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Sunday
June 19

As You Go, Make of All Disciples

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 28:16-20

One who hears a witness becomes a witness.

Professor Elie Wiesel has taught us this at Boston University over the years.

To hear a witness is to become a witness yourself. In that sense, every Sunday on which we stand to hear the witness of the Gospel, we again become witnesses. We stand up, and becoming upstanding, in bearing witness.

Our Gospel today, the sacramental and hospitable conclusion to the First Gospel, that of St. Matthew, addresses us as a community about our witness.

What then shall your witness be? To whom, to what, to whom shall you bear witness?

Dime con quien andas, y te dire quien eres, say the Spanish: Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.

Wiesel again spoke to us this past year, as he has for 34 years at Boston University. He spoke about Deborah, in the Book of Judges. He spoke that is about the Scripture and about the interpretation of the Scripture. He spoke about meaning, justice, and truth in our time and all time. He delivered his meditative lecture as a witness to an earlier witness, the witness of Deborah.

Around us this past school year have swirled other such witnesses. Professors Prothero and Bacevich recalled and reflected, one evening, upon Jonathan Winthrop’s famous sermon from the Massachusetts Bay in 1630, ‘a city set on a hill’. They were recalling earlier witnesses. Downtown, earlier in the year, during the meeting of a civic club, a woman remembered the sermon series on ‘Darwin and Faith’ which we provided here at Marsh Chapel two summers ago. She was recalling a form of witness. One evening in our Gottlieb center, four people who were children in Europe in the Second World War gave witness to the searing, tragic experiences of their childhoods, and those who helped save them. They were recalling the people who got them to where they are, who got them to whom they are. Various BU alumni have appeared to visit this year and have spent some time in reverie and reminiscence. They have been recalling those who made them the kind of disciples they are. Two visitors brought a video recollection of Howard Thurman, our predecessor here at Marsh Chapel. They recalled his witness. A man wrote from Oregon, not long ago remembering a sermon of Thurman’s from that era: ‘Fear not the Fallow’. Did we have a copy? We have not discovered it yet, but, that title pretty much preaches the sermon, a good early summer reminder; ‘Fear Not the Fallow’. Our students and staff, including some from Marsh Chapel have remembered this year their experiences growing up gay, and the ‘fightings without and fears within’ which they experienced, including those who encouraged and sustained them. They were recalling witnesses.

In our Gospel Lesson, St. Matthew too offers a word about bearing witness. The original frames the Matthean exhortation in the shape of a journey: “As you go, make…” We hear the Gospel and we are reminded, recalled to a rightful mind. We are reminded that we are children of God. The Gospel reminds us that the good news is for people, about people, within people. We have rehearsed before us today again the ethic of love in the teaching of the church, the ethic of Jesus in the teaching of the church.

In a few minutes, we shall close our service, singing a familiar hymn, “Go Make of All Disciples”. Every hymn has a story, every hymn is itself a witness. This one was written and first used for a June Sunday service like ours today, back in 1955. It was composed by the minister of University Methodist Church, in Syracuse, NY (twenty years after Norman Vincent Peale had left that pulpit for Marble Collegiate Church in NYC). The hymn was lifted on a day of great celebration, with many hundreds of children, that Children’s Sunday, singing their way into the summer, with a reminder: ‘as you go, make’.

Our capacity to understand and then to embody such a gospel and such an ethic depends in a practical way upon those whom we know well enough and admire fully enough to choose as mentors. The church has recognized this need, over the years, by remembering, in particular, particular persons who have led, exemplary lives. One tradition may hallow and revere individuals, chosen and examined over time. Another tradition may emphasize in the communion of saints, the COMMUNION more than the individual saints. You may find that there is some wisdom in both. But when we are touched by the communion of SAINTS or by the COMMUNION of saints, we are influenced, shaped and changed. To hear a witness is to become a witness.

Over this past year, you have perhaps experienced some loss. The cloud of witnesses to whom you turn in heaven for guidance on earth may have grown. One—only one—part of your work in grieving their loss will evolve through your own assessment of their helpful examples. You will want to find ways to hold up and to hold on to the gifts, graces and goodness of their lives, as time goes by. My family joined your grieving in the labors of love when our Dad died last June. The manifold, multiple kindnesses which were extended to us, through a season of bereavement, for which we are deeply thankful, have connected us to you, one to another, in a deep, and personal, way. Bereavement is a sacrament. Bereavement is a kind of sacrament. There is a grace, a deep river of grace, running through it all. In particular, this year, I have been impressed by the memories which men have shared, of their own fathers, memories which men have recalled and related, concerning the deaths of their dads, of your dads. They come to mind this Father’s Day.

A part of grace in bereavement arises from the communal capacity to remember. As a graduate of BUSTH in the class of 1953, my father could appreciate that communal capacity of memory. To hear a witness is to become one yourself. The ethic of love in the teaching of the church, the ethic of Jesus in the teaching of the church, becomes personal and real when we can identify persons who witness to that ethic and that teaching, and so teach us how to live. Another generation heard the witness of Earl Marlatt, then professor and Dean in our BU School of Theology, who asked a question: Are Ye Able…said, to remember, when the shadows, still the master.

In the spring of 1973 six freshmen from Ohio Wesleyan University (as we have noted before, a small Methodist college for small Methodists) drove a large Oldsmobile in the rain, across eastern Ohio and Central Pennsylvania, bound for a lake cottage in upstate New York. We had planned to meet my father there for a late dinner, and the beginning of a summer break. In the rain on route 80, the car went over an embankment. Passengers and luggage went in all directions. I had been bringing two white lab mice, in an open bucket equipped with a drip water dispenser, as some sort of gift for my sister Cynthia. After the crash the mice were gone, the car drivable but without windshield wipers, and the six freshmen rightly frightened. We inched along in the rain in silence. About an hour into the silence a roommate in the front seat started shouting and screaming at the top of his lungs. At least one of the mice had survived, and was crawling up his left leg. We inched along in the rain in further silence, one headlight, no wipers. Near dawn we turned down the camp road to see lights burning, and a little smoke coming from the chimney.

Dad had paced all night, after we had called to tell him our delay, and greeted us with a fierce joy. He fixed us a lumberjack breakfast. As we went to sleep, I could see him stoking the fire, before going off to work, to meet the challenges of 1973, after a sleepless night. Just before dosing off I heard him singing: “Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I will pray. Every time I feel the spirit moving in my heart I will pray”.

That song at the hearth and from the heart still resounds, rings out, true of his life and faith. It is important for us, for the coming generations, the remember the witness of those who taught us how to bear witness. Unhappy are those who lose access to their own best past. Happy are those who find access to their own best past. In that personal song of spirit, experience, and prayer were many of the cherished beliefs and values for which he lived, by which he lived. Let me name some of them.

He and his companions in the ministry lived in the openness, the magnanimous freedom of grace, the freedom for which Christ sets us free, on which we are to stand fast, and not to be enslaved again.

He lived convinced of the lasting worth, the ultimate value of persons and personality.

He lived and taught that love means taking responsibility.

He placed the highest premiums on marriage, family, children, and friends.

He had a rare, great capacity for friendship.

He could be restless with and critical of those perspectives which narrow the wideness of God’s mercy. And he could be restless with and critical of those practices in personal and institutional life which did not become the gospel, were not becoming to the gospel.

He trusted that wherever there is a way, there is Christ, wherever there is truth, there is Christ, wherever there is life, there is Christ.

He honored his own conscience and heart, and expected others to do the same. The conscience of the believer is inviolable.

Many of you remember today those who helped you become a disciple, with toughness in love and love in toughness.

And as I heard him say, circa 1990,during a meeting in the Oneida church sanctuary, ‘because I am loved, I can love’.

Given Matthew 28:16, and given this particular Sunday, and given the venerable pulpit here the stewardship of which in these years is our shared responsibility, it is fitting to remember his poem about preaching:

Preaching

Preaching is not Bible study, but

It does require Biblical understanding

Preaching is not theology, but

There must be theology in it.

Preaching is not biography, but

It does require an understanding of people.

Preaching is not teaching, but

It is instructional.

Preaching is not social ethics, but

It must point to social responsibility.

Preaching is one vehicle God has chosen

That can g
row life.

Preaching is humbling,

Frightening,

And Rewarding!

As you probably suspect, I believe these words fit more than preaching. They really ask us about our witness to what most matters, counts, lasts, and works. They ask us about our journey in faith. “As you go…’ What?

Does your way of living have some root and grounding in ancient, holy, inspired Scripture? Well then, as you go, read the Bible some and set an example for those growing up to become students, that is disciples, with you.

Does your way of living, your going as you go, afford a place for thoughtful reflection, for putting things in the light of divine love? Well then, as you go, you might want to share your regard for thoughtful living, for theological reflection, and so set an example for those growing up to become students, that is disciples, with you.

Does your path, your journey involve some other, interesting people? Some colorful characters? I hope so! Tell their stories to those you are making as disciples.

Does your own experience leave you with something to pass on to others, some life learning? Well then, as you go, find some creative ways to leave a trail of bread crumbs for others to follow.

Does your way of living in faith bear the weight of responsibility we share for the common good? What about justice, and mercy, and humility? Do you have a cause or three? (Like refugee resettlement, or employment for all, or care for those in military service?) Well then, as you go, let us know.

On this Father’s day, to conclude, is your way of living a kind of living that grows life for others, and sets an example that is humbling, challenging and rewarding? My marine friend says this: ‘Leadership is example. Period.’

As you go, make of all disciples…

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,

Dean of Marsh Chapel

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 06.19.2011 at 11:00 am

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Sunday
June 12

Birthday of the Church

By Marsh Chapel

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John 20:19-23

Pentecost is the birthday of the church.

The church will exist until the end of time. Some parts of the church may not. Nevertheless, discreet communities, communities of common faith and common ground and common hope, communities of meaning and belonging and empowerment, will continue to the end of time.

Our text from John 20 identifies several abiding features of the church, of community life, as the community of the beloved disciple took shape in the early second century. Notice them with me, on this happy Pentecost Sunday.

In the life of this community, there is continuity between the Lord and his disciples, the life of Jesus and the lives of those who have gone over to him, gone after him. ‘Jesus came and stood among them’. We are not after the physics of this, but the metaphysics. There is a flow, a river of being, a somehow marvelous interlacing of death and life, of Jesus and church. Every Sunday we marvel at this. People are in worship, and yet they have their minds, rightly, on loved ones afar: traveling, in peril, gone to God, in another country. With Jesus we learn to pray first, walk together, and save lives.

In the life of this community, the connection or interlacing of the Lord and the disciples is effected through speech. ‘He said…’ Our voice, our most personal characteristic, carries us from the lonely continent of our personal isolation across the sea and hell of anxious separation, and transplants us onto the dry shore of another person’s heart and mind. This is what it means to fall in love, to experience friendship, and to know forgiveness. We see this week by week in our churches, often in pastoral care. The good pastor begins and ends work by getting to know his people, by keeping track of them, by watching out for them, by taking the time to go out onto their own turf.

In the life of this community, whose birthday we today celebrate, the roadsigns point to peace. ‘Peace be with you’. Peace is not so much the absence of conflict as it is the awareness of love.

In the life of the community of the beloved, the church, we should note, there is real bodily hurt, and real personal change. ‘He showed them his hands and his side’. Yes, this was mentioned to show that the crucified was the raised, the glorified was the ascended. But before the theology, there was the tragedy. The church came out of hurt, suffering, defeat. Things do not always turn out. Justice is not always done. Some things end badly. It is the hallmark of the church, at its truest, to be honest about this. Then, too, the one sent, sends. We are all spiritual itinerants. We change, we move, we grow, we age.

In the life of this community, there is a breath of fresh air. We receive the Spirit. And here, unlike in the rest of the Gospel, that spirit gift is tied to forgiveness, with the further admonition that we are playing for keeps. People will know forgiveness in the actual living of a forgiving community. ‘They have been forgiven’. How this sudden occurrence, not recurrence, but occurrence of a word on forgiveness relates to the rest of a Gospel that does not mention forgiveness, I am not sure. I am sure that it stands out here, a beacon, a lighthouse, a voice in wilderness, a swan song: forgiveness. People know forgiveness by being forgiven. If you are like most people, including me, you probably have some unfinished forgiveness projects strewn around the basement and attic and garage of your unconscious mind.

The utter reality, the unrepeatable miracle of days lived is here shouted, blasted at us: every day matters. Fortunately (to call on Paul) we are not alone. Those of us who keep silence, have among us others who utter wisdom. Those of us who have no knack for healing, have among us others who are natural healers. Those of us who are clumsy at insight and imagination, have among us others who shine in the dark. Those of us who are all thumbs, have among us others who put the X in dexterous. We have a whole body, a church, born on Pentecost.

Let us love our church, let us love our community, let us love our beloved community. For the church today is in serious decline, and so truly can benefit from love. By today’s Gospel, we are responsible for what has been forgiven and what has been retained.

The decline of my own beloved Methodism in the Northeast (a harbinger of similar decline coming soon to other regions) is not the consequence of the will of God (the theological defense). Nor is this decline the result of inevitable demographic trends (the sociological defense). Neither is the decline due to insuperable national and regional trends in lifestyle or commitment levels (the cultural defense). This spectacular decline is also not assignable to educational fashions (the pedagogical defense). Our decline toward death in the Northeast has been a matter of consistent, deliberate, and conscious choice, on the part of church leadership. It is a case of the banality of evil. Little decisions, choices, elections, selections, expenditures, repeated and reinforced, over time. It need not have happened. It did. We did it. To ourselves. Neither a vengeful God, nor a drop in population, nor culture wars, nor seminary curricula are to blame. We simply chose decline over health, death over life. The banality of demise is seen in its location in every mistaken expenditure, every misdirected election, selection, choice, decision, budget and appointment. We are responsible for what has been forgiven and what has been retained.

We had several excellent reasons.

In the meantime, though, the body of the church lost significantly more than half its size, and aged well out into retirement years. In the span of little more than a generation. We simply decided not to tithe at any level of church life, not to engage in the exacting discipline required to preach well, and not to replenish our spirits in the vital liturgical traditions of the church.

Since 1972, my beloved church, the United Methodist Church of the Northeast, has displaced, off loaded, dismembered half of her people. 2% a year for 30 years. The farther north, and the farther east, the worse the numbers. Lyle Schaller’s tragic prophecy has come true: ‘the denominations will gladly accept 2% annual decline in exchange for the tacit agreement that there be no significant change’. We don’t seem to mind dying, as long as we can do it at home, in our jammies, watching TV, eating ice-cream, with pleasant pastoral (read hospice) care.

So let us remember where we are, whose we are, and what time it is. Today is Pentecost, the celebration of the birthday of the church.

Dearly beloved, the Church is of God, and will be preserved to the end of time, for the conduct of worship and the due administration of (God’s) Word and Sacraments, the maintenance of Christian fellowship and discipline, the edification of believers, and the conversion of the world. All of every age and station stand in need of the means of grace which it alone supplies. (UMH, 1968).

He said to them, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I send you’. And when he said this, he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’.

There is a gentle, warm summer wind breathing through us today. The happy news is that a return to excellence in preaching, consistency in tithing, and immersion in tradition will bring us back to life. Here are some gentle suggestions, as we pray first, walk together and save lives.

The m
ark of disciplined living in our time most needed by our churches is robust giving. The old word, a good word, is tithing. In a materialistic age, nothing testifies better to the invisible than generosity with abandon. People notice. Likewise, when the church appears to act irresponsibly with money, people also notice. In an age of entitlement, nothing witnesses better to graceful love than intentional self-abandon in regular (not occasional) giving. Steady investment in fellowship is a great joy to the giver. In an age of greed, nothing bears stronger witness to another way, than another way of relating to wealth. We have not always and consistently remembered well our inherited practice of tithing. Our current average lay giving hovers between 1 and 2% of income. Our current average clergy giving is lower still. More sadly still, we have overburdened our basic ministries in the local churches by requiring not a tithe, but often over 25% of income to be sent on into the elaborated ministries of the denomination. The power to apportion is the power to destroy. This heavy handed ladling of required donations has most hampered growing and larger churches, which most would have benefited from the reinvestment of extra-tithe resource in developing ministries of worship, education and service. To equip our church for the struggle ahead, we will need to teach tithing by precept and example, in season and out.

In Methodism we need to recover our confidence about the importance of education. No denomination anywhere, ever did more to support educational development than did the Methodist church in America during its first two centuries of life. 128 US schools and colleges continue to this day to honor such investment. More statues to John Wesley are found on campuses than in churches today. John Dempster (Methodist minister and founder of Boston University) exemplified the recognition of an earlier era to the need for education in the preparation of clergy, and education in the development of laity. Our current willingness to let semi-prepared people occupy our pulpits in large numbers is a direct contradiction of our own best past. When I entered the ministry in 1979, about 5% of the pulpits in our conference were held by non-elders. Today it is 55%. 500 of the 937 pulpits in upstate New York are occupied by unordained, only partially educated ministers. You cannot run a college on adjuncts. It is far better to have one good sermon preached four times than to have four bad sermons preached one by one. Our confidence in our inherited use of circuits has disappeared. We have made a virtue of uneducated piety. But there is no such thing as piety without learning. The two go together. Better a good sermon preached four times on a circuit than four bad ones comfortably heard and given, without any driving.

We shall need to recover a love for worship that is traditional without the scourge of traditionalism, that is enchantment not entertainment, that is God centered not conversation centered, and that is excellent, entrepreneurial and enjoyable. Every church both deserves and requires fine preaching and music. Especially preaching. It is the heart of pastoral ministry. It is the one thing most desired and needed in our churches. It is the single thread of consistency linking all healthy and growing churches. It is utterly difficult consistently to do well. It is more important than all the other features of community life. It was what we have been known for, our verbal endowment. “I am grateful for the discipline which preaching requires” (R Dolch). We hunger, hunger for the right handling of the word of truth.

For some years our churches have been under the sway of a kind of preaching meant to distance the church from the culture. Unlike Jesus, who ate with sinners, and Paul, who wrote good Koine Greek, and John, whose Gospel itself may be considered (to borrow from Harnack) the acute Hellenization (that is acculturation) of Christianity, this currently influential quasi-Gospel tells us we are resident aliens. Resident aliens. I heard this same now tired, now old phrase used again this week. In it there is some truth, we must affirm, the truth of the narrow gate and the straight way. But on the whole it misses the large, Pentecost, great, Spirited, good, Gospel. Friends: you are not resident aliens in Boston! You are angelic residents of Boston. Not resident aliens, but angelic residents.

Such preaching takes preachers who love both the Bible and the people, both the church and its life, both the community of faith and the culture in which it dwells. If thine heart be as mine, then give me thine hand. (J Wesley). How shall they hear without a preacher? The cunning of a private detective, the resilience of a boxer, the courage of the matador—these are the marks of speech which moves from peace to forgiveness, which is the preaching of the gospel.

For example, we have been told recently of a governor in a far off golden state, who lived for decade, in a household where he was a known father of some, but an unknown father of another. Daily deception. Remarkable. (Of course I feel sorry for all in this situation, and want the grace of forgiveness extended to all.) The Governor was living a double life, his deeds and their consequences all around him, visible fully to him, but not to others. Until a moment of revelation.

But just a minute (so says a preacher). Just how many of us are utterly, completely known by others as we know ourselves? Just how many of us have metaphorical offspring whom we see, but others do not? Others may not see our illegitimate offspring (I am speaking by analogy here, metaphorically here). But we do. They walk right by us, on the way to breakfast. That is what makes the California story of some weeks ago so compelling. It is not just about him, it is about us, about you and me. We see, suffer, rue, endure the presence of things about ourselves that others do not see. We are all the ‘party pooper’, to some degree.

Hence the dire need for the announcement of forgiveness. The Gospel is that God’s grace frees us and forgives us not only from what is seen, but also from what is not seen. Forgiveness frees us again to try to live the lives we hope to live, and which we hope will inspire others, particularly the young.

We want to love our church.

Every spring, we try again to do so, in our Annual Conferences. Although we continue to fail, I find the spring time call of the Spirit utterly compelling. A conference is a chance to confer. This week I heard a saintly superannuated preacher, and Boston University graduate, open his heart in eloquent confession, before 2000 others, about a view of his from 1980 and 1984 which he now knows to be mistaken, in light of Scripture AND tradition AND reason AND experience. This week I listened to a saintly preacher in mid life, and a Boston University School of Theology graduate, who has quietly spent 22 years rebuilding a tiny church into a great community—the real, messy foundational work of our era in ministry—and July 1 will move 100 miles to start all over and do the same in another setting. This morning I have the privilege of meeting and greeting the spirited congregation of Marsh Chapel, a heart for the heart of the city, and a service in the service of the city. Listen, as we end this morning, to the historic questions every budding preacher answers on her way to ordination. See if these questions do not catch you up. See if they do not inspire you. See if they do not touch your heart, and make you think, about how best to live, from this day forward:

Have you faith in Christ?
Are you going on to perfection?
Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?
Are you earnestly striving after it?
Are you resolved to devote yourself wholly to God and his work?
Do you know the General Rules of our Church?
Will you keep them?
Have you studied the doctrines of The United Methodist Church?
After full examination, do you believe that our doctrines are in harmony
with the Holy Scriptures?
Will you preach and maintain them?
Have you studied our form of Church discipline and polity?
Do you approve our Church government and polity?
Will you support and maintain them?
Will you diligently instruct the children in every place?
Will you visit from house to house?
Will you recommend fasting or abstinence, both by precept and example?
Are you determined to employ all your time in the work of God?
Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in your work?
Will you observe the following directions? a) Be diligent. Never be unemployed. Never be triflingly employed. Never trifle away time; neither spend any more time at any one place than is strictly necessary. b) Be punctual. Do everything exactly at the time. And do not mend our rules, but keep them; not for wrath, but for conscience’ sake

Though with a scornful wonder we see her sore oppressed
By schism rent asunder, by heresy distressed
Yet saints their watch are keeping, their cry goes us ‘How long?’
And soon the night of weeping, will be the morn of song.

Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’.

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
Dean of Marsh Chapel

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 06.12.2011 at 11:00 am

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Sunday
June 5

Consecration

By Marsh Chapel

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John 17: 1-11

1. Summit

High atop the world’s greatest writings sits our Holy Scripture. Such knowledge is too wonderful for us. It is high. We cannot attain it.

Within the Scripture itself are conjoined the sibling testaments, the older and newer, the Hebrew Scripture and the Christian Writings. For us just now, the 27 newer books stand a little bit higher.

The Gospels and the Letters and the Apocalyptic Writings are all inspired and inspiring, all sufficient for faith and practice. The gospels though have a certain priority, in our liturgy, and in our hearts. They lie just a step or two higher, atop higher ground.

You love all the Gospels. One there is though which from antiquity has been known as the sublime, the spiritual gospel. We shall ascend today, on ascension Sunday, to the craggy paths and rarified air of the Fourth Gospel.

High above the rest of John, above the seven signs to begin and above the passion and resurrection to end, there lies the strangest moonscape in the Scripture, and so in all literature, and so in life. I mean chapters 13-17. We are about to place our homiletical flag on the very summit, the highest of high peaks, the textual Matterhorn, Everest, Mount Washington, Pike’s Peak: John 17.

And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

2. Where We Least Expect

Your own participation in this sermon is cordially invited, and fully required today. We affirm, with the ancient Gospel according to St. John the Divine, that we find freedom in disappointment, we grasp grace in dislocation, and we learn love in departure. Look back at all your experience to date. What is your greatest disappointment? It is a clue to freedom. What is your hardest dislocation? It is a signpost for grace. What is your most grievous departure? It is the way of love.

The community of the beloved disciple knew about disappointment. After three generations, and some, the community had awaited the primitive hope of the church to be realized. They awaited the return of Christ. The resurrection of the dead from their graves. The end of time. The apocalypse of God. It did not come. He did not come, at least not in the way once hoped. I find it the most remarkable experience of the New Testament that John, rather than being lost in a sea of disheartening failure, in the very eye of his most stormy theological hurricane, found freedom. In disappointment he found freedom.

The community of the beloved disciple knew about dislocation. They had lost their family of origin. They were sent out from their mother religion. The church that wrote John had been thrown out of the synagogue. The life they grew up with had cast them out. It took three generations for them to grasp the joyful grace in dislocation. Count it all grace, brethren, when various dislocations beset you!

Our time has also known dislocation aplenty. We should hunt more for grace in the financial dislocation that is endemic in our time. I have yet to serve a church that was not financially challenged. Every religious institution in our region—church, conference, seminary, campground, school, all—is under water in financial terms. More: middle aged families are sinking into the quicksand of debt. They are buying groceries on credit. Debt is work undone. Savings is work done. We have work to do. Go back and read Who Moved My Cheese.

The community of the beloved disciple knew about departure. The layers of grief culminating in chapter 17, while ostensibly a rehearsal of Jesus’ own departure, may also have been crafted by the heart and voice of their aged John, the other and beloved disciple, whose own departure, in the midst of disappointment and dislocation, itself provoked these layers of grief. Is it not ironic that the sharpest, most rarified language of love in all of the New Testament—in all of literature—arises in the hour of departure?

In our time, we are bidding a reluctant farewell to God. To a certain, junior, perception of God. God reigns. This we affirm with the church militant and triumphant. But God’s way among us is away from us. He is risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him. The measures of freedom and grace given to us become real possibilities, real freedom and real grace, only when we have the gracious freedom to decide for faith. The same is magnificently true of love. This is the message of John, at the end.

The departure of the Christ makes space for love. As I have loved you, so you also ought to love one another.

3. Brother John

We are four siblings in my family of origin. The older three have brown hair. The youngest is a redhead, whose name is John. John’s bright red locks are unlike, quite unlike, the less remarkable curls of Bob, Cathy and Cynthia. He stands apart, does John. It makes you wonder where he came from, with such a distinctive aspect. John is like his Gospel namesake, the Fourth Gospel. The youngest of the four, he stands out, so different from his synoptic siblings Matthew, Mark and Luke. They with their shared brown hair, their shared parables and teachings, their shared emphasis on the humanity of Jesus, their shared trips from Galilee to Jerusalem, they just don’t look at all like their younger redheaded brother.

In the summer, it happens, as it may in your family, there is a family reunion for one part of our tribe. Occasionally, we would go, growing up. Like yours, ours is something of standard reunion. It is held on a farm near Albany, which has been in the family since before George Washington rode a horse. After the usual light meal of beef, corn, potatoes, bread, sausage, pies, and pickles and so on, the extended family (or those who having eaten so can still move) will sometimes stand for a photograph on the long farm house veranda. I ask you to look at the photo. I am holding it here. Can you see it? Well, even if you cannot see it across the radio waves, you can probably guess what it shows. Of these eighty people, do you see how many have red hair? About 60—young or old, tall or short, heavy or slight, male or female, they mostly have red hair, like John. 75% are redheads. In fact, in the photo, it looks like a sea of red hair. Maybe a red heads convention out in the farm fields of Cooperstown, NY. John isn’t the odd ball. His siblings are.

John is not the second century Greco Roman odd ball. His synoptic siblings are. When you put the Fourth Gospel, with all its red haired radical difference, on the farm house veranda of second century religious family literature, he fits right in. He stands shoulder to shoulder with all the Gnostic writings that are so like him, especially in these late chapters. It looks like a redheads convention. He looks and sounds quite like the rest of his second and third cousins, once or twice removed: The Paraphrase of Shem, the Treatise on the Resurrection, the Odes of Solomon, the Apocryphon of John, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Mary. How e
lse will we ever hear this voice of Jesus from John 17?

And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God.

This voice is NOTHING like that of the sermon on the mount, or that of the parable of the Good Samaritan, or that of the cry from Psalm 22 on the cross. Not human, but divine, here. Not earthly, but heavenly, here. Not low, but high, here. Not immanent, but transcendent, here.
The community of the Gospel of John had a radical experience of Jesus, as God on earth. To render that experience meaningful, they had the radical courage to take language from the heretics around them, the Gnostics, and use it as their own BECAUSE IT FIT. It worked. It explained to the huddled humans clinging to Christ what they had experienced in him: divine grace and divine freedom. It rendered the sense of consecration, the sense of holy living and dying, the sense of consecrated joy, which they had found, with the Light of the World, with the Bread of Life, with the Good Shepherd, with the Resurrection, with the Word made flesh.

The community of the Gospel of John feared not the culture around them. They feared not truth, even when that truth was best expressed outside of their particular religious circle. They had the guts to use language belonging to pagans, outsiders, heretics, Gnostics to celebrate and consecrate their faith. In doing so, they opened up the church to the world, to the future, to the culture around them. They changed their way of speaking of Christ, and pointed to Christ above, in, and transforming the culture around them. They changed. They had the courage to change.

In age, our own, when the Gospel of John, served raw, without cooking, without historical interpretation, can be made to sound like the voice not of tradition but of traditionalism, we do well to remember John’s courage to change, to reach out to the culture around, to put the gospel in word and music on the air waves of a pagan culture, out on the radio waves of a secular world, and where possible to use that same culture, and its language, for the cause of consecration.

4. Spirit of Truth

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide
In the strife of truth with falsehood
For the good or evil side
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah
Offering each the bloom or blight
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light
New occasions teach new duties
Time makes ancient good uncouth
One must upward still and onward
Who would keep abreast of truth

5. Rich Man, Poor Man

A poor man went to a Methodist church for worship. The congregation welcomed him and he returned week by week. After a while the women’s circle took up a collection and bought him a nice new suit, with a blue tie. He happily received the gift, but they never saw him in church again.

A while later, on the street, one of church members saw him and asked what had happened. Did he not like the suit? Did it not fit? Was he afraid to wear it?

“Oh no, I love the suit. I look great in it. When I say myself in the mirror, I looked so good I thought, ‘I look like a million bucks. I look too good to go just to the Methodist church. I think I’m dressed well enough to go the Episcopal church. I think I will go there. And that is what I did”

6. Carol and Realized Eschatology

Sometimes a dose of realized eschatology can clear the mind and strengthen the soul. In a way, every day is our last. In a way, heaven and hell are here and now. In a way, the end time is all of time. John puts it this way: ‘the hour is coming AND NOW IS’.

Some years ago we sat at dinner with several other couples, in a beautiful home, over a majestic meal, graciously served. Because the couples new each other well, and were in trust to each other, there was the chance for hard and serious conversation, consecrated conversation you might say. This evening the debate swirled around gay marriage.

There are tipping points in the way a culture moves. Some of them occur at dinner, in beautiful homes, over majestic meals, graciously served. The host was opposed, to gay marriage that is. The conversation widened, and then narrowed, and then widened again. We can surely agree that there are many ways of keeping faith, and many honest, different, points of view, on this and on many issues.

Across the table sat Carol, mother of two fine teenagers, married with joy to a business leader, baseball player, Red Sox fan. She had battled cancer once before, and now it returned, and she fought it again. We could not see it then, but in seven months she was gone.

Over some heat and some laughter, much disagreement but little discord, the conversation, consecrated you might say, moved on. Carol spoke fully, and at one point said: ‘You know, I have learned how precious life is, how fragile, what a gift every day is. Here is what I feel: if two people truly love each other, deeply commit to each other, and want to consecrate their vows, that is they want what Doug and I have, why would I ever want to stand in their way, why would I ever want to deprive them of that happiness that I know so well.’ I heard some minds changing as dessert came that night.

7. Give us the 66th!

Pasternak loved Shakespeare’s Sonnett 66. It is said that whenever he read aloud the crowd would not let him leave until he had rehearsed it for them. “Give us the 66th…” Its evocation of daily anxiety bears remembering. The poem is unequaled in its announcement of trouble. When life gives you the 66th remember Shakespeare, but especially his last couplet.

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly--doctor-like--controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

‘Captive good attending captain ill…’ Can you hear that? It begs to be heard. Stand with your people in tragedy, honest and kind in word and deed.

8. Presence and Thanksgiving (Ps 139)

1 O LORD, thou hast searched me and known me!
2 Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar.
3 Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.
5 Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.
7 Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, "Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be n
ight,"
12 even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with Thee

9. Coda

“Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.” While we may shed the inherited demonic mythology in the verse, knowing and honoring its origins in the distant past, we nonetheless fully recognize the spiritual truth in 1 Peter: we know not what a day may bring, but only that the hour for serving is always present. Our dear Springfield mother, covering her daughter and so saving her in a bathtub, knew not what a day would bring, but only the presence of mind to save her beloved.

We too want to discipline ourselves and keep alert, as the 2nd century author of 1 Peter instructs his baptizand. So we pray. Do you pray? So we commune. Do you receive the eucharist? So we study. Have you devotionally read your Bible this week? So we converse with one another. Have you opened home and heart recently in Christian conversation? So we fast—park your car, save your money, do not reply all: fight pollution, debt and dehumanization. We too want to discipline ourselves and keep alert.

We want to live consecrated lives.

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
Dean of Marsh Chapel.

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 06.5.2011 at 11:00 am

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Sunday
April 10

Bonhoeffer and Bach: The Passion According to St. Matthew

By Marsh Chapel

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Brisk air, breathtaking view: we can imagine for a moment the sights from, the sights of the great mountain peaks near and far. Mount Washington, Mount Everest, Mount Marcy, the Matterhorn. The Bible itself moves from promontory to promontory, from Mount Sinai to Mount Nebo to Mount Tabor to the Mountain of the Transfiguration to the Mount of Olives. Up high, we pause.

We have come this far this Lent. Now we are ascending and descending the great mountain of beauty before us, The Passion According to St. Matthew. We have come this far this Lent. We pause here to survey the scene, to take in the brisk air the breathtaking view the beauty of the music. Thus far the Gospel of John has shown us our path: Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman, the Blind Beggar. Thus far the witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer has shown us the trail: The Cost of Discipleship, Cheap Grace, Religionless (though not churchless) Christianity, and Life Together. Thus far the muted but audible voice of Franklin Littell, the father of Holocaust studies, has provided a way to orient ourselves, Sunday by Sunday. For a moment, we shall simply rest and wait. As Howard Thurman said of the power of waiting and resting, we need not ‘fear the fallow’. We need not fear the quiet, the quiet power of height, beauty, grace.

Yet in the midst of turmoil far and near we hunt for hope. ‘Faith is the conviction that hope works’ (so Professor Gomes, of blessed memory). Many of our younger friends have been partly cut off from the traditions of faith and memory, of morality and hope which have the power to guide us, to recall for us our own best past and so our own best paths. We want to respect and affirm the ‘fragility of goodness’, and so to find ways to expand that circle of goodness, in our time. And goodness knows our time well needs such expansion. In this hour we prayerfully wonder about shocks and aftershocks in Japan, leaks and spills and heroic labors to bring remedy. In this hour we soberly wonder about peace and war in our so called middle east, and wonder further about ways forward when none seems just right. In this hour we lay on the altar of reckoning and hope the endless multiple liberties and longings of our beloved country of more than 300 million souls. The tides of worry can wash so hard against the very rock of our souls that it seems all we can do to hold out and hold on in trust that ‘faith is the conviction that hope works’.

So our reflections emerge along the cliff walk of this high summit, this high peak, this mountainous musical beauty. Brisk air, breathtaking view. From our Lenten journey we shall carry forward and with us a collection of convictions.

We too, with Bonhoeffer, refuse to set back the clock. We know that this world in which we take our places as working and caring human beings, is not the world of a hundred or two hundred years ago. Nothing human is foreign to us in a world come of age. We neglect no truth, and fear no growth in learning of new truth. If we are to be women and men for others, we shall in truth need to be and become women and men with others, in all the complexity and difficulty of life at its height and breadth and depth. We hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, and read the two with rapt attention.

We too, with Bonhoeffer, live in hope, with our loyalty and love given to the Lord of Life himself. In Christ we shall again see the great vistas of beauty and grace. In Christ we shall again learn the seasoned wisdom of discipline, work, labor, earnest and diligent care. In Christ we shall again gain courage to become we are, to be who we are most meant to be, to let our lives speak. In Christ, we shall trust the meaning of the cross and resurrection, the triumph of substance over form, of grace over law, and love over death. We shall trust that love outlasts death. We shall trust that faith, hope and love abide.

We too with Bonhoeffer, will give of ourselves to the transformation of our time, to the transcendent transformation of all of life, of the very bits and places of culture committed to our care, starting with Sunday morning, but not ending there, or here. This hour of worship is to be the first in a long seven day series of hours given, shared with others. We shall strive to Biblical Ethics: ‘all contingent on the call of Christ’ (Green, 256):

1. Do what needs doing (Ecc 9:10)

2. Be exact in small matters (Lk 16:10, 19:17)

3. Do Domestic duties first (1 Tim 3: 15)

4. Do not interfere with others (1 Pet 4: 15)

And we shall recognize ‘Discipline, Action, Suffering, Death’ as stations on the road to freedom.

From this Lent, for the faithful living of the days to come, we shall honor our inheritance in truth, affirm the faithfulness of Christ, and look forward to the time and space which Isaiah did foretell, streams in the desert.

“By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered

And confidently waiting come what may

We know that God is with us night and morning

And never fails to greet us each new day.” (UMH 517)

~The Reverend Doctor Robert Allan Hill
Dean of Marsh Chapel

posted in Lenten Series 2011: Bonhoeffer, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 04.10.2011 at 12:10 pm

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Monday
April 4

Bonhoeffer: Life Together

By Marsh Chapel

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John 9:1-22

Preface

For Lent 2011 at Marsh Chapel we have listened for the gospel in Scripture, in the life Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and in application of the gospel of truth to our own time, with help from Franklin Littell. Bonhoeffer’s affirmation of liberal thought, affirmation of Christ as Lord of life, and affirmation of the transcendent transformation of human culture in the preaching of the Gospel, are at the heart of our own life together here.

Like many today, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s family did not regularly go to church. They were cultural but not observant Christians. They assumed and affirmed the place of the (Lutheran) church, but did not attend. In this light, it is especially, movingly meaningful to remember how Bonhoeffer’s father, an eminent psychiatrist, responded to Dietrich’s decision to study theology. For this family, such a decision might have become one that came with the name tag, ‘black sheep in training’. Yet this is not the response his Dad gave. On the contrary, there was an openness, a respect, an admiration, mixed in with the predictable surprise, concern and criticism: In any case you gain one thing from your calling—in this it resembles mine—living relationships to human beings and the possibility of meaning something to them, in more important matters than medical ones. And of this nothing can be taken away from you, even when the external institutions in which you are placed are not always as you would wish. (Metaxas, 213).

One detects in this early letter something of the freedom and grace within the Bonhoeffer home. On this freedom, and on this grace, one may surmise and imagine, Dietrich Bonhoeffer relied as he gradually developed an understanding of life together. The disciplines of study, science and music from his home were transposed into the disciplines of prayer and worship in the church’s life together. The convivial joy of gathering and celebration, which his family exemplified even through 1944, were transposed into the regular reading of psalms, both thanksgiving and lament. The brotherhood, sisterhood of his own upbringing were transposed into a kind of fraternal love—in his churches, his classes, his school, his friendships and even in his imprisonment—on which all who knew him well regularly reflect. The fierce sense of loyalty, duty, responsible freedom, acquired within the liberal culture of Berlin in his youth, became, one could argue, and with some sense of irony, the ground out of which his later understanding emerged. Culture became the culture of faith. The Gospel speaks to the height and strength of human being.

Exegesis

Speaking of height and strength, in John 9 we reach the summit of the Fourth Gospel. Here this morning is the crucial chapter within the Fourth Gospel. In it we see clearly the two level drama of faith which John acclaims. Said Luther, “preaching the Gospel is one beggar telling another where they both may find bread”.

Today we meet two beggars. One is a man lost in the mist of memory, who somehow recovered his sight at the pool of Siloam. The other is the church, John’s church, and by extension the whole church including the community of Marsh Chapel, existentially lost, who somehow recover sight at the hand of Jesus the Christ. John has two eyes at work. One is trained on the distant memory of a powerful Jesus. The other is trained on the experience of the Risen Lord in the life of the church. Both see again, by the healing action of the divine.

This blind beggar, and his healing, and all the trouble that such a good deed occasions, is important to John because in him John sees clearly what is going on in his own church. At Siloam, there was a lonely beggar. We are beggars too. In Jerusalem, one was powerfully healed. We have been healed too. With Jesus, a man’s sight, his most prized faculty, was restored. So too our spirit. So long ago, Jesus was heard to say, “I am the light of the world”. He is the light of our world too. Did Jesus of old bring healing to the needy? By grace he does so every week in our midst still! What the earthly Jesus did for the blind beggar, the Risen Lord does for the beloved church.

That’s the good news.

There is other news too.

At Siloam, Jesus heals on the Sabbath. We too have learned that the Sabbath was made for man and not the other way around. In Jerusalem, there is immediate conflict over what this new Power means for old traditions. We too know the conflict between gospel and tradition. With Jesus’ healing there comes a division between generations. Such contention and difference is ours too.

Our gospel shows us two beggars, one in Jerusalem a long time ago. And one which is the church itself, to whom Jesus speaks, the Risen Lord speaking in the spirit through the very human voice of John.

Two blind beggars, one a man and one a church. Expulsed, thrown out, shunned, set apart.

Most especially, in this crafted memory, the blind man given sight is then thrown out of the synagogue for consorting with Jesus. And this is the central communal dislocation of John’s church. The story, culminating in 9: 22, ‘thrown out of the synagogue’, is the story of a struggling community, which, like a beggar, is wandering outside of what inherited tradition alone can provide. And we are, too. John 9 is about what happened to a community of faith in the late first century. Its rancorous depiction of opponents, ‘the Jews’ or the ‘Judeans’, refers to those siblings, those closest in heart and mind, with whom there has been a rupture. Not to understand the history of the fourth Gospel so is tragically and irresponsibly to enhance anti-Semitism both ancient and modern.

The expulsion from the religious family of origin has two dimensions, one of sight and one of sound, one sociological and one theological. First, in actual experience, the little and poor community has lost its roots and its support. It is dislocated. Second, in the nature of hope, the community has now to find new resources, new ways of thinking about hope. It is disappointed.

(Why the separation? For ample reason. For the Jewish community, John’s high claims about Christ amounted to a breach of monotheism, a kind of ditheism, two gods. “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one….” And the charge had merit. Now we can say so many years later, why this is minimal, look, by the fourth century the church acclaimed not one, nor even two, but three persons in the Godhead!)

Just here is the good news. In the very depth of dislocation, John’s church experienced grace in their life together. We may too. In the very depth of disappointment, John’s church experienced freedom in their life together. We may too.

Bonhoeffer’s teaching and life bear such witness.

Exposition

That is, to complete the affirmation begun last Sunday, religionless Christianity is not churchless Christianity. For the sake of life together Bonhoeffer, and we, together, set our minds and hearts against pride, sloth, falsehood, and against superstition, idolatry and hypocrisy. That is, it is not a question of avoiding the church, but of avoiding the inherent illnesses of religion, and of strengthening the disciplines and commitments within the church.

So Bonhoeffer cherished preaching: The Christian hope of resurrection in contrast to (religious) otherworldliness sends man back to his life on the earth in a completely new way. The Christian must like Christ totally give himself to the earthly life. (Green, 322)

So Bonhoeffer cherished teaching: I want therefore to start from the premise that God should not be smuggled into some last secret place, but that we should simply recognize the autonomy of man and not run him down in his worldliness but confront him with God at his strongest point. (Green, 324)

So Bonhoeffer cherished marriage: ‘It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on the marriage that sustains your love’‘ (Metaxas, 4580

So Bonhoeffer cherished the church: ‘A state which includes within itself a terrorized church has lost its most faithful servant’

So Bonhoeffer cherished silence: ‘God comes to people who have nothing but room for God and this hollow space this emptiness in people is called in Christian speech, faith’ (Coles 46)

So Bonhoeffer cherished witness: ‘Only he who cries out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chant (Littell, 50)

So Bonhoeffer cherished the prophetic: ‘It is rather the task of Christian preaching to say: here is the church, where Jew and German stand together under the Word of God; here is the proof whether a church is still the church or not’ (Metaxas 155)

So Bonhoeffer cherished the Bible: 136 ‘I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions…’ (like listening to someone whom we love) (Metaxas 136)

So Bonhoeffer cherished faith: ’love is the name for what God does to man in overcoming the disunion in which man lives’ (Coles 84)

So Bonhoeffer cherished Life Together—hymns sung, prayers offered, gifts given, sacraments administered, friendships honored, letters written, listening practiced, reading enjoyed.

So shall we. If an hour of worship is not worth our attention, what is? If one hour of real attention a week to all that lasts, counts, matters and works is not worth engaging, what is?

Application

We have relied in this Lent’s application of the gospel on Franklin Littell, former Dean of Marsh Chapel, for some guidance and insight about how best to apply our exegesis of John and our exposition of Bonhoeffer to our own lives. Littell, the father of formal Holocaust studies in America, a Methodist minister who had witnessed both the rise and the terror of Adolf Hitler, preached from our pulpit for one year in 1952. But his lasting voice continues to address us, in part through his book, The Crucifixion of the Jews: the failure of Christians to understand the Jewish experience.

Life together, for John and Bonhoeffer and Littell, has meant the courage to find grace in dislocation. In expulsion and imprisonment and failure, we become dimly aware of real grace. But we first have to endure being expulsed from our earlier religion. We first have to endure the inescapable discipline of imprisonment. We first have to endure the crime and punishment of failure. Littell’s premonition was that the very same issues which led to the majority failure in Christianity to contend with Hitler are still and pervasively alive and abroad in the church. These are the religious issues, named last week, which continue to strangle and hobble real church life, real community, real life together. Individualism eclipses the common good. Episodes in experience occlude our view of community. Intellectual dishonesty precludes our ability to speak a full truth. Religion, which infantilizes, blocks the way to faith, which gives maturity, or responsible freedom. Littell has this for us to ponder: what if the faith tradition most damaged by the Holocaust, in the long term, was Christianity?

The Holocaust was the consummation of centuries of false teaching and practice, and until the churches come clean on this ‘model’ situation, very little they have to say about the plight of other victimized and helpless persons or groups will carry authority. There is a symbolic line from Auschwitz to (present troubles), but what the churches have to say about (present troubles) will not be heard until their voice is clear on Auschwitz. The tune must be played backward, the ball of scattered twine must be rolled up through the difficult and mysterious byways of the maze, before we come again into the blessed daylight of faith.

The meaning of the Holocaust for Christians must be built into the confessions of faith and remembered in hymns and prayers. That was the turn in the road that most of the churches missed…Antisemitism is not just a peculiarly nasty form of race prejudice; Antisemitism is blasphemy—a much more serious matter!

When Christians denied their obligations to the Jews, the way to boasting and triumphalism was opened wide, and most churchmen are still marching cheerfully through it (Littell, 65)

Coda

How shall we proceed? How shall we live up to the gospel, and live down our waywardness?

Through a moment of self-critical honesty, as when Maureen Dowd recently took the measure of her own tradition:

‘It is time for (us) to take inspiration from that sublime—even divine—side of the church, from those church workers whose magnificence lies not in their vestments but in their selflessness. They’re enough to make the Virgin Mary smile (M Down, NYT).

Through a moment of reflection on experience, as when James Matthews thought about his travel to India?

‘India enabled me for the first time to see myself and America as others see us, and it liberated me to be at home in the world’ (Bishop James K Matthews, BG 9/25/10).

Through a moment of Lenten discipline, as we struggle against the great pollutions of our time in air and debt and internet? As we park our car and save our money and do not ‘reply all’?

In Scripture (especially John), in History (especially Bonhoeffer), in Life (especially Littell), we are called to live in responsible freedom. We are called to shuffle off any and all religious or secular impediments, so that we may freely choose, responsibly decide. It is in our life together that we find the nutrients to sustain this perilous journey.

So, today, a table of mercy, a cup of salvation, the bread of life

~The Reverend Doctor Robert Allan Hill
Dean of Marsh Chapel

posted in Lenten Series 2011: Bonhoeffer, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 04.4.2011 at 6:04 pm

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Sunday
March 27

Bonhoeffer: Religionless Christianity

By Marsh Chapel

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John 4:5-42

Preface

We have a full, free Monday evening dinner here at Marsh Chapel. Last Monday our volunteer cook lavishly prepared a sprawling delicious Greek meal, from olives to baklava. Yummie.

Thirty years ago some of us likewise took turns cooking. My grandmother used to serve a Sunday chicken dinner (biscuits, pies, creamed onions) which served as a model for what a couple of us tried to cook. We failed. Eberhard Bethge and his wife were with us. But with the potatoes too done and the chicken undone (it wasn’t much fun, close to none), not all the conversation stuck. Some did. Bethge was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s closest friend, a spiritual brother who wrote Bonhoeffer’s biography. Over semi cooked chicken, he told us about the German Lutheran Pastor, martyr, and theologian. He held up his fork, and stabbed the air to make his points, in English only mildly clothed in a German accent. With the dessert in disarray, much of the brilliance of the conversation disappeared into the din of noise from Broadway. Phrases remain in memory, or in stylized imagined remembrance. Cost of Discipleship. Cheap Grace. Man for Others. World Come of Age. Religionless Christianity.

We have dedicated five Sundays of Lent 2011 at Marsh Chapel to lifting up, remembering the voice of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The burned potatoes and rough chicken were served 35 years ago. Bonhoeffer was hung 32 years before we met Bethge over dinner that night. April 9 1945 in Flossenburg, Bonhoeffer was martyred, a conspirator in the failed attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler, having lived his last two years in prison, having been engaged but never married, having inspired a generation of young students to Christian service, having written books that only now, perhaps, can we fully appreciate.

Bonhoeffer grew up in the height of western culture, an acculturation and liberal inheritance he continuously affirmed. He challenged that culture, not at its depth, but at its height, not at its weakness but at its strength, not at its worst but at its best. People ask: how can you preach at a non sectarian University? The reply: where else is real preaching possible? People ask: how can you preach in utterly secular New England? The reply: where else is anyone really free to hear the gospel? People ask: how can you preach to sleepy, bleary eyed 20 year olds? The reply: who better to judge our worth for the future? Bonhoeffer would probably agree. Christ is not to be found on the periphery, but in the heart, at the height of human history and culture. He is not Lord of religion, but Lord of life. Christ is the very center point of human life. This season we remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in whose life and writings a liberal legacy is honored, Christ Jesus is loved and affirmed, and at least in potential human culture istransformed. No wonder, given our commitments here at Marsh Chapel, we turn this month to him.

With a warmth and grace undeserved in the face of a junior varsity meal, Eberhard Bethge prayed with us, one fine evening, in 1976. Of all the phrases from that dinner hour, religionless Christianity was the most memorable. We heard about someone who desperately wanted his students to move from religion to faith. From religion to faith, from Christian religion to religionless Christianity. Maybe you are ready to make that move this morning? Listen for the gospel in Scripture and in History and in Life.

Exegesis

One lone woman at one old well is here to help us.

In a region well versed in religious difference and dispute, our Lord is pictured in John 4 cutting through religion. For Samaritan simply substitute ‘other’, religious other. If Nicodemus reminds us that we are free, and he does, the Samaritan woman reminds us that we are responsible, and we are. Freedom gives birth to responsibility. Jesus leaves the familiarity of Judah. He crosses, on this memory, multiple lines. He crosses the geographical line. He crosses the gender line. He crosses the racial line. He crosses the status line. He crosses the religious line. Our woman spells it out. You, a Jew: I, a Samaritan.

Jesus Christ is the Lord of life, not the Lord of religion. He calls us from religion to faith, out of false consciousness into a whole new way of being.

Spirit and truth, spirit and truth.

Our lone woman knows her Samaritan religion: Samaria, Jacob, ancestor, marriage (she knows marriage better than Elizabeth Taylor), holy mountain, Messiah. She is not a Jew and she is not a Christian, but you can substitute for her religious vocabulary any number of similarly developed religious tongues. She knows religion. Jesus offers her faith. Jesus offers her the religion of unreligion. The Lord offers us the religion of unreligion.

The Jesus of the Fourth Gospel is not easily blended with his counterparts in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Rather than projecting our own needs for uniformity out onto these ancient, holy, mysterious, puzzling and powerful writings, we first to listen to them. Listen. We need to let the Bible speak to us. Now, the Jesus of John 4 is a very different Jesus. He sees into others’ minds. He knows things without being told. He divines the secrets hidden in the heart. He stands alone and in public view with a woman, a Samaritan woman, a troubled Samaritan woman. This Jesus is guided along in a lengthy mystagogical conversation, full of riddles, double entendres, hidden meanings, mysterious silences. He offers living water. In none of this does one find a single correspondence with the earlier three quests for Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John’s is an entirely different Jesus. So, asked one bright student, which is true?

Excellent question.

And here is an answer. They all are. They all truly represent the actual historical experience of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, which various little communities in his fledging church did have of him. All four are historically accurate. With accuracy they describe the Jesus known in the actual lives of the communities of Mark, forty years after Calvary; Matthew, fifty-five years after Calvary; Luke, sixty years after Calvary; and John eighty years after Calvary. They give us grace and freedom to sense Jesus, as they did, present among us, as He was among them. He is risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him.

John’s Gospel is roughly the same distance from Jesus in time as we are from Bonhoeffer in time, about 80 years, from the thirties to 10—110 or 2010.

Exposition

Are you ready to move from religion to faith? Are you ready to drink from the living water? Are you open to spirit and alive to truth?

What on earth is ‘religionless Christianity?’ (cited in Clifford Green, The Sociality of Christ and Humanity, Missoula: Scholars Press, 1972; wherein are found this and following page numbers and citations from his book; my reliance on Dr Green in this section of the sermon is open, substantial, and grateful). 315

First, it is a faith that recognizes and honors the strengths and capacities of human beings. Later in life, in prison, Bonhoeffer could balance his earlier emphasis on submission of the will and ego with a fuller appreciation for human beings in a world come of age. He is proud of his urban culture and its traditi
on, which brings both freedom and responsibility.

Bonhoeffer refuses to turn back the page from modern life. He accepts the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and human autonomy as heightened in our time. In his famous phrase, man has come of age. Science, technology and social organization have given us security and confidence (even though they have created their own problems): knowledge, power and control. DB is particularly focused on insurance; man can insure himself against everything except against man.

Bonhoeffer affirms human strength: scientific research, industrial and farming technology, medicine, social and economic planning, insurance. (Green, 308)

While he saw the weakness of liberal theology (‘it conceded to the world the right to determine Christ’s place in the world’.), he never forgot its strength (‘it did not try to put the clock back’. ) (Green, 307)

“In the (prison) Letters we find a clear theological affirmation of the strengths of the mature ego which is liberated and shaped by Christ for the service of others, especially in responsibility for corporate, political life.” (Green, 335)

Second, religionless Christianity is skeptical of religion. Perfect for Universities, for young adults and for New England! Precisely ideal for Marsh Chapel! But what does he mean by religion? We proceed carefully here, for he means something different than we expect.

Beware religion, or a religious outlook, that is episodic, peripheral, subjective, individualistic, otherworldly, dishonest (intellectually), humiliating and self centered. (C Green summary, 313-318). It is all that diminishes, chains, and harms the human being. But faith is something else, lived in the context of the community of faith, THE CHURCH, (to which we turn next week).

Bonhoeffer’s view of religion is in a way similar to that of some famous critics, that religion infantilizes. If religion is keeping you from growing up, religion is not a good thing. Innocence and holiness are not the same thing. Hold onto this verse: the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Third, religionless Christianity takes as its aim a grown up faith, a mature, fully human way of being in the world. Faith means maturity. Faith is reliance upon God. Faith is freedom from narcissism and freedom for responsible existence for others.

Christ is the man for others. We are to live as he did live, a man for others, or as we would put it today, a person for others.

Christ crucified and weak thereby creates room for human strength, freedom, independence, responsibility and integration—in short, maturity. (Green, 320). Human problems have human solutions. So, we must find a way to live safely with nuclear energy, or dispense with it. So, we must find a way to live peaceably across ancient middle eastern religious differences, or suffer the consequences. So, we must find a way for workers and owners to honor one another, or be ready to pay the price in endless strife. What did Paul write? If you bite and devour one another, take care that you are no consumed by one another. (Gal. 4)

Bonhoeffer’s words carry a paradoxical power. His sense of responsible freedom, Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman together, is compelling: God lets us know that we must live as men who can manage our lives without God. The God who is with us is the God who leaves us alone. Before God and with God we live without God. 321 Sin consists in the lack of faith needed for commitment to free responsibility. 325

Application

We have these weeks of Lent 2011 committed ourselves to listen for the Gospel by which we are saved in Scripture and Tradition and Reason. Jesus invited the Samaritan woman to a religionless faith. Dietrich Bonhoeffer made his appeal for a religionless Christianity. How shall we apply gospel truth to our own lives?

Having turned in exegesis to John and in exposition to Bonhoeffer, we turn again for application to Franklin Littell, the first Dean of Marsh Chapel, who was not in the habit of mincing words. One ongoing application for those of us who have been seized by the confession of the church, who have been loved by the faithfulness of Christ, is to look again, to look long, to look hard at the Holocaust. We have yet to understand what happened to Christianity in the dark abyss, the hellish, ghoulish fire of Auschwitz. Almost alone, Littell continues to ask what the ongoing repercussions are for Christianity, for the possibility of future Christianity. Her reminds us unsparingly of what happened religiously in an ostensibly Christian country:

Nazism was in no sense a revolt against ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’. Neither was it ‘secularist’. Quite the contrary…The Fuhrer and other party orators made constant reference to ‘divine providence’, ‘spiritual renewal’, ‘moment of decision’, ‘immortal destiny’…and the like. Many of the party hymns were simply new words written to popular gospel songs, with the same brass bands marching and evoking from crowds the same emotional response. The key question, and here the issue of ‘heresy’ arises, is why the millions of baptized and confirmed Christians had no sense that they were now responding to visions and programs antithetical to the biblical faith. (F Little. The Crucifixion of the Jews. 70)

Coda:Elie Wiesel

Two years after the dinner with Eberhard Bethge, a few of us were privileged to meet a scholar who had just been hired at Boston University, Elie Wiesel. Our 1979 dinner with him in New York came before we had read anything of his work, and was in the home of Robert McAfee Brown. He was very kind and very quiet. Now we have spent since 2006 almost 5 years in Boston. The lectures Wiesel gives every fall, here, provide a profound moral compass, a serious historical point of reference, for the rest of our educational work, and especially for the preaching of the gospel. Hear again the end of the most striking passage from his book, Night, and the memory of a child who was hung:

“For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. Behind me I heard the same man asking: "Where is God now?"

And I hear a voice within me answer him: "Were is he? Here He is - He is hanging here on this gallows. . . " (Night, 78)

How are we to live with faith in earshot of this passage? Our Lutheran Pastor, Teacher, Witness struggled against this hell. His life gave life to his words: “The responsible man … tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God… we are moving toward a completely religionless time…the profound this worldliness of Christianity… the Christian is… simply a man as Jesus was a man...I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes, failures and experiences and perplexities.” (Green, 328).

Receive the gospel:

“The hour is coming and now is when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father…The hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:21)

~The Reverend Doctor Robert Allan Hill
Dean of Marsh Chapel

posted in Lenten Series 2011: Bonhoeffer, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 03.27.2011 at 11:00 am

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Sunday
March 20

Bonhoeffer: Cheap Grace

By Marsh Chapel

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John 3: 1-17

Preface

The primitive Christian church proclaimed two accounts of Jesus. The first is the story of his death. The second is the story of his life. The death narrative and the life narrative continue in tandem, continue in dialectical dialogue, to this day.

The older is the death story. The church first preached Jesus’ death. ‘Ye do preach the Lord’s death until he come’, said St Paul near the year 50ad, in describing the marrow of the meaning of the meal, the Eucharist, at the heart of the community’s life. Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried: here we hear the older story, the death story. This older story, the account of the Crucifixion and the radiant apocalypse of resurrection to follow, is the church’s primal affirmation. Paul: ‘I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, and the life I know live in the flesh I live by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, who loved me, and gave himself for me’.

The second story followed the first, though that seems odd to us today. Later, some decades later, the church began to convey not only the story of the cross and resurrection, but also the narrative of the incarnation and proclamation of Christ. This was the primitive church’s second story. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary: here we hear the second oldest story, not of death but of life, not of cross but of cradle, not of suffering but of growing, not of example but of precept. John: ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us’. In this secondary affirmation, the church accounted for Jesus’ advent, his birth, his teaching and preaching and healing, his parables, his miracles, his family, his disciples, and his call to those who would hear, ‘follow though me’. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength. And thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. The whole law is here summarized”.

Now these two sibling stories have usually gotten along well, with the occasional familial rancor. You will notice that the second story is that of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany and Ordinary Time. You will notice that the first story is that of Ash Wednesday, Lent, Holy Week, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. They are related but different stories. How they are related consumes two thousand years and the whole history of Christianity.

Some traditions and denominations within Christianity tend to favor the life story. Orthodox, some Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Quaker, Unitarian and various other Christians tend to know the second story better, and to sing the Carols of Christmas loudest. They tend to interpret the New Testament letters in light of the Gospels. They tend to interpret Holy Week in light of Epiphany.

Some traditions and denominations within Christianity tend to favor the death story. Lutheran, Calvinist, some Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist and various other Christians tend to know the first story better, and to sing the hymns of Holy Week and Easter loudest. They tend to interpret the New Testament Gospels in light of the letters of Paul and others. They tend to interpret Christmas in light of Good Friday.

But you will ask for a synthesis. ‘Please, Dean Hill, is there no way to bring these two stories together? Is there not an apt balance between Bethlehem and Calvary, Nazareth and Golgotha? May we not find a suitable compromise? Must we ever be at daggers drawn, death vs life, one vs two, Novum Testamentum vs Jesus Seminar, Buttrick vs Craddock, Calvin vs Wesley? In the immortal sentence of Rodney King, Dean Hill, please, por favor, ‘CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG’?

No.

No. The answer to your heartfelt desire is: no. You will inevitably read one story by the light of the other. Or, at least, the LENTEN answer is no. Now. Now…Come back at Christmas and ask again THEN and you may find a more irenic, more life affirming, more pacific, more latitudinarian response! But you will need to stay around until December for that.

In any case, in this season of Lent, we are best advised to listen to the first story, the account of Jesus death, and to do so guided by Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, that is, by Exegesis, Exposition, and Application. A quintessential Lutheran, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is here to help us.

Exegesis

Our Holy Gospel from John, chapter 3, takes us insot the heart of Lent, the heart of darkness, a prelude to Calvary. Nicodemus appears at night, trying to catch the spirit. His darkened, murky encounter with the Christ of God reminds us, as Bonhoeffer wrote, that ‘discipleship is more than what we can comprehend’. In that sense, discipleship comprehends us, grace comprehends us, Christ comprehends us, rather than the other way around.

Nicodemus is a ruler of Israel. He is a teacher and a religious leader. He has stayed by the mother tongue, the mother tradition, the mother religion. He has stayed in the womb. He has never left home. But you cannot become yourself if you never leave home. To become who you are you have to go somewhere else. Not always geographically. Jesus never traveled more than fifty miles from Bethlehem.

John is concerned with Spirit, not speculation; with the artistry of the everyday, not with Armageddon; with the church, not with calamity.

You have already learned the heart of this text: that Nicodemus and Jesus are representative types of religion—past and future, law and liberty; that the word for Spirit and wind is the same word and that John can and does mean both; that the command to be born from above is plural, you all, or as they say in the South, “all y’all.”

John turns his gaze now away from inherited religion to focus on culture, away from Judaism to address the Gnostics, who wanted fervently to be saved by knowing “whence we come and whither we are going.” Says Jesus, “The Spirit blows where it wills.”

Cultural religion says, “You know whence you came.” Spirit says, “You do not.”

A pre-Christian culture says, “You know where you are going.” John says, “Not so: Those who are born of the spirit, of them you do not know whence or whither.”

John’s neighbors affirm: we know whence and whither. John replies: not so of those born of the spirit. You are left with confusing liberty, the assorted decisions of a complex life. You are free. In Christ, you are set free. In Spirit, you do not know. In Spirit, you believe.

Here stands Nicodemus, a man in full. A religious leader, really a representative of the best in spiritual inheritance. He ventures out at night, choking from the challenge of truth, new truth, full truth. Where he has been will not take him where he needs to go. He is a person on the edge of a great dislocation: he is about to make up his mind to change his mind about something that really matters. Think of Bonhoeffer in 1944.

Some years ago the Christian Century ran a series of articles by nominally great religious leaders, titled “How My Mind Has Changed”. A disappointing series. One found really little significant change of mind in any of them. Typical of preachers—stubborn, self-assured; it takes one to know one.

But here stands Nicodemus, a courageous soul. He is facing the great heartache of maturity. You face it too. He is facing out over a great ravine, a great gorge,
a great precipice. On a matter of mortal meaning, he is making up his mind whether to change his mind. That takes real courage.

Benjamin Franklin found this courage when he left behind his beloved Europe and his confidence in diplomacy to take up arms with his fellow colonists. Abraham Lincoln found this courage when he finally moved to side fully with the abolitionists. Robert F. Kennedy, then the junior Senator from the Empire State, found this same courage when he left the Cold War mind of his own past and of his dear brother to oppose the war in Vietnam. Sometimes you get to a point where you have to make up your mind whether to change your mind. To face facts, as Nicodemus courageously faced the works, signs, deeds of Jesus the Christ. It takes great courage to change your mind about something of mortal significance. In fact, it may not even be humanly possible, apart from grace.

It means admitting error. We would sooner be proven sinful than stupid. John takes us to higher ground. We have an easier time receiving forgiveness for sin than we do receiving grace for change. So, we hear John 3, the first of our three Lenten tasks in these weeks of Lent 2011. For our rendering of, our exposition of, the Gospel, we turn to the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Exposition

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau Germany, in 1906. His father was a prominent psychiatrist, and the family sooned moved to Berlin. Bonhoeffer made, for his family, the unusual decision to study theology, and began in Tubingen in 1923. In the next several years, he wrote and published, and traveled to Barcelona and New York. He later served as a pastor in London, and returned for further study to NYC, again at Union Seminary. In 1934 he worked to organize the Confessing Church, which criticized the Lutheran church’s support of Hitler. For three years, he led a small seminary for the Confessing Church, in Finkenwalde, until it was closed by the Gestapo (about the time his book, the Cost of Discipleship, was published in 1937). Although on returning to Union in NYC in 1939 he could have stayed there, he determined to return to his homeland. In 1940 he was prohibited from public speaking in Germany. For many years he had taught and practiced a kind of pacifism. But in 1943 he began to take part in a plot to kill Hitler, for which activity he would lose his life. He was also engaged to married that year, and then imprisoned in Berlin. In 1945 he was moved from Berlin to Regensburg and from Regensburg to Flossenburg where he was hung on April 9, days before he would have been liberated.

Bonhoeffer is best known for his ferocious assault on cheap grace. We here at Marsh Chapel in Lent 2011 will not let his voice be forgotten. Hear him again:

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheap wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolation of religion are thrown away at cut prices.

Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means foregiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian ‘conception’ of GodIn such a church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin.

Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner…Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.

Cheap grace is the preaching of foregiveness without requiring repentance, baptism withouth church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all he has. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world and not thrown to the dogs…it comes as a word of foregiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart.

Do we realize that this cheap grace has turned back upon us like a boomerang? The price we are having to pay today in the shape of the collapse of the organized church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving.

With us it has been abundantly proved that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations. Cheap grace has turned out to be utterly merciless to our Church.

Application

We set ourselves these weeks a third assignment, to apply the Gospel and this one life. As Justice Holmes said of a sermon he heard (5 beautiful words): ‘I applied it to myself’.

Monday morning this week brought a quiet calm to an empty campus. Our plaza centrally adorned by the majestic, universal beauty of the MLK sculpture was empty, or nearly so. A winter solitude settled on the center of our University.

Across the plaza hustled a young father, administrator and doctoral student. He is completed a dissertation on the leadership of our fourth President, Daniel Marsh. He paused in front of the Chapel named for his subject, and then saw last Sunday’s sermon title. Slowly, haltingly, deep in reverie, he came across the rest of the windswept emptiness.

Then he spoke: The Cost of Discipleship. I will never forget reading it in college. It changed me. It inspired me. It stays with me. Not since have I read it or anything like it. Bonhoeffer’s voice penetrated my heart and soul, and lives there still.

The Lenten series here offered, Marsh Chapel 2011, is lifted with the hope that such an experience, either of reading remembered or of words presently heard, will broadly be ours. May you know his voice, remember his voice, honor his voice, hold and be held by it. For something there is that warns us that sometime, maybe soon, maybe sooner than later, we shall need, deeply need to remember that voice. Our life, our salvation may in part depend upon it.

We are relying this Lent, for the application of the Gospel heard in Scripture and Life, upon a third voice, beyond that of Nicodemus and that of Bonhoeffer. This is the voice of Franklin Littell, who preached thunderously from this pulpit in 1952.

The meaning of the Holocaust for Christians is at least this: when the baptized betray their baptism, when those who have been grafted into history flee back out of history, when the new men and new women in Christ cast off the new life and become part of the dying age again, the old Israel is left alone as the sign that the God who is God yet rules…For Christians only: we must begin our agonizing self-assessment and reappraisal with the fact that in a season of betrayal and faithlessness the vast majority of the martyrs for the Lord of history were Jews. The Jewish people carried history while
the Christians fled headlong from their professed vocation. (80)

Israel and the Holocaust are alpine events deeply resented by many modern Christian teachers—the former, because its survival against great odds requires a theological reappraisal for which few are ready; the latter because popular religion admits error but denies guilt. (2)

Just as the child is aware of the mother before it is self-aware, just as it commonly says mama before it says I, so the awareness of God and his work in history is primordially known to the person of faith. But the world of techne, in its aversion to the mysterious and the open, has sealed off that dimension of human experience. From the elementary school, the young person is taught to think in the symmetry of the closed, the traditional mathematical model, and by the time he has finished with the university he may be a skilled technician—but he is rarely a wise man. (13)

Coda

Within the jail cell of his last years, Bonhoeffer penned memorable prayers, reflections, meditations, and a hymn that is located in our hymnal, and we shall sing it next week. It is a hymn of faith. A hymn we may hum when we want to summon the courage to change our mind. A hymn we may hum when we need to remember the supreme sacrifice of others. A hymn we may hum when we try again to see ourselves, truly, in our real location in history:

By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered
And confidently waiting come what may
We know that God is with us night and morning
And never fails to greet us each new day

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
Dean of Marsh Chapel.

posted in Lenten Series 2011: Bonhoeffer, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 03.20.2011 at 11:00 am

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Sunday
March 13

Bonhoeffer: The Cost of Discipleship

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 4: 1-11

Preface

When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die.

With these and similar sentences, Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke to his generation. His words still speak to us today.

Just how does he speak to us today? It is this question which will occupy our hearts and minds in the shared project of Lenten preaching, Marsh Chapel, 2011. In four Sundays we shall listen for the divine Word in Scripture, in History and in Life. First, as Bonhoeffer himself would advise, we shall carefully scour the Gospel for each Sunday. Then, second, we shall set that Gospel next to his own life and work. Third, and finally, we shall apply our listening to our thinking and doing here at Marsh Chapel, as we reach out from here to the world. Exegesis, Exposition, Application—an old sermonic design—rounded out with a preface (like this one) to begin and poem to end.

Why Bonhoeffer?

His threefold representation of liberal thought, devotion to Christ, and investment in culture radically draws us to him, given our commitments here at Marsh Chapel. That is, he sat at table and in seminar with Adolf von Harnack, arguably the most lasting historical and theological voice from liberal Protestantism. That is, his life and death, writing and teaching, poetry and prose exude a disciplined devotion to the Christ of God, perhaps unlike any other in our time. That is, his personal life, upbringing, family life, and spiritual development rode the high waves of the best of western culture—literature, art, music, philosophy, science, history and religion (much as he detested the word). A liberal theology, sternly devoted to Christ, given to the world: here is his legacy for us.

Exegesis

We could not begin at a better Scriptural doorway than with the Matthean account of the Temptation. As one has said, ‘The accounts illustrate Jesus’ habitual refusal to allow his sense of mission to be influenced by concern for his safety or for merely practical interests’ (OAE, 1174). Jesus fasts for forty days in the wilderness, according to this legend which Matthew and Luke share. The passages from Hebrew Scripture remind us that the Messiahship of Jesus is set in the history of God’s chosen people, Israel, and the sort of disputation read today was quite common among the rabbis of old. The temptations Jesus faces have been perennial temptations for the community of faith, and for the children of Israel. The devil appears here, in good apocalyptic fashion, and in a way similar to his roles in other texts of the time. Jesus resists the charms of wealth, power and fame. Rather, he says, quoting scripture: One does not live by bread alone. You shall not tempt the Lord your God. Serve God alone. We shall pass by the long consideration we might give these dominical sayings as they arise in a University setting, which is not at all foreign to interests in wealth, power and fame. One would not easily or lightly choose Matthew 4 for the seal or crest of a college or school. Many parents would not be averse to seeing tuition investments bear fruit in some earthly, even worldly wealth, power and fame. They compete rather favorably in our time with learning, virtue and piety. But we digress.

Of this passage, great minds and hearts have spoken of old:

R Bultmann: ‘Miracle as such never yields to criticism but…divine and demonic miracles are sufficiently alike to be mistaken for each other.’ (Bultmann HSR op cit). J Calvin: ‘He wished to share our battles with us’ (Calvin, Commtaries, op cit). R Williams: ‘Having bought truth dear, we must not sell it cheap, not the least grain of it for the whole world’ (Roger Williams, THE BLOUDY TENENT 1644).

In our tradition, we begin Lent with a long hard climb, up a high mountain, straight into the headwind of temptation. There is a cost in discipleship. There is discipline in discipleship.

Exposition

Which brings us straightway to Bonhoeffer.

Some years ago a friend remembered hiking up a hill to his dormitory. He was a young man. In the mist, walking down toward him, there came an elderly man, walking slowly with the weight of years and age. They nodded to one another as they passed. At the top of the hill my friend looked back down expecting to see the older one on the path. He had vanished. My friend had the deep sense, the strange mysterious sense, that he had passed himself, his old self, his later, soon to die self, walking by.

I thought of his vision, re-reading this week my own first reading of The Cost of Discipleship many decades ago.

An early reading of The Cost of Discipleship from thirty five years ago caused the following notations. I call on us, both the congregation present and the congregation afar, to listen with care to these choice and chosen sentences from Bonhoeffer’s most famous work. We shall introduce him this Sunday by his words alone, and next Sunday through the voice of his biography, his life. I want us to know his voice.

Bonhoeffer reminds us of the Call of Christ:

If they follow Jesus men escape from the hard yoke of their own laws, and submit to the kindly yoke of Jesus Christ. 8
In the modern world it seems so difficult to walk with absolute certainty in the narrow way of ecclesiastical decision and yet remain in the broad open spaces of the universal love of Christ, of the patience, mercy and ‘philanthropy’ of God (Titus 3:4) for the weak and ungodly. Yet somehow or other we must combine the two, or else we shall follow the paths of men. 9
We hear the words of One who is on his way to the cross, whose whole life is summed up in the Apostles’ Creed by the word ‘suffered’. No man can choose such a life for himself. 65
His word…is the recreation of the whole life of man. 67
The road to faith passes through obedience to the call of Jesus…If we are to believe we must obey a concrete command. Without this preliminary step of obedience our faith will only be pious humbug and lead us to the grace which is not costly. Everything depends upon the first step. It has a unique quality of its own…Only he who obeys can believe…You can only learn what obedience is by obeying. 86

Bonhoeffer places us before the Cross of Christ:

The cross means sharing the suffering of Christ to the last and to the fullest…When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die. 102
For God is a God who bears. The Son of God bore our flesh, he bore the cross, he bore our sins, thus making atonement for us.
Discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend. 103
(Christians):When reproached they hold their peace; when treated with violence they endure it patiently; when men drive them from their presence they yield their ground…His disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure suffering
themselves rather than inflict it on others….Not recognition but rejection is the reward they get from the world for their message and works. 127
The Incarnation is the ultimate reason why the service of God cannot be divorced from the service of man. 145
The cross is God’s truth about us, and therefore it is the only power which can make us truthful…When a Christian meets with injustice he no longer clings to his rights and defends them at all costs. He is absolutely free from possessions and bound to Christ alone…The Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego. The precept of non-violence applies equally to private life and official duty. 159
Love is defined in uncompromising terms as the love of our enemies…The only way to overcome our enemy is by loving him… God loves his enemies…
If there is no element of asceticism in our lives, if we give free rein to the desires of the flesh, we shall find it hard to train for the service of Christ. Discipleship means estrangement from the world. When all is said and done the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh. 188
Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected. 200
The disciples of Christ are to love unconditionally. Christian love sees the fellow man under the Cross and therefore sees him clearly.
Every attempt to impose the gospel by force…is both futile and dangerous…Our easy trafficking with the word of cheap grace simply bores the world to disgust…The Word is weaker than any ideology, and this means that with only the gospel at their command the witnesses are weaker than the propagandists of an opinion…209
The disciples are few in number and will always be few…Never let a disciple of Jesus pin his hopes on large numbers. 211

Bonhoeffer shows us the Narrow Way:

To be called to a life of extraordinary quality, to live up to it, and yet to be unconscious of it is indeed a narrow way. To confess and testify to the truth as it is in Jesus, and at the same time to love the enemies of that truth, his enemies and ours, and to love them with the infinite love of Jesus Christ is indeed a narrow way. To believe the promise of Jesus that his followers shall possess the earth, and at the same time to face our enemies unarmed and defenceless, preferring to incur injustice rather than to do wrong ourselves is indeed a narrow way. To see the weakness and wrong in others, and at the same time refrain from judging them; to deliver the gospel message without casting pearls before swine, is indeed a narrow way. The way is unutterably hard, and at every moment we are in danger of straying from it.

Sanctification will be maintained by their being clearly separated from the world…by their walking in a way which is worthy of the holiness of God …(and) will be hidden, and they must wait for the day of Jesus Christ. 314

Christ took upon himself this human form of ours. He became Man even as we are men. In his humanity and his lowliness we recognize our own form. He has become like a man so that men should be like him. And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Henceforth any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ. 341

Application

I learned midway through the first semester at Union Theological Seminary that my roommate and I were sharing the room once inhabited by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Carlyle Marney famously asked, ‘Who told you who you was?’ His words continue to shape many of us, telling us again, as they did in this annotated first reading thirty years ago, who we are meant to be. During Lent 2011 we shall endeavor to listen and learn from this example and his writing.

A third voice enters our sermon here. His is the voice of the first Dean of Marsh Chapel, Dr Franklin H. Littell, about whom a full sermon was preached here in October of 2009. (You may hear his 2006 STH commencement sermon on our website). I shall not repeat his substantial biography, except to remind you that he was, among many other things, the Father of Holocaust studies in this country, through his work here, in Chicago, at Temple University and elsewhere. As we this Lent listen for the gospel in the study of Scripture and in the life and words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we shall rely on Littell to guide us a bit in our application of such exegesis and exposition. His biting statements in The Crucifixion of the Jews: The Failure of Christians to Understand the Jewish Experience (1975) give us plenty of caution as we seek to apply all this to our common life. In sum, he reminds us that there were very Bonhoeffers and we Christians would do well not to hide behind their very few skirts.

The German Church Struggle, 1933-45, and parallel conflicts between Christian minorities and totalitarian rule in the Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Denmark, and France has as yet scarcely entered into the thought of the planning committees for church school literature. Perhaps this is just as well for the moment, for misuse and misinterpretation of that encounter would be worse than neglect. When the martyrs and confessors of the Church Struggle are held up to honor without considering at the same time the failure of the churches in the matter of the Holocaust, a spirit of boasting can easily drown out any mood of repentance which might turn us around.

As Arthur Cohcrane pointed out in his classic on the Barmen Synod and Confession of Faith, the Church Struggle was ‘the struggle of the church against the church for the church’. This point cannot be made too often, for the cheap and easy view of the Church Struggle is that it was like the persecutions of old in which martyrs and confessors stood to death against heathenism. And now the purveyors of cheap grace are beginning to use the faithfulness of a few Christians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer to boast of the church’s record of courage in the face of the spiritual enemy! The truth is that the Church Struggle was fought out within the institutions themselves, not between insiders and outsiders, that most church constituents apostasized and only a small percentage remained faithful, and that most of the theological and ecclesiastical crises which surfaced during this time of trial are yet unresolved…To remember the Church Struggle of an earlier day is painful. The record of most theologians and churchmen, in England and America as well as in the Third Reich, was confused and weak where not outright wicked…Few indeed were the martyrs and confessors, and their meritorious conduct does not save the rest of us from the need for self-appraisal and repentance and correcting our false teaching and wrongdoing…44

Coda

We shall continue along the narrow Lenten path. We scour the Scripture of the day to hear and overhear the Gospel. This year we set that Gospel alongside the words and life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We shall endeavor to apply the Gospel and his life to the Gospel in our own. To conclude, a friend has offered me the reminder of this fine poem about Bonhoeffer from our own former colleague Geoffrey Hill, titled Chr
istmas Trees:

Bonhoeffer in his skylit cell
bleached by the flares' candescent fall,
pacing out his own citadel,

restores the broken themes of praise,
encourages our borrowed days,
by logic of his sacrifice.

Against the wild reasons of the state
his words are quiet but not too quiet.
We hear too late or not too late.

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
Dean of Marsh Chapel

posted in Lenten Series 2011: Bonhoeffer, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 03.13.2011 at 11:00 am

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Sunday
March 21

Atonement Lenten Series V

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the sermon only.

John 12:1-8

As we approach the end of this Lenten series on Atonement, I can’t help but wonder whether our centuries of elaborate theories, on which the whole church has never agreed, don’t point to a more basic hesitation to believe the fundamental claim that we have indeed been reconciled with God. That somehow, through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, whatever barrier may have existed between us and the Holy One has been definitively torn down.

We puzzle at this possibility and ask with Charles Wesley’s hymn:
And can it be that I should gain  an interest in the Savior's blood!  
Died he for me? who caused his pain!  For me? who him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be ?

How indeed can it be, we wonder – probing the mechanisms by which Jesus might bring humankind into union with God. But we miss the point altogether if we forget to marvel at that union itself, at the reconciliation which exists and the connection which endures. It is this kind of wondering that Wesley invites in the next verse of that same hymn:
'Tis mystery all: th' Immortal dies!  Who can explore his strange design?
‘Tis mercy all; let earth adore. Let angel minds inquire no more.

A strange mystery indeed … stranger still if we can imagine how un-like us God is sometimes, most of all in the amazing extravagance of unconditional love. Can it be, atonement theories aside, that God might simply love us, for no reason, and with no reservations, through a strange mystery that boggles our minds as much as the Psalmist’s proclamation of rivers in the desert. Can it be that we are saved by love? Full stop.

We know that we go to great lengths to separate ourselves from God. Wandering down alluring paths, chasing after elusive riches, settling for other, not-so-amazing loves, and fearing that we might not be worth anything more.

Can it be that we set the caveats on salvation, conditions for communion, prerequisites for admission into God’s family? “God will save us, if we accept Jesus; if the Father’s wrath is assuaged; if his honor is preserved; if his justice is maintained; if the God-man dies; if the perfect sacrifice is offered; if the invitation is received.” If, if, if.

Can it be, though, that God is not an amplification of ourselves, not a mirror of our “if”-modified loves, our “if”-restrained loyalties?

Can it be that for no reason but love itself the very God of the universe is alive in each and every human soul and is pulsing through Creation? Can it be that the One who “who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters” Isaiah says; is perfectly capable of finding a way into the hearts of you and me.

Can it be that the Psalmist was right in wondering
Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?

Can it be that he was right, too, in answering this way
If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,  
even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.  

Can it be that Paul was also right, when he said that
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present,
nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus

Can it be that the image of God within us and the Spirit of God beyond us conspire in a saving unity that draws us more and more into the life of the Holy One?

Can it be that the union with God, which our souls seek, is found when explanation ceases and contemplation begins?

This is where we find ourselves in today’s Gospel, with a mind-boggling act by Mary of Bethany. Jesus visits his friends: Martha, Mary and the recently-raised-from-the-dead Lazarus for a dinner party at their home, a couple of miles outside Jerusalem.

Martha is of course busy getting the food ready, and Lazarus is at table, perhaps talking with some of the disciples, when Mary makes her way to the feet of Jesus and anoints them with a pound of an expensive, fragrant ointment of pure nard. She lingers there, wiping these well-walked feet with her very own hair.

This provocatively intimate moment between two friends caught the eye of Judas, who objected to the wastefulness of her behavior. ʺWhy was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?ʺ A noble question, perhaps, since this sum might be as much as a whole year’s pay. But the jousting of explanations that comes next reveals something more is afoot, with the Gospel writer questioning the motives of the soon-to-be-betrayer, and with Jesus snapping back “Leave her alone” and reminding everyone about the death he saw coming. “The poor you will always have with you,” he says, “but you will not always have me.”

Mary has discerned what the others did not. The tides were turning. Christ’s body was breaking. This was no moment for ordinary reasoning, but for irrationally-extravagant love. Perhaps she could hear the crack in Jesus’ voice, see a weariness of step, a furrowed brow, or an empty stare that betrayed an inner ferment, as he gathered up the power to face what would lie ahead.

Perhaps she knew that something was wrong, that he now needed a blessing. She comes near to him with the same perceptively healing gentleness that he showed to so many others – to the woman at the well, the blind ones in Jericho, the paralytic at Bethsaida, the lepers on the road, and even wee little Zacchaeus up in his tree, even the perpetually not-too-bright disciples, even maybe you and me…

But now his feet are the object of mercy; others take on his healing work. “See from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down,” words we will sing in a few minutes time, marking this new moment in the life of Jesus, a moment of mingled emotion and shifting roles. Yes, Jesus still will kneel and wash the feet of his friends, but as he does, as we are transformed more and more into that Body of Christ.

Judas misses this meaning, misses the connection between friends partaking in each other’s love, and falls into the familiar temptation to make everything about money – a commodification of both the poor and the nard, reducing the fruits of the earth, the loving work of human hands, and the dignity of God’s people into charity and cash, exchangeable, transferable, without the intimate investment Mary shows.

Judas misses the fact that when we really love someone, we do all kinds of crazy things whose economics may be questionable – a pound of nard, an only-begotten Son, perhaps. And even if his desire is pure, Judas misses the one thing that is right before his eyes.

Like him we love big ideas, sensible plans, well-ordered syllabi, and practical strategies with quantifiable benchmarks of success. And these, like caring for the poor, are good, good things. But we can become lost
in them, and wander far from the God who is staring us in the face, far enough that it takes an irrationally prophetic acting out, an undeniably extravagant expression of love to catch our attention again.

We can be tempted to believe the lie that we’re somehow missing out on life if we’re not stressed-out, sleep-deprived, overworked, hypercaffeinated, perpetually entertained and well on our way to making a fortune and/or changing the world – preferably with a hefty dose of community activities, a better than average partner, and a house and cute dog for an added bonus. Mary tells us “STOP, stop, stop” and see what is in front of you. See – like she saw Jesus.

Yes the healing of the world is urgent, but to do that God’s way we need to learn to focus on the one thing. If we are to avoid making even the work of Christ into a project with a price tag, we need to practice an intense, attentive, extravagant love for one who is already before us – the roommate, the partner, the colleague, the familiar stranger on the street, the lonely neighbor down the hall. When we do this, then we might be ready to approach, with dignity, a wider suffering.

Maybe like me you’re juggling jobs to make ends meet, trying hard to just get by, and all this is sounding a little too mystical. But in these last days of Lent, I pray we will give ourselves the gift of some small place to focus bottle of nard’s worth of time:

Maybe call your mom. Speak a word of truth, however painful. Have a cup of tea with a potential new friend. Ask for something you desperately need. Forgive a festering hurt. Walk in this new-found spring weather for no reason other than to spend time with the One who calls you by name. Imagine what an act of extravagant love, for the one who is before your eyes, might be.

Whether your Lenten observance has been a paragon of perfection, or a wilderness disaster, we have time, still, to practice Mary’s style of love. And Holy Week will bring even more ritual moments of irrational intimacy – to praise the one we hoped would change the world, to have our feet washed by our Teacher, to weep at the foot of the cross, to run away in shame, and to marvel, speechless, at the one who is alive again.

All this is coming (not to mention a mission to heal the world and a Spirit to comfort and guide us) – but for now we have in Mary a precious moment with the vulnerable Jesus, one who longs for us, a moment to come near and manifest the unity we have in God by our care for another.

Can it be that this love is in us too? That same amazing love, which sought us out when we were far off, pulsing now through our veins? Can it be that Jesus has released a power in us? Can it be? Yes, of course … though extravagant love looks to others like foolishness, like a waste; a naïve, unrealistic choice. It makes “sense,” if you can call it that, only in the economy of God, only with the mind of Christ.

And here is where my favorite atonement image might actually help a little – itself more a contemplation than an explanation. It’s what the second century theologian Irenaeus called “recapitulation” – that in Christ, God returns humanity to its true purpose, not simply taking away sin but infusing Creation with a renewal of its original holiness. It’s a kind of cosmic do-over, with a little extra help this time. At every moment of his life, Jesus shows us another way, offers us another choice, demonstrates that rejection of God and each other are not inevitable.

It is, as Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky says, “the deification of created beings by uncreated grace.” A true union with God, not an eradication of our selfhood, nor a feeble acquaintance, but a sharing in the same energies of Life, so that the love which was in Christ Jesus could also erupt in Mary’s love for him, and in our love for those God sends to us. Anglican theologian Lancelot Andrews put it this way: “Whereby, as before He of ours, so now we of His are made partakers.” Can it be? Can it be?

How bold we might become if we really believed, if we trusted that Jesus has already pioneered this way of foolishly boundless love, that we don’t have to be the first to risk awkwardness at a dinner party. Jesus and now Mary of Bethany go before us, along with the saints and sages of the generations, the cloud of witnesses whose lives were filled with God enough to overflow. Can it be that extravagant love is in us, too, ready to be released when we but focus on the One before our eyes, and so more and more become partakers in the very God of the Universe and this being-redeemed world.

Can we take our part in this strange mystery, an atonement in which God chooses us for no reason at all? And so we ask, with John Donne –
Wilt thou love God, as he thee? Then digest,
My soul, this wholesome meditation,
How God the Spirit, by angels waited on
In heaven, doth make his Temple in thy breast.
The Father having begot a Son most blest,
And still begetting, (for he ne'er be gone)
Hath deigned to choose thee by adoption,
Co-heir t' his glory, and Sabbath' endless rest.
…..
'Twas much that man was made like God before,
But, that God should be made like man, much more

Amazing love, how can it be.

~The Reverend Joshua Thomas,
Episcopal University Chaplain

posted in Guest Preachers, Lenten Series 2010: Atonement on 03.21.2010 at 11:00 am

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Sunday
March 14

Atonement Lenten Series IV

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear sermon only.

Luke 15:1-3, 11-32; II Corinthians 5:16-21; Psalm 32

“Be reconciled to God.”

We can take Paul’s exhortation in two ways this morning. In Lent we are most often asked to consider how we can be reconciled to God from God’s point of view, in light of our sin which separates us from God. That is indeed an important and necessary part of our reconciliation. And, this morning our scriptures invite us to consider also how we can be reconciled to God from our point of view, in light of the resentment and distrust we often hold toward God.

At first glance, the story that has come down to us as “The Prodigal Son” is a straightforward redemption story that focuses on the younger son. He asks for his share of the inheritance, squanders it “in dissolute living”, comes to rock bottom, and then “comes to himself”. He realizes that while he cannot have the life he had, he can still have a good life. So he goes back to reconcile with his father, to serve him as a servant if he cannot serve him as a child and heir. The father on his part greets him with joy and is quick to reconcile, restores him as a child if not an heir, and throws a luxurious party to celebrate his return. All well and good. But Jesus does not end the story with this happy ending. Instead, he continues the story with the arrival of the elder son, who bitterly resents the father’s joyful reception of the younger son with no retribution. He resents also the father’s lack of appreciation for his, the elder son’s, hard work. The elder son refuses to join the party even when his father pleads with him to come in. He refuses his relationship with his brother (“this son of yours”, he calls him). He questions his father’s love for him himself. We never do find out if he joins the party or not.

If we are honest, as we are called to be in Lent, it is often a challenge for us – the good people, the Christians, the members of the Church – to be reconciled to God in the face of what God and others choose to do. Even if others repent or undergo the consequences of bad or even evil choices, we still find it hard to believe that God can or should love them as much as we should be loved in our goodness and hard work. Some of you may remember the denial and outrage when it was reported that Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer, had repented and become a Christian in prison, and that when Dahmer was killed in prison the chaplain stated that he himself did believe that Jeffrey was saved and would be in heaven with God. Likewise the denial and outrage when Charles Colson, Richard Nixon’s hatchet man, repented in prison and went on to found his Prison Fellowship. Some folks found it very hard to pray for George W. Bush and Richard Cheney as they professed to be brothers in Christ, and some folks find it very hard to pray for Barack Obama as he professes the same. And in any given church deliberation more and more progressives and conservatives draw lines in the sand, with no allowances that God might even conceivably be present with the other “side”. These are just some of the challenges within Christianity. How much more are we encouraged by our culture and our own privilege to demonize the poor, the uneducated, the different, the refugee, the “uncivilized”, even as our delicate sensibilities call us to resent or distrust God on their behalf. Like the elder brother with his father, we often feel that we have worked very hard as good people, and have very little to show for it, or that what we have may be taken away. We feel more and more uncertain of our place in an entangled and globalized world. Climate changes and the decisions of others who we may not even know affects us and those around us in frightening ways. The complexities of our lives make us complicit in wrongdoing without our knowledge or consent. How can we be reconciled to God, who insists on love toward that which so deserves punishment?

In any relationship, there are times when one party has a grievance against the other, a big one or a small one. That is not the problem; the problem arises when the aggrieved party does not talk about the grievance with the other party. This then becomes a problem for both; as the Psalmist says, “when I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all the day long”. As with sins we have committed, so with sins we feel are committed against us. If we do not express our grievances, they fester, and turn to distrust and resentment. The problem is then compounded when the other party may not realize there is a problem. The elder brother at least expressed his resentment and distrust toward his father. The father then had an opportunity to respond. And he clearly stated his affection and plans: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” The reason the father celebrates, and pleads for the elder brother’s celebration, is that the younger brother has come back, come back not just from dissolute choices, but from his own death and being lost to his family, the true evil of his choices. In his response toward the elder brother’s grievance, the father invites the elder brother also to “come to himself”: to realize and claim for himself his own place as his father’s son and only heir, and to rest in that true identity. Maybe to claim it to the extent that he could just take a goat and celebrate with his friends, and not work all the time. Maybe to claim it to the extent that he could join the party for his brother, back from the dead to be a son and brother again in a different way, but a son and a brother nonetheless.

Be reconciled to God. The same principle of openness applies to our relationship with God. Part of the invitation of Lent is to examine our grievances toward God, to examine the sins we feel have been committed against us through the choices of God as well as the choices of others. This is for our benefit, so that we know the grievances that we carry and so that the grievances do not fester. It is also for God’s benefit, so to speak: we may feel that God already knows, indeed must know, what our grievances are, but to express them is to give God a chance to respond and to work with us to make things right.

So what does all this have to do with atonement? One of the preachers in my home
church used to say that the meaning of “atonement” was “at-one-ment”; the same word but hyphenated – at-one-ment; that in that great mystery of atonement/at-one-ment God became truly one with us, and we are invited to be truly one with God, in all the complexities and complicities of our lives. Indeed, Paul exhorts us to be reconciled to God “on behalf of Christ”, for Christ’s sake, for the sake of the one who was both God and Human, for the sake of the one who “was made to be sin who knew no sin.” for our sake, for the sake of the one who from the very incarnation in our humanity and human life is “God With Us.” While the mystery of at-one-ment finds its expression in all of Jesus’ birth, life and ministry, it finds its fullest expression in Jesus’ crucifixion. Crucifixion is a nice word for what it really was: Jesus’ execution -- by the state through injustice and torture and by the collusion of religion with political expediency and evil. The experience of crucifixion is the answer of God With Us. It is God’s answer in love and solidarity in suffering. It is God’s answer to our resentment, dist
rust, and fear of uncertainty. This is how much God loves us. This is how much God wants to be at one with us, even to our death in suffering and injustice. In the crucifixion together through Jesus Christ we may experience the worst that sin as evil has to offer, but we do not have to give in to it, we do not have to become it or retaliate in kind; we can keep the faith that evil does not have the last word, that same faith in which Jesus himself, even on the cross, knew himself reconciled to God.

Be reconciled to God. We do not know the end of the story of the Prodigal Son and the Elder Brother. But we do know the end of the story of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion. He did indeed die. But evil did not have the last word. There was instead Resurrection and Pentecost and the birth of the Church (which while often oblivious and coopted and aggravating by its own choice is for all its faults still on a good day the Body of Christ) and there is our ongoing sanctification in the work of the Holy Spirit. But these are sermons for other days. For today, we have the possibility and promise of our identity precisely as we are Christians, those who have accepted the love of God With Us and love God in return, as we do indeed work to serve the good: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new."

One of my mentors in the ministry of reconciliation says that “you have to give people a way back in.” Jesus told the story of the Prodigal Son and the Elder Brother in response to people who grumbled about the tax collectors and sinners who came to listen to Jesus, and grumbled about Jesus when he welcomed them and ate with them. The grumblers too were good people, religious people, who worked very hard for God, who also were challenged by the choices of God and by the choices of others. Jesus offered the story to give them a way back in, to recognize themselves in both the Prodigal Son and in the elder brother. If we are honest, as we are called to be in Lent, we too will recognize ourselves in both. As good as we may be, we are in no way perfect, in our own choices and in our judgments of the choices of others. Part of the recognition of the grievances we have with others is the recognition of the ways we may also be implicated in those grievances. To deny others a way back in is to deny it to ourselves as well.

In the mystery and paradox of atonement, God offers us a way back in to relationship, through our sin that separates us from God. God also asks us to give God a way back in through our resentment and distrust and fear of uncertainty. If we take the way back in, if we give the way back in, there is a new creation. We are no longer caught up in resentment, distrust, and the fear of uncertainty. We are reconciled to God, at one with God, able to claim our true identity as beloved and at home wherever we are, whatever happens. We also are entrusted, entrusted, God trusts us with the ministry of reconciliation for others, even those whose choices we may find challenging. We are trusted to offer others a way back in to reconciliation with God, with others, and with themselves. When we accept and offer reconciliation for ourselves with God, and accept and offer reconciliation to others, we go a long way toward the elimination of resentment, distrust, and fear of uncertainty for everyone. We go a long way toward helping to continue to create that new creation for ourselves and for the world.
Be reconciled to God. From both God’s point of view and from our own, it is love that makes reconciliation possible. May we accept our own at-one-ment, and offer at-one-ment to others, with joy and thanksgiving.

Amen.

~Rev. Victoria Hart Gaskell, OSL

posted in Lenten Series 2010: Atonement, The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation on 03.14.2010 at 11:00 am

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Archive for the ‘The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel’ Category

As You Go, Make of All Disciples

Birthday of the Church

Consecration

Bonhoeffer and Bach: The Passion According to St. Matthew

Bonhoeffer: Life Together

Bonhoeffer: Religionless Christianity

Bonhoeffer: Cheap Grace

Bonhoeffer: The Cost of Discipleship

Atonement Lenten Series V

Atonement Lenten Series IV

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