, Bultmann said, would need to learn to demythologize this unwieldy apocalyptic message of Jesus. But then Bultmann’s own student, a scholar named Ernst Kaesemann, had pushed the problem back to the center.  Kaesemann argued that the apocalyptic view was not easily dispensed with.  In fact, he called apocalyptic the mother of all Christian theology!

The mother?  Now that hits close to home!  We might be tempted to keep a friendly distance to apocalyptic thinking.  What reasonable and morally sensitive person today has need of mythological horsemen, stories of rapture and being “left behind,” or cosmic conflagration?  Granted, some apocalyptic texts are just problematic and Christians need to learn to think about them and reinterpret them.  But the core of Käsemann’s argument about apocalyptic’s motherly role is still relevant.  The gospel is about Jesus’ death and resurrection.  How can we really speak of resurrection apart from the apocalyptic worldview which gave it currency in the Jewish world in which Christianity emerged?  For those of us who listen for that gospel in a late modern context, we just cannot write off mother!

Perhaps the problem is lack of precision about what exactly makes Mark’s gospel apocalyptic.  While the spectacular visions of apocalyptic literature are hard to ignore, lately scholars have been pointing to what apocalypses do.  The word apocalypse itself does not mean “burning judgment” or “cosmic catastrophe.”  What apocalypse means in Greek is “to reveal.”  Apocalypses are about divine revelation.  A brilliant scholar of apocalyptic literature, Christopher Rowland, made just such a case a couple decades ago.  He titled his book on apocalyptic literature:  The Open Heaven. Apocalypses reveal something about God, something that gives a perspective in the midst of life in chaos.  Other scholars point out that an apocalypse is a genre of what is called revelatory literature.  In other words what makes an apocalypse apocalyptic is that it reveals.  Therefore, the purpose of apocalyptic literature is to disclose something from a transcendent perspective…and in a way that helps to make sense of some difficult anomalies of life.

In the Jewish and emerging Christian world, apocalyptic is an at least four-century long dialogue about the righteousness of God from the standpoint of some sort of problem of theodicy.  Through the centuries it asks questions like the following:  How can God be just or righteous, and these awful Gentiles have destroyed the Temple?  How can God be just or righteous, and these Greeks force us to abandon our traditional ways around Sabbath, circumcision, and obedience to the divine law?  How can God be just, when those who act in God’s name are persecuted and killed by those idolatrous Romans?  How can God be just when the righteous dead never receive any vindication in this world that is now so clearly in the grip of anti-divine forces?  These are the kinds of profound questions of theodicy and the righteousness of God that writers of apocalyptic texts ask.

So now we come back to Mark’s gospel.  Just what exactly makes Mark’s version of the good news so apocalyptic?  On a general level, we can see some of the more spectacular elements of apocalyptic throughout the Markan story.  When in Mark 1:15 Jesus comes preaching the coming Kingdom of God’s reign, he announces it as gospel/good news of God.  What he means is demonstrated in his Galilean ministry of kingdom proclamation in the following chapters.  Jesus heals the sick as a sign of the dawning kingdom.  Jesus casts out demons with apocalyptic authority.  He forgives sins, offering God’s end-time mercy even now in his Galilean ministry.  When Jesus feeds people, though they start with just few loaves and fish, there is more than enough and everyone is filled: a sign of the eschatological banquet.  Not even nature escapes his concern.  Jesus himself contends with apocalyptic forces as he walks miraculously over the waters of chaos, and rebukes and silences demonic storms with his mere word of command.

With all these elements of the Markan gospel story we can see:  this apocalyptic world is not just some neutral space of choice and human freedom.  Elements of human and natural life are vividly portrayed as in the thrall of cosmic evil:  demons, forces, principalities and powers as Paul would say.  God’s good earth has been corrupted by evil forces that require some sort of “strong man” to overcome.

Here we see the importance of Mark’s apocalyptic revelation at the beginning of his gospel.  Right here, in this fifteen-verse prologue to the Gospel of Mark, Mark includes his crucial moment of apocalyptic revelation.  In the first few verses, Mark has us focused on John the Baptist, an end-time prophet sent to prepare the way.  But even John confesses--for all the powerful signs of his ministry of repentance--that a “stronger one” is coming.  Then Jesus appears.  The text words it this way translated directly from the Greek:  “and it came to pass in those days.”  “Those days”—that is end-time talk.  When Jesus appears in vv. 9-11, he, too, is baptized by John just as all the crowds are—except when he comes up from the water.  What Jesus sees and hears in these early verses of Mark is an apocalyptic vision.  The heavens are opened, the dove descends, and then a divine voice that only he and we readers get to hear says:  “You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.”  This is an apocalyptic moment of revelation replete with open heavens, cosmic symbols, and heavenly voices.  We who hear the text are privy to Jesus’ own revelation as are no other characters in the text.  We and Jesus know that Jesus has a messianic, prophetic identity and mission.  As he sets out into this difficult apocalyptic world, he does so in light of this divine revelation, in light of this mysterious, transcendent perspective.

Please note further what the apocalyptic elements of this revelation point to.  First, the heavens are not merely opened, but ripped apart, schizomenous in Greek.  God in this apocalyptic revelation is breaking down barriers.  As Duke Biblical scholar Joel Marcus puts it, there is a “gracious gash in the universe.” God has committed Godself to entering this broken world to fulfill God’s kingdom purposes.  Second, when the dove descends, it is not just some pretty symbol.  The language of the dove goes back to God’s original purposes at creation, where the Spirit broods over the waters in anticipation of God’s creative act.  God is not yet through with this broken created order.  What of the aural disclosure of God’s relation to Jesus?  This is language of prophetic anointment and messianic kingship, language that reminds us of all the promises of God in the Hebrew Bible:  the psalms and the prophet Isaiah, too.

At the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, God reveals Godself, God’s purposes and Jesus’ otherwise secret mysterious identity.  We hearers are, right there at the beginning of Mark’s gospel, given a transcendent perspective on the sixteen-chapter apocalyptic struggle that is about to ensue.  What is the point?: in the midst of God’s good creation, which is nonetheless in the thrall of anti-divine forces, God rips open the heavens and places God’s imprimatur on Jesus in such a way that Jesus and we readers are privy to this transcendent perspective.  We now know, even in the midst of life’s most hellish conditions, that God through Jesus is committed to the fight against cosmic evil.  God is revealed as ripping open heavens to break the boundaries that give cosmic evil the upper hand.

Of course, Mark’s strange vision of Jesus’ significance may still just seem too far out.  Apart from movies, books, and a few sectarian groups, our world is not that crazy for apocalyptic.  We probably live our lives largely in the light of reason, and in relative comfort.  Mark may offer an apocalyptic gospel, but on the whole, our world, our late modern reality is not buying.  Mark may well defer to Jesus the exorcist, but when faced with struggles of mind and spirit, we late moderns are much more likely to refer to psychologists and medical professionals.  Mark’s Jesus may celebrate eschatological banquets of an apocalyptic kingdom where all are miraculously fed, but for us these matters are better left for the rational adjustment of public policy on food, agricultural production and foreign aid.  Jesus may rebuke storm demons and silence the wind, but we are far more likely to stick with the weather channel and its talk of low pressure systems and the jet stream as we deal with matters meteorological.  In the end, Bultmann was right:  our worlds are different and are not amenable to Mark’s apocalyptic gospel of Jesus.

But on a second look, even we find our reasoned worlds interrupted by intractable evil.  We experience this in multiple ways.

Personally, we experience this with the struggle with disease.  For all our progress against cancer, there still seems to be something of a strange virulence to it—the body turned against itself.  Cancer may be a describable biological process, but we nonetheless feel compelled with our language to “wage a war” against it, to fight it as if it were something more.

Socially, we bump into this with the mysteries of life together.  We experience an inability to find ways of even talking with each other about solving problems like gun violence after another massacre of innocents—situations where we cannot only not do something, but even imagine talking about doing something.  In such moments it is as if we felt we were in the grip of something that is bigger and different  than our capacity to reason and act as free persons.

At the broadest level of our shared humanity in this world, there are also those powerful experiences of corporate evil that force us to recognize the very limits of enlightened reason among free citizens to do what is necessary.  The 20th century was supposed to represent the triumph of reason, technology, and astounding feats of human accomplishment.  For all that, it was also the century of repeated, bloody wars and a holocaust.  For all the talk of “never again” in both warfare and silence about mass extermination, the incomprehensible bloody trail marches forward to Cambodia, the Balkans, and beyond.  Is it any wonder that Quebec General Romeo Dallaire, the head of the UN forces in Rwanda in the 1990’s, mysteriously titled his book about that awful event, “Shake Hands with the Devil:  the Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.”?  We sometimes experience evil in just such a way.

It is true that we may not have the same mythology.  Yet we still deal with the mystery of intractable evil, ask questions of our mysterious selves, and yes, pose questions of theodicy to a mysterious God.  Here Mark’s strange apocalyptic gospel registers:  good news for a good creation gone awry.  It is good news in the face of the struggle with intractable evil.  And the good news is this:  in the face of these intractable realities, God has not given up, but comes closer.  In Jesus’ baptism, the apocalyptic news revealed is that God is not staying behind the cosmic curtain of the heavens.  God has transgressed the very boundary between heaven and earth. In Jesus, God has been mysteriously revealed as the uncontainable other.  This God does not remain in the holy separation of eternal otherness.  Instead, in Jesus God is revealed as coming close with a divinely authorized risky love that leads all the way to the cross.  This is no triumphant fix-it God.  It is also not an aloof God of aseity and impassibility.  This is a God who apocalyptically reveals Godself precisely as the mystery for us in the face of our broken realities.

Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall captures this apocalyptic mystery in a helpful way.  Here I paraphrase him:

God’s revealing is simultaneously an unveiling and a veiling.  God conceals Godself under the opposite of what both religion and reason imagine God to be, namely the Almighty, the majestic transcendent, the absolutely other…. God’s otherness…is not to be found in God’s absolute distance from us but in God’s willed and costly proximity to us.

In her article “Preaching to Horror-Struck People,” Rebekah Eckert, saw a deep connection between Hall’s thoughts about the mysterious revelation of God’s otherness in risky proximate love, and the story of Victor Munyarugerere. Victor is described years later in a newspaper report about his actions during the Rwandan Genocide.  Amidst the bloody context of extermination in the 1990’s we hear this unexpected news story of his risky proximity:

Victor Munyarugerere, a Catholic lay counselor married to a Tutsi woman, used creative tactics to save the lives of about 270 people.  Dressed up as a priest and doling out bottles of whiskey and wine to soldiers at checkpoints, he shuttled carloads of children, women and men to safety at the Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali.  “I decided that I preferred to die saving people,” said Munyarugerere. “Tutsis and Hutus are all children of God.”

This risky proximity however is never just for times of extreme social and political duress.  It is also for personal lives lived under difficult circumstances.  Rev. Samuel Proctor, BU grad and eminent preacher and homiletician tells the story of a mother who, “working for Mrs. Cartwright from sunup to sundown every day and then coming home to cook and do laundry for her own children without a mate or the inspiration of a faithful companion.  We saw that,” Proctor said, “and we heard her singing Zion’s songs in the dark.”

This revelation of a God who in Jesus rips open heaven to come close is itself the core of Mark’s apocalyptic gospel.  Mark begins his gospel with this revelation to show God’s loving abandon for a good creation gone awry.  It is not an apocalyptic gospel of easy answers.  It is, however, a word about God’s love, a risky proximity, in the midst of the darkness.

In the early 20th century a group of artists formed a collective in a small community just north of the German city of Bremen.  The town of Worpswede was of no great repute.  It sat on the edge of a long sparsely inhabited swamp-like region known as the Teufelsmoor, the Devil’s moor.  One artist, a painter in the group, crafted a painting he called, “the Sower.”  In the picture, the sower casts his seed on the ground—it is a typical motif and theme in painting from the period.  But this artist’s sower casts his seed across the landscape he came to know in the collective:  the Devil’s moor.  As he does so, the sower casts his seed in the dark, but toward a small dawning light.

I suspect the writer of the first gospel written would have understood.  Mark’s Jesus offers the beginning of his apocalyptic gospel.  It is a song in darkness, a seed cast across a dark landscape.  Yet, amidst the darkness, Mark’s gospel speaks…a promise of dawning light.

~Rev. Dr. David Schnasa Jacobsen

Professor of Homiletics, Boston University

posted in Guest Preachers on 08.12.2012 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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If you’ve been following the lectionary text with care, you are aware that considerable time has been spent over the past couple of weeks thinking about the kings of Israel, the shepherds of Israel and the Davidic line. Would there be a king to follow in David’s lineage who would finally deliver Israel? Reading the text this morning the story of David and Bathsheba can have you wondering how it was that David was seen to be such an ideal king. But over time he was imagined to be that figure. In that tradition we find hopeful signs again and again in Israel’s history that such a king will arrive. You see from the text that was just read from John Chapter 6 that that hope was expressed at the feeding of the 5000. When they come to want, and want to make Jesus King. You can imagine that that hope, that aim, is very much following along with the tradition of David being the ideal king.

In this series of lessons on apocalyptic literature or the Apocalypse Den as the series is called, I’m interested in featuring the apostles Paul’s apocalyptic outlook and trying to give insight into how Paul understands David as a king within his apocalyptic frame. You may have noticed that Romans 1:1-7 was read a bit ago outside of the lectionary text for this week. I had this text in the reading because this text is the only place in the undisputed letters of Paul where Paul mentions Jesus as a son of David and emphasizes that he was in David’s lineage, according to the flesh. I want to flag two other items in the introduction to this sermon, that come from this opening text and then I want to see where this leads us in the study of Paul’s letter to the Romans. He says that this is the good news concerning Gods son, “Who was descended from David according to the flesh 4and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead” I want to flag, that this is the good news for Paul and it has to do with a kind of power Jesus had due to the resurrection.

Very often when we focus on the death of Christ we focus on the cross itself and not on the larger event of his death and resurrection. Paul places considerable weight on the resurrection and there is a good reason for that. It is hard to be able to place Jesus in a Davidic line if he simply goes to Jerusalem and dies at the hands of the Romans, it hard to imagine how that fulfills the hope of Israel; to have a short ministry and to be killed on a cross. Paul’s experience of Jesus was not as a disciple who followed in his footsteps but is one who had a vision of the risen Christ. And that vision of the risen Christ brought Paul face to face with Jesus as one whom God had raised. That allowed Paul to transfer his Davidic hopes on Jesus, from a Jesus who conquers the Romans in Israel to a Jesus who is involved in a much larger cosmic drama, in an apocalyptic frame. Another way of putting this is that the death and resurrection of Jesus are not the last act. They’re not the last act, they are part of a drama that fits in a larger apocalyptic frame.  Now I’m going to stray briefly out of the letter to the Romans to read a text from First Corinthians that lays out this larger frame real quickly and then I’ll be back in Romans to illustrate it. This text I’m about to read comes from First Corinthians 15:20 and following, “But now has Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the first fruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”

Again, often when we think of the gospel or the good news, we think of Jesus dying for the sins of the people, as an atoning sacrifice. I’m suggesting to you that Paul has a much larger drama in mind, where Christ resurrection is a resurrection with power, which is the beginning of a conquest to overcome Adams’s fall. The only other place where this Adam and Christ contrast is taken up by Paul is in the letter to the Romans. In Chapter 5 of the letter to the Romans Paul uses this Adam-Christ contrast as a means of thinking about how the death and resurrection of Christ means that the dominion of Christ has broken into the realm of Adam so that sin is able to be challenged as well as death. And as you will recall from the First Corinthians text the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Understanding this larger frame allows us to recognize why the righteousness of God, in Romans, is such a big issue for Paul. For Paul, God has great responsibility for this creation; great responsibility. And the fulfillment of this larger drama that I’ve just described is a fulfillment whose weight rests, for Paul, on God. And whether or not that is fulfilled is a judgment on God’s own righteousness. This is the theme that is strongly emphasized to the letter to the Romans but one that many modern readers have missed because we have associated the righteousness of God so closely with atonement out of the Protestant tradition and the Reformation.

Highlighting a couple of important texts out of Romans, let me draw your attention to Romans 1: 16 and 17, two verses that have been thought to be the theme of the letter to the Romans since Martin Luther’s time. Paul writes, “ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The one who is righteous shall live by faith.” You see the phrase here “in the good news, or in the gospel, the righteousness of god is reviled.” This is a text in which there is considerable amount of debate about translation. The word faith, in Greek pistis, is used here a few times. It is becoming much more common among scholars of the Apostle Paul’s letters to translate this as faithfulness rather than faith. So that that verse reads, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faithfulness, Christ faithfulness, for faithfulness, human faithfulness; “As it is written the one who is righteousness will live by faithfulness” This sense that Gods righteousness is being fulfilled in the coming of Christ with the result that humans are faithful, places more weight on human responsibility than was typical out of reformation theology.

Listen to that text in relation to this next one, Romans 3: 21-26” But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:  for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,  whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” And now again this emphasis on the righteousness of God is based on this larger drama where God is to be righteous in fulfilling the redemption of the larger creation. You can see that larger picture in Romans, especially in Romans 8:18 and following. “I consider that the sufferings of this present time,” for Paul while we are still caught between Adam and Christ, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.  For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.  And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” The striking thing about this text in a document, the letter to the Romans where Paul is laying out this larger drama, salvation for him is not simply the atonement of the sin of individuals it is god reclaiming creation from the dominion of sin dominion of death. The last enemy to be destroyed is death, which is why redemption of our bodies is featured here in the way it is. This looks backs to the Adam story in Genesis of the fall where you see here, where it says “The creation itself was subjected to futility”. Are you thinking of a text in Genesis 3, “Cursed be the ground because of you.” So that not only are human beings sinful but the creation itself was subjected to futility as it groans and labor pains looking to share in the redemption of human beings, For Paul the creation itself became a less hospitable place for the good, and a more hospitable place for evil.

Hence for the resurrection of Christ, Christ leads a campaign according to First Corinthians 15:20 and following in which he puts all the enemies under his feet and the last enemy to be destroyed is death. And in Paul’s apocalyptic outlook, death is not the cessation of someone breathing, it is a cosmic power. In the same way that sin for Paul in the letter to the Romans is not this individual misdeed of a person, but is a cosmic power that exercises dominion and leads ultimately to death.

So where is the good news in this? Well, you saw the last text I read ended with this note that we have hope.  Because the redemption of our own bodies is tied up with the redemption of the creation and God’s own righteousness is at stake in fulfilling it. For Paul there is reason for great hope in that. That comes out most clearly in the next paragraph of Romans 8 “We know that all things worked together for god for those who love God who are called according to its purpose.” I don’t think that all things work together for good every minute of every day, but that this future projection that God has staked God’s own righteousness on, is something that we are a part of and can depend on. “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son In order that he might be the first born within a large family and those whom he predestined he also called and those whom he call he also justified and those whom he justified he also glorified. “

If I might break in and argue with Paul, “But Paul it has been a long time. It was a long time for Israel, this period of time where all the shepherds failed Israel. Recounted in first and second Kings with such brutal frankness has simply been time continuing. Paul, how do you keep confidence?” He writes, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” He is going to give a little list of possible terrestrial things that might separate us, “Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Now he is going to start listing some cosmic threats, tapping that apocalyptic tradition again, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” This is the good news according to Paul, Paul’s Davidic message, Paul’s son of David, is the one who makes this happen. Thanks be to God.

~Dr. James Christopher Walters

Associate Professor of New Testament,

Boston University

posted in Guest Preachers on 07.29.2012 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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Good morning.

The series of text that have been read this morning from the lectionary are in many ways remarkable. My guess is that there are a number of political leaders throughout the world who are not enjoying the lectionary readings today. Given what a sharp judgment they offer on Israel’s leaders and ask us to consider it as we grapple with leadership in the modern world. It’s a remarkable collection of texts.

In Mark 6, the text that was just read, Jesus sees a chaotic crowd of people and imagines them to be like sheep without a shepherd. This taps a very very long tradition in Israel’s scriptures where Israel time and time again is scattered lacking a shepherd. The text I read to you early from Jeremiah is the text from which this sermon’s title comes, “Woe to the shepherds,” the first four words from Jeremiah 23:1-6, “Woe to the shepherd who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture says the lord.” These shepherds are the Kings of Israel, and Jeremiah is following the fall of Judea and the exile of God’s people to Babylon. Ezekiel presents the same sort of critique in Ezekial 34, even harsher. You’ll recall that this is not a new theme in the biblical text. Beginning with Jeremiah or Ezekiel as a matter of fact, even a casual reading of first and second Samuel and first and second Kings should remind you that these lengthy narratives are by in large a judgment on the failure of Israel’s monarchies. Over and over again, we are told of a failed reign, followed by a failed reign, followed by a failed reign. The political disaster that was the monarchy in narrative form is judged as a moral and religious failure and hence ultimately a political failure.

The story continues as we are in an apocalyptic series this summer and you might recall this is rather a large theme in apocalyptic literature as well, if I might trace it down briefly. What we have is the fall of Judea the Southern Kingdom, and five, maybe six, of the Babylonians in exile and Jeremiah and Ezekiel offer their judgment on the shepherds of Israel. Following that exile there’s a return to the land and rebuilding of the temple. Ultimately the land falls under the control of the Talamies and the Salutes. Following Alexander the Great’s campaign in the east, there is a revolt against Salute rulers that we know of as the Maccabean Revolt, where new shepherds were put in power--followers of the Maccabees, the Hasmoaneans. But things go no better, as a matter of fact, after decades of Hasmoanean rule, where Israel is being ruled by its own Kings again, it’s almost as if it’s a relief when the Romans come to town. Oh and then we have the Romans and by now the misery of failed leadership takes on cosmic proportions. Its not just as if a king looks after the king’s own interest rather than the interest of the people, it’s not just that the game is rigged among political insiders. Oh it's worse. In an apocalyptic world view, the game is rigged in cosmic proportions, where the rulers are not simply rulers living out their own excesses and greed, but they are the puppets and the pawns of dark spiritual powers. If you’ve worked your way through the Book of Revelations, the Apocalypse of St. John, you’ve read the story told in violent and brilliant color. As the Roman Empire is held up for judgment and its shepherds are accused. The beast from the sea, is the Roman Emperors and the power of the Roman Empire comes from Satan himself, that’s the apocalyptic tale of Revelation 12 and 13. It’s a dark story. If you’ve read much political history, it’s a dark story.

The revised common lectionary encourages us to read Psalm 23 in dialogue with Jeremiah 23. It’s an interesting juxtaposition. We just worked our way through Psalm 23. In Psalm 23 we imagine that it is God who is the ruler, God is the shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest  my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever

It’s the universal longing of humanity, the universal longing, to be led to green pastures, for our cups to overflow, for goodness and mercy to follow us. It’s the path that Israel’s Kings were to lead Israel on, but far too often it was not the path that had been promised. The experience of failed leadership is an experience of terrific suffering, of victimized populations, of barrenness. You see if the 23 Psalm if its read in reverse it’s the opposite of the yearning of God and God’s people.

Bashar Al-Asad is my shepherd, I shall always want. He makes me lie down in barren pastures:  he leads me beside dry riverbeds, he destroys my soul, he leads me in the wrong path for his own sake.

You see Psalm 23 is not just that little pastoral text we learn to recite when we were children in church; it is a powerful statement about what the right leadership offers and should do for people. And hence the failed kings of Israel and the failed kings of today, whether in the Middle East and Syria in the case of Assad or in this country, results in people being led to barren pastures. One of the most pronounced themes in all of scripture is the theme we are talking about this morning. And we continue to be haunted by poor leadership; we continue to be haunted by barren rather than green pastures. It’s an old story.  The apocalyptic tradition is so pessimistic it loses hope that this can be righted. That it can be righted in the space of human history and imagined that God has to right it at the end of human history, God has to make it right in the end, that is the message of the Book of Revelations isn’t it. It’s not my desire this morning to encourage us to that level of pessimism, but even from this story to gain some hope, to work for greener pastures, to work for still waters, for goodness and mercy to follow us as opposed to judgment and wrath. But, it’s a hard path and we are foolish not to have our eyes wide open.

For the past 36 hours I have found myself wondering time and again why I agreed to preach this weekend, especially after the horror of Aurora, Colorado raised its head. A story I’m sure you know by now. A 24 year old neuroscience PhD student walks into a midnight showing of the latest of Chirstopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy movies, with four guns: two glock 40mms and an AR-15 assault rifle and a 12- gauge shotgun. He walks into that theater in battle armor from head to foot; his assault rifle has a drum magazine that holds 100 rounds. He bought all of this legally, within the last 60 days. He shot 70 people. The Washington Post reports this morning that apparently the assault rifle jammed so that all 100 rounds were not able to be dispersed. Now, I understand we have a gun debate in this country, I know something about the gun lobby, I grew up hunting on a farm in Alabama. Whether or not Mr. Holmes should have been able to purchase those four weapons, I’ll leave open for a moment, but I want to suggest to you that he should not be able to purchase a magazine that holds 100 rounds. It’s illegal in the state of Massachusetts but it’s legal in every other state but eight. The gun debate in this country is a failed conversation. More should be done to protect the sheep.

May it be so.

~Dr. James Christopher Walters

Associate Professor of New Testament,

Boston University

posted in Guest Preachers on 07.22.2012 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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Good morning.

It is a tremendous privilege to be here with you again for a second Sunday. I’m truly enjoying my trip back to beloved BU, again from rural Maine. My parents get back from their trip tomorrow so I had yet another week of mucking barns and caring for chickens and keeping track of gardens in this heat, which we’ve had up in Maine as well. It’s lovely to be back and to be a city girl for the day and to be here among you with my dear friends new and old. Nice passage right, I mean did that have to come up during the lectionary when I was preaching. Ok anyway here’s the sermon.

It’s nearly blueberry season in Maine again which is just about my favorite time of year. My son Leander took the kayaks over to the little pile of boulders we call Blueberry Island this past week. And sure enough the first blueberries had just started to turn that lovely purple blue that promises a delightful morning of blueberry picking from the canoe followed by blueberry pancakes made in a cast-iron pan at the camp, wonderful. If I could pick what heaven is like, I would defiantly choose Blueberry Island on a calm hot summer day in late July.

But Blueberry season also reminds me of another less happy blueberry story, one that points out that we are not quite in heaven, yet. I usually tell this story for a laugh because really if we weren’t laughing we would have to cry. So I guess I’ll tell it that way here to.

One summer, the last summer my grandma Jean visited Maine before her death, blueberry season came early. For my mom blueberry season means a flurry of activity. She bakes pies, she makes muffins, she boils mason jars and puts up blueberry jam for the winter. As she would explain to my grandmother, if there are blueberries, all other activities must and will stop. There will be a full day in the kitchen. My grandmother however could not abide with this nonsense.

You see Grandma Jean had left her own farm behind as a young teenager and never looked backed. Her family lost their farm in Iowa during The Depression, piling up all their worldly belongings on the back of their old Ford and trekking across the country to seek a new life in California. These were hungry times and the family barely survived. I can only guess at how wrenching this loss must have been for my grandmother, she dealt with it and with her new life in California by refusing to have anything to do with farming ever again. Her cooking reflected this decision; she never met a can of cream of mushroom soup that she did not like. And the idea of spending a day making jam seemed preposterous to her.

So there was my mom in the kitchen boiling jars and picking through the flat of blueberries as she removed the little leaves and green berries that inevitably get caught up in a blueberry rake. And there was my grandmother sitting at the kitchen table and offering a running commentary about the fruitlessness of making homemade jam during the modern age when you can just as well go to the grocery store and by blueberry jam for three dollars.

This argument masquerading as a discussion and hiding within it decades, if not a lifetime of mother-daughter pain and frustration finally ended with a daring repost of the part of Grandma Jean. “But Mom,” my own mother said, “I like to make jam and besides tonight we’ll have a fresh homemade blueberry pie.” “Blueberry pie,” Grandma said, “I hate blueberry pie.” Ok then, no blueberry pie for Grandma and no love and approval for Mom who had somehow and perhaps not entirely accidentally chosen to live on a farm and to therefore emulate her grandparents rather than her mother. As for me observing this whole exchange, I just tried to make myself disappear.

Thinking about blueberry pies, blueberry season, and the heavenly place that is Blueberry Island this past week while also hearing these lectionary readings brought this family fable to my mind. Reminding me about how unlike heaven even earthly heavens can be, especially once people and families with long memories get involved. And really we were and are such a lucky happy family. At the end of the day we love one another, we show up for one another.

By contrast, as I’m sure you noticed, the Herods were indisputably a mess, as Mark points out in this long digression on the death of John the Baptist. Mark is a decidedly ungenerous critique of the Herodian family, although few surviving writings have much that is positive to say about the Herods and the lengths they took to secure their Roman sponsored dynasty.  Nevertheless, in this story the gospel writer goes through exceptional lengths to embellish a set of unsubstantiated rumors about Herod Antipas, Herodias and an unnamed daughter that upon further inspection don’t quite hold up. But never mind the facts, by the time Mark was written the Herodian dynasty had lost much of its influence, crushed, Mark implies, by the weight of its own corruption. And he certainly does give us a tabloid shocker version of their history complete with a degraded, sexually suspect puppet king, a wicked bloodthirsty and conniving queen, and a beautiful young princess willing to do just about anything to please her father, or her stepfather-it depends on which manuscript one is reading-and her mother, or her stepmother, see above, including luring her father into executing a righteous man, Mark’s hero John the Baptist. Who needs a hot, thrilling, and violent summer blockbuster when one can simply read today’s gospel lesson.

In terms of facts here’s what we do know. Herod Antipas had John the Baptist executed. Herod Antipas was married to Herodias who had been previously married to his brother, another Herod whom Mark confuses with Phillip the tetrarch of an area north of the Sea of Galilee. Antipas himself had also been married to a Nabateaian princess who may or may not have been named Thalamus. According to the historian Josephus Herodias had a daughter named Salome by her first husband, though the young women in this story may also be a daughter of Antipas from his first marriage named Herodias like her mother or stepmother as some manuscripts of Mark suggest and as the NRSV would have it. At any rate Herodias’ daughter, Salome, she really did have a daughter named Salome really did eventually marry Phillp, the tetrarch another half-brother of Antipas sometime around 33 C.E.

Whatever the details of this sordid family history might be, and however fishy Marks version the gospel story makes one point clear the dynastic aspirations of the Herodian family were not only fruitless they also produced nothing but trouble, either for those sympathetic to Jesus and John the Baptist or for their own heirs. Indeed their attempts to secure their privileged position both at home and with their Roman patrons came at a high personal and familial cost; dividing brother against brother, mother against daughter, and wife against husband.

I’m not a huge fan of how Mark chose to deliver this message today. Did he really have to provide so much ammunition for future purveyors of erotized Orientalizing representations of the Herods? Oscar Wilde had a lot to work with. Did he really have to take the oh so obvious narrative tact of blaming political corruption on out of control male lust and the wilds of a bloodthirsty women? Tell me something else. But clearly all was not well, either in Judea or in Galilee during the latter Herodian period, and no amount of political, ideological, or familial intrigue had improved the situation. Both John the Baptist and Jesus were killed, at least in part, because of the extremely difficult political circumstances there. And by the time Mark was writing another of their followers had certainly been caught up and killed by the disastrous rebellion that changed the Judean and Galilean landscape forever. How sad that this little earthly slice of heaven, the chosen land of pomegranates and fig tress and honey, had become and still has often remained a home not of peace and harmony but of conflict and pain. Did the Harrods know what they were bargaining for when they sought to displace the Hasmonean, those heirs of the brothers Maccabees who more or less ruled the area before they did. Did they sometimes regret their palaces, their power, and their influence? I guess we’ll never know, because beyond their building projects and the coins they minted what remains of them are literary depictions that are largely unfriendly. For obvious reasons the gospel writers really had nothing at all nice to say about them. And larger public opinion, Mark suggests, was also openly critical.

Whatever led to the beheading of John the Baptist, the Judean and Galilean public were outraged, as the rumor about John’s possible resurrection suggests. It seems that this rumor was in fact historical and it followed the following logic: since Antipas had unjustly killed a righteous man he would certainly be haunted by the act. He was doomed to face what he had done, when the resurrected John justly returned to accuse him and give him his due. Part of what the theory of the resurrection could do for first century Jews, many of whom believed in it long before Jesus ever entered the scene, is promise that horrific murders would be avenged and that in the end God would not allow the righteous to suffer. John had won in the court of Judean and Galilean opinion. And Antipas would not easily live his decision down.

Our epistle lesson in its own way refers to this promise of resurrection, extending it to include all of Jesus followers and emphasizing not the revenge that resurrection offers, but the many good gifts that accrue to those who are faithful to the hope of its coming.  As was also the case with the Herods, dynastic succession is in view in Ephesians. But in this case the dynasty envisioned is described as a gift of god, rather than as a result of human effort. Writing to a wide circle of Paulean Christians, Ephesians promises that he followers of Jesus can rest secure in a divine heritage given to the whole adopted family. We have been chosen since before the foundation of the world, Ephesians writes, we are wanted children, destined for adoption, though Jesus Christ, and we have attained an inheritance given to us by divine will. Our belonging is made visible with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit which serves as a sign of the coming fulfillment of our family-centered hopes.

The relatives of Herod may have gone through extreme lengths to keep their wealth in the family to secure their rather tenuous position as Roman client-kings. But according to Ephesians, the followers of Jesus have simply received every spiritual blessing from the only ruler who truly matters. One family’s dysfunction led to the death of John the Baptist, another adopted family’s confidence in a purpose granted them a home in the heavenly places while they awaited the redemption to come.

Reading these visions of heaven the last two weeks, I am struck by how often images of family and belonging appear. Defending his apostolic credentials to the Christ followers in Corinth, which is the context of the story of the man who viewed heaven that we read last week, Paul calls himself their parent proclaiming that he would gladly spend all that he has for the Corinthians, wouldn’t any parent do the same? In his letters his regular labels for them include, holy ones, brothers and sisters in Christ, and children of God. And he concludes his second letter with an admonition to agree to live in peace and to greet one another with a kiss, just like any happy family would. Ephesians takes the family metaphor even further; believers are recipients of a divine heritage written in God’s will as it were, and they are a part of God’s household knit together in love. These visions of paradise and disclosures of the heavenly secrets lead both writers to exhort their audiences to find a way to  embody and live out that most elusive of human arrangements, the happy harmonious family.

The problem of course is that happy harmonious families can be less like paradise for their members then Paulean metaphors suggest. As sociologist Cindy Patton points out, the love identified with family feeling can turn out to be, “an insidiously structured form of obligation, rather than an expression of mutual recognition and regard.” One must submit to the point of view of the family and thereby serve the family’s needs, an obligation that can come at a very high cost for some members. Just think about the scenario Mark was imaging for the daughter of Herod or Herodias, whether or not these events happened as he described them. A young preteen aged girl, the Greek word used to describe her suggest that she had not yet hit puberty, dances before her father and as a reward for pleasing him is asked to participate in a plot to execute a troubling critic of her family’s regime and in a particularly horrific way. Her love for her family requires that she debase herself and become a party to murder. Or what about Herodias passed off from brother to brother, well actually from uncle to uncle, so that family wealth can be retained?  What about Herod the Great's sons Herod Antipas and Phillip, the tetrarch who had witnessed the execution of their three elder brothers on the order of their very own father? Or what about the followers of Jesus in Corinth that knew a little family of about a hundred believers already competing over which of their leaders could boost of the best heavenly vision? How long did it to go from new believer in Christ to competitors for God’s and the rest of the adopted family’s affection? And don’t even get me started about David who I’ve managed to avoid the last two weeks. Now obviously these are extreme examples of what families, actual or adopted, can do to one another, and to their children in the name of preserving the family name. But perhaps that is the point. Whatever heaven is like, and whatever paradise looks like, surely those who belong there do not and cannot behave like this. Surely God intends something else for God’s children. Surely there is some other way. Surely, it is possible to intimately love one another without causing one another harm.

When my mom and my aunt Donna were little girls my Grandma Jean would make them matching dresses by hand. On the wall in the little room in the farm house where my son sleeps when we visit there is a picture of the three of them dressed in matching outfits.  My grandmother is so sophisticated with her elaborate necklace, velvet top and perfectly coifed 1950s hair. My aunt Donna and my mother are wearing coordinated velvet jackets and white button-up shirts with peter pan collars. My aunt, the elder of the two girls has her hair combed to look just like her mom. My mom, the little one has her hair parted on the side; all three are smiling the broadest smiles you can imagine. All three are so lovely, so beautiful really, that my heart breaks. Why couldn’t my grandmother honor my mom’s choice to live on a small farm in Maine? Why can’t my mom forgive my grandmother for being, well, so very very, difficult? Why did it take more than thirty years of buried pain and stony silence for my mom and her sister to speak to one another again? Does the loss of an ancestral farm in Iowa have to reverberate forever, if that’s what caused the whole mess? Why couldn’t Grandma Jean have pretended to like blueberry pie?

Blueberry season in Maine is the perfect antidote to apocalyptic visions of doom and destruction; with every purple berry gracefully adorning every improbable blueberry bush, a bush that has somehow eked out its survival on a pile of granite boulders in the middle of a wild pond., a tiny delicious bit of heaven arrives to greet the summer once again. My sons and I paddle out to see the bushes just like we have every year since they were born. We watch the king birds chattering to one another as they flit from branch to branch of the stunted hemlock trees on the Island. Their young have newly fledged. If we are lucky the loon comes back, sometimes with a baby on her back. We spend the morning glad to be alive, glad that we too belong to this wild pond and to one another.

Adopted by the world, secure in the spiritual and material blessings that have marked my own life, I think about the family of which I am a part and the families I have chosen. What sort of heritage am I passing on? To whom do I belong? I suspect that I have made my own mistakes, that I too have served as a reminder that we are not yet in heaven. I am confident that I have. To paraphrase Ephesians, I may be destined for adoption and have forgiveness through Christ and have the grace that God has so graciously extended to me. In the meantime I am human and to be human means to fall and participate both knowingly and unknowingly in the fullness of all our human heritages for good and for ill. Nevertheless I too have a vision of paradise. In my paradise Grandma Jean loves blueberry pie. Her red hair, a color that never faded sparkles in the sun. And she sees my mom and loves her for who she is. In my paradise I would also like to imagine that Herod Antipas, Herodias and Salome are together with John the Baptist dancing even now.  Mark’s battles are no longer mine. In my paradise, having cast off the sin that clings so closely and found myself blameworthy and blameless, both at the same time, I discover that we are all family and I am very very glad.

May all of us know that we really do belong

May we be glad for the blessing of being here.

And may we all find a way to enjoy a delicious blueberry pie.

Amen.

~Rev. Dr. Jennifer Wright Knust

Associate Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins,

Boston University

posted in Guest Preachers on 07.15.2012 at 11:00 am