Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

John 1:1 and Lectionary Passages

Opening

AND God stepped out on space,

And He looked around and said,

“I’m lonely—

I’ll make me a world.”

And far as the eye of God could see

Darkness covered everything,

Blacker than a hundred midnights

Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,

And the light broke,

And the darkness rolled up on one side,

And the light stood shining on the other,

And God said, “That’s good!”

(James Weldon Johnson 1922)

Start Fresh

Well begun is half done. Gut begonnen, hapt gebonnen. Your first day on the job includes rhythms, histories, personalities and systems that will accompany you until retirement. Your first month of marriage includes stories, histories, encounters, and disagreements that will span the lifespan of the life of the marriage. Your first week on campus will expose you to a place, a time, a community and a history which will change you far more than you will change it. Picture the extended family crowded in the evening around the cradle of a newborn.

A true joy of university life is matriculation. In one sense, the world is reborn every September, reborn in spirit and reborn in flesh. It is thunderous to hear 4000 18 year olds and a few scattered, well outnumbered faculty and staff, create the new year with a roar. It echoes all the way from Monday morning through today.

On Monday we applauded the young men and women. Many wore T-shirts. As a liturgical observance, a place that is where the work of the people is seen under the aspect of eternity, my colleague and I read out the statements. Many simply named a club, a town, a team, or a project. Marsh Chapel, read one shirt. But the great wave of announcements continued well beyond group identities. Save the Sudan…So many books, so little time…Big Love…Red Sox (this is a religious affirmation in our region)…Make cupcakes not war…The Grateful Dead (really!)…A heart strangely warmed and a community warmly strange…Devil says: God is busy, may I help you?…My colleague said he was going to market a shirt reading, ‘Stop marketing silly T-Shirts’. I thought those of you present today, and the many listening from afar, might enjoy feeling the pulsing power of thousands of young lives, ready to start fresh. Fresh men and women.

There is a divine energy, a creative energy, pulsing in the start of something. To this energy, the Psalmist sings as he offers a blessing upon meditation, reading, and the reading of Torah, by one who so becomes ‘like a tree planted by streams of water, in all that she does, she prospers’. Start well. It matters.

Our community was blessed by one who himself has been planted by streams of waters, and has prospered. Sir Hans spoke clearly about beginning. Like Zaccheus, he is a diminutive don. I am a scientist—more precisely a microbiologist. You might think, looking at me, that a micro biologist is a small biologist, but it actually means that I do research, using bacteria as test organisms. By doing research I am not only trying to discover new things, but I am publicly proclaiming that I am ignorant. If I knew the answer, I obviously would not need to do research. In other words, your Professors are still students, just as you are—the only difference is that they have been at it rather longer. Let me remind you that there is a world of difference between ‘I don’t know’ and “I don’t know but I am trying to find out”.

It is this creative energy, a divine donation in our midst, which gives us the courage to start fresh. We do not know every place the journey will take us. But we are trying to find our way. You do not need to know the whole story to get started. In your faith journey, you need not finally have concluded just where you want to land your little boat. But begin. In one sense, for the 21^st century, there is simply no better place to start your spiritual journey than in a university setting.

Nor do we need to have a fully finished picture of God, to begin our journey. God is not one of the aspects or features of our world, not an item or a value or a virtue or a plant or a decoration. We are well warned from history not to start with an image of God that is really an idol. God gives the conditions for life, but may not be identifie
d with any solitary aspect of life.

As John Kennedy put it, “All of this will not be finished in the first hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

Start Fresh!

Start Over

Still, every solitary beginning, which we might name in our hearts, is not ever fully solitary nor completely a beginning either. Sometimes to start is more to start over. Immanuel Kant, across the craggy, beautiful and arid expanse of his Critique of Pure Reason, argued that the ultimate role of the reason to understand itself, to apprehend itself, through time and space, and so to guard itself. From what? From misuse, from misunderstanding, from misapplication. He too feared pride, sloth and falsehood, as we do too. So, we might say in parallel fashion, the role of religion is ultimately to watch over itself, to keep itself from harming itself and others. That requires not merely starting, but also starting over. To begin is to begin again.

The greatest of the prophets, Jeremiah, tells us so, in unmistakable terms. His figure is the potter and vessel, his hope is in the capacity in life to start over. More: the potter is the divine design against evil, the pressure in life and history to learn from what is wrong, and so to learn again what is right. Here is a hidden gospel. If you know evil, at least, by inversion, we may learn to know good.

Our student matriculation speaker caught the new beginning spirit, the starting over, the excitement of trying again. I was so moved by his speech that I asked his permission to quote him this morning, as I had done with Sir Hans. Adil Younis, who gave the student address, is with us today. I wanted to stand up and shout! Amen! Not just because Adil mentioned ML King. Not only because he aptly quoted Howard Thurman. Not merely because he mentioned Marsh Chapel. (All very honorable things to have mentioned, mind you.) Friends give you back your real self. Adil gives Marsh Chapel a reminder of who we are supposed to become, in the hands of the divine potter: I challenge you to discover what ideals that have been fostered here at Boston University for generations are most import to you. For me it has always been Boston University’s innovational history and its relationship to the city.

Boston University is in the heart of the city of Boston and in that sense we are in service to the city. When I first came to the Boston University campus what struck me most was Marsh Chapel and how it serves as a non-denominational place of worship. For me, coming from Lebanon where religion is often a cause for conflict that was a really powerful thing and it is something I hope to take back to my community one day. I also like to think that one of the greatest dream in American History may have begun right here on the Charles River Campus, but it certainly did culminate with Martin Luther King Jr. sharing his dream with millions of people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

I challenge you to discover what your dreams are and to begin pursuing them here at Boston University.

I would like to leave you with a quotation. One that you may have heard before, but nonetheless truly embodies the spirit of Boston University. A quotation by Howard Thurman: Do not ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

Start over!

Jump Start

There are some times and places in life where a start requires a jump start.

We learned to drive in the frozen snow of the northern reaches of New York State. To learn early to ‘jump’ the car, with the help of others and cables and a strong source of energy, was a necessity not a luxury.

Sometimes, in the journey of learning to live, there are points that require a sudden jolt, a burst of spirit and energy, a jump start. John Dempster, who started Boston University as a school for Methodist ministers, and who grew up in upstate New York, adroitly brought such sudden starts to new projects. In the heart of Luke’s gospel, today, we hear a similar word. Here Jesus is depicted as jolting his hearers. To start down the road of discipleship some may need to hear the jolting word of separation from first identity, as a prerequisite to second birth, or the birth of a second identity, or becoming a real human being. Bear the cross. Count the cost. Leave kindred and even life. These are stern and sharp words. They jolt. They jump. They inflame. To start some engines, especially in the cooler climates, a jump start may be required. A word of sober caution, a word of mature warning, a word of challenge.

A couple of years ago, my colleague and friend Robert Neville said as much, at a time of another beginning: ‘Our text from Ecclesiastes however says that “better is the end of a thing than its beginning”. Dramatic openings are fine, filled with large choices. But life is lived in the living, not the starting, and we do not know how to assess it until the end…Success…will be measured in large part by the management of prosperity and adversity as dual gifts of God”. Sober caution and a word of mature warning and a word of challenge.

There are perils in sudden starts. But t
here are perils, too, when sudden starts are avoided. A sudden decision is not necessarily a hasty one, prepared as it may have been by earlier experience, sincere prayer, personal courage, and collegial support. Still, the high voltage and energy burst of sudden starts warrants sobriety and caution.

A day of new beginnings is a day of good news. In the faith of Jesus Christ, you are given courage to start. To start fresh, to start over, to jump start. I will not complain if someone hears this as a Trinity of creation, redemption, and inspiration. For there is a blessing in beginnings, enshrined in the Fourth Gospel at its very outset: “In the beginning, was the Word”. The presence, voice, person, relationship, power, love of God were—from the beginning. So we believe…

Coda

We believe in God who has created and is creating

Who has come in the true person, Jesus, to reconcile and to make new, who works in us and others by the Spirit.

We trust God.

God calls us to be the church, the Body of Christ.

To celebrate Christ’s presence.

To love and serve others.

To seek justice and resist evil.

To proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope.

In life, in death, in life beyond death,
God is with us.

We are not alone.
Thanks be to God.

posted in Matriculation, The Courageous Gospel, Uncategorized on 09.9.2007 at 12:00 pm

By Marsh Chapel

John 21: 12

Jesus speaks to us today from the edge of the shoreline. His voice, although we often mistake or mishear or misunderstand it, carries over from shore to sea, from heaven to earth. I know that for the souls gathered here today, that voice—His voice—makes life worth living. Within earshot of His voice there are no merely ordinary nights or days or catches of fish or meals or questions or answers or friendships or loves or losses. Within earshot of His voice there are no merely ordinary moments. When the Master calls from the shoreline, “children…have you…cast the net…bring some fish…have breakfast”, no one who hears will dare ask, “And who are you?” We dare not. For we know. Jesus speaks to us today from the edge of the shoreline.

His disciples stumble through all the magic and grit of a fishing expedition. Many of us still find some magic in fishing, though fewer of us have had to develop the skill, courage and endurance of a real fisherman who depends on the catch for sustenance. Still—we know the thrill of it! And the disappointment. The roll of the boat with each passing wave. The smell of the water and the wind. The feel of the fish, the sounds of cleaning, the sky, a scent of rain: this is our life, too. All night long, dropping the nets, trawling, lifting the nets with a heave. And catching nothing. The magic comes with the connection of time and space—being at the right place at the right time. How every fisherman would like to know the right place and the right time. It’s magic! The tug on the line! The jolt to the pole! The humming of the reel! A catch. And woe to the sandy-haired, freckle faced girl or boy (age 12 or 90) who cannot feel the thrill of being at the right place at the right time!

John Stewart Mill once wrote that understanding the chemistry of a pink sunset did not diminish at all his profound sense of wonder at sunset beauty. In fact, we might add, real understanding heightens true apprehension. In such a spirit, we might note that chapter 21 in John, the breakfast chronicle, is probably not original to the gospel. A later writer (he leaps out in the first person singular in vs. 22) has added this breakfast scene. (Three such additions were also made to Mark, as you know) So, you veteran John readers have reason to scratch your head in chapter 21. The gospel has no use for sacraments. Chapter 21 is a Eucharistic feast. The gospel has no happy place for Peter. Peter stars in Chapter 21. The gospel champions the beloved disciple. The beloved disciple is less beloved and less disciple in Chapter 21. The gospel abounds in a philosophical vocabulary: light, life, spirit, love, knowledge, truth. Chapter 21 counts fish—153. The gospel makes nary an ethical claim upon its reader. Its voice is indicative. Chapter 21 is a command wrapped in a directive shrouded in an order. Its voice is imperative. The gospel ends in 20:31, “these things are written that you may believe”. Chapter 21 is an ending without an ending.

Our inspired writer stands in a long tradition of concern for relationships and fellowship. Jeremiah thrashes his hearers for drinking polluted water, drawn from what does not feed and does not slake, apart from relationship with the living Lord. The psalmist gives a divine voice to a plea for the basis of relationship, a listening ear, a trained capacity to listen, in love. The gospel of Luke again arranges the concerns of the religious life around a common table. Who is excluded? Invite them. Who is humbled? Exalt them. Who is disgraced? Honor them.

John is a meta-gospel. His is a gospel’s gospel, a gospel in which themes like those in Luke are reprised. John is in a way a gospel about the gospel, a concluding gospel in which the nature of the gospel and of written Gospels is addressed.

Yet this chapter 21 has been roughly—crudely?—added to make a wondrous point, to underscore John 3:14, ‘the word became flesh’. Real religion is about relationships, too. Prize them. You will find a beloved pastor, sometime in your life, someone with whom to share an intimate breakfast. At least one of your siblings may become a friend, or an approximation thereof—a breakfast looms. Hardly a student escapes college without befriending or being befriended by a teacher. This happened even way back when before Facebook. Breakfast fodder. Who is to say whether you may fall in love this autumn? Take the boy to breakfast.

Don’t you ever wonder when the preacher goes on about such a topic—relationships, for example—whether she or he ever had any such? You look at the preacher’s Facebook page and he has only three friends, two of whom are relatives, paid to sign up. It makes you wonder.

Well, thirty years ago, some of us were befriended, if from afar. A former chaplain at Williams, become Yale Chapel Dean had then come to preach near our seminary. It is, I note, he who first in my hearing used the sermon title pronounced today, ‘Breakfast with Jesus’. I have not a single memory of the content of sermon, but the title stuck. And I have only a smattering of memories of actual events and deeds in those years. But the friendship, the sense of having been befriended, from a venerable pulpit, by a good preacher, in a true way, the relationship remains. Even post-mortem. At the end of this Eucharistic homily, I shall quote from his book CREDO. What William Sloane Coffin meant to one generation, we can mean to another. But it does not happen without relationships.

Autumn is the start of the New Year, in Judaism and in Academia, and in University congregations and communities like this one. Welcome home choir! This is a day of new beginnings. The promise of resurrection is upon us. Its harbinger is Holy Communion. Resurrection disarms fear. Resurrection ignores defeat. Resurrection displaces and replaces loneliness. Resurrection will not abide the voice that whispers, “There’s nothing extraordinary here. There’s no reason for gaiety, excitement, sobriety or wonder.” Resurrection will not abide the easy and the cheap. Resurrection takes a daybreak catch, a charcoal fire, a dawn mist, fish, bread, and hungry, weary travelers, and reveals the Lord present. Resurrection takes bread and wine and makes an encounter with God.

The failing of this world, whether we see it more clearly in the superstition of religion, the idolatry of politics, or the hypocrisy of social life, has its root in blindness to the extraordinary. But hear—and today taste—the good news! The King of love his table spreads. And the humblest meal –breakfast—the worst meal of the day the worst hour of the day and everyone at there worst--becomes—Breakfast
with Jesus!

Therefore Christian people, as we take this sacrament, as we enjoy the gift of this day, and as we work and fight, play and pray this week, let us resist with joy all that cheapens life, all that dishonors God, all that mistakes our ordinary sin for the extraordinary love, power, mercy and grace of God.

As an old friend, William Sloane Coffin wrote (CREDO, in passim):

In love...

There are those who prefer certainty to truth, those in church who put the purity of dogma ahead of the integrity of love. And what a distortion of the gospel it is to have limited sympathies and unlimited certainties, when the very reverse—to have limited certainties and unlimited sympathies—is not only more tolerant but far more Christian.

In humor...

Clearly, the trick in life is to die young as late as possible.

In confession…

I am a little clearer now on the issue of hypocrisy. Of course we all pass ourselves off as something we are not, but not anything we are not. Generally we try to pass ourselves off as something special in our hearts and minds, something we yearn for, something beyond us. That’s rather touching.

In spirit…

The longest, most arduous trip in the world is often the journey from the head to the heart. Until that round trip is completed, we remain at war with ourselves. And, of course, those at war with themselves are apt to make casualties of others, including friends and loved ones.

Before breakfast…

Relationships—not facts and reason—are the key to reality. By entering those relationships, knowledge of reality is unlocked (P Palmer).

posted in The Courageous Gospel, Uncategorized on 09.2.2007 at 12:00 pm

By Marsh Chapel

Jesus meets today us along a summer road, a road to health. He meets us as the Lord and Savior of our humanity. Human beings, real, true, authentic, he calls us to be, as, in the same way, long ago, his voice did call out to one daughter of Abraham. For Luke, as for us, it is not her healing, finally, that lasts. Words seem weaker than deeds. Yet words outlast deeds. Unless they are perpetually repeated, deeds remain, located in their setting. Words carry. Words last. So Jesus offers us the gift of humanity today, his words to her, which now are his words to us: “you are set free from your ailment”.

The gifts of summer make us human. They recall Irenaeus who wrote that ‘the glory of God is a human being fully alive’. They prepare the way of John Wesley who wanted his poor Methodists to be a ‘people happy in God’ Walk with me. They remind us that we worship God who, as Paul Lehmann used to say, is continually at work in the world to make and keep human life human.

The meaning of summer, sub specie aeternitas, and particularly in a climate, like yours, long in darkness and deep in cold, the meaning, that is, of the four score summers God gives you, at the largest extent of God’s favor, is itself a matter for prayer. Let us pray together today for a few minutes by taking a homiletical walk, down a dusty summer road. In the mind’s eye, and with the sun upon our backs, let us meander a moment, and see what we can see.

Picture an Ant…

Start small. There in front of your left moccasin moves a lonely red ant, the lowliest of creatures, yet, like a Connecticut Yankee, bursting with the two revolutionary virtues, industry and frugality. Benjamin Franklin wrote, admiring such frugality and industry, and dubious of much dogmatic preaching, “none preaches better than the ant, and he says nothing.” A good reminder.

Ghandi said that ‘to the starving, God must appear as food’. Today we might add ‘to the threatened, God must appear as security. When our freshman come, and decorate their rooms in Warren Towers, we might murmur, ‘to the lost and lonely God must appear as companion’.

While we step around the ant, the little insect recalls others: grasshoppers, flies, locusts. Small creatures. Our world leaders summer in August, often near their places of growth. They must love the virtue of the simple people they have known there. They must like the simple rhythm of town life. Perhaps they enjoy the simple summer gatherings—reunions, little league, band concerts, parades. Surely they tire of the necessary urban emphasis on urbanity, the inevitable public relations concern for appearance and apparel. They return to place from which they can see life, not from the top down, but instead from the bottom up, from the vantage point of one ‘daughter of Abraham’. We may pray that there is a summer pause in which we all may focus on the little. The ant. A pause in which we may fully consider the human consequences of what we choose and do, the effect on actual individual lives. Consider the human consequences. This is near the marrow of Luke 13. Jesus steps past the relics of a form of religion to seize one human life, to heal one daughter of Abraham.

Maybe that is the meaning of summer, to pause and appreciate simple, good people, one daughter of Abraham at a time, ‘folks with good hearts’.

Imagine a Berry…

We can stop up the path just a bit. Raspberries,

blackberries, all kinds of wild fruit are plentiful. Jesus taught us to ask, simply, for bread and a name. “Bless the Lord O My Soul”. We daily need food and forgiveness. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we forgive all who are indebted to us. What bread does for the body, pardon does for the soul. One of the gifts of summer is the time and leisure to remember this. They church finds its prayerful voice in the summer, for this reason, this recognition of our ultimate needs.

Our neighbor has baked some of these wild berries into morning muffins. We stop to savor them, with butter and coffee. We listen to one another along the path. So we are nourished, by one another, and made ready for the next steps in the journey.

Perhaps this is the gift of summer, its meaning, to pause and make space for real worship, for that which can feed our hungers, and set us free for the next adventure.

Envision a Fence…

Up ahead there is an old fence. For a river to be a river, it needs riverbanks high enough to contain the flowing water. For a lake to hold its integrity it needs a shoreline that stands and lasts. For a field to retain any semblance of usefulness, it needs fences to mark its beginnings and endings. For an individual to have any identity one needs the limits of positive improvement, as Jesus taught about perseverance, and of protective caution, as Jesus taught about times of trial. For a life to have meaning and coherence, it needs those riverbanks, shorelines, fences, and limits that give life shape and substance. The book of the prophet Jeremiah begins with the divine voice in shaping mode. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…” (Jeremiah)

We can spend some summer time mending fences. It is hard work, but utterly crucial. Keep your friendships in good repair, and mend the fences where they need it. Think, heal, write, love.

The other day I came by this same old fence. I was walking with my dad, as it happened. (He now sends an e-note every Sunday morning). We had some coffee and a muffin. Then we started off together, down the old road, he to walk with a gnarled walking stick, and I to jog after my own eccentric fashion. But for a mile up to the same fence, to the place where the road parts, we walked together. We shuffled and talked a little, remembering the name of a former neighbor, spotting a new garden planted, making a plan or two for later on. We remembered an old fri
end, an old style doctor, long dead. He remembered that Dr our friend to visit him the day his mother died. I remembered the gentelman swimming the length of the lake and, while he did so, barking various orders at the universe and some of this patients along the shoreline, riverbank, fence—along the virtuous limits that make a life. We came to fork, one taking the high road and one the low, and with that an embrace and a word and a glance and we were alone again.

You need not have read all of Tao Te Ching to know the truth of Laot Tse’s remark, “the reality of a vessel is the shape of the void within”. Here is a gift for the end of your summer. Set limits and keep them, mend our fences and protect them, honor one another. How? In faith and love.

Behold a Cloud…

This is a clear day, in our reverie. (It is our sermonic hike. We make of the day what we choose. How are we ever to proclaim of grace and freedom unless we live lives that exude grace and freedom?) Even so, there are a few dancing clouds, white and bright. We try to make sense of the summer, and to make space for the summer, and to honor this season, one that brings together meteorological splendor and theological insight.

There is a dimension of possibility alive in the summer that is hard to approximate in the rest of the year. We alter our summer forms of worship, not at all to suggest that worship is less central now, for in some ways summer ought to be the most worshipful of the seasons, but rather to accommodate our life to the necessary rhythms of life around us.

It is astounding to hear again, earlier, just before our reading in the Gospel Luke, that seeking, knocking and asking themselves bring discovery, opening and reception. But they do. Summer is the season and worship is the focus of all such wonder and possibility.

A gift of summer. Maybe this is the meaning of summer, to pause and allow a fuller consideration of all the possibilities around us.

Sense a Breeze…

A summer wind accompanies us as we walk farther down the dirt road. A fawn—or was it a fox?—darts into the brush. The smell apples, already ripening, greets us at the turn. More sun, bigger and higher and hotter, makes us sweat.

Most families have a family secret or two, that one subject that dominates every present moment by it the sheer weight of its hidden silence, that one taboo topic that somehow screams through its apparent muteness. Daddy’s drinking. Junior’s juvenile record. Grampa’s prison term. The so-called elephant in the room. True of nations, too, and businesses, and projects and even churches. You find it, finally, by listening quietly and asking gently about what is feared.

The human family has this same kind of family secret. It is something we avoid discussing, if at all possible, something that makes us fearful, something that dominates us through our code of silence. It is our mortality. I made a summer list of the most utterly personal things about each one of you. Your fingerprint. Your voice. Your gaite. Your manner of aging. What would you add to that foursome? Our coming death is the one thing that most makes us who we are, mortal, mortals, creatures, sheep in Another’s pasture, not perfect because not perfectible, the image of God but not God, “fear in a handful of dust”. Yet we are so busy with so many other things that this elemental feature of existence we avoid.

In the face of death, we turn heavily upon our faith. It is the steady and warming wind, the breeze of the Holy Spirit, which keeps us and strengthens us all along the road. Here is the argument Luke has made just before Jesus gazes upon the daughter of Abraham. If your children ask you for something, do you not provide it? And you are evil! (Not to put too fine a point on it!) Imagine, then, how much more God will provide for the children beloved of the all powerful, holy God.

Does your brow furrow when a reading from Hebrews is announced? Lord, if it be Hebrews, let it be the cascading litany of Hebrews 11: cloud of witnesses, by faith Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses…Lord, if it be Hebrews, let it be the clear ten point ethical sermon of Hebrews 13: love, love strangers, love prisoners, honor marriage, be good stewards, remember your leaders, avoid strange teaching, praise God ceaselessly, obey your leaders, pray for the church. Yet, by grace today we hear Hebrews 12. Fire. Trumpet. Darkness. Trembling with fear. A consuming fire, but all showered with a mystery, and showered with a promise. “We are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Let us give thanks”.

Maybe this is the meaning of summer, to number our days that we get hearts of wisdom, to measure the mystery about us and give over our imaginations to a consideration of our limits, to learn to pray.

Utter a prayer…

Think for a moment about prayer.

Prayer is a kind of shadow boxing, the struggle of the soul for one’s own life, over against all the forces outside arranged against us.

As Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote in Gift from the Sea, “Every person, especially every woman, should be alone sometime during the year, some part of each week, and of each day.”

Prayer is the possibility of an inner life, of communion with God—whether in the graveyard, the library, the symphony hall, the art gallery, the study, the beach. Or, in church.

A sanctuary is a place to be quiet, in order to reconstitute our real life: “the very best prayers are but vain repetitions, if they are not the language of the heart.” (J Wesley)

The soul, personal or collective, is boxing with its shadow in prayer….

Before the firelight of a hard decision, as your soul sees its shadow lengthen into something like fear

Before the blue haze of the television glass, as your soul sees its shadow lengthen into something like listlessness—acedia

Before the searching, seering floodlight of clear and painful memory, as your soul sees its shadow lengthen into something like hatred

Prayer is one great battle, your soul locked shadow boxing in combat with what maims and harms life.

Prayer tunes out many of the frequencies of this world. Prayer is deaf as a post, stone deaf to the telephone the radio the world around.

One older, beloved hospital patient, who had only one working ear, found peace and healing at a nearby medical facility by lying with his good ear straight down, planted firmly in bedding, muffled in the starchy pillows. He turned a deaf ear to the orderlies and nurses and heavy constant dehumanizing noise. Prayer is like Beethoven at the end, deaf. So in prayer, if you will steal away, you will hear another music.

The song of the soul

The chance for an inner life

The language of the heart

Ears to hear THE REAL YOU

Remember Job, as sentence which provokes an end to any sermon, “Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth, therefor let your words be few.”

Your Gifts of Summer…

May the Good and Gracious God make of all of us prayerful people. May the Good and Gracious God make of us all simple people. May God make true our virtues of the heart, nourishing and nourished in pardon. May God’s grace discipline us with fences of peace, inspire us with gracious clouds billowing and high, and support us all the day long by a summer wind, a spirited faith in the face of death, and an honest attempt at prayer.

posted in The Courageous Gospel, Uncategorized on 08.26.2007 at 12:00 pm