Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

Mark 13:24-37

Come, thou long expected Jesus

Born to set thy people free

From our fears and sins release us

Let us find our rest in thee

Israel’s strength and consolation

Hope of all the earth thou art

Dear desire of every nation

Joy of every longing heart

Our gospel guides us forward this first Sunday in Advent, regarding ancient persecution, conflicts today, and apocalyptic attentiveness.

Keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come.

The earliest church was born in persecution, was born under the burden of persecution.

After that tribulation…the sun will be darkened…the stars of heaven shall fall…

Those hearing, reading and writing and hearing, Mark 13 in its inception, could nod their heads, could feel the force of the words. They were coming to faith, and coming of age, in and through persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire, and at the hands of the Roman Emperor Domitian. So, hence, the power of these lines was, for the first hearers, a validation of their predicament. So hence, the power of these lines was, for the first hearers, a deliverance from their predicament. The darker things got—Peter to the lions, Paul to the lions, others to the lions, the edict to choose between Caesar and God, the edict to say that either Caesar was Lord or Christ was Lord, and to live with the consequences—the darker things got, the direr the need for the fig tree promise that summer is near, hang on.

Largely without exception our life in the community of faith is free of persecution, at least of the final, ultimate sort. So, the apocalyptic language and imagery of these words aside, the force of the Gospel, come Advent each year, is alien to us, or largely so. We can come to worship, receive communion, hear the music and words, and return to our routines, without the threat or burden of persecution, of empire wide persecution of those who would not bend the knee to Caesar, for whom Christ not Caesar was worshipped, Christ not Caesar was God.

But our existence, if not our faith community, our physical life, if not our religious life, our bodily life, if not our confessional life, we yet know, is fragile, and ultimately frail, and finally mortal, finally to be extinguished. Here, it may be, the Advent gospel touches us. With and when there is a quickened sense of our mortality, our own undatable but unavoidable death, then…He is near. At the very gates. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. So. Mortal. Watch. So. Mortal. Watch. Those who had staked their faith and their lives on Jesus, at the possible cost of persecution, at the possible cost of the lions’ den, could hear these words. They are likely not the words of Jesus. But they are surely words about Jesus that carried power for those who were his people, given as Jesus’ words to save Jesus’ people, in extremity.

It is mightily humbling to recall, to realize, that the faith we share was, at first, in the first century, lived out and so preserved but many who suffered for righteousness’ sake. So, the saying, ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith’. A great dear treasure, our own basis for meaning and belonging and empowerment, the faith once delivered to the saints, and through them to us, was galvanized in the heart of persecution. In the dark of December, it brings a ray of light. Others have known, and in far sharper relief and detail, something of what in our own corners of life we also know, the cost of discipleship.

The earliest church was born in persecution, was born under the burden of persecution.

Keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come.

Through this autumn, in the preaching and hearing of the Gospel, we have had in mind, tried to keep in mind, the tragic conflicts today around the globe, and particularly in the middle east. We listen with care for the word of truth, some word of truth, in earshot of harm, of warfare, of death, of forms of persecution. We take a step, one step, then another. Week by week.

October 15: Elie Wiesel over four decades here at Boston University did so much (for us, saying): “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it is indifference.”

October 22: For those more on the left, a question today, and be careful how you answer, will be, first, and last, do you believe and affirm that Israel (in the Middle East, as a Jewish democracy) has and must have a right to exist? For those more on the right, the question, and be careful how you answer, will be first, and last, do you believe God is Lord of all life, all human life, not narrowly divine only to one perspective, one tradition, one religion, one sacred book?

October 31: Those hunting for a sermon on Christian teaching regarding pacifism and just war both, are referred to the sermon from this pulpit February 12, of this year, “With Malice Toward None”.

November 5: Our culture languishes in the doldrums of a pervasive malaise, not unrelated to our fear of freedom, and its demands, and its rigors, and its openness to human flourishing.

November 19: Faith does not exclude us from calamity, but faith prepares us to fight it. Faith does not give us the capacity to understand, but it does give us the courage to withstand. Faith is not an answer to every question, but it is a living daily question of ultimate concern. Faith in God is faith in God, not in another creaturely being. Faith does not protect us from calamity, though it does weave us together into the shared human experience and history of loss.

November 26: Any manner of bigotry deserves to be met by condemnation, contempt and resistance. We have plenty of work to do, and let us not grow weary in doing it. We will want to sharpen our understanding of the requirement in just war theory of proportionality, of response that is proportionate to the provocation, proportionate to the needed defense, proportionate to the given situation, and those, especially women and children, potentially harmed therein.

Keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come.

Apocalyptic theology in the New Testament, like our Holy Gospel from Mark 13 today, is a language of hope lifted in the face of death, a language of hope lifted in the face of death. Apocalyptic followed the prophetic hope for justice on earth, and preceded the late platonic hope for life in heaven, building on the former and preparing the way for the latter. We need them all, to some degree. The prophets hoped for a righteous earth. The Gnostics hoped for a glorious heaven. In between, the apocalyptic hope in the face of death is hope ‘on earth as it is in heaven’, a hope for the apocalypse of heaven on earth. As Paul wrote, ‘Hope that is seen is not hope. Who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience’. (Rom.8)

For the gist of today’s gospel is clear enough.  We cannot see or know the future.  We ought to live on the qui vive.  Health there is, to be sure, and succor in a full acceptance and recognition of such a humble epistemology and such a rigorous ethic.  Let us admit to the bone our cloud of unknowing about the days and hours to come.  Let us live every day and every hour of every day as if it were our last.  Which it is. Song and Scripture, sermon and prayer, they will guide us along this very path come Sunday morning, come this very morning. We shall want to be attentive to attentiveness.

One wrote recently: The lament is as old as education itself: The students aren’t paying attention. But today, the problem of flighty or fragmented attention has reached truly catastrophic proportions. High school and college teachers overwhelmingly report that students’ capacity for sustained, or deep attention has sharply decreased, significantly impeding the forms of study — reading, looking at art, round-table discussions — once deemed central to the liberal arts. (D.G. Burnett, et. al., NYTimes Op Ed 11/24/23)

Love, faith and hope all include. Let us be attentive.

Most of us need more reminder than instruction. Let us be attentive.

Wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us be attentive.

Do not remember our iniquity forever. Let us be attentive.

Restore us O Lord God of Hosts. Let us be attentive.

Be careful, nostalgia, said Dr. Walton, can eclipse curiosity. Let us be attentive.

The prerogative of care is love. Let us be attentive.

Our students are becoming not just intelligent people, but also people who will make the world a better place. Let us be attentive.

Yet our cyber world and devices are driving addictive behavior. Let us be attentive.

Covid, Dean Galea just wrote this week, taught three lessons: the marvelous power of vaccines, the pervasive inequality of and in public health, and, now, the broad pervasive and tragic distrust of institutions. Let us be attentive.

Look north in New England and see gun violence in Lewiston and Burlington. Let us be attentive.

We shall meet violence with patient justice, one leader once said. Let us be attentive.

Born thy people to deliver

Born a child and yet a king

Born to reign in us forever

Now thy gracious kingdom bring

By thine own eternal spirit

Rule in all our hearts alone

By thine all sufficient merit

Raise us to thy glorious throne

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 12.3.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
November 26

Thoughts at Thanksgiving

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 25:31-46

Let us be thoughtful this Thanksgiving week.

Let us be mindful of the goodness of God, as sung in the Psalm this morning. Let us be mindful of the blessings of God.

The measure of faith is the meeting of need. The measure of faith is the meeting of need.

The goodness of God knows no limit, no single season, no particular admixture of victory and defeat. Our friends, the seasons themselves, and the prayerful practice of remembrance, tell us this again.

Let us be mindful of friendship. The friendship of Marsh Chapel is offered each Lord’s Day, and each week day in the Lord, first and foremost to those most in need. The physical safety of our students, in all times and in all seasons, stands as our highest priority in friendship. If you are a sophomore, say, and sense you are in some need or peril, our chaplains and staff welcome you in friendship. Now in a season when, given the events of this past autumn of discontent on campus, some sense possible peril, we stand with you, on a daily basis, on the ground level, in a protective posture.

Let us be mindful of friendship, as was our friend, of blessed memory, Max Coots, longtime Unitarian minister along the St Lawrence river:

"Let us give thanks for a bounty of people:

For children who are our second planting, and though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are....

For generous friends with hearts and smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we've had them;

For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the other, plain as potatoes and as good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels Sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem Artichokes, and serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;

For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, and who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter;

For all these we give thanks."

Let us be mindful of friendship. And let us be mindful of the seasons.

Last week, most sat before a carved turkey. For many years, Marsh Chapel provided such a meal right here. Now the University itself has taken up that meal, and provides it for students who are here over break, along now with open housing. Your ministry, Marsh Chapel, has been such an incubator over time, for service that then becomes University wide. A Marsh Chapel Martin Luther King observance, becomes a University wide observance. A Marsh Chapel community service program, becomes a University wide service. A gospel group becomes a University-wide Inner Strength Gospel choir, Marsh Chapel hosted. A Marsh Chapel Howard Thurman room and listening center becomes a University Howard Thurman Center. A Marsh Chapel commitment to pastoral care over seven decades becomes further embodied in behavioral health, and SARP, and the office of the Ombuds, and others. Your work in incubation continues. You plant seeds, and they grow, and grow up and on and out. Season by season. Who knows what seed planted now will grow into a great oak tree in the seasons to come? So last week, you will have been at your table, somewhere.

It may be that the rhythms of nature in harvest will help us, in this dark time of calamity and warfare, help us to see and serve the hungry, tthirsty, stranger, naked, sick, imprisoned, as the parable implores us. It may be that the season itself, redolent and rich with meaning, may support us. It may be that the hymns of Thanksgiving, hummed or remembered, may help us. You could also sing them, of course, even if you are not Methodists. It may be that prayers, like those used year by year here at Marsh, and used today, may help us.

Yes, our lessons from ancient Scripture regularly surround us with a thanksgiving conversation. Today, Ezekiel in hope, the Psalmist in praise, the Epistle in encouragement, and the Gospel in loving service. Even those of us dwelling mostly in an urban setting can from this autumn—warm, mostly; dry, mostly; pleasant, mostly—receive such a sense of blessing and so a sense of gratitude. Seed-time gives way to harvest, as tears give way to shouts and joy. The long months of hidden growth, of change and development under the earth, are a firm reminder that the future will look different from the past, and from the present. Every autumn, every harvest season, we are offered such a reminder.

Let us be mindful of the good earth, of the fruits of harvest, of the fruits of years of labor and love, as one remembered in the figure of her friend. One lay woman wrote a poem prayer, about a friend, some years ago. It is set in Wisconsin, on a family farm.

Sitting by my window—looking out at the field

This chair has been such a comfort for so many years

Rocking—rocking

All the children were comforted in this chair

All grown and gone now

Babies—growing year after year

‘Til they could go to the field to help

The fields—so green in the spring

Then the plough broke it up into beautiful brown earth

Worked over and over

Until the seeds had a wonderful bed in which to grow

Week after week growing

And then harvest.

We all went to the field for the harvest.

Sunrise to sunset

Day after day

Finished at last

Ready for winter

Now looking across the field at beautiful virgin snow

Like watching a baby sleep. So peaceful.

Happy for the quiet.

Anxious for the awakening

Start again

Sitting by my window

Rocking Rocking

Her rocking, the rhythm of her remembrance, along the brown earth, seems a world away from our world today, for we have been this past autumn through a very difficult patch. Nature may aid culture here. Nature may refresh culture here.

We will want to be somber and sober to remember that God gives the human being a rooted, daily freedom, but does not then suddenly intervene to erase that freedom, does not ‘root it out’however perversely, however violently, however mistakenly that freedom is used.

We will want to remember this when the worry birds are flying, filling the late autumn darkening sky. And they are in flight, the worry birds. Planet warming. Ukraine reeling. Israel bleeding. Gaza flaming. Trump leading. Lakes greening. Loved ones moving. BU changing. Age advancing. Winter coming. We will want to remember the divine gift of freedom, when the worry birds are flying, filling the late autumn darkening sky. For freedom Christ has set us free, stand fast therefore and do not be enslaved again.

We will want to stand up, sit up, and take notice that liberty is only of any value within the constraints of security to enjoy it; and that security is only of any value as a basis for the enjoyment of liberty itself.

As people of faith, we cannot in sloth afford to be naïve, refusing the dominical wisdom of serpents to hide underneath a false innocence of doves, when facing hatred, religious terrorism, and nihilistic venom. Protection for the lamb requires resistance to the wolf, before either determines to lie down with the other. Any manner of bigotry deserves to be met by condemnation, contempt and resistance. We have plenty of work to do, and let us not grow weary in doing it. We will want to sharpen our understanding of the requirement in just war theory of proportionality, of response that is proportionate to the provocation, proportionate to the needed defense, proportionate to the given situation, and those, especially women and children, potentially harmed therein.

We do not want to pray, preach, sing or proffer a kind of cheap grace. The utter realism of the Bible, on the one hand, and our brutal experience across many centuries, on the other hand, forbid it. Read again Victor Klemperer’s two volume diary, I Will Bear Witness, or the exemplary biography of Bonhoeffer, Strange Glory. Or Jon Clinch’s new memoir of Ulysses S Grant, The General and Julia. Or any one of the novels of Marilynne Robinson.

In helping one another, and speaking to our children, in Thanksgiving conversation, we can at least remind them that ‘they are safe, and it is OK to feel sad about what has happened to others’, and we can continue to support and protect our neighbors and friends of all manner of different traditions, religious and secular alike.

So let us be mindful of the seasons this Thanksgiving. And let us be mindful of remembrance. You know, we honor with regularity four different calendars, here in worship, Sunday by Sunday. One is our University Calendar, including Matriculation and Baccalaureate and Commencement and all. One is the Marsh Chapel calendar, including Summer Preaching Series and July picnic and Lessons and Carols coming next week. One is our Christian liturgical calendar, including Christ the King Sunday this morning, and the beginning of Advent next week. One is our national calendar, with recognition of the Fourth of July and Martin Luther King Sunday and Labor Day and, this week, Thanksgiving, that quintessentially American holiday. All of them our former dean Howard Thurman honored with a regular attention to varieties of and in life.

Howard Thurman, who was a hundred years ahead of his time fifty years ago, was so nationally, religiously, locally and collegiately mindful. Underneath it all he was attentive to all that dehumanizes life—to anxiety, to depression, to loneliness, to disconnection, to all that unbalances the person. He would remind us, come this Sunday, that there is much in life that you didn’t cause, that you cannot control and that you may be able to change. I didn’t cause it. I can’t control it, and I cannot change it. See, hear him, and know he is here with and for you. Thurman’s poem, in part:

Today, I make my Sacrament of Thanksgiving.

I begin with the simple things of my days:

Fresh air to breathe,

Cool water to drink,

The taste of food,

The protection of houses and clothes,

The comforts of home.

For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day!

I bring to mind all the warmth of humankind that I have known:

My mother’s arms,

The strength of my father

The playmates of my childhood,

The wonderful stories brought to me from the lives

Of many who talked of days gone by when fairies

And giants and all kinds of magic held sway;

The tears I have shed, the tears I have seen;

The excitement of laughter and the twinkle in the

Eye with its reminder that life is good.

For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day

To conclude, a story, an analogy—full well knowing that all analogies stumble. The point of the parable is that there is still a future, remarkable, different, and good—we just do not know what the future holds.

You watch and wait. We left Cornell and Ithaca in 1981 for pastoral visits along the St. Lawrence, in the far north, in the bitter cold, in the barns at milking; for ministry among farmers and truck drivers in the fire department; for an immersion in non-urban poverty, poverty without electricity and without a subway, along a frozen river; and later for counseling with engineers let go by a failing Carrier Corporation; prayer with factory workers dis-employed by Oneida Silver and Smith Corona; tearful farewells to executives leaving Kodak; in short, the disappearance of both farming and manufacturing, as the drums of globalization beat along the Mohawk. (Why do we wonder that people dis-employed in the non-coastal regions are angry and express that anger politically?) In one sense our real theological education began, in earnest, in 1981. Martin Luther taught us: “One becomes a theologian by living, by dying, and by being damned, not by understanding, reading, and speculation.” You watch and wait. You have faith, you have hope, and you have each other. And you have plenty of work to do, awaiting the day when ‘the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain says the Lord.’

Many years ago, I asked my mother, of blessed memory, who worked 1951-1953 next door at then CLA now CAS, why the churches were so full in the 1950’s. Born in 1929, she thought for a moment, for a good while, and then said, well, I guess we were just very grateful: we had lived through the long very hard years of the depression, and survived that; we had seen the war come, the second world war, and take away many of our own neighbors and friends, and had survived that; we had seen losses and unexpected defeats, but had survived them. We had made it through, and I guess we were all just very grateful, very grateful, very grateful. So we came to church, to say so, and sing so and pray so, and live so. Every week was a kind of thanksgiving.

Maybe our own days, week by week, should be an ongoing Thanksgiving as well.

The measure of faith is the meeting of need. The measure of faith is the meeting of need.

Maybe our thoughts at Thanksgiving, on friends, and seasons and remembrance, should carry through, and carry us through, the whole year too.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 11.26.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
November 19

The Bach Experience- November 2023

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear just the sermon & the cantata

Matthew 25:14–30

The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill:

Ponder Jesus’ parable of the talents. (One still hears the mystical reverberation of it from William Sloane Coffin, in his very first sermon at Riverside Church, autumn 1977, who preached magnificently then on it, and concluded by singing ‘This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine”.) Life is a gift which inspires continuous giving, says the Lord. Talents are meant to be shared, says the Lord. What we have and who we are we are meant for us to invest in the future, says the Lord. This means risk. There is risk, always there is risk, in investment. The risk is real, and should be reasonable, and can be managed. But it is risk still. All walks of life, including yours and mine, involve real, reasonable, manageable risk. Let us apply the lesson, you and I, to our own lives and work. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said of a sermon he once heard: ‘I applied it to myself’. This morning, in particular, let us think about those faithful people who preceded us at Marsh Chapel, now glistening as angels in the heavenly church triumphant, to whom the Lord may have said: “Well done thou good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. We will set you over much. Enter into the joy of the master”.

As now Bishop Ken Carter said about this parable, as our guest in this pulpit, a dozen years ago: “We hear themes of patience and trust in the Gospel from Matthew today. The Master, who can be interpreted either as God or as Christ, gives the generous gift of a “talent” or large sum of money to each of his slaves. Now, we could just take the “talent” at face value as a story about sound financial investment, but instead, let us consider Jesus as the Master and the talent as the good news of Jesus Christ entrusted to Christians after Jesus’ death, but before his promised return. The lesson we learn from the third slave is that what is given to us from God or even through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, what is entrusted to us, is not meant to be hidden away as some sort of secret, but rather is meant to be shared with others…we are meant to share the good news of Christ with others’’. Or as our colleague Rev. Dr. Chicka said once, preaching upon this parable, ‘God entrusts us with this message and we, in turn, place our trust back in God.”

Dr. Jarrett, the gospel rings out to us in Matthew, but also in Bach’s own chosen text for today’s beautiful cantata, Psalm 130, de profundis, out of the depths. For what shall we listen upon this majestic, mystical Lord’s day?

Dr. Scott A. Jarrett, Director of Music:

One of Bach’s earliest vocal works, Cantata 131 draws almost exclusively on Psalm 130 for its text. There are two chorale verse layered within the two solo movements of the cantata, but otherwise Bach sets each line of text with its own motivic and melodic properties. Even at a young age and with little to no experience composing in the genre, Bach reveals his considerable skills in musical form, structure, symmetry, and contrapuntal textures. Of the roughly five sections, the first, third, and fifth movements feature the full vocal and instrumental ensemble. And each of these three movements contains two sections, the first more syllabic and homophonic moving to a second section characterized by polyphony, fugues, melismas, and other hallmarks of contrapuntal maturity. The second and fourth movements feature solo baritone and tenor, respectively. the most interesting feature of these movements is the elegant layering of a chorale tune sung by sopranos in the baritone aria, and then by altos in the tenor aria. The musical effect is similar to hearing a chorale prelude on the organ, with newly composed material ostensibly in the foreground, and the chorale tune on a solo stop entering variously over the course of the piece. Because both soloists and the chorale singers employ texts, the layering takes on a theological, even mystical, purpose. One hears the chorale tune almost as an after-thought, a hazy aural image, whose presence is more subliminal than obvious – is it evocative, sentimental, nostalgic, clarifying, troubling?

And here is the wonder of Cantata 131 – from the hands of a 22year old Johann Sebastian Bach, the music colludes with the Psalmist phrase by phrase finding each us in our own depths, our own melancholy or despair; and phrase by phrase, our faith is renewed, restored, revived, as we wait upon the Lord assured of his mercy and plenteous redemption. You’ll identify with the sincerity, doubt, or dolor of the fourth movement – I know I’m supposed to wait, but how long? How long until God’s mercy and redemption flow like a river? Just how long until justice rolls down like water?

And like a splash of cold water, Bach answers with three marble columns in the three opening measures, each calling Is-ra-el, Is-ra-el, Is-ra-el. Worried frenzy interrupted, and the posture of devotion resumed, hope in the Lord! For in the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption. The final verse surges off the pages, the promise of redemption as the refiner’s fire in ascending chromatic tones, or the well-spring of the Holy Spirit in sixteenth-note melismas for the word “Erlösen” or Redeem.

However deep, however low, the assurance of pardon, mercy, redemption, a new day, a second chance – this is the hope of the word. The word made flesh. The word of the Lord endureth forever. Longer and outlasting those that wait and hope in the Lord.

RAH:

Faith does not exclude us from calamity, but faith prepares us to fight it. Faith does not give us the capacity to understand, but it does give us the courage to withstand. Faith is not an answer to every question, but it is a living daily question of ultimate concern. Faith in God is faith in God, not in another creaturely being. Our faith in God is cruciform, faith in the crucified God, who has chosen to make our vulnerable condition his own. I know the early church rejected patripassianism (the teaching that in the suffering of Jesus on the cross God the Father also suffered). But barely. But barely. And developing the capacity to meditate on profoundly unanswerable questions of human suffering is why three times a fall 1000 of us used to go and listen to Elie Wiesel. Faith does not protect us from calamity, though it does weave us together into the shared human experience and history of loss.

Hence the dire need for salvation, offered us in musical mystique, Scriptural grace, the quiet of the Sunday liturgy, a restoration it may be of our rightly minds.

For, as citizens of both country and globe, we weep, weep in this autumn of conflict and tragedy, and so mightily benefit to hear the truth, goodness and beauty of this morning’s word and music, Scripture and song. It may be that the dark struggles of this year, this autumn, over time, may make us both more human and more humane. Let us pray so. One of my students this fall grew up in Stockbridge, MA. She remembers seeing Reinhold and Ursula Niebuhr there, when he, at the end, was convalescing following a stroke. Her mother made sure she knew who he was, he who wrote ‘The Irony of American History’. When he died in 1970, and was buried out of that village congregational church, his eulogy—do you remember who gave it?—was delivered by Rabbi Abraham Heschel, he who wrote one of finest theological sentences ever to emerge in American English. The sentence begins with the word ‘different’ and ends with the word ‘same’, and its musical balance and cadence recalls us to our rightful humanity, our rightful mind: Different are the languages of prayer, but the tears are all the same. Different are the languages of prayer, but the tears are all the same. Different are the languages of prayer, but the tears are all the same.

-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 11.19.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
November 5

For All the Saints

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 5:1–12

The text of this sermon is unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 11.5.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
October 29

The Horizon of Love

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 22: 34-46

One longs for a more excellent way, as did Shakespeare

Here you might catch a glimpse of what love can be, neighbor to neighbor, what loving kindness, chivalry, honor, care can be.  We still teach Shakespeare at Boston University:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments.  Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me prov’d,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d

One longs for a more excellent way, as did Matthew.

St. Matthew’s fiercest passion, is patently and transparently on display this morning. Matthew holds a very high view of the church, far higher than we expect, far higher than yours and mine, one could add. For Matthew, the church is empowered: with the means of lasting forgiveness with a mind for sound ethics, and especially with the real presence of Christ.

Matthew trusts this risen Christ and this voice of the risen Christ to free him to follow his bliss, to succumb to his passion. And what is Matthew’s passion? What passion pulses through the parchment of this popular gospel? What force of energy is on the “kiviev” on the lookout, on the wing, hanging ten, parachuting in, ready to emerge here today? It is the passion of an evangelist who finds every blessed possible way to connect Jewish Jesus with a Greek world. It’s the passion of an evangelist who enlists an old missionary teaching tract (“Q”) to spread inspiration, truth, and joy. It is the passion of an evangelist who portrays your Savior among pagans, amid harlots, appended to the cross, about the resurrection work of compassion. It is the passion of an evangelist who sums up his Gospel this way: “Go make of all disciples”. Here is this autumn’s Gospel: the point of St Matthew the blessed evangelist is that he is an evangelist. The whole point of the gospel of St Matthew the evangelist is that he is an evangelist. Matthew’s passion? Seeking the lost! Expanding the communion of saints, the circle of divine love!

One longs for a more excellent way, as does Marilynne Robinson…

She concludes an essay this week with a rumination on children, on work, on love, on daydreams, and on the liberal and liberating purposes of education. In the last year, our evening with Robinson in April represents our ministry to the country as a whole, while our three days at McGill as University Lecturer last October represent our ministry with the whole globe as a whole just as our Baccalaureate address here in Marsh Chapel in May represents our ministry with BU near and far, on campus and with alumni, far and near. Our worship service is for the country, for the globe and for the university, as well as for those, you and you all, those sturdy souls who by decision, discipline and faith come here, present each Sunday in this sacred, beautiful chapel. What love you and all bring to us and others! What love you all express by prayers, presence, gifts and service. What love you all long for and lean toward and hope to know, by shadow in this lifetime and by sunshine in the next life. God love you, as you work toward the horizon of love.

One longs for a more excellent way, as does the language and body language of every wedding…

In mid-March of 2020 COVID hit, hard. A time of sheer mendacity, when one leader intoned, ‘it will be over by Easter’. But no. Suddenly, in all directions, all was cancelled. All manner of gathering was cancelled. Group, assemblies, meetings, classes, worship, funerals, and weddings and all. We have not fully recovered from this sudden shut down, not three and half years later. We are not fully ourselves, at least not yet, not conversationally human, not humanly available, not ardently and easily committed to gathering, to assembly, to connection, to ordered public worship. But healing is coming, and more along the way. The Covid onset, among other things, interrupted weddings.

One was scheduled for early March, 2020. But the word, the word ‘no’ came down, necessarily so. So, a beautiful couple, very understanding and gracious, cancelled their wedding: no service with 300 present, no reception with 300 at table, no 300 photographs in a wedding album, no guest book, no family together. And there were to be no exceptions, and there were none, all through 2020 and 2021. The next decanal pronouncement of marriage in the Chapel occurred on May 14, 2022, more than two years later.

Now, of a sudden, and this is part of the recovery from Covid, our weddings, and funerals, here at Marsh Chapel, are steadily moving back to more regular levels. We will have had six weddings this fall at Marsh since Labor Day. For this we are thankful, thankful for the gathering, the assembly, the community, the conversation, the public worship. Thankful for the human being, involved, the being human therein.

It happened in 2020 that a few days later the cancelled wedding couple placed a call to the Dean of the Chapel, saying: This is probably not possible, but could we come, just us two, and stand on the far ends of the communion rail, double masked, and ask you, double masked, standing behind the altar, to marry us? We recognize that this probably cannot happen, but we would love to have you do so.

Well. The Dean of the Chapel had some moral reasoning to do. Hm. OK. Bride at one wall, Groom at the other, Dean at the third. OK. On March 17, 2020, they appeared alone, this handsome couple, fully attired, full dark tuxedo and lapel flower, full white gown with cape and and all, one under one stained glass window and one under the other. The service was solemnized in short order and abbreviated order of worship, all three double masked. The traditional ‘you may kiss the bride’ was not included and would have to wait until they arrived at their isolated honeymoon cabin alone in New Hampshire, the car packed with foodstuffs for the journey up, the days of honeymoon, and the journey home. I pronounce that they are husband and wife together.

One longs for a more excellent way, as did Martin Luther…

In 1520, Luther published three fundamental documents in that cornucopia year, which, to some measure, encompass the broad range of Luther’s theological perspective. Together these three ‘made the breach with Rome irreparable, and established the foundations of what would eventually become a new church’ (with thanks to Dr. Lyndal Roper, now and later, 133). To the Christian Nobility of the Church. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. The freedom of the Christian person. They each and all, along with his opening hymn this morning, sing of love in the fierce presence of tragedy, armed conflict, hatred and death. (Those hunting for a sermon on Christian, pacifism and just war both, are referred to the sermon from this pulpit February 12, of this year, “With Malice Toward None”, and including historic teachings regarding response and proportionality).

We should remember that Luther’s reformation coincided with the emergence of the printing press. 4,000 copies of Nobility were sold as soon as they came off the press, August 1520. It was addressed in German to lay people, and argued that since the church itself had been unable to reform itself, it fell to the laity to do so. The reform promoted here is heavily weighted on financial reform. Luther charged the church with avarice, and charged the nobility with the task of addressing that avarice, something the nobles had every interest in doing. Most striking, to our ears, is the full sympathy Luther has for love, for human love, for priests and religious who have fallen in love and fallen into another’s arms. Putting them together and forbidding sex ‘like putting straw and fire together, and forbidding them to smoke or burn’ (Roper, 150). Only the nobility, only the lay princes, said Luther, had the power to do all this, and he charged them to do it. Sola Gratia! Sola Scriptura! Sola Fide!

For his trouble, Luther was excommunicated in December of 1520.

One longs for a more excellent way, as did MLK…

“Agape (LOVE) is more than romantic love, agape is more than friendship.  Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive, good will to all men.  It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return….   When one rises to love on this level, he loves men not because he likes them, not because their ways appeal to him, but he loves every man because God loves him.  And he rises to the point of loving the person who does an evil deed while hating the deed that the person does.  I think this is what Jesus meant when he said ‘love your enemies.’  I’m very happy that he didn’t say like your enemies, because it is pretty difficult to like some people.  Like is sentimental, and it is pretty difficult to like someone bombing your home; it is pretty difficult to like somebody threatening your children; it is difficult to like congressmen who spend all of their time trying to defeat civil rights.  But Jesus says love them, and love is greater than like.”[i]   

‘We must reconnect to King’s passionate belief that human dignity is indivisible: it is not possible to enjoy it unless it is equally available to all’ (OToole, NYRB 11/23)

Jesus is our beacon, not our boundary. Love is our beacon, not our boundary.

One longs for a more excellent way—you and II do—especially in the midst of mayhem and troubles in the middle east and in neighboring Maine, where your former chaplain Brittany Longsdorf is hard at work as the chaplain at Bates College in Lewiston…

Let us keep our eyes on the prize, and look for that one day, in the fullness of time, when love will reign.

One day when there will open space, luxurious freedom for all manner of difference, all kinds of kinds.

One day, as the Old Testament says, when the lion will lie down with the lamb.

One day, as the New Testament says, when there will be no crying anymore, nor grief anymore, nor tears, nor shall hurt any or destroy.

One day…and why not start here, and why not begin now?…there will be a real community of gracious love.

The darkness shall turn to the dawning and the dawning to noonday bright and Christ's great kingdom shall come on earth, the kingdom of love and light.

At least let it be known that here, at Marsh Chapel, with us, it has got to be love all the way, love all the way, love all the way. As the Scripture guides, may we walk daily. toward the horizon of love, even to perfection in it. As Mr. Wesley said, ‘if you are not going on to perfection, just what are you going on to?’

‘And I will show you a still more excellent way’. A more excellent way…

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful;

It is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect;

but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.

So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love, the horizon of love

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 10.29.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
October 22

The Promise of Hope

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 22:15–22

What a friend we have in Paul!

Whose mighty voice has rolled down through the ages bringing us the good news in all its stark simplicity:  Christ the Lord is Risen!

Raised in Tarsus, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, of the Tribe of Benjamin, as to the law a Pharisee, a defender of the traditions of the elders—and so a persecutor of the church.

Who rode to Damascus and on the way was blinded and there heard a voice saying: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?”

Who in that blinding encounter with the Risen Lord, gave himself up, pronounced a sort of death sentence over himself, and so died with Christ and walked henceforth in newness of life.

Who believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead and so lived moment by moment thinking, “Who knows what will happen next?”

Who cared for those first few Christians, and worried about them, and grew angry with them, for they so easily lost this vision:  that since God had raised Jesus from the dead, who knew what would happen next?

Who challenged the Thessalonians: “This is the will of God, your sanctification”.   He taught them about death.

Who challenged the Galatians: “Be not deceived, God is not mocked.”  He taught them about the law.

Who challenged the Philippians: “Let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel”.  He taught them about service.

Who challenged the Romans: “Be ye not conformed but be ye transformed by the renewal of your minds.”  He taught them about the spirit.

Who challenged the Corinthians: “Be reconciled.  The form of this world is passing away”.  He taught them about culture.

Who challenged Philemon: “May your goodness not be by compulsion but of your own free will”.  He taught him about power.

Whose mighty voice speaks to us today, in these verses from 1 Thessalonians 1 (the oldest chapter in the New Testament, from 50ad) ever answering the question of what we should do by saying something, first, about what God has done.  Our faith springs not from ourselves but from God, the Giver of both life and faith.

Paul reminds us that “the form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7).  What else can we expect from a God who raises crucified Messiahs?  Who knows what will happen next? The future is as open as we, in faith, will allow it to be.

We may recognize in Paul a form of thought that differs utterly from our own.  If Paul did retain some of his formative religious worldview, the part he closely retained here was his inherited apocalyptic eschatology.   The resurrection must be, he reasoned, the beginning of the end.  Hence, preaches Paul, the form of this world is passing away.

Paul’s worldview, his apocalyptic eschatology, is not our worldview.  Paul’s world, though, is very much ours too.  So, this morning, we shall need to imagine, to dream, and to interpret these verses in a new way, for a new time, as did our forebears like Martin Luther, Elie Wiesel, Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King, Jr., as have 6 Marsh Chapel Deans, as did 10 Boston University Presidents plus our current interim President, as did those of us in pulpits, not so long ago, in the winter of 1991, and in the spring of 2003.

No, we may not share Paul’s worldview, but we share his world.  So, we may benefit from his friendship, and practice his faith.   What a friend we have in Paul!  He befriends us by bequeathing us two kinds of hope.  And hope we do need, in a time like ours, in an autumn like ours, of strife, warfare, and of fear.  Today, that is, today.

In the Gospel of Matthew 22, Jesus meets us between Caesar and God.  He is ensnared, or nearly so, in a trap set between conservative Herodians and liberal Zealots. Between conservatives and liberals. Hmm. In good rabbinic fashion, he responds to a question with a question.  Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, this little bitty coin, and render to God what is God’s, your very life.

We are not alone in history to have suffered strife. As Christian people, trying by day and week to walk by faith not by sight, we know something of the difficulty here, and something more perhaps than we knew a month ago today.  Sometimes you just have to learn things the hard way.  The preacher is not free just to read the Bible and not the newspaper, nor free to preach without reference to civil society, culture, and the social conditions of life which have pervasive, profound impact and influence on the baptized and unbaptized alike.

Let us hold and finger the coin of Caesar as we are touched by the finger of God.  Let us take stock.

I saw this again midweek in our student union, as undergraduates undertook to underwrite ‘trick or treat for UNICEF, that creative confluence of culture and care, of politics and religion, given birth decades ago, when some of us first set out, costumed and eager, a bag for candy in hand and a box for coins in another.

In this time of middle eastern mayhem, not unlike, by this preacher’s memory, the winter of 1991 and following, or the spring of 2003 and following, we may want to pause and take stock. For the Matthean dilemma, liberal and conservative, and its questions, we may want to pause. For those more on the left, a question today, and be careful how you answer, will be, first, and last, do you believe and affirm that Israel (in the Middle East, as a Jewish democracy) has and must have a right to exist. Then follow self-defense, proportionate response, ‘meeting violence with patient justice’. For those more on the right, the question, and be careful how you answer, will be first, and last, do you believe God is Lord of all life, all human life, not narrowly divine only to one perspective, one tradition, one religion, one sacred book? Then it follows that the killing of innocent children from one tradition will do nothing to avenge the slaughter of innocent children from another. From answers to both questions, there flow manifold consequences. With President Biden, personally, I answer yes to both.

Let us remember lessons from the past. In summer 2017, at the Chautauqua Institution, we had the pleasure of learning from, dining with, and speaking to Stella Rimington, the former head of British Intelligence, MI 5 (1992-1996).  She was the first woman to lead that agency.  A television drama was produced about her, starring Judi Dench.  She was bristling and candid regarding then current global perils.  She proffered no immediate or ready recommendation for resolution to then current dangers. She affirmed no optimism about the US President, at the time. Sharply, frankly, and bluntly she admitted the US and British intelligence failures that led to the tragedy of Iraq, the mistaken misinformation about weapons of mass destruction.  She worried extensively in rumination about the internet, about the technology controlling so much about us.  That is, she offered no encouragement, no bright forecast for the near-term global future.  To conclude, she said, as you would expect, ‘that nonetheless the best we can do is to ‘keep calm and carry on’.

Let us hold and finger the coin of Caesar as we are touched by the finger of God.  Let us take stock.

No, we may not share Paul’s worldview, but we share his world.   So, we may benefit from his friendship, and practice his faith.   What a friend we have in Paul!  He befriends us by bequeathing us two kinds of hope.  And hope we do need, in a time of terror and tragedy.  Let us survey our current tragedy, but let us also convey our lasting hope.

Two shades of hope abide.  “Hope has two beautiful daughters: anger and courage” (Augustine).  One realized.  One unrealized.  One for today and one for tomorrow.  One from Bultmann, and one from Niebuhr.

Here is one shade of hope…

You can in faith ‘face the world free from the world’, with a righteous and realized indignation, tempered with full humility. Even a kind of anger, if tempered with humility. That daily form of hope is yours by decision, by choice, through a commitment to live by the faith of Christ.

We may rely not on ourselves alone, but upon God who raises the dead.

We may face the world, free from the world.

We may lean into the future, free of the burden of past worry.

We can live on tip toe.

We can compose every day with brilliance as if it were our last, which, in a way, each one is.

The person of faith, who overhears the distress down deep in this world, so deep that others don’t hear it, does not rely on himself to sooth it.  He knows there is one Savior and he isn’t Him.

What a friend we have in Paul, who preaches Jesus Christ, and Him crucified!

Why does Paul teach this way?

Because Paul expects that “the form of this world is passing away”.   God has raised Jesus from the dead.  Who knows what will happen next?

For Paul, this meant a daily, excited, imminent expectation of the turn of the ages, a new heaven and earth, the end of time and the beginning of a new era.  For our sake, it is a blessing that Paul’s own timeline was a little fuzzy.  Otherwise, we would not be here.  But the spiritual truth which lives in this passage, its existential reality, is the same.  Every day is our last.  Paul so reminds us, and so shakes us out of our stupor.  THIS is the day the Lord has made.  We shall rejoice and be glad in it!

In all of life, in the fullness of faith there lies this strange, new potential.  Potential.  Potential for something new.

We face the world, free from the world.

When things go south, let us live not in the form of this world (in despair and doubt and dread), but in the form of the coming world (hope and freedom and a sense of God’s uncanny potential).

Bultmann: “Only Christ can give the kerygmatic character to everything which is ‘taught’ as Christian. Therefore, Christ is correctly preached not where something is said about him, but only where he himself becomes the proclaimer.”

The resurrection is, simply, the preaching of the gospel.  But preaching in a way that is heard. Bultmann helped us see the present hope in Paul, facing the world free from the world.

Here is a second shade of hope…

Niebuhr, the great liberal (still a great tradition, affirmed from this pulpit0 who helped us see the future hope in Paul.  Both shades of hope require a translation from apocalyptic expectation into insights for living today, both individual and collective, present and future, Bultmannian and Niebuhrian.  Niebuhr gradually left behind some of his younger optimism. He also gradually left behind the narrow and prideful tones of a strict socialism.  Gradually he found his way, as we will need to do again in this painful decade ahead, toward a faithful Christian realism.  He found a realistic way toward hope.  That is our work today as well.  Recalling his phrases, we too need to beware ‘the sentimental optimism about the essential goodness of men without realizing how evil good men can be’.  Learning, but critically, from Niebuhr we too need ‘a check not only on policies but on pride, to guide men in a mood of dialectical humility’.  We too need to realize that ‘all justice rests on a balance of power’.

You can in love ‘love one another’ as Christ loves you, toward an unseen horizon, a far-off land, a land flowing with milk and honey.  You can hope against hope.

Let those who rejoice do so as if they were not rejoicing.  Let them rejoice not in the form of this world but in the form of the world to come.

We meet each day with courage. We touch and are touched in the presence of Divine Potential, the raw possibility of a new day. We live on tip toe.  We live each day as if it were our last, which it is.  We greet the hour and its struggle, from a certain distance, and over every loud booming statement there is a misty question mark.

You know, it is not always clear what is bad news, or good.  What can seem cause for the greatest rejoicing also can carry hurt, and vice-versa.  God’s time is not our time.  God’s purpose is not equivalent to any one of ours.  God’s justice is not the same as our own.  God’s freedom far surpasses yours and mine.  A crushing defeat can, in God’s time, and with patience, become the source, the medium of great victory.  I think of Franklin Roosevelt.  Where would our country be today, without his life’s strange mixture of rejoicing and suffering and struggle and perseverance?  Is it not odd that the one President who appeared to be the least vigorous, was in fact the most? ‘To lead you have to love, to save you have to serve’.

Let those who buy and sell, do so as if they had no goods.  Not in the form of this world, but in the form of the world to come.  Augustine said it so well:  we use what we should love and we love what we should use.  We use people and love things, when we are meant to love people and use things. About your car, your house, your wardrobe, your bank account, your things—ask this:  Do you own it or does it own you?  Do you own it or does it own you? 

Yes, use the things of this world and buy and sell.  Let us do so, though, not in the form of this world, but in the form of the world to come.  Not in grasping selfishness, not in anxious pursuit, not in such strangely intense attention.  Rather:  with aplomb, with a certain disregard, with an inner freedom, the freedom to saunter in spirit, to saunter, flaneur dans les rue.

What a hopeful friend we have in Paul!

Paul who wrote to the Thessalonians, of hope for the present and hope for the future, so long ago:

We give thanks to God always for you all, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thess. 1: 1-10).

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 10.22.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
October 15

The Bach Experience, October 2023

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to watch the Bach lecture

Click here to hear just the sermon and cantata

Matthew 22:1–10

The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill:

We are living in and through a dark and difficult time, this fall. Our climate shows significant signs, in our lived experience, of steady and worrisome warming. Our nation continues in the grip of deep divisions, and, of more concern, a palpable willingness on the part of some to jettison centuries of hard-won democracy for autocracy, and its false promise of ‘escape from freedom’, as Erik Fromm called it. Our culture languishes in the doldrums of a pervasive malaise, not unrelated to our fear of freedom, and its demands, and its rigors, and its openness to human flourishing. The dark night of warfare has fallen and stayed grounded into Europe, for a year and a half, with the fate of our Ukrainian sisters and brothers in the balance, with no end in sight. Now, in addition, we have the advent of a full blown catastrophic second war, perpetrated through terrorist violence, horrific and unspeakable violence, upon the people and traditions of Israel, which people and traditions our own Elie Wiesel over four decades here at Boston University did so much to illumine and honor, say: “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it is indifference.”

How we miss his voice, his presence, his warning and his wisdom today. Our youth and young adults, still wriggling free from years in the screen prisons of COVID, need and deserve and require expanded care and services related to personal, emotional and mental health, at a rate and with a range quite difficult for other generations fully to grasp. The challenges of poverty, of racism, of sexism, of inequality and injustice, of health care, of educational disparity, and the ever--present clouds of greed, malevolence, mendacity and despair continue to lap at the shores of our existential beaches, without pause and with ongoing wind strokes of pain. We are living through a dark and difficult time, this fall.

While true for every season and age, it is acutely the case for our time that an honest, a necessarily honest admission of our condition should also and more so be soothed by, and challenged by, the promise of the gospel, and the prospect of better days to come. It is acutely the case for our time, for this very day, this day of rest and worship, this sabbath day, that a pause, a discreet hour of ordered worship, should be observed, and honored, including today by way of word and music both, the stringent candor of word and the soothing beautiful balm of music, together. The ordered public worship of Almighty God upon the Lord’s Day is not a matter of indifference. It is a savingly crucial hour, that brings a ray of light into the dark, a note of promise into the silence, a reminder of joy into the pain, and a source of get up and go again power into the despond. It is thus fitting to hear the negativity of the last third of St. Matthew, including the harsh cold parable this morning, as a partnered honest admission of our own condition, the condition our condition is in. For Matthew cries out over the rejection of invitation, the rejection of welcome, the rejection of love. And he will not be consoled, like Rachel weeping for her children, and like Israeli mothers today weeping for their now soldier sons, no dishonest avoidance here. His parable matches our own angers. When things are not right, saith the Scripture, let us be honest that things are not right. And then let us turn and listen for the true, the good, and the beautiful. As in our cantata this morning. Dr Jarrett, what does this morning’s Cantata bring us?

Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett's contribution to this sermon is not currently available.

The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill:

Presence in an ordered service of divine worship, your presence here today for instance, is one sign of trust that in this life we are being addressed from beyond. Your presence this morning is an indication, a witness if you will, to your intimation or confidence or something in between, that you are ‘hearing voices’, that you are called, spoken to, addressed.

The parable of the wedding banquet, retold in Matthew from a kinder Lukan version, rests on this conviction of a divine beckoning and calling.

I think we seldom recognize what a powerful thing an invitation can be. Pause and recall a time or two when you were savingly invited.

We know the power of an invitation when we hungrily receive one heartily desired. Nothing in all the world ever happened between persons without invitations. Every sermon is in some way an invitation to you, to take a step in faith, to take a step, one step, in faith.

That is, you receive today, again, a personal invitation. The invitation is meant for you, sent to you, an event for you. You are invited to attend the wedding of heaven and earth! to lead a godly life! to lead a life worthy of God! to live in faith and by a conviction, which is a trust, faith is a personal commitment to an unverifiable truth.! If we had all proof we want we would not have all the faith we need. Will you come to the banquet? Will you take a step in faith?

The voice of invitation is an enticement, a coaxing, a luring, a courting.

President Biden this week offered such an invitation, a biblical one, tucked into perhaps the greatest speech thus far in his administration, saying: This is a moment for the United States to come together, to grieve with those who are mourning. 

You remember that our gospel writer for today, St Matthew, the Evangelist, has a passion. It is invitation. The point of the Gospel of Mathew the Evangelist is that he is an evangelist. This is his love. His first love. To seek the lost, to hug the lonely. And it is a passionate love. I can see your passions, in architecture, history, homily, mission, symbol, country, group—these inspire passion. As, especially, does music. Matthew offers the gift, divinely wrapped, of his passion: sharing an invitation, perhaps a first encounter with Christ for those c’est vouz?, who do not know a single verse, cannot recite a single psalm, cannot describe baptism and communion, do not a favorite hymn, and have no lived experience of church committee meetings. This is the great joy of faith, to share it. Do so. You only have what you can give away.

-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 10.15.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
September 24

Divine Generosity

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 20:1–16

St Matthew intends to encourage and to nurture full steps in faith, within the community of faith. Today, upon this Boston University Alumni Weekend Sunday, we remember and affirm that Marsh Chapel is one such community of faith, a precious jewel, a rare breed, a novel venture, an open window. Your community. Yours.

In Matthew 20, in the vineyard, our parable represents the ‘undifferentiated rewards of the Kingdom of God’. (Bultmann) The parable affirms divine generosity, and inscrutable divine goodness and generosity.  Its point:  behold the divine generosity, do not begrudge the divine generosity. Its point, justice and equality are not the same thing. (repeat)

Consider this parable (found only in Matthew). All the workers are paid the same.  As in life, so here in Scripture, there is no sure, consistent equality.  To be sure, the landowner has paid what he agreed to pay.  To be sure, hour by hour, the workers have received what they agreed to receive.  To be sure, the daily needs of all for the day to come are met, from each according to his stamina and to each according to his needs.  To be sure, the added proverb, about last becoming first and first last fits the parable awkwardly if at all.    The parable acclaims God’s bounteous generosity, not God’s impartial equality. Justice and equality are not the same thing.

When a job truly fit and meant for you goes to another, on a shaky or unjust premise or process, you know the feeling of the early workers.  When an illness unearned and unexpected afflicts your loved one, you know the feeling of those working among the grapes and feeling the grapes of wrath.  When a day begins and ends as an existential illustration of Shakespeare’s 66th sonnet, you know the resentment addressed in the story from Matthew 20:1-16.

Here in the vineyard, the undeniable difference between equality and justice faces us, as it did Jesus, Matthew, the Rabbis and others.  Jesus, loving the amhaaretz, the poor of the land, may have been telling the Pharisees to broaden their embrace.  Matthew, among Jews and Gentiles, Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, may have been admonishing the former to honor the latter.  The Rabbis, in the same period, used the same story, but added, by way of explication that the later workers did in two hours what took the earlier ones all day.  Very dubious that.

Our landowner, through Matthew’s rendering, is called an ‘OIKODESPOTES’, a person of some power.  The allegory is clear.  God is obliged to…nobody.  Further, the timing of God’s grace and generosity is God’s own affair, only without prejudice either to the early or to the later.  In this way, Matthew concurs with Paul in 1 Thessalonians and elsewhere that the living will not precede the dead, in the hour of judgment.

Our parable does not rely on the famous passage from Exodus 16, read a moment ago.  (This too is a passage we should know and know about by the way.)  Yet the acclamation of divine generosity in both is the same.  Evening comes, and morning, and in the morning there is a sweet hoar frost covering all the ground, a layer of dew under which is the ‘manna from heaven’.  ‘The bread the Lord has given you to eat”.

Here, in the vineyard, we have again to ponder the labor at the heart of life and the labor at the heart of faith.  Faith comes by hearing, but it is an active, ‘employed’ listening that allows for that hearing.  Faith is a gift, but is a gift like any other that requires receipt, and response, and embrace, (and maybe a thank you note, too).  If faith comes by hearing it helps if you are in earshot, in worship.  Faith comes as a gift at the time of God’s choosing, but to labor and live in faith requires of us a steady, even fruitful, practice of faith.  Daily prayer or quiet. Sunday worship or devotion. Tithing or disciplined percentage giving. Choosing to serve or to volunteer. This is what Paul is driving at in his letter to the Philippians:  live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel.

I wonder about you? and me?  Has the unfailing light and love of divine generosity worked on us at all this week?  Are we better people than we were last Sunday? Have we heeded John Calvin on this parable:  We may also gather that our whole life is useless and we are justly condemned of laziness until we frame our life to the command and calling of God.  From this it follows that they labor in vain who thoughtlessly take up this or that kind of life and do not wait for God’s calling.  Finally we may also infer from Christ’s words that only they are pleasing to God who work for the advantage of their brethren. (loc cit 266).

Our Scripture lessons explore the rigors of community, by acclaiming the generosity of God. And every community is a source of endless contention and intractable difference. The very rigors of assembling a couple of hundred people on a Sunday morning for an hour of devotion itself brings rigors. Yet, here you are, and here we are, together. God is good.

We come into and to worship with a heartfelt desire to grow in faith, to walk in faith, and to grow in faith as we walk in faith. One such step, one step in faith, is to find a congregational family to love and a congregational home to enjoy. To some measure, each of you, each of us, has so found that here in Marsh Chapel. For others this may be a moment when one has an inkling that this is your community, your congregational home, not only to visit but also to inhabit (notice the habit in inhabit). In the great long and happy shadow of divine generosity announced in Holy Scripture today, we step forward in a growing faith, to notice around and about us the particular aspects of divine generosity afforded us in this chapel. Here are some things you may or may not know about your community.

Marsh Chapel is a distinctive community, a congregation of souls, a chapel not a church, with the various differences and similarities so named, a congregation laden with hopes, tasks, plans and goals, all of which are steadily in motion.

We have hopes.

In 2025, we will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the building of Marsh Chapel (March 1950 dedication). And we lean forward with hope. We hope then also to celebrate a full or partial completion of the endowment of the Deanship of Marsh Chapel. We hope then also to celebrate the full physical refurbishment of the building, Marsh Chapel. We hope then also to celebrate the many hundreds of students who have heard a calling to or entered or continued on the path of ministry with the support and guidance of Marsh Chapel 2006-2024. We hope by then also to continue to show increase in our virtual community, audio and video both—on livestream, by telephone, by internet, on podcast, by blog, and all. As we move forward we hope then also to continue to welcome a growing number of students each week into the worshipful ministry of Marsh Chapel each and every week of the school year. We hope then also to encourage our congregants, students, chapter members and affiliates to volunteer weekly in a form of direct service to a neighbor in need. These are aspects of our shared faith and hope to ‘do all the good we can’ in our brief time of stewardship, ministry and service. All of these hopes rest on a global vision, a conviction that ‘the world is our parish’, and that we serve a University, Boston University, in the world and for the world, with a longstanding history of outreach and engagement, in the heart of the city, in the service of the city. That is, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, our focus will become more fully global. We shall retain our envisioned vision and mission without redaction, but the weight and sense will shift: ‘A heart in the heart of the city, a service in the service of the city’: meaning a heart in the heart of the globe, a service in the service of the globe.

The Scripture teaches, at the very conclusion of the gospel of Matthew, ‘as you go, make of all disciples’. We hope to serve God and neighbor, and be of service to our University in particular, through * Sunday Worship Excellence, *All University Events Ceremonial Leadership, *Pastoral Care at Death, *Astute Oversight of University Religious Life Ministry, Program and Presence, and, perhaps the hardest, ongoing exemplary *Embodiment of the University ‘Identity’, in History and Hope. These are our tasks, the work that your prayers, presence, gifts and service afford the University in which we dwell and for which we labor.

We also have plans.

A heart in the heart of the city, and a service in the service of the city. Our use of President Merlin’s epigram means city as the global city, and service as worship and work. Our foci guiding this envisioned mission are voice, vocation, and volume. We happily take our lead from the new, refreshed Boston University Plan, especially its own five-fold foci: academics, research, globality, diversity, community, and have our own renderings of such. In fact, the University plan seems deeply rooted in the very heart of Marsh Chapel itself. In weekly work, in staffing and strategy, in the warp and woof of shared ministry, we offer our gifts: through a leading academic University pulpit; through music choral and instrumental that carries an experimental, in that way a research dimensions; through particular attention to the 26% of our student body who are international students; through decades deep and daily commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion; and finally and mainly to the ongoing sharing of the gifts of belonging and community which religious life, including the Sunday congregation, offer with warm welcome and earnest outreach.

A couple of years ago, a friend was ordained as a Rabbi, and some of us were graciously included in the service. Throughout the beautiful service, the power of trusted voices and people stood out. The one ordained said, For over thirty years, I have been in a life-long love affair witb my faith, seeking a substantive connection to our tradition, and a close and meaningful relationship with God. Close, meaningful. These are the relationships that bring out our own-most selves. Steps in faith, nurtured by a community of faith, nurtured in this community of faith, are meant to bring out, bring forward, your best self, your true self, your own-most self. The old story holds. God’s divine generosity desires and affirms your life, lived as your own most self, not your almost self, as your own most self, not your almost self. The divine question is not, ‘Why are not more like Jane or John or Mary or Mark’ but, ‘Why are you not more like you?’ There is only one you, and in community, step by step in faith, we are given time, grace and support to become ourselves, our own-most selves

Hear the gospel. St Matthew intends to encourage and to nurture full steps in faith, within the community of faith, perhaps beginning for you this day, this morning in this community. Today, we remember and affirm that Marsh Chapel is one such community of faith, our community of faith, and with glad hearts give ourselves over to the joyful service of living our faith, step by step, here and now. We receive the divine generosity of God, and give ourselves over to the joyful service of faith.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 09.24.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
September 17

Conscience

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 18:21–35

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light. 

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

(Robert Frost)

‘Let everyone be convinced in (their) own mind’

You owe it to yourself to be honest with yourself. Even, if you can be, apart from repression, from the mind’s way of sheltering us from lasting hurt in memory. You owe it to yourself to be able to look in the mirror. This is what conscience, the work of conscience, brings. Faith is the mysterious power to withstand what we cannot understand. Faith is the power to get up, stand up, start up, to take the promise of Sunday morning into every other day. One of the steps of faith, on the trail of faith, is awareness of conscience, the quickening of the conscience. Faith awakens conscience, and conscience guides faith, even when the walk is a walk in the dark. Luther: Faith is a walk in the dark.

We too are acquainted with the night, and walk, together, in the rain.  Hear Gospel this Lord’s Day, the good news of faith. The path, the sawdust trail of faith involves steps toward the mirror, toward what the wonderful old prayer names as the chance to serve God ‘with a quiet mind’.

There is such a step of faith, a growth in conscience, in the exercise of study, of sacred study, of exegesis, the careful study of Holy Scripture. The historical and critical study of Holy Writ, as practiced from this pulpit over 70 years, is a pathway to insight, interpretation, application–and sermon.

Samuel Terrien taught many the adventure of this labor, years ago, the search for the divine, for God: an elusive but real presence…not in nature but in history, and in history through human beings…a presence that does not alter nature but changes history through the character of women and men…a walking God not a sitting God, a walking God not a sitting God…nomadic, hidden, free…known in tent not temple, by ear not eye, in name not glory, in a spiritual interiority (we might say conscience)…that translates the love of God into behavior in society…demythologizing space for the sake of time…(phrases from The Elusive Presence: The Heart of Biblical Theology.)   Samuel Terrien.

We are left to wonder in conscience about things, to plumb the depths of Scripture. What are they?  We are on our own. There is no live interview from the heavenly conference room.  There is no point-by-point bulletin, with details promised at 11pm.  There is no footnote, or explanatory second conversation.  We are left on our own, by our Lord to wonder and study, relying on conscience. We are given a fair and good amount of freedom in doing so.

In conscience, do you wonder about things, as darkness falls, as the rain falls?

Through the year, from this pulpit, we have tried continuously to trace the moves Matthew makes in 85ad away from what Mark, his source, had written in 70ad.  Mostly, we want to be crystal clear about the way the announcement of the gospel changes, with the setting, changes with the occasion, changes, with the time and season and year. 

New occasions teach new duties. Time makes ancient good uncouth.  One must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

“Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe…the starry heavens above and the moral law within,” wrote the German philosopher Immanuel Kant at the end of his Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and these words were inscribed on his tombstone.

Of one conscience stirring sermon, Oliver Wendell Holmes did say, in five words, I applied it to myself.

We are left to wonder in conscience about ‘the things that are God’s’.  What are they?   Are they wonder and conscience—the starry heavens above and the moral law within?  Wonder and conscience?  Wonder and conscience, spirit and soul?

Our colleague offered a marvelous devotional to being our faculty meeting. Biblical, Johannine, exegetical and resting in a single Greek verb, the devotional implored us to abide, through difference, to remain, through disagreement, to wait and watch, through difficulty. It restored faith, it restored my faith—including my faith in the necessity, power and beauty—of devotions. It was a devotion that restored faith in devotions. It stirred the conscience.

There is such a step of faith in the exercise of study.

There is a step of faith, growth in conscience, in institutions, for the love of God and country both. Let your conscience be your guide.

So, today, Matthew, being Matthew. He is looking at institutional life, political and religious, governmental and ecclesiastical, all 2000 years before our own similar challenges today.  In Matthew we hear what we perhaps most need to hear in America, in October, in 2023, in the midst of political contest, even political mayhem.  Institutions matter.  Institutions matter. We are broadly or dimly aware, year by year, that institutions matter, but see so most sharply when they collapse. The collapse of shared truth. The loss of acute memory. When the my US Marine friend’s slogan, ‘leadership is example, period’, is discarded and disregarded. Covid took more than a million lives, in our country alone. But not only that. Covid removed the benefit of the doubt for inherited structures of civil society, including gathering, assembly, community, presence, religion

As we mortally and tragically are today.  Institutions, particularly those of civil society, really matter.  Volunteerism in a free society is not a luxury, but a necessity.  For the Christian, for the citizen in a free republic, faith involves ‘intelligent and conscientious participation in politics so that God’s will may be done as fully as possible’ (IB, loc. cit.).

Just in time, Marilyn Robinson reminds us: This country would do itself a world of good by restoring a sense of the dignity, even the beauty, of individual ethicalism, of self-restraint, of courtesy (NYT, 10/11/20).

One pastor delivered a powerful sermon on dreams, last week, relying on Jacob and his ladder, from centuries before. He invited the congregation to dream, to dream of new things for a bright future. The sermon cut through the wariness and distrust we have come to practice regarding religion, with the fine blade of honesty, love and truth. It stirred the conscience.

Midweek this week, one recalled our 2008 decision to hire a gay pastor to work directly with our BU gay community, out of our religious commitment to the full humanity of gay people. She did so for nine years with grace and faith. (It may be time again to refit and refill that part time position.). The memory brought encouragement. It stirred the conscience.

There is a step of faith, in participation in institutions, for the love of God and country both.

There is a step of faith, a growth in conscience, in respect of and for community, given through these institutions that shape community.  Community matters.  So.  Give of your life and breath. Till gardens you will never harvest.  Build schools in which you will never study.  Construct churches in which you will never worship.  And listen, listen to the voices that emerge in communal conversation, particularly those tart and salty.

Listen to lives that speak, for so the faithful gift of community abides, and guides us.

Over some years now, one of the treasures and delights of living in Boston is the grace, and care, with which lives are remembered in our Boston Globe.  No other paper, to our memory and experience, does so well, so consistently and so personally.  Our community is one of memory, as well as of hope.

We lost many friends and congregants to Covid. Those who were front line COVID workers and victims have had right, ample remembrance, here, on our behalf.  As have those once among us who now rest from their labors. Our first loss, in March of 2020, was C F Richardson, whose husband Neil, an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, taught Hebrew Bible first at Syracuse University and then here at Boston University. She, Faith, was for decades the secretary to the local bishop. It was rumored he would make a decision about who to appoint to what pulpit, and then reverse the decision after talking to Faith. She was a grand soul, a person of faith, whose conscience was her guide.

Greeting our new class of students in the school of theology, our new faculty member concluded his welcome sermon by telling students not only to study the high ranges of theology, but also to make space for the touch, for the tactile, for the physical, for photographs, for pets, for plants. By gracious accident, as the doors opened, his hearers were greeted by our chaplains, passing out—plants! There was a gardened altar call, unplanned but so timely! It stirred the conscience.

There is a gift of faith, in respect of, and for, community.

There is a step of faith, a growth in conscience, in the joy of discourse, of conversation.  Of all our losses in the last several years, this has been the greatest.  John Wesley even named conversation a means of grace.  All need warm, personal, true, glad hearted, genuine dialogue.  Especially, leadership needs dialogue, leaders need dialogue.

Leadership, said my friend, ‘is disappointing people at a rate they can accept, or survive, or endure. At a rate they can handle.’ Justice is a part but not the heart of the Gospel—justice is a part but not the heart of the gospel; equality and justice are not the same thing; public safety on the streets matters to all; poor children of every hue need and deserve our care in health, in education, in protection, in nurture, and in respect.

We will pause and ask questions like: Why is there so much distance between theology and ministry, theory and practice, when there is not such in medicine, dentistry, public health, hospitality, education, engineering, arts, social work and communications? Why?

In September of 1995, newly installed as the senior minister of a very large church, I hurried out for a breakfast meeting to meet and get to know with our church’s investment advisor. My earlier church had also an endowment, small and stowed away in card board boxes, or at least in impregnable savings accounts and CD’s. Now I had some responsibility for a real, or a large, endowment, and more detailed strategies for investment.

Over breakfast, a bright well-dressed fellow explained the current funds, their places of investment, risks and rewards. About half way through the fine talk, I noticed that his lapel button was not buttoned. This produced a moment of conscience. I did not know the man, I did not want to offend him, and I did not thereby point out his sartorial error. We parted to go on to the rest of the day. I wondered how someone so well dressed and spoken could come out the door unbuttoned. Who dresses you, I mused.

But you know, life is funny, and will teach us, if we let it.

Returning to my office, I stopped in front of a mirror there. Here is what I saw: my own lapel button was unbuttoned. His and mine, both. He had gone on to his day thinking what I had before—why this otherwise well-appointed person going about with his shirt unbuttoned? Conscience would have leaned over in both directions and righted the wrong. The look in the mirror stirred the conscience.

You owe it to yourself to be honest with yourself, to look in the mirror. There is a step of faith in the joy of discourse, of conversation. Our friends give us back ourselves. And a look in the mirror can move us along.

Study, institution, community, conversation—steps along the walk of faith that quicken the conscience, steps of faith that quicken the conscience, steps of faith that quicken the conscience.  Sursum Corda.  Hear Gospel this Lord’s Day. God walks with us, in the rain, in the dark, in sadness—at night, at night, at night.  A walking not a sitting God. God walks with us in the rain.

‘Let everyone be convinced in (their) own mind’

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 09.17.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
September 10

Well Begun is Half Done

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 18:15–20

Faith is the power to start over, in the midst of anxiety, and even in the throes of despair. Faith is God’s gift, and the message of the Spirit of the Christ. What the reason can never fully capture, and what the law can never fully define, faith gives: the power to struggle free of despair. Faith says: ‘Start again’…

Faith inspires forgiveness. Of yourself. And of others.

The church is where the deep gladness of faith meets the world’s deep hunger for forgiveness. Where forgiveness takes root, indwells, has a home, is known. Where you are called to learn and speak the language of pardon, in all its glorious grammar, syntax and spelling.

‘And throughout all eternity, I forgive you, you forgive me’ (Blake). You are invited to growth in faith. Faith has as a first step, or at the least a very early step, in pardon, in clemency, in forgiveness. So today, in your first autumn steps, walk the sawdust trail of forgiveness. ‘And throughout all eternity, I forgive you, you forgive me’.

So the fierce prophet Ezekiel warns us and all. Turn back. Seek pardon, offer pardon, start with pardon. And watch for first steps in pardon. Your calling—is it your calling?—is pardon, clemency, forgiveness. We begin so each Lord’s Day, every single week, with the prayer Jesus taught, ‘forgive us our sins (catholic), debts (presbyterians), trespasses (methodists), as we forgive’. The hallmark of faith, the hallmark of the community of faith, is forgiveness.

You have ample space for practice. All communities inevitably are riddled with endless contention and intractable difference. A family, a dorm suite, a team, a business, a church, a country, a globe: endless contention, intractable difference. And the prophet warns, warns, that an honest, true, hard word needs sometimes to be spoken. You need to stop that, because if you do not, the future is not good, for you, or others, or us, or all. Ezekiel is a later prophet, on the edge of the divide between prophecy and apocalyptic, between politics and religion. ‘Turn back, turn back’.

If you had told me in 2015 that we as a country would spend the next nine years in verbal contest with one another, regarding three presidential elections, with no end in sight, with focus on and apotheosis even of a most disreputable cadre of personalities, cacophony of vitriol, and cascade of venom, I would not have believed it. But I have now heard, and seen, and watch the worry birds fly morning by morning. Things change.

James Baldwin: ‘Nothing is fixed forever and forever, it is not fixed. The earth is always shifting and the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down the rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them, because they are the only witnesses we have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to one another, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with each other, the sea engulfs us, and the light goes out’…from Nothing Personal, 188)

You may need to say a straight word to a roommate, teammate, suitemate or fellow inmate: ‘one of us is wrong and I think it’s you’. Then follow with, ‘but maybe I am wrong, let’s talk’. The moment we break faith with each other the sea engulfs us, and the light goes out.

The Psalms are chock full of pardon, clemency, forgiveness. David, however many Psalms he did say, sing or write, knew the first step of faith, the first word in faith. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Create in me a clean heart O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 51: 10. Sometimes we need to start over, begin again. Sometimes that early step in faith invites a measure of mercy, a feeling for forgiveness.

Annie Dillard: ‘The line of words is a hammer. You hammer against the walls of your house. You tap the walls, lightly, everywhere. After giving many years of attention to these things you know what to listen for. Some of the walls are bearing walls. They have to stay, or everything else falls down. Other walls can go with impunity; you can hear the difference. Unfortunately, it is often a bearing wall that has to go. It cannot be helped. There is only one solution, which appalls you, but there it is. Knock it down. Duck. Courage utterly opposes the bold hope that this is such fine stuff the work needs it, or the world. Courage, exhausted, stands on bare reality: this writing weakens the work. You must demolish the work. AND START OVER. You can save some sentences, like bricks. It will be a miracle if you can save some paragraphs, no matter how excellent in themselves, or hard won. You can waste a year worrying about it, or you can get it over with now. (Are you a woman or a mouse?) (The Writing Life, 73).

Oh. How I hate to scrap that sermon and start over. I do. But. It cannot be helped. It might have been good, but it is not good enough. Scrap it. But it cannot be helped. When it doubt throw it out.

Faith means starting over, in life, in relationships, in work. Every day.

Which brings us to our gospel.

Our gospel dives deeply into the dark waters of pardon, of forgiveness, that for which we pray every Lord’s Day and every day.

Matthew relies on Mark, and then also on a teaching document called Q, along with Matthew’s own particular material, of which our reading today is an example. He has divided his Gospel into five sequential parts, a careful pedagogical rendering, befitting his traditional role as teacher, in contrast to Luke ‘the physician’, whose interest was history. We have moved from history to religion, from narrative to doctrine. Matthew is ordering the meaning of the history of the Gospel, while Luke is ordering the history of the meaning of the Gospel. You have moved from the History Department to the Religion Department. Matthew has his own perspective.

You may be interested or saddened to know that these several Matthean verses are found summarized from in this half verse from Luke: if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him (Luke 17:3). Brevity is the soul of wit. And the word church is used only twice in the Gospels, both in Matthew. This is the life of the early church on display, late in the first century. (Jesus after all loved both Gentiles and tax collectors, with passion and abandon.)

The word ‘ouch’ has a place in our lexicons and in our lives.

The teaching is to begin alone, to speak privately to your sinful, trespassing, debtor sibling. Then the teaching is to involve two or three others in the conversation, Then, finally, the teaching is to turn to the whole ecclesia (hear ecclesiastical), the community as a whole. One, few, more, many. Okay.

But what if the gospel here, in full and in fine, is not so much about tactics, but about mindset? What if the way to forgiveness is not so much 1,2,3 as it is something far more universal, more permanent, more personal? What if the real marrow of Matthew here is something like—‘when you have a problem, experiment; when you try one thing and it doesn’t work, try something else; in something as precious and lasting as forgiveness, maybe what most counts is not 1,2,3—go alone, go with a few, go with the community—as it is try some different things, experiment, if at first don’t succeed, try again, but in a different way?

Maybe we are meant to hear, here, a summons to varieties of religious expressions.

Hardly anything in life calls out experiment, creativity, and soul more than does forgiveness, whether we are talking about personal life or political life.

This calling you may be feeling toward forgiveness, clemency and pardon this morning may require some creativity, some freedom of thought, some novel approach. And you may be just the person to conduct the experiment. Good for you. In fact, you may be able to expand all of our repertoires of grace.

Matthew is apparently fighting on two fronts, both against the fundamental conservatives to the right, and against the spiritual radicals to the left. In Matthew, Gospel continues to trump tradition, as in Paul, but tradition itself is a bulwark to defend the Gospel, as in Timothy. Matthew is trying to guide his part of the early church, between the Scylla of the tightly tethered and the Charybdis of the tether-less. The people who raised us, in the dark, in the snows of those midnight blackened towns along the train tracks of the Lake Shore Limited, Albany to Buffalo, and on to Chicago, knew this well. That is, with Matthew, they wanted to order the meaning of the history of the gospel. They aspired to do so by opposition to indecency and indifference. They attempted to do so by attention to conscience and compassion. Matthew emphasizes the role of law, of the law, of laws. He is a legalist, whether or not he was Jewish (the general assumption, though some (I) would argue otherwise). The church affirms and protects the conscience (repeat), in a personal way.

“His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save his people from their sin.”

Many years ago, in late November a 26 year old woman died, a death tragic and needless. She had come in the early snows of that November to our little church, for a few Sundays. So the family asked us to do the funeral and burial, which we did. But we learned later that they also had a long time earlier attended another church in a neighboring town, and a connection with the minister from that church, John, who had baptized the girl 25 years earlier, and who was, and probably felt, left out. A week later the Episcopal priest nearby called and invited us to lunch. ‘I just wanted to catch up with you both’. The door opened on a priest in his clerics, a linen covered table with fine China and crystal, and a full meal. We dined and talked. And there was real grace. Brushing the snow off the windshield that afternoon, I realized this older pastor was just trying to bring a little pardon, a little mercy, a little grace into a time of loss. It didn’t build his congregation, or expand his budget, or add to his Sunday attendance. He just had a sense, a calling to offer some mercy, in a time of hurt, over a common meal. And 39 years 8 months later the memory is as clear as a bell.

The pinnacle of our readings from Holy Scripture this Sunday is in Romans. Paul, as he does in 1 Corinthians 13, so here in Romans 13, sings praise to the God of love, to love, for love, in love. Forgiveness guides us to love. Forgiveness is the heart of love, and love of forgiveness. Forgiveness is the uber driver who gets us to the street of love.

Mark Helperin: ‘I was graduated from the finest school, which is that of the love between parent and child…In this school you learn the measure not of power, but of love; not of victory, but of grace; not of triumph, but of foregiveness’ (Memoir from Antproof Case, 298)…

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.

The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Besides this you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed;

The night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light;

Let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. https://www.christianity.com/bible/rsv/romans/13-14

But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Well begun. Begin with forgiveness. You’re half done, when so well begun.

This in a particular, personal way may become your calling. You may look in the mirror and see and say, ‘as hard as this is for me in general, I feel that I am called to be the salt of forgiveness and the light of pardon for those about me…Even though I am not good at it, I still feel called to it, called to grow in pardon, called to know well the grace of clemency, called to practice forgiveness.’

Frederick Buechner’s simple lines are oft-quoted, and should be:

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 09.10.2023 at 11:00 am