Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

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Luke 6: 17-26

Romans 12:1-13

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Might we hear a call, an invitation, to faith this morning?  Following the sense of the numinous, the moments, moments of transcendence throughout this Epiphany, a season of light and revelation, might there follow, for one or another, a straightforward invitation to faith, spoken and heard and heeded?

For we are nigh on to two years of COVID: two years of days with limitations and with fears laced into the very simplest of moments—a trip to the store, a decision to meet a friend, a first meal outside or inside, a worried report of a colleague ill.  And other strains have come alongside as well:  planet, pandemic, politics, prejudice, pocketbook.  Our planet will need our attention, our care, well into the future.  The pandemic may become endemic but will not by a moment disappear.  Our raging political discourse, downstream from the losses in culture just when we needed them over these 24 months—gathering, symphony, travel, family, tertulia, worship and assembly and prayer together—will require attentive, disciplined, curative investment of time and mind, not just a quick vote on a November morning.  Our lasting measures of racial prejudice, much on our minds especially this month, continue and cost.  And speaking of cost, gasoline is up 40%.  With all this about us, we may be ready for, and ready to hear in full this Lord’s Day, a robust call to faith, an invitation to faith.  Ours may be a profoundly preachable moment.

Here we may rely on our Epistle, speaking of such moments.  St. Paul leaves speculative, less practical theology and jarringly tells us how to live, in Romans 12.  He outlines a call to faith.  He describes what a life of faith might look like, for you, and for me.

You might not expect such from the author of the rest of the Epistle to the Romans, the one who traced our condition (our sin) from creation through conscience in Romans 1 and 2. Impractical theology there, though most treasured and precious.  You would not expect such from the Apostle who poured out the great watershed (our salvation) from Christ to Cross in Romans 3-5.  Impractical theology there, though pearls great in price, field hidden.  Nor would you expect the 13 lightning bolts of 12: 9 and following from the elliptical, emotional, tent-making, bachelor, spit-fire—what a friend we have in Paul!—who unveiled Spirit, Holy Spirit, in freedom and grace, in Romans 6-8,  who wept and conjured and pleaded about his own extended religious family in Romans 9-11.  Impractical theology, there and there, though the high-water mark of all his writing, a Spirit interceding for weakness, speaking of love and need.  Imagine our shock.  Not sin, not salvation, not Spirit, not synagogue come Romans 12: 9.  Rather, some utterly practical, pastoral, applicable theology.  Say, an Epiphany call to faith, especially for those who may be just a bit ragged, just now.

Romans 12: 9ff, the ‘Pauline 13’ may be your best threshold, liminal line, front door response to the question, ‘Can you help me get going on this?  What does it mean to hear a call to faith?  I mean I would like to think about faith, and the gift of faith, and growth in faith. But how am I to do so?’  We ask:  what does it mean to hear a call to faith?  And the Holy Scripture, in the voice of the Apostle to the Gentiles, responds.

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?  It means to let love be genuine.  All these verses, note well, are plural imperatives, communal commands.   The command in Genesis ‘be fruitful, multiply, fill the whole earth’ is not an individual demand.  Your family doesn’t need to do so alone, though Samuel and Susanna Wesley certainly did their best.  It is communal.  You all.  All you all.  In fact, given our ‘limitations’ (being kind here), there is no way for us individually to accomplish such commands.  Not all love is genuine.  Not all is from the heart, nor true, nor durable, nor real.  But it is our call, together, to be lovers in a post-agape world, and to make that love genuine.

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?  It means to hate what is evil.  Notice the firmness in Paul’s flexibility, the vagueness in his certainty.  In sin, salvation, Spirit, and synagogue he has now confidence that—for our own time, we shall know the place of hatred and the outline of evil.  Implied here:  new occasions teach new duties, as James Russell Lowell wrote, and this month in repetition we note.  Not all of life is good and clean.  Some is, some is not.  We are free, nay called, to hate evil.  You overhear Amos: ‘I hate I despise your feasts’ (5:23). When someone says or does something you hate, something that is wrong, hurtful, damaging, and lasting, not something mild or minor but something real and permanent, then the door closes on that event or act or word, and you are left with disappointment and anger, disappointment that does not dissipate and anger that does not abate.  It is a permanent wound, a lasting, permanent scar, perhaps by grace forgivable and forgiven over long time and disciplined prayer, but not forgettable or forgotten.  It is as if that deed or word or word\deed or deed\word is now locked behind a great oak door, an oak door with heavy iron hinges and a great lock, locked without a key.  You may howl at the door.  Please do.  You may pound on the door until your fingers bleed.  Have at it.  You may knock your nose and forehead against the door until you bleed with profusion.  Go ahead.  It will do you nothing of good.  It is done.  It is said.  It is awful and it is irremediable.  It has only one true first cousin in life and that cousin is death.  Here, just here, right here, is where you need faith.

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?  It means to hold fast to what is good.  Hold fast to what is good! Notice again the firmness in Paul’s flexibility, the vagueness in his certainty.   Of one odd Scriptural admonition, Krister Stendahl said, ‘I believe it is the Word of God, but not the Word of God…for me.’  Time makes ancient good uncouth—again, Lowell.

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?  It means to love one another with mutual affection, brotherly affection, a bond that is fraternal, sororial, militant if not military, visceral and reciprocal.  Real affection is mutual.  Affection wherein one party has all the say and the other does all the work is not affectionate.  It is affectionless, affected, not effective.

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?  It means to outdo one another in showing honor.  Creative generosity, happy hospitality, courage in counting others better, here is our way.  Forebear one another in love.  Light, salt, sheep:  people need to see you giving honor, taste the spice of your commendation and expect willingness to honor to be shorn, clean cut, readily recognizable—not just an afterthought.

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?  It means not to lag in zeal, to be ardent in spirit, and to serve the Lord.  These three dicta largely place before you the directive to get out of bed, into some comfortable clothes, into a prayerfully cleansed mindset, and seated by the radio dial, come Sunday, or to get yourself out of bed, into some clean clothes, over to Marsh Chapel, and be seated in a pew, come Sunday.  A walk in the country or on the beach is good.   Yet the public worship of Almighty God is not a matter of indifference.  Hear a call to faith, and come to worship!  Your sister, here, needs the encouraging support of your zealous presence.  Your brother, here, needs the example of your ardent spirit.  God’s service is perfect freedom, and this worship service is just one hour.  We can become so lackadaisical about worship:  and I am not only speaking of us academics (J).  In a lifetime, you have 4,000 Sundays, 1,000 haircuts, 60 income tax returns.  And 525,600 minutes a year.  Zeal, spirit, service, Sunday:  prize your time now you have it!

Howard Thurman was and still is not only the past Dean of Marsh Chapel, but the Dean of Black preaching, teaching and devotion, 100 years ahead of his time 50 years ago.  My friend Phil Amerson remembers Thurman’s words:  “I say that creeds, dogmas, and theologies are inventions of the mind. It is the nature of the mind to make sense out of experience, to reduce the conglomerates of experience to units of comprehension which we call principles, or ideologies, or concepts. Religious experience is dynamic, fluid, effervescent, yeasty. But the mind can’t handle these, so it has to imprison religious experience in some way, get it bottled up. Then, when the experience quiets down, the mind draws a bead on it and extracts concepts, notions, dogmas, so that religious experience can make sense to the mind. Meanwhile, religious experience goes on experiencing, so that by the time I get my dogma stated so that I can think about it, the religious experience becomes an object of thought. (From “An Interview with Howard Thurman and Ronald Eyre, Theology Today, Volume 38, Issue 2 (July 1981)). ”)” Deeper and Wider: Beyond the Two Revivals, Philip Amerson, February 2022 p. 8

To hear a call to faith, and to heed, is to ride the waves, in community, of shared hope and pain and prayer.  Hope carries us beyond pain through prayer.  Pain drives us hard back onto hope in prayer.  Prayer brings us up, out, forward, and through whether in hope or in pain.  When we have hope, we celebrate, as a community.  When we have pain, we endure, as a community.  Be constant, steady, regular, punctual, reliable, disciplined, in prayer.  This is an old saw, but a true one.  A man on Fifth Avenue is asked, How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  The right response:  Practice, practice, practice. And that requires community, a common ground, social holiness as well as personal, and habits:  a prayer a day, a worship service a week, Holy Communion once a month.

(Again Phil Amerson reminds me): “Speaking of the suggestion that individual mysticism was the highest good, John Wesley wrote (in contradiction): Solitary religion is not to be found there. “Holy Solitaries” is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than Holy Adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness. Faith working by love, is the length and breadth and depth and height of Christian perfection. “(John Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739), Preface, page viii.)” (“A Call for Social Holiness | The United Church of Canada”)” Deeper and Wider: Beyond the Two Revivals Philip Amerson, February 2022 p. 8

And sometimes for those trying to live out that social holiness there is high cost.  I keep a quotation from former Republican Senator Jeff Flake in my desk, from almost five years ago, November 2017:  ‘I will no longer be complicit or silent in the face of the president’s reckless, outrageous, undignified behavior…I deplore the casual undermining of our democratic ideals, the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedom and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency…We must stop pretending that the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal.  They are not normal.  Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified.  And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else.  It is dangerous to a democracy…It is often said that children are watching.  Well, they are.  And what are we going to do about that?  When the next generation asks us, why didn’t you do something?  Why didn’t you speak up?  What are we going to say?…There are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles.  Now is such a time.’ (NYT, 10/24/17).  That is, better to lose your job than your soul.

What does it mean to hear a call to faith? The Apostle reserves the two toughest communal challenges for last, one about money and one about time.  Time and money, money and time.  On money:  Rightly, you will take one tithing Christian for every 10 of the born-again variety.  Rightly, you will take one tithing Christian who remembers the ministry of the church in her will for every stadium full of political praying Christians.  You want to see less hat and more cattle.  A Christian vision along our southern border, and we do need borders, say, will include a recollection of the Monroe Doctrine teaching us to care especially for our hemispheric neighbors, a recollection of the Marshall Plan, and what can be done to the benefit of all to reconstitute fragmented nations and communities, a recollection of the love poem of Emma Lazarus at our front door. Contribute to the needs, not the irresponsibility but the needs, of the holy community, near and far.  On time:  Hospitality is to time what generosity is to money.  Hospitality is how you spend your time (such an odd but choice phrase in American English).  Hospitality:  the making of the bed of friendship, the cooking of the meal of companionship, the pouring of the bath of empathy, the cleaning of the linens of suffering, the embrace of the journey through life:  welcome home, how was the trip?,  let’s see your photographs.   Hospitality is to time what generosity is to money.    Practice. Practice!  You will get better at both with time. I would put money on it.  Practice. Practice!  You will get better at both with time. I would put money on it (J).

Here is your Epiphany call to faith, offered with a Methodist handshake.  If this were a Wesleyan revival, we would line this out like a hymn for us to sing.  If this were a Pentecostal church we would call you to response in call and response.  If this were Fenway Park, we would start the wave or sing Sweet Caroline.  But this is Marsh Chapel, so we will just ask you, encouraging your memory, to remember together, entering 2022:  Romans 12: 9-13.

Let love be genuine

Hate what is evil

Hold fast to what is good

Love one another with mutual affection

Outdo one another in showing honor

Never lag in zeal

Be ardent in spirit

Serve the Lord

Rejoice in your hope

Be patient in tribulation

Be constant in prayer

Contribute to the needs of the saints

Practice hospitality

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 02.13.2022 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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Luke 5: 1-11

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Our meditation upon Holy Communion this Lord’s Day centers on the Holy.

A place can inspire the idea of the Holy….

This place
Come Sunday, every Sunday, here at Marsh Chapel:
The Chapel’s gothic nave, built to lift the spirit, welcomes you
The Chapel’s sixty year history, at the heart of Boston University, welcomes you
The Chapel’s regard for persons and personality, both in its Connick stained glass windows and in its current ministry, welcomes you
The Chapel’s familiar love of music, weekday and Sunday, welcomes you
The Chapel’s congregation of caring, loving souls, in this sanctuary, welcomes you in spirit.
So, dear friends, then travel with a little imagination…Imagine Eucharist at Marsh Chapel. Stand to sing… Pause to reflect… Step out into the aisle… Look at and look past Abraham Lincoln and Francis Willard…Receive cup and bread, bread and cup… Kneel at the altar to pray… Stand in communion with the communion of saints…Here is the bread and cup of friendship…Imagine, a congregation reciting together a creed, a psalm, a hymn, a poem. Imagine, if you are willing, a congregation currently in diaspora, but just now, by the word spoken and heard, a gathered and thus addressable community, you and I and all together, able to respond to Easter.

A song can inspire the idea of the Holy…

Together we can sing. Those in the balcony, our regular closer to heaven balcony crew, can sing.

Those along the back wall, in the last pew, the AMEN corner, can sing.

Those from the east, who regularly sit to the east, who lean left, and those from the west, who regularly sit to the west, who lean right, can sing.

Those in the chancel whom we do not want to cancel, can sing, choir or clergy or other or all.

Those at home, following the bulletin, humming the tunes, imagining a day when they will again be among us in the nave, can sing.

They shall sing of the ways of the Lord

Even in grim reminder of grim remainder of abiding injustice, prejudice, racism, embedded in systems, as the shooting and death of Amin Locke in Minneapolis reminds us. At least we are present, alive, together come Sunday and can recall and remind and name in the moment, not waiting for the taping of the sermon a week later.

Grim reminders. The possible need for shunning in days ahead, of those who would overturn elections, of those who would incite insurrection. We have a hard time seeing, and admitting, just how grim things can become.

A promise can inspire the idea of the Holy…

So Paul teaches us in 1 Corinthians

We are led in faith to the open, and ever new frontiers of what is true, honorable, just, lovely, excellent, of good report. New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth, one must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth. Those who live to the utmost for God’s highest praise are capable of being fearless before change, before newness, before adventure, before truth. This, to my mind, is the lasting meaning of a willingness to try new things. New music, new forms of transport, new technologies (well, at least a few of them), new places, new jobs, new homes, new ways. Truth is itinerant. And such a willingness is a virtue, like all virtues, formed by habit. To quote the Dean of Marsh Chapel, the public worship of Almighty God is not a matter of indifference. Aristotle, Aquinas and Wesley all emphasized: virtues are formed by habit, daily ritual, weekly routine, virtues are formed by habit, as the spirit is nourished by reading a Psalm a day. The past precedes but does not prescribe the future. Biology precedes but does not prescribe destiny. Family of origin precedes but does not prescribe identity. Home, hearth, culture, cult, church, school, town—they precede but they do not prescribe vocation. May we hear this as a word of faith? The past does not determine the future. There is always the open possibility of healing for past hurt. There is always the open possibility of forgiveness for past wrong. There is always the open possibility of liberation from past entrapment. This is what we mean by Christ. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away and the new has come.” In the lasting and large, this is truly what we mean by resurrection. The resurrection of Christ is the new truth of faith made eternal and everlasting across the threshold of death. The resurrection is the power of love transcending the sting of death. Love outlasts death. One day I passed by a boy climbing into a school bus. I saw his parents’ wave. I remember that the bus door closed, a closure to the past and a way to the future. It takes faith to climb on and it takes more faith to wave goodbye, across all our separations and thresholds, all our liminal moments, especially at the River Jordan. I saw the bus driver put her strong hand on the boy’s shoulder. Pause for a moment and sense a Hand on your shoulder too.

A surprise can inspire the idea of the Holy…

So our gospel, of unexpected catch, used by analogy to recall our call to share, call to care, call to offer others love that we have known

Holy, Holy Holy: Presence, Thanksgiving, Remembrance

Frost Star

Psalm 121

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 02.6.2022 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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Luke 4: 21-30

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Consider us with Your love, enclose us within Your mercy!

So, in word and song, we bow before God this morning.

In word, this year, the word as given through the Gospel According to St. Luke.

What meets us in St. Luke this year?

Luke was written nearly a generation later than Mark, by most estimates, Mark in or near 70, Luke in or near 90 of the common era.  Traditionally ascribed to Luke the physician, its author and that of its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, is finally unknown to us.  We know him only through the writing itself.

What do we find?  Or what shall we find in prayerful conversation with Luke across the next year, and beginning today amid Cantata and Liturgy?

Luke is made up of a mixture of ingredients.  First, Luke uses most of Mark. An example is our passage today, the depiction of Jesus rejection by his own home town.  Like Matthew, Luke knew and repeated most of the earlier gospel of Mark. But he made changes along the way, or construed the gospel according to his own desires and emphases.  This is hopeful for us, in that it is an encouragement for us to take the gospel in hand, and interpret it according to our time, location, understanding, and need. Second, Luke uses a collection of teachings, called Q, as does Matthew.  An example is our Lord’s Prayer.  Luke’s version is slightly different from that in Matthew, as is his version of the beatitudes and other teachings, found in the ‘sermon on the plain’, rather than the ‘sermon on the mount’.  Third, Luke makes ample use of material that is all his own, not found in Mark or elsewhere. The long chapters from Luke 8 or so through Luke 18 or so, are all his. Examples include some of your favorite parables, like the Good Samaritan, and like the lost sheep, and like the Prodigal Son, and like the Dishonest Steward.  We have Luke to thank for the remembrance of these great stories. Luke brings us a unique mixture of materials, and makes his own particular use of them.

But regarding Word, what does Luke say, and how does he say it?

This will take us the year and more to unravel.  We shall do so, one step at a time, one Sunday at a time, one parable, teaching, exhortation, miracle, or, as today, one narrative at a time.  Still, there are some outstanding features of the Lukan horizon, which we may simply name as we set forth, a sort of map for the journey ahead. First, Luke displays a commitment to and interest in history, and orderly history at that.  Both Luke and Acts are cast in a distinctive historical mode. In fact, Luke has his own schemata for sacred history, in three parts: Israel, Jesus, Church: the time of Israel, concluding with John the Baptist; the time of Jesus, concluding with the Ascension; the time of the church, concluding with the parousia, the coming of the Lord on the clouds of heaven, at the end of time.  Second, Luke employs and deploys his own theology, or theological perspective, including this emphasis upon history and the divine purpose in history.   Third, Luke highlights the humanity and compassion of Jesus in a remarkable way. The Christ of St. Luke is the Christ of magnificent compassion, embodied in the humility of a birth among shepherds.  The Lukan Christ bring this word:  a passion for compassion. The poor, women, the stranger, the injured, those in dire need all stand out in Luke, as the recipients and subjects of Jesus’ love, mercy, grace and compassion. Fourth, Luke carries an abiding interest in the church.  Ephesians says that ‘through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principles and powers’. That catches the spirit of the author or the third gospel and of the Acts to follow.

Hold most closely the compassion in Luke.  At every turn, there is a return to the least, the last, the lost; those at the dawn of life, those at the twilight of life, those in the shadows of life.  Those who decry preaching that engages life, culture, politics, economy and the cry of need about us have not read Luke, not even a bit.

Notice, record, the way Luke puts it, beginning, middle and end:   He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree, he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away…The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor…Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God…What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?…Sell your possessions and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old…When you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind…You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just…Said Zacchaeus, ‘behold Lord the half of my goods I give to the poor’…They contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty…

Dr Jarrett, what grace, and sung beauty does our Cantata bring us today, alongside the compassion of St. Luke?

Dr. Jarrett's response text is unavailable at this time.

 Dean Hill:

What shall bring to application of Scripture and Cantata?

First, forbearance.  “Let your forbearance be known by all men.”  Forbearance is a patient power to bear with others and their needs.  To help others get things right.  To guide by presence and voice.  Forbearance is a kind of prevenient forgiveness, a gift ahead of time.  We look for and lean on people who bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ, like mothers bear children and fathers bear with children.  Institutions depend upon forbearance, and discern their leadership there.  It is this grace to bear with that helps us in tight places, helps us through tense meetings, helps us manage tough interviews.  It takes faith to show forbearance, and it takes something else, too.  It takes a peace, like a river, down deep in the soul, a freedom from anxiety.  “Have no anxiety about anything, but in all things through prayer and supplication with thanksgiving bring your entreaties to God”.  It makes me anxious to read the sentence, because I can scarcely live it, in full, for a whole day.  Yet as we grow in faith we find, over time, the peace to be forbearing, to be present but not anxious.  We affirm forbearance in Cantata and in Scripture.

Second, joy.  Our passage is best known, perhaps, for its triumphant affirmation of faithful joy.  “Rejoice in the Lord, always, again I say, Rejoice!”  It is startling for us to hear this sincere word, written in prison.  It is one thing to be joyful in the summer, another in the winter.  One thing in the meadow, another behind bars.  Joy is more than happiness.  Joy is bone happiness, or happiness put to music.  Sometimes it is expressed in humor.  One winter in our church there was a high moment, when our youth performed Godspell.  It makes us older people very happy to see a stage full of handsome, talented 17 year olds.  Since his grandson played Jesus, and very well, I said to the three generations:  “Son and Father I understand in the Trinity, along with Spirit, so Daniel and Al, my theology can comprehend you two, but Albert I have no way to comprehend the role of the Grandfather of Jesus”.   Joy also a playful musing (musing is a crucial spiritual term), and he carried the thought along.    We affirm faithful joy in Scripture and Cantata.

Consider us with Your love, enclose us within Your mercy!

So, in word and song, we bow before God this morning.

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

-Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music

posted in Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, The Bach Experience, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 01.30.2022 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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Luke 4: 14-21

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Hear the gospel.  Our gift and task as people of faith is to live out the resurrection in this hour of insurrection.  Resurrection amid insurrection.

Resurrection

Our gospel this year is that of St. Luke, about more which other Sundays. Today Jesus meets us, for once, in the pulpit. He has chosen his text from Isaiah. He has read and spoken.

Jesus reads and interprets, in the stylized memory of Luke 4. He meets us in the garb of interpretation. Interpretation is a very delicate art. Communication is a delicate art. Interpretation is communication squared.

A vote tally is communication. Interpretation begins when the question is raised about what the tally meant. The announcement of the new evening programming is communication. Interpretation begins when the question is raised about what the change says, portends, about, say, generational communication. The body count is communication. Interpretation begins when the question is raised about what we are to make of horrendous loss.

Jesus reads from the beauty of later Isaiah. Then he interprets the meaning, meaning, now, the reading is fulfilled.

No other gospel records this reading from Isaiah, nor the remarkable interpretation which follows.. Mark does not record it in his writing from 70ce, nor Matthew from 85ce, nor John from 90ce. Only Luke includes Isaiah 61, only Luke has Jesus in the synagogue pulpit, only Luke devises the account of the scroll and its attendant, only Luke announces fulfillment in a dramatic conclusion. That is communication. Interpretation begins when we ask, ‘why’?

By so doing, Luke announces Jesus as bearer of the word, a resurrection word. There is a word, a passage and its meaning.

Luke has expanded and redesigned an account of Jesus’ hometown preaching, also recorded in Matthew 13 and Mark 6. You will find those two passages largely unlike what we heard a moment ago. Luke places Jesus, as apocalyptic preacher, announcing the advent of the kingdom, right in the beginning of the gospel. Moreover, this preachment is about the jubilee year, a prophetic hope that once in a lifetime, once every fifty years, all debts would be forgiven, all indentured servants freed, and all land returned to its ancient owners. ‘Once in a lifetime the entire economy would be given a fresh start’ (Ringe, 69). We have no historical evidence that the Jubilee ever occurred, but we have Isaiah 61 to show the presence of such an imaginative hope.

Edward Schillebeex, a Roman Catholic Vatican II theologian from Holland, died about ten years ago. His ninety years were spent in interpretation. He was criticized for focusing the meaning of resurrection on what it means in people’s lives. He came from that school of thought that emphasized the preaching of the gospel as the experience of resurrection. Hearing in faith of the resurrection, and believing in obedient living, is the resurrection of the faith of Christ. Well, he and his form of Roman Catholic theological interpretation, are no longer the norm, in our sister church, if they ever were. But his insight lives on, raised, if you will, from the dead.

‘Truth happens’, as William James taught. Truth is spoken and heard. When in the course of human events, when in the ordinary run of one’s few earthly days, one hears and heeds a renewing truth, a good word, there is resurrection. Such a moment is not less than Easter morning, and is not a substitute for Easter morning, and is not apart from Easter morning. It is saving truth, grounded and rooted in the cross of Christ, heard and lived.  May we discover faith in God and faith in ourselves

A religious community that will honor, as Jesus is remembered here to have honored, the word, will live.

A traveling elder, in the tradition of our second hymn, is sent to preach. She is sent to preach the gospel of the resurrection. Renewal by word. We have many pulpits and an older pattern, which we may want to dust off, of sending the traveling preachers pulpit to pulpit. By the fourth time you preach a sermon, it can be pretty good. We are better off with one good sermon preached four times, than with four not so good, once each. Traditional liturgy is renewal in thought. Traveling elders are renewal in word.

Would that all God’s people were preachers and prophets! Or, as we did sing, ‘O for a thousand tongues…’

Word brings renewal to culture, religion, denomination, ministry and life.  Word brings resurrection.  That, there, here, now is good news, a resurrection word, resurrection amid insurrection.

Insurrection

But there are particular weeks and months when we most need to hear and re-hear the gospel. There are some weeks and months when good news seems hard to come by.  November 1963.  August 1968.  December 1988. September 2001.  April 2013.  November 2016.  January 2021. Yet these serial reminders of dark days, weeks and months past are meant, as you rightly surmise, to recall that we did make it through them, and we will get through this, too.  We did make it through them, and we will get through this, too. Not unscathed, and hopefully not unchanged, but together, we will make it through.  Some weeks, like that of January 6, one year ago.

At some preconscious level, somewhere down in the declivities of the country’s psyche, we had a sense that this was coming.  We did not want to admit it.  We hoped against hope to be wrong in that premonition.  We hoped to whistle past the graveyard for another few days.  Yet we remembered, dimly, our upbringing, ‘don’t play with fire if you don’t want to get burned’.

I pray for my own people, my own congregation, our University, our listenership, you and your loved ones, near or far or very far away.  It must be admitted, that there are some weeks when good news seems pretty hard to come by.  This is one.  A week in a month that includes the affrontery, the remembered predatory mendacity of a year and fortnight ago, January 6, 2021.

Today, following Jesus’ example in Luke 4, we announce the gospel in interpretation of and accord with the Scriptures. Scripture gives us the chance for the long view.  Scripture gives us a deep grounding, with heaven a little higher and earth a little wider. Thank goodness we have the Holy Scripture to which to turn, from which to  learn, with which to listen, pray and prepare.

Resurrection Amid Insurrection

Listen.  The Gospel of Luke was written for listening.  It emerged over long time, with the earliest Christians reciting and recalling their Lord, his love, and their shared shaping by that love, in faith, beginning in baptism.  They listened, morning and evening, Sunday by Sunday, and over time, in direct response to weeks both empty and full, they began to write down for future generations what they had heard.  Today we have such a lesson, the hearing of a voice.  Today we start again into an unknown future.  For all our failure, for all manner of sin and death and meaninglessness, for all that is wrong, and there is much, especially just now, there is a voice, ringing out and calling to us.  Especially in weeks when good news is scarce.  And in our time, into dimensions of common ground that may cause us work and make us uncertain, we will want to learn to listen, and listen again. Voices from this past week reverberate.  On MKL Sunday, after worship, and following our memorial service for Ed Mann, echoes of voices from this weekend in years past came along to encourage.  Dale Andrews, Walter Fluker, Peter Paris, Gil Caldwell, Liz Douglass, Lawrence Carter, Jennifer Quigley, Karen Coleman, Christopher Edwards, Cornell William Brooks, Deval Patrick. Particularly in these years on MLK Sunday, a resurrection word has been spoken and heard, here, for which we are grateful, lastingly so.  Then, through this week, the reverberations resounded.  Tuesday, Cornell William Brooks engaged an 11 day hunger strike this last week, he who spoke here on April 4, 2018.  Resurrection voice.  Wednesday, Governor Deval Patrick implored us, we need an unrest of the heart, not unrest in the streets, but in the heart, unrest of the heart, he who spoke here on April 8, 2018.  Resurrection voice. Senator Rafael Warnock, student of Lawrence Carter who also preached here in 2018, spoke bluntly:  Some people don’t want some people to vote. Resurrection voice. Listen.  Listen.  Listen.

Pray.  What a tremendous spiritual gift is our Psalter.  Remember Samuel Terrien teaching us: :  Here are 700 years of psalms, 1000-400bce.  For the psalmists, Yahweh’s presence was not only made manifest in Zion.  It reached men and women over the entire earth.  The sense of Yahweh’s presence survived the annihilation of the temple and the fall of the state 587bc.  Elusive but real, it feared no geographical uprooting and no historical disruption.  Having faced the void in history and in their personal lives, they knew the absence of God even within the temple.  The inwardness of their spirituality, bred by the temple, rendered the temple superfluous. (279)  In other words, they knew how to live through and out through godless weeks.  Our psalm today, Psalm 19, ancient and redolent with glory, recalls for us how to pray.  From your youth you have known.  Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication.  The ACTS forms of prayer.  Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication.  Pray.  Pray.  Pray.

Prepare.  The whole of Scripture begins with the divine preparation, in creation, and in speech.  ‘Let there be…’  And what might that be, let there be?  Light.  Watch for the rays of light in the dark.  Watch for the rays of light in the darkWeeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning, he was reminded.  Yes, but that’s the thing about the morning, he responded, it begins in the full dark, it begins at dawn, before daybreak.  Light.  Watch for the coming rays of light.  Nor does light shine only in the heart, but also, even moreso, in the heart of the community.  Individuals need to prepare, but so do communities.  That’s the thing about the morning.  It begins in the dark, in preparation, awaiting the word… LET THERE BE LIGHT.  So, friend, you have the task and gift to face the time we are in.  To choose a way to support leadership you affirm, check by  check.  To influence the health of culture, meeting by meeting.  To live your franchise, vote by vote.  Give, go, vote. Prepare.  Prepare.  Prepare.

Now is the time.  In the halcyon, bucolic spring of high school senior year, a few years ago, Mrs. Bartels confronted your preacher.  Mr. Hill, you are failing my typing class.  You will get an F.  (But, why an F, I asked?)  Because she said it is the lowest grade I have on offer.  If I had a lower one I would give you that.  You do not want an F on your final grade sheet.  I see you talking to that talented pianist who accompanies the choir.  She got a typing A three years ago.  Maybe she could help you.

In fact, that talented pianist and typist did, and I came through with a C-, a gentleman’s C-.  But this sermonic spoonful of sugar is told to help the fateful medicine go down.  For Mrs. Bartels began each class, if memory serves, having us type the following sentence:  Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.  Now is the time for all good folk to come to the aid of their country.  Now.  Not later, now.  Without a functioning democracy we will never be able to address climate change, face race, outrun pandemic, keep peace on the globe, work for a just, participatory and sustainable culture, or live with hope.  So now is the time.  Send a check, attend a meeting, go and vote, especially younger folks, hear that last: vote, vote, vote.  It’s later than you think.

People of God.  Listen!  Pray!  Prepare!  And hear again the gospel, that of resurrection not of insurrection.

We conclude with a poem from the Lone Star State, and our theopoetical radio congregant, Milton Jordan.

Coda:  Creating Community

after Howard Thurman *

When the song of the marchers is silent

and annual memory of the Dream reshelved,

When Senators turn back to obstruction

and justice hard won is reversed,

When despair seems to cloud every vision

then the work of the people begins.

To call forth our shared hopes

and reclaim shattered trust

To bind up the broken

let the prisoner be free

To leave no neighbor hungry

nor any people at war,

To recreate community

and join all creation in song.

• Following Thurman’s poem

“When the Song of the Angels Is Stilled. ”

This Week is a now and then poem from Milton Jordan on an item in the news.

Hear the gospel.  Our gift and task as people of faith is to live out the resurrection in this hour of insurrection.  Resurrection amid insurrection.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 01.23.2022 at 11:00 am

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Amos 8: 7-12

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Introduction

One shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. (2 Kings 1:8, Matt. 4:4).  You shall not live by bread alone.

Not by bread, alone, but by the word…

We do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

A long time ago, now, an Irishman wrote his first best seller. Frank McCourt’s lovely bildungsroman, his coming of age novel, Angela’s Ashes, ends with the young boy escaping his past, escaping his family of origin, escaping the biology that threatens always to become full destiny, and feeding himself.  He is so hungry that he finds trashed newspapers in which the daily fish and chips have been wrapped, and he licks the papers clean of scraps and bits and crumbs and oil, until the words on the paper fill his mouth.  His whole book is about his deliverance, how he learned to live by reading, how he learned to love through words… how he learned to live by reading, how he learned to love through words.

Not by bread alone…

The ancients knew this.  An education is in part the freedom to travel beyond the confines of the 21^st century.  Our Holy Scripture, read Sunday by Sunday at Marsh Chapel, is a part of that liberation, that freedom, that freeing of the mind.  The books of the prophets, from Hosea to Malachi, and from Isaiah to Daniel, are part of the spiritual road map, the religious diet for the long journey of, toward, in, by and through faith.  Amos fiercely predicts that all manner of calamity will befall his 8^th century BC countrymen.  He saves the most horrific for last.  There will come a time, he forecasts, given human wayward habits, given that so many so often are willing to live a lie (this is sin, living a lie), even A BIG LIE, when there will be…no word.  After which, as Jesus so often said, it is too late. There does come a time sometimes in time when it is too late. Famine was the great scourge of antiquity, feared as today we fear nuclear holocaust.  Said Amos, famine is terrible, but…there is something worse.  A holocaust of the word, a famine of the word.  When there is no word, no truth, no communication, no consort, no connection.

Are we living in such a time?  Today?  Has a famine of the word befallen us?  A fit question for the memory of Martin Luther King, is it not?

A Time of Famine Today?

Has a famine of the word overtaken us?   A few hours spent exploring the cyber space might make you think so.  And yet, it must be added, there are treasures too there too.

Has a famine of the word overtaken us?  The great hopes with which television writing began, in the 1950’s, has given way to waste, a beautifully bedazzling wasteland.  And yet, there are exceptions, children of Rod Serling we might say, still found in the magic box.  You enter a new dimension, not of sight or of sound, but of mind and imagination.

Has a famine of the word overtaken us?  Look out at the internet, a sprawling universe of chat, governed by e-mail, and its second cousins.  E-mail:  immediate, global, indelible, irretrievable, reactive.  One medium of choice today.  And yet there are exceptions.  A carefully composed, thoughtful e-letter, kind and honest, personal and self-disclosive, sent over the waves after attentive editing.  A joyful e-note from Europe or Texas or Canada.  Or Dublin.

Has a famine of the word overtaken us?  I found cleaning out my wallet the other day that my public library card was still there. The human being, to be human, needs space and time for being.  Otherwise, we become human doings, not human beings.  For this reason, God made deep winter.  For this reason, of the making of books there is no end.

Has a famine of the word overtaken us?  Listen to our political and cultural discourse.  Twenty years ago, nearly, we were led to war on the argument that prudence dictated immediate action.  So, we could act preemptively--though this was not our custom, unilaterally—though this was not our desire, imperially—though this was not our heritage, unforeseeably--though this was not our preference.  A Christian country could be led to prosecute a post-Christian war, in 2003.  This, because of the fear of weapons of mass destruction.  But…where were they?  People know about mistakes, and thus about contrition, compunction, apology, learning. But correction takes compunction. He now of blessed memory, Bishop Desmond Tutu, could teach us about truth and about reconciliation. But truth needs saying, doesn’t it?  Or are we beyond telling the truth?

Has a famine of the word overtaken us?  Someone should right a diary of our daily talk, like Victor Klemperer did in Germany from 1933—1945.  What would such a diary record?  What is the character of our daily conversation, to the extent we have time for it?  How well do we listen?  How carefully do we remember?  How insightfully do we respond?  How lovingly do we visit?  Do we visit?

Has a famine of the word, that prospect in Holy Writ, in ancient Scripture, in the dusty book of the prophet, has it come upon us? Think back one year and one week.

There are some weeks when good news seems hard to come by, and (that) week (was) one such. 

Coming into (that) week already we faced challenges aplenty.  A climate reeling out of control.  A pandemic claiming (at that time) 350,000 lives.  A political culture, a culture cooked politics, for politics is ever downstream from culture, putting people at daggers drawn.  A community of communities seeing, in full, for the first full time it may be, the ravages and damages of racial bias, hatred, and prejudice.  And pain, the pain of every day.  And then, January 6, 2021. Insurrection with presidential incitement.

For the rest of history, for the rest of our lives, we shall have to live with, and attempt by faith to live down, both to live with and to live down, such utter calumny, such tragic, needless, heedless yet revelatory disaster.  It (was) an apocalyptic—a revelatory—moment, hundreds wrecking the capitol…One said, ‘this is like 9/11, except we did this to ourselves’.

(RAH, 1/7/21, (slightly amended)).  More on this another week.

Listening for A Prophetic Word Today

Amos spoke 800 years before the birth of Christ.  He mourned the bitter loss of an only son, before that phrase would trigger theological reflection, as it does for us.  He foretold a darkness at noon before that phrase titled an account of Stalin’s purge.  He spoke of songs becoming laments before the poetry of Robert Pinsky subsequent to 9/11.  Amos like John the Baptist comes before Jesus the Christ.  Amos’s prophecy about a famine of the word may fit most or some of our current experience.  I wager it fits more than we care readily to admit.  But this is not the last word.

We trust our life and future to Jesus Christ (repeat).  It is his word, finally, that carries us, and his role as Prophet that means most for us.  In him, the voice of the prophet continues, even in a word famine, to speak to us.

The other cold day I noticed the temperature.  –2 degrees Fahrenheit.  Here is a strange reality.  There are great gulfs crossed between gas to liquid and liquid to solid.  But those gulfs are numerically unheralded.  They are not know by great numbers like 100 degrees or 0 degrees.  No, they are found out on the arithmetical periphery, in forgotten minor numbers like 32 and 212.  Celsius is so much more orderly.  But Fahrenheit is like prophecy.  You find the word spoken in forgotten places (repeat).  With Amos, in a little hamlet of Tekoa.  With Jesus, up on the lakeshore.  With Wesley, in coal mines.  With King, in the black church.

The prophet gives voice to silent agony.  This is what Amos did, however unsuccessfully, for his people, smitten by a word famine.

The prophet gives voice to silent agony.  Reinhold Niebuhr did so over a long life-time of restrained, earnest engagement with life. This paragraph of Niebuhr’s abides in memory: “Nothing worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope.  Nothing that is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith.  Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love.” (Sifton 349)

The prophet gives voice to silent agony.  So said Abraham Heschel, as he and Niebuhr, then older men, walked their dogs together on Riverside Drive.  Heschel preached Niebuhr’s funeral. Wouldn’t you have loved to overhear their banter? Listen to Heschel’s voice: “The demand in biblical religion is to be alert, and to be open to what is happening…Awe enables us to sense in the small things the beginnings of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and simple.”

The prophet gives voice to silent agony.  The generations deep hurt of people of color in these United States finally found fullest voice in the well tempered homiletics of Martin Luther King.  In Christ, the divine voice has taken full throated residence in the heart of hurt.  A voice to be heard needs loving connection with an addressable community.  The prophet does not stand above or apart from his people.  He abides, dwells, tabernacles among them. Among us.

The prophet gives voice to silent agony.  During WW II Paul Tillich took the NYC subway downtown once a week to speak over Radio Free Europe, to speak to his German relatives.  Listen to Tillich’s radio voice:  Listen to his radio voice regarding the National Socialists: “They know all about tragedy, for their creed educates for tragic heroism, it educates for death, but this is all Nazism knows, whereas democracy, socialism, Christianity all have something that stands beyond tragedy, a hope for the human race.” (Sifton 265).

Honoring Prophetic Speech

Up then and let us wait for the Word, waiting without idols, waiting without substitutes.  And as we wait, let us honor the prophetic speech of Amos, of Jesus, of Wesley, and, especially today, of King.  And let us act so in particular.

Let us prize the days in winter, the gifts of winter snow days, to read, to read ourselves, to read to our grandchildren, to invest in the joy and the spiritual grace of reflection that comes from reading.  A literate person today is not one who can read, but one who does read.

Let us protect and preserve the possibility of a divine Word, heard as spoken, by listening with intense presence and presence of mind, come Sunday, and responding both in affirmation and in critique.  People have such remarkable, and shabby reasons not to worship.  Not you, not we.  Listen…for the word of God.

Let us then speak ourselves, as we have spirit.  At least in prayer.  By visiting with one another (and that more than a broadcast e-mail).  By writing down our views:  in a journal, for a letter, as a letter to the editor.  Numbers 11:29: “Would that all God’s people were prophets”.

Our job is not to remember and recite, but to live and speak!

Our job is not just to remember that King said, “The great stumbling block is the white moderate more devoted to order than justice”.

Our job is to be alert to the weighty matters of justice and mercy and love—of jobs and money and life.

Our job is not just to remember that King said “if a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live”. Our job is to find that something.

Our job is not just to remember that King said “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”.             Our job is to re-build that nation, even, in the deep shadow of January 6.

Our job is not just to remember that King said “let freedom ring” Our job is to make it ring, in our time, in the face of the fears of this time.

Our job is not just to remember that King said, “I just want to do God’s will…we as a people will get to the promised land”. Our job is to get walking.

For one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 01.16.2022 at 11:00 am

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John 1: 1-18

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The text for this sermon is not available.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 01.2.2022 at 11:00 am

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Luke 2: 41-52

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 The only Scriptural account we have of Jesus’ growth and boyhood is located in today’s reading.  Only here does the Gospel allow us a glimpse of Jesus growing up.  In this one picture of our Lord’s maturation, we find him engaging the great teachers of his time.  After three days they found him the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.

Later ages, and later writings, did not resist the urge to imagine Jesus in his boyhood, clever, magical, boy deity, able to make birds from stones and animals from the very dirt at his feet.  But the Holy Gospel of St. Luke, for which and in which we stand, refrains from wilder speculation.  Only here, just for a moment, does the writer relent and, in the reading meant for the Sunday after Christmas, show us the young Jesus, the young man Jesus, Jesus as a young man, which in some measure he would be for the whole of his earthly life.  He who was to call disciples, now himself, just this once, is a disciple too.  He whose life is the heart of faith, the call to faith, a daily call to faith, for this Christmas moment, is himself so called.  And what is Jesus doing, in faith, for faith, toward faith this morning?  Why, he is reading.

What good news this is for educators near and far, and for grandparents and parents and teachers and all who labor and are heavy laden in the educational projects of our time, always rigorous, and now COVID covered and far more so!  As he blessed weddings in Cana and healers in Bethany, so now Jesus, by his presence and practice, blesses those who teach, who prepare the ground for a lifetime, a lifesaving call to faith, and those of us fortunate to have received their teaching, and so to have been seized by the confession of the church, the confession of faith.

Jesus is our Lord and Savior, born in a manger.   Come Christmas, He is our transforming friend.  We have gathered, after already much church this week, to pray and listen for grace, because of Jesus, our transforming friend.  We bear witness, today, that Jesus has transformed our life, made us happier and better people than otherwise we would have been without him.  How we hope that people, others, especially young people, will experience his power and love, in their own way and time!

For Christmas 2021 for us may bring a time to take another look at our walk in faith.  Our gracious Advent daily devotions guided us in this direction, day by day.  All fall we have noted that faith comes, to most of us, one step at a time.  Yes, there are some for whom a blinding light on the Road to Damascus, a blinding light on the road of life, carries us to faith.  But most of us come along more gradually, one step and then another.  One such step, in faith, is to find a way to read, to read, to read what nourishes faith by nourishing the soul. the rhythm of reading that fits your own-most self.  This morning, it may be, is a time for that step, to make a resolution to read in 2022.  For the elusive presence of the divine lies at the marrow of the Christmas gospel, embedded in the strange stories of the season.

A few years ago, a friend down south sent me a copy of an article by E.J Dionne (WAPO, 12/23/18).  I keep it in my drawer, and re-read it at this time of year.  It rightly celebrates those who come to church come Christmas, perhaps only then, or only then and at Easter.  Perhaps you have come or are listening during Christmas, hoping for—what?, waiting for—what?, ready, it may be to hear a call to faith.  Dionne wrote about the difficulties in organized religion, particularly Christianity, today:  a decline in religious observance, the rise of the ‘nones’ (now a quarter of the population in the US, and 40% of those under 30), about unwelcoming attitudes and practices regarding the LGBTQIA portion of the population, about clergy sexual abuse, about the ‘complicated and compromised structures of churches and denominations’, but went further:

Christmas remains wondrous, but it arrives at a difficult moment for Christianity in the United States…Regular worshipers can be disdainful of the Chreasters. But these twice-a-year visitors deserve our attention and, I would argue, our respect. Their semiannual presence is also testimony to the enduring hunger for the experience of the sacred…

Yes. Just so.  Testimony to the enduring hunger for the experience of the sacred.  You feel it in the bones on Christmas Eve, the sanctuary dark, with candles lifted, and Silent Night sung.  Yes.  Just so.

Dionne then went on to name and cite three people whose work and teaching, as it happens,  I have personally known, with whom I have taught and studied, and who have meant a great deal to me and others.  Reading matters.  Theology matters.  Dionne’s capacity to call up these three wise persons, for our inspiration, also matters.

One is Gabriel Vahanian:  (Dionne) What the theologian Gabriel Vahanian observed decades ago…explains the larger context: “Christianity has long since ceased to be coextensive with our culture,” he wrote, and “our age is post-Christian both theologically and culturally.” I remember Vahanian granting me an interview in his Syracuse University Hall of Languages third floor office, one winter day long ago, and his comment, in a beautiful French accent, Ze will of man, it is more inscrutable zan ze vill of God!

One is Peter Berger, whom some of you knew here at BU:  (Dionne)The great sociologist of religion Peter Berger offers a clue in “A Rumor of Angels,” his 1969 book about the persistence of faith in the face of rapid secularization…the stubborn refusal of human beings to give up on the transcendent. I picture Berger at lunch here on Commonwealth Avenue, chastising the Lutheran church he very much loved, and warming to tell a truly funny joke.  And I remember his memorial service, in our neighborhood, 2017.

One is N.T. Wright, for whom I was a teaching assistant at McGill over three years: (Dionne)The biblical scholar and former Anglican bishop N.T. Wright sees “the longing for justice, the quest for spirituality, the hunger for relationships and the delight in beauty” as human aspirations beyond the material that can be heard as “echoes of a voice” pointing toward God (from Wright’s book, Simply Christian).  I picture Wright both curious and frowning as I guest lectured on the Gnostics; inviting me to dinner in his Montreal home, with four beautiful growing children; his desk stuffed in tiny closet under the hallway stairs.  A few summers ago we lunched across the river at Harvard.  He chuckled and thanked me for a sermon title from decades ago, What a Friend We Have in Paul. ()

Jesus had his teachers, at least according to Luke.  And we have our own. Vahanian, Berger and Wright, in very different theological voices, would approve Dionne’s reliance on them.  You might like to read them!  My friend (Mr. Art Jester), in sending the article, brought these teachers back to me, and so gave me back a part of myself.  And that is what friends do, they give us back ourselves.  And finally, then, Dionne himself, who preceded us in our room the week before we were speaking at Chautauqua Institution, four summers ago:

(People) show up twice a year because some part of them is in rebellion against a society defined solely by self-interest and calculation, by the visible, the measurable and the tangible. They have an intimation that the world is made up, in the words of the Nicene Creed, of both the “seen and unseen.”…Christmas sketches “a picture of a cosmos capable of love.” (Joseph Bottom).

A picture of a cosmos capable of love!

Are we lovers anymore? Christmas comes along with a question:  Are we lovers anymore, or are we resigned to a post-agapic, post-agape, ‘post-love’ world and life?  (From my point of view the Christmas longing is not only for transcendence, but also and more so for love.) And in the question there is a call.  Are we lovers anymore?  Are we?

In 2006, our first autumn in Boston, I received a telephone call from a woman I did not know.  She had been prompted to call me by my teacher, Dr. Christopher Morse, he who was a part of that pantheon of powerful professors at Union Theological Seminary 50 years ago:  Raymond Brown, J Louis Martyn, Robert McAfee Brown, Donald Shriver, Cyril Richardson, James Forbes, James Washington, James Cone, Beverly Harrison, Kosuke Koyama, all.  The caller was Sara Terrien now of blessed memory:  Christopher tells me there is a Union man at Marsh Chapel and I should call him up and welcome him.  Is that you?  Sara’s husband, Samuel Terrien, retired from teaching Hebrew Bible three months before I arrived at Union, and he had died some years before her call.  I never met him, or studied with him, to my great loss.  But through his books, he has taught me, especially his great work, Elusive Presence.  He has taught me over the valley of the shadow,  come to shape, guide and form my own faith, my own theology, my own liberal biblical theology.  To you I commend him, and his work, and his book, even as I cherish Sara’s personal, pastoral, kind telephone call of many years ago.  Terrien wrote:

Presence….does not alter nature, but changes history…through the character and lives of women and men….The elusive presence of…a walking not a sitting God, a God nomadic, hidden, elusive and free…a God of tent not temple, of ear not eye, of name not glory…a God who creates and calls out a spiritual interiority, a commission by command…Hebrew not Judaic, a God of time not space, of grace not place…whose faith allows one to translate love for God into actual behavior in society…whose prophets demythologize space for the sake of time…a religion which does not affirm that God is hidden is not true…’vere tu es Deus absconditus’. (Elusive Presence, in passim).

Read something great this year, 2022, something that feeds your soul, that pushes off and faces down pandemic, something that surprises you, as in our friend and South Texas poet minister, Milton Jordan’s playful December poem, of this week, A South Texas Christmas:

At first glance this late December day

the weather line on my device seems

normal enough. Twenty-six is chilly

but not unheard of; until I realize

my device, just to be contrary,

has converted to Celsius

(used with author’s permission)

Before we let technology have all the power alone, maybe we could spend some time reading.  Read.  It is one step in faith.  As Robert Bly, now himself of blessed memory put it, I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, and events of one’s own life. (NYT, obituary 12/21).

In the early 1970’s, a decade that seems eerily and tragically similar in its outworking to our own, some came into ministry out of parsonages, some out of college chaplaincies, some out of summer camping experiences, and some of us out of all three.  In late August one year a group of high schoolers set up a panel, a kind of truth and justice panel if you will, of six elderly clergy, to ask about faith.  How do we find our way to faith, the younger asked the older?  One crisp response stands out, among the others:  Read.  You are going to need to apply yourself, learn, read, grow in what you know so that you may thrive in what makes you come alive.

The minister did not mention Augustine of Hippo.  But he might have.  He who found faith by reading alone in a garden.  you may take a seat for a moment in Marsh Chapel, under the window of St. Augustine, just here, who amid tears, misery and lamentation reclaimed his own soul by reading:

I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when suddenly I heard the voice of a boy or a girl I know not which–coming from the neighboring house, chanting over and over again, “Pick it up, read it; pick it up, read it.” [”tolle lege, tolle lege”]…

So I quickly returned to the bench where Alypius was sitting, for there I had put down the apostle’s book when I had left there. I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.” I wanted to read no further, nor did I need to. For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away. (Confessions, 29)

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 12.26.2021 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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Luke 1:39–45

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It may be time to take another look at prayer.

Christmas 2021 for us may bring a time to take another look at our devotional life, our worship life, another look, at prayer.  Our Advent daily devotions have guided us in this direction, day by day.  All fall we have noted that faith comes, to most of us, one step at a time.  Yes, there are some for whom a blinding light on the Road to Damascus, a blinding light on the road of life, carries us to faith.  But most of us come along more gradually, one step and then another.  One such step in faith is to find the rhythm of prayer, of devotion, that fits your own-most self.  This morning, it may be, is a time for that step, to take another look at prayer, at mystery, at the numinous, at worship.  The elusive presence of the divine lies at the marrow of the Christmas gospel, embedded in the strange stories of the season.

Our Gospel this morning is a case in point.  Luke acquaints us with two births, John and Jesus, two mothers, Mary and Elizabeth.  Multiple generations are engaged in audible utterance, at the dawn of a new age.  I heard the sound…the child leaped.

The Holy Scripture read in worship itself may call you this morning to another look at prayer.  A familiar introit has called us to prayer.  There are hymns, hymns sung, and you hear them. You recognize again a kyrie, a sung sorrow, crucial to being human today.  Mercy, have mercy.  Some courageous soul has led a psalm.  Anthem, hymn, reading, prayer.  And a story so well known that it is unknown.  A story of birth.   Let there be no separation between what is said and what is heard.  Let the snow filter fully down this morning, snow upon snow.  Let the message of the day be yours and ours.

For Jesus’ birth is like all births, in that physical sense utterly predictable.  Yet ask yourself where in life you have felt closer to miracle than at the moment of birth.  An ordinary extraordinary.  For the telling of Christmas, from the very first, was about more than one birth, more than one kind of birth.  The gospel writer is trying to say what cannot readily or easily be said, to connect the sense of the extraordinary with the experience of the ordinary.  There were many births in first century Palestine.  To this one birth there came attached a second birth.  Yes, that of John alongside that of Jesus, but more so his birth, somehow, alongside our own.

Charles Wesley caught the marrow of the message in a phrase: “born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth”.  For the Wesleys both, it was the incarnation of Christ, his birth and life and word made flesh, which rooted and grounded their reverence.  The English carols we most love, both those Charles wrote, and those that influenced him and were influenced by him, bring their disciplined obedience to a fever pitch.

Our Scripture lessons today bring harmonic support to the intersection of the ordinary with the extraordinary, which intersection is the mailing address of prayer.  Micah, Mary, Hebrews, Elizabeth--whether in prophecy or in song or in address, the voices of today’s Scriptures also lift up the strange paradox of earthly heaven and heavenly earth.

What does the Scripture mean by the birth of the Christ, and what especially does this mean for us, for our second birth, as the hymn has it?

Are we able to enter again into our mother’s womb, either in figure or in truth?  But no.  This is the question Nicodemus raised, to no avail.  We cannot return to an earlier condition, nor to an earlier conception of an earlier condition.  Heraclitus was so right so long ago:  no one ever steps into the same river twice.  The second birth clearly is not a physical or conceptual retreat, or return, or recapitulation.  It is a step forward, another look, another step, in faith.

Are we to assume a second naivete, at the heart of the Wesleyan second birth?  Paul Ricouer, and others using other terms, have recalled to us the mature, midlife importance of such a second birth.

The Scripture in other quarters clearly connects the meaning of the birth with the meaning of the name of the newborn, ‘one who will save his people from their sins’.  Paul may speak of the Christ as the Lord of a new creation.  Mark may affirm the Christ as hidden and crucified.  John may herald the Christ at his coming as one with God, revealing God.  Matthew early and late acclaims the atonement wrought in Christ, the healing from past error, the steady saving removal to higher ground.  This is a great hope, the hope of freedom, deliverance from what has hurt in the past.  Today, Luke heralds two births, the Baptist and the Christ, John and Jesus.  Two. When saving liberation occurs, there is a kind of second birth, a new lease on life, a new life.  This second birth is the one that carries you forward, one step, to take another look at prayer.

Something somehow has brought you to prayer this Sunday morning.  Here you are, present or listening or both.  Maybe you have been at this intersection before, and are ready to take another look.

Nudges come from many directions. You may have heard the Methodist minister from western Kentucky, Joey Reed, last week, standing in the rubble of his Mayfield Kentucky church, in the basement of which he and his wife had survived the tornado.  "I realized it might be my last few moments of my life on this earth and I was very glad to be with my wife," he said. "I know her prayer and mine was that we'd be spared. I was afraid for my children, what would happen to them and how they would respond to this."  And then he began talking about helping others, regathering the congregation, holding on to the precious memories of that building, and, with grateful tears, looking forward to solemnizing the marriage of this daughter.  That is, in the midst of trauma, he called on the grammar of faith, he called on the language of worship, he called on the cadences of prayer.

Or, it may be, the beautiful music of our organ and organist draw you, week by week.  Through the late afternoons of pandemic, with office the quiet, the organ playing in the nave above brought us another look at prayer.  A powerful listening look at prayer.  The organ preaches its own sermon, lifts its own prayer, week by week, as a friend’s reminder of Thomas Troeger’s poem recently recalled:

With pipes of tin and wood make known
the truth each star displays:
creation is a field that's sown
with seeds of thanks and praise.
Articulate with measured sound
the song that fills all solid matter sings.

With pipes of tin and wood restart
the fire the prophets knew
and fan the flame within the heart
to do what God would do.
Pull out the stops that train the ear--
the flute and reed to listen and more subtly hear
God's call through human need.

With pipes of tin and wood repeat
the music danced and played to welcome home
and warmly greet the prodigal who strayed.
Let healing harmonies release
the hurt the heart compiles
that God through music may increase
the grace that reconciles.

With pipes disclose the song the world has blurred,
the hymn of life and love that flows
from God's renewing word.
Then boldly open wide the swell
and with a trumpet call
announce the news we thirst to tell:
That Christ is Lord of all.

 Here is a Christmas word.  You are still listening, if you are listening.  I am still preaching, for a few more minutes.  And we are together, amid the daily, hourly difficult pandemic worries to one side, and a sense of the Extraordinary on the other.  For all the sorrow, there is still, on your part, and on mine, and on others’, a listening ear, a willingness to tune in, a hard to articulate longing, a reaching toward…Another.  Another look.  What is that listening?  What is that willingness?  What is that longing?

One form of the second birth is here.  One form.  A second religious birth, a second connection, a second opening.  You would not listen if there were not some meager eagerness to wake up to…Another.  Generosity, compassion, forgiveness—these are the hallmarks and doorways into that second birth.  You have the heart to give something to others, generously to give something without expecting any personal return.  You have the spirit to be present with someone whose own spirit is sore, spiritually to walk with a fellow human being.  You have the soul to forgive a past fault, whether it was thirty days or thirty years ago, mercifully to move on, and say so, and mean it.  Your generosity, your compassion, your forgiveness—at least your longing for and leaning toward and listening to them—these are the natal cries of a prayer.  Another look.  At prayer. You may be ready to pray, or to pray again.

Last Sunday we prepared for worship, readers and choristers and clergy, looking greatly forward to the chance to pray, and to sing, and to sing the glorious carols of Christmas.  We expected a modest gathering, a partial percentage of our regular seasonal attendance.  And then, we processed in to the nave of the Chapel, and, my goodness, the church was full, or nearly so. It took the breath away.  It was another look, given by those ready maybe to take another look, another look at religion, at singing, at sacrament, at Scripture, at sermon, at worship.  Another look at prayer. The worship of Almighty God is not a matter of indifference.  Said that strong gathered throng last Sunday:  the worship of Almighty God is not a matter of indifference.

Take another look.  Take another look at prayer, at a kind of prayer that suits you, fits you, is meant for you.

In the new year, you may be given a gift of another look, a new start on a genuine religious life.  Howard Thurman would not be surprised:

When the song of the angel is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost

To heal the broken

To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner

To rebuild the nations
To bring peace among brothers and sisters
To make music in the heart.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 12.19.2021 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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By Marsh Chapel

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