Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 4:12-23

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Today we see Jesus walking the shore of his beloved Sea of Galilee.  He sets out at dawn, as the fishermen begin, casting and mending.  This stylized memory from the mind of Matthew kindles our own memory and hope, too.

That first light of the day, daybreak, carries a power unlike any other hour’s hue.  The excitement of beginning.  The promise of another start.  The crisp, cold opening of the year in January.  Like the skier, mits and poles at the ready, we adjust our goggles, and we lean, and…

Here is Jesus, midway from Christmas to Easter, from manger to cross, from nativity to passion.  Along the beach, along the shoreline he strides, one foot in sea and one on shore.

He meets two brothers at first light, and they meet him, God’s First Light, the light that shines in the darkness.  Notice how Simon, called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, are sketched.  There is little to nothing of history here, but what there is says so much!  There is no parental shadow lying on their fishing nets.  One hears no maternal imperative, no paternal dictate.  These boys are on their own.  They have left home already, maybe leaving the city to the south to find a meager middle-class existence farther north, with their own means of production.  They are small business men, boat owners, fishermen.  Neither the amhaaretz nor the gentry, they.  Not poor, not rich.  Working folks.  Young, young men.  Simon already has a nick-name.  A sign of joviality, of conviviality, of gregarious playful fun.  Peter, the Rock.  Is this for his steady faithfulness or his failure to float?  On this rock…Sinks like a Rock…You sense that these brothers play in the surf a little, kick up the sand a little, flirt with the Palestinianas a little, take time to take life as it comes.  Brown are their forearms, and burnished their brows.  They love the lake and life, and have made already their entrance into adult life.  For they have left home.  One envies their youth and freedom.  They have taken to the little inland sea, and with joy they meet each dawn, like this one, at first light, as they see Light.

You can feel the sand under their feet as they take a moment to play and laugh.  You can feel the chill of the water as they swim, while breakfast cooks over the fire.  You can feel their feeling of vitality and joy as they greet another day at first light.

I wonder whether we allow ourselves to drift a little too far from that sense of presence and gladness, that first light feeling.  Those nearly pure dawn moments of almost rapturous illumination.  Those moments of connection.

The day your BU acceptance letter came.

The afternoon of BU Commencement, four fast years later, 25,000 in attendance.

The evening you came out to your parents.

Your first child, tiny, red, crinkled, fists waving, crying and then asleep, literally in your hand.

Your daughter, or son, taking the vows of confirmed faith, in the church’s chancel.  Yes, there was some part child and another part adult in what was said.  But they were there, in tie and dress.  They were there, in public and in church.  They murmured, and they murmured piously.  And how did that feel Dad? Mom?

Your day of matrimony.  Down the aisle they come, or you come, father and daughter.  Do you? Do you?  I do. I do. They do.  My, my. And what was once a simpler world, now has further complexity and creative power.  A new creation.

Your retirement party.

There must have been some moment, sometime, when you felt an intimacy with the universe, a closeness, a sense of purpose.  That too is a kind of daybreak, dawn, first light.  That is an inkling of gladness, of presence.

A simple trust, like theirs who heard beside the Syrian sea, the gracious calling of the Lord, let us like them without a word rise up and follow thee…

Our denomination once had a thriving ministry in China.  When we forced out of China in the 1940’s, something vital left our church.  But you can still feel the first light of mission in the halls and rooms at Scarritt College in Nashville.  Oriental ornaments, paintings, sculpture, gifts, symbols of connection and love.  We grew up with the family of Tracy Jones, in Syracuse, who himself had been raised as missionary child in China.  As had Huston Smith, who taught across the river at MIT. Our first parsonage, in Ithaca, had once housed Pearl Buck while she and her husband were back on furlough, from China.  Have we begun with the Spirit to end with the flesh?  Have we forgotten the love we had at first?  Have we stayed close enough to that dawn light, and those first light experiences, to stay fresh?  Have we an inkling of, of…the gladness of faith, the presence of God?

Our malaise, our ennui, should we have such, our “acedia”—spiritual sloth or indifference, literally, our “not-caring”—so often is due to our turning away from the dawn, daybreak, that elemental experience of love that energizes everything else.  Said the saint, ‘love…and do what you will.’

Peter and Andrew, of course, are casting, casting nets.  They have no furrowed brows, no endless worries, no pessimism, no angst.  They probably have left unattended some holes in their nets, these two happy brothers.  They are not perfect and not perfectible. They are willing to accept that their casting will be imperfect, as all work, all life, all evangelism is imperfect.  But that imperfection will not keep them from enjoying the labor of casting.  To miss the dawn, the first light, is to miss the fun of faith!

Invite that neighbor, the one across the street whose porch light is always on, to come along to worship with you.  Do you enjoy, benefit from, appreciate worship here, come Sunday?  Then, of course, you will want to share that enjoyment, benefit and appreciation, by inviting someone to come too.  Here at dawn…those first stirrings, first longings, first intimations of something new and good….

Meanwhile, back on the beach, Jesus heads south, cove by cove, with Andrew and Peter frolicking in tow.  They had already left home.  So, maybe they are ready to take a flier on some new trek, not fully sure how it will work out.  It is a miracle that they are remembered, perhaps with a little hagiography, as having responded “immediately”.  Still, every little scrap of memory of these two brothers tends in the same direction—full of vim, vigor, vitality and pepperino.  Yes, they will follow!

But down the shoreline a little, there rests another boat.  A different story, a different set of brothers altogether.  James and John.  Known as the sons of Zebedee.  Simon has already earned his own name and nick-name.  But these two are known by their father’s name.  They haven’t left home.  They have not yet acquired that second identity.  When you won’t leave, won’t move, you won’t find, you won’t grow:  you’ll miss, you’ll miss the experience of really being alive. Here they are, as usual at dawn, stuck in the back of the boat.  All these years they have watched the Peter and Andrew show.  All these years they have envied the fun and frolic down the beach.  The late night parties.  The bonfires.  The singing.  The swimming.  And here they sit strapped to the old boat of old Zebedee.  They are lathered, covered with the ancient equivalents of chap stick and Coppertone.  And they are trapped.  Under the glaring gaze of Zebedee, whose thunderous voice has so filled their home that their own voices have not even emerged.  Every day, in the back of the boat.  And what are they doing?  Why you could have guessed it, even if the text had not made it plain.  Are they casting?  No.  Are they fishing?  No.  Are they sailing?  No.  They are mending.  Mending.  Knit one, pearl two… Their dad has got them into that conservation, protection, preservation mode.  Mending.  At dawn!  Of course, nets need mending, but the nets and the mending are meant in a greater service!  The fun is in the fishing!  The joy is in the casting.  The happiness is in the evangelism.  And there they sit, sober Calvinist souls, mending.  Deedle deedle dumpling, my son John…

Today we are mid-way between Christmas and Easter.  This passage has a little passion (the Baptist) and a little nativity (Nazareth). The two stories of Jesus, of his birth and of his death, are meant to complement and interpret each other.

Here is a pronouncement of a broad peace, on earth.  On earth.  With Gandhi along the Ganges.  Beside Tutu on the southern cape.  Along the path of the Dalai Lama in farthest Tibet.  In Tegucigalpa, back when, with our missionary friends Mark and Lynn Baker. This is no predestinarian quietism, which has taken over parts of American Christianity, from its seedbeds in the Orthodox Presbyterian and Anabaptist communions:  cold, careful, efficient, first mile, changeless, fearsome, depressed grace.  No, this is Christmas:  warm, open, effective, second mile, free, growing, angry, and hopeful!  Augustine:  Hope has two beautiful daughters:  anger and courage.

The early church told two stories about Jesus.  The first about his death.  The second about his life.  The first, about the cross, is the oldest and most fundamental.  The second, about the manger, is the key to the meaning of the first, the eyeglasses which open full sight, the code to decipher the first.  Without Christmas you can’t see Easter right.  Jesus died on a cross for our sin according to the Scripture.  That is the first story.  But who was Jesus?  What life did his death complete?  How does his word heal our hurt?  And how does all this accord with Scripture? One leads to the other.

This second, second level story begins at Christmas, and continues in Epiphany, and is told among us to interpret the first.  Christmas\Epiphany is meant to make sure that the divine love is not left only to the cross, or only to heaven.  Epiphany is meant to open out a whole range of Jesus, as brother, teacher, healer, young man, all.  Christmas is meant to provide the mid-course correction that might be needed if all we had was Holy Week.  And the Christmas\Epiphany images are the worker bees in this theological hive.  Easter may announce the power of peace, but Christmas names the place of peace.  Jesus died the way he did because he lived the way he did.  Jesus lived the way he did, and so died the way he did.  That is, it is not only the Passion of Christ, but the Peace of Christ, too, which Christians like you affirm.  What lovely news for us at the start of a new year.  The passion too of Christ.  Theologically, globally, politically, militarily, ecclesiastically —we have seen passion this year.  Now comes dawn, the light, Epiphany, Christmas\Epiphany again to announce that there is more to Jesus than the passion.  There is the matter of peace as well.

The real miracles of this account lie in the second invitation to the second set of brothers.  It is a miracle that Jesus stopped and invited them, so somber are they.  I wonder if he took in the timbre of Zebedee’s voice, and saw them quaking in the back of the boat.  Perhaps his heart went out to James and John.  No, I am sure Jesus’ heart went out to James and John, as it does now to so many 20 year-olds.  So, he stops, Jesus stops, and he asks, Jesus asks.

That is the great thing about an invitation.  All you can do is ask.  Do ask.  Ye have not because ye ask not.  And for the first time in their lives, James and John are invited to live, to live and to leave…and so to live. Too many people live half asleep.  Too often we don’t live life, life lives us.  Like these two knitting in the back of the boat.  Half asleep.  Then dawn comes, and day breaks, and that first light shines!  And a voice like no other, so equanimous and so serene, casts its spell upon them.  Maybe upon you, this morning.  Do you hear Jesus’ voice this morning? Watch.  It is a first light moment.  See James, see John.  First one, then the other, stands and moves.  Under the shadow of that paternal presence, under the sound of that maternal imperative of home.  They rise.  And they move toward First Light.  They are about to grow up.  AND THEY LEAVE HOME! Wonderful!  And what do they leave behind?  You would have known even if the Scripture had not laid it right out.  They leave behind the boat…and their father.  We best honor the adults in our lives when we become adults ourselves. (repeat)

Will this world grow up? Will we find a way to live together, all eight plus billion of us, and to drink from the same cup? This text, strangely like the Gospel of John, claims for Jesus that Jesus is light.  Not color, now.  Light.  Color is great, and good.  But we all want finally to be able to drink from the same water fountain, we want our children in one school, we want to sit at one table, we want to drink from one goblet.  It is light that we will need into the 21^st century.  We finally all drink from the same cup.

I am told of a man who stopped in his new neighborhood to buy lemonade from a freckle faced 7 year old girl and a mahogany skinned 6 year old boy.  He paid his dime and drank his beverage and stayed to talk.  After a while the girl asked if there was anything else he wanted.  No, he said, why?

Well sir, we are running a business here, and we have had a busy morning, and we hope for a busy afternoon, but that cup you are holding is the only one we have, we only have one cup, so if you don’t mind, we’d like it back.

We all finally drink from the same cup. The more funerals you attend, the more clearly you will remember.  We forget it at our worldly peril.  If we walk in the light as He is in the light we have fellowship with one another.  We have more in common, as climate change, nuclear danger, European warfare, governmental malfunction, denominational turmoil, and personal angst remind us, all around the globe, than we do in difference. We have far more in common, in unity, than we do in difference, in diversity.  Give us light.  Give us light.  Give us light. Dear God, give us light.

Have you faith?  You are going to need some this coming year, 2023.

At first light, at dawn, we may with happiness remember this.  The protagonist of M Robinson’s Gilead, (we will have Robinson here to speak April 11) an old pastor in the Iowa town of this name, spends Sunday mornings, at dawn, praying alone in his church.  He loves the morning hour.  He waits with baited breath for the church to begin to fill up, to fill in.  He basks in the first light of day.

He knows, you do too, that we are going to need some faith.  Some faith, some faith, some faith… this year.  Others will, too.  How will they find faith in Christ without a church family to love them, without a church home to nurture them:  without you taking a moment to say, ‘I will be at Marsh Chapel on Sunday at 11am—why not meet me there?’

That is the dawn, Peter and Andrew, that is the real joy of faith:  sharing it.  That is the dawn, James and John, that is the real joy of faith:  sharing it.  Would you like to have some fun this week?  Look around for dawn breaking out, on the beach, and kick up some sand.

Sursum Corda!  Lift up your hearts!

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 01.22.2023 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 2:13–23

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The dawn is breaking, slowly, over the snow-blanketed city.  You have assembled yourself for the morning, with your coat and hat and mittens.  You stand like a medieval knight with his standard, you with your broom or shovel in hand, and dawn is breaking slowly, say in upstate NY, say in Buffalo, a week after the great snowfall.

Shakespeare knew the beauty and terror of the dawn:

The grey eyed morn smiles on the frowning night

                  Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light

                  And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels

                  Form forth days path and Titan’s fiery wheels

                  Now ere the sun advance his burning eye

                  The day to cheer and night’s dank dew to dry

The great poet and playwright knew, as was said of our Lord in his earthly ministry, knew the heart of man.  He knew the complexity of moral judgment.  He knew the ambiguity of corporate and governmental life.  He knew the strange subterranean interplay of spirituality and sexuality.  He knew the elusive mobility of truth, which, to be spoken, requires a lifetime of rapt attention, and sometimes years of isolated pain and imprisonment. What this country may need to start a new year is neither a chicken in every pot nor a good 5 cent cigar nor a plain, new, fair, or square deal, but, a rivetingly taught course or two in Shakespeare!  Or Paul of Tarsus.

As you start, at whatever dawn you face, ponder this Good News:  Christmas gives strength to start.  A new year?  Strength to start.  A new path?  Strength to start.  A new relationship?  Strength to start.  A new diagnosis?  Strength to start.  A new commitment?  Strength to start.  A new situation? Strength to start.  Christmas offers strength to start.

In the first place, we may plainly affirm that together we find a shared strength at Christmas.

We listen to the words of St Matthew, the story of the Magi, and we hear them as God’s Word.  The words of Scripture are “holy” in that they stand over against us, they take the measure of our self-deception, they outlast our passions and defeats and very lives.  These verses will live longer than we, and rightly so. They will still be heard when we will not be. They will be heard when YOU will not be. So,  they have the power to help us to begin the service, the day, the week, the year, looking out in Christmastide at a new year.

The words of Scripture start with the whole of life in view and with the end of life in view.

We too must make our various beginnings, and so we are not displeased to find here an inspired manner of entry.  By example the Kings assert strength to start.

The passage opens the year with joy, and leads us into a new vocabulary of love and delight. Words of wisdom, that the Kings celebrate, and which will adorn the Gospel as the gospel unfolds.  These words are meant to become our living vocabulary, dictionary, glossary.  We are to learn them again as the New Year unfolds:

Grace

Peace

Thanksgiving

Saints together

Gifts-charismata

Guiltless

Fellowship

In Christ

God is faithful

Oh, that we would bathe ourselves at the outset of each day in such a shower of strength!

For you, all of you, have been found in a new situation.  You are “in Christ”. You have been seized, at least for a worship hour, and so maybe for a lifetime, by the confession of faith that is the confession of the church.

Start the day strong—much will befall to challenge by dusk.

Start life strong in childhood—much comes later to unsettle.

Start with laughter and play in summer—much in autumn proves more difficult.

Start this New Year with strength, and like a skier carried along by gravity, you will pass by and over and around the bumps.

Start this week and each week with the hearing of the Holy Word—much that is less than holy will greet you later.  Go to church on Sunday.

In the second place, we may plainly affirm that the gifts of Christmas are reliable in time of need, are firm in the face of danger.  They make us confident when we need to be and inwardly secure when we have to be.

Whether we are young or mature or old, whether we are babes in Christ or approved in Christ or wise in Christ—we make our starts with strength, recognizing that, as one author began one famous book, ‘life is hard and life is a struggle’.

For the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the people of skill, but time and chance happen to them all.  I once said to my father, a graduate of Boston University in 1953:  ‘this is not fair’.  He replied as you would have done:  ‘whoever told you life is fair?’

Life is not fair, not by a country mile.

Not fair to those who suffer untimely loss

Not fair to those stricken with unexpected illness

Not fair to those whose limbs are taken and torn

Not fair to those who should have been chosen

Not fair to you

Time and chance happen to all.

Not fair to those of whom our south Texas weekly internet congregant, and theological poet, Rev. Milton Jordan, writes:

Imagine Joseph’s difficult decision. He and Mary have a child less than two weeks old. They do not have any documents to prove they are married. Visitors who have heard rumors of this new heir in David’s line have come to see for themselves, and they report that Herod has also heard these rumors. Joseph knows what this means, and he knows how few options he has.

With few resources, perhaps a gift or three from some of the visitors, Joseph takes Mary and their newborn child and strikes out across the country looking for safety in another land. Imagine them now, their few resources long spent, at a crowded border crossing asking for asylum in this foreign land.  

Is this not fairly the heart of the simple gifts we shall share in a moment at the Lord’s Table, and at the Lord’s behest?  It was a borrowed upper room, not a paid for condo, in which the meal was shared.  It was a circle tinged with betrayal, not a safe protected team, within which he washed feet and lifted cup.  It was an evening before defeat, not a twilight of victory past, during which wine and bread were given.  It was lack that gave way at last to hope, treachery that was the doorway to a later hope, suffering, the suffering of the cross, that made way for the hope in which we now stand.  It was Jesus giving himself to us in sacrificial love, in a week when we may have known disrespect, betrayal, and insult.

Whatever harsh word you now have reason to hear and overhear, hold on.  It is not the last word.

Start with that trust and strength.

Paul suffered shipwreck and lash and hunger and despond.  Yet he could still sing with confidence:

 If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation…

                   He who has begun a good work in you will complete it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ…

                   Have you begun with the Spirit to end with the flesh?…

                   It is the God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness’ who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ…

                   He is the beginning, the first born from the dead that in everything he might be pre eminent…

                   For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we preached among you, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes.  For all the promises of God find their Yes in him…

Resolve to choose and memorize one of these verses of hope wrought in struggle, in 2023.

Whatever silence and despair now accompany you, hold on.  Your lasting friendship is in Christ.

Martin Luther recounted his many attempts to find peace with God through self-discipline, through religious duty, through acts of contrition, through his own works, until at last he collapsed.

At last, he found his way out from the harsh word of command from authority to obedience, and out into the meadow of hope in a calling word from wisdom to happiness, from the Kings to the Christ.

“But this availed me nothing; nor did it free me from a fearful and dreadful conscience…This is God’s Word… this one thing God asks of you, that you honor him by accepting comfort; believe and know that he forgives your transgressions and has no wrath against you.”

We learn late or early that without explanation rain falls on the just and unjust alike. In time of trial, though, you may start again with strength.  You have the love of God, the Gospel of Christ, the Grace of the Lord, the baptism of the church, the prayers of the church, the Lord’s prayer, the ten commandments, the sacrament of communion, the word of absolution, and the decision of faith.  Use them, rely on them, let them buoy you up, in time of trial.  What more do you need?

In the third place, we may plainly affirm the strength that comes from beginning with the end in view.  Though they found him an infant, one who does not speak, they saw him a King, One whose voice rings out to all the world.

This Christmas Sunday reminds us that the Lord Christ is both Alpha and Omega.  When at last we set down our various tools and trades, when at last we have lost our eyes and ears, when at last our final paycheck has come, when at last the various dawns have given way to dusk and dusk and dusk—here too we are in Christ and nowhere else, of Christ and no one else.  Somehow all the little subplots and sufferings of this present time are going to find their full place and point in a greater story, the day of God, the life-span of Jesus Christ.  Today is God’s, and tomorrow is God’s, too.  Earth is God’s, and heaven is too. Somehow, somehow, somehow…

So, we need and want to be together, with and for each other, come Sunday, right here, right now.  To know one another, to love one another, and then, at last, to remember one another. As our Haines, Alaska internet listener, and obituary composer, State Writer Laureate Heather Lende put it:

Writing about the dead helps me celebrate the living, my neighbors, friends, husband and five children, and this place, which some would say is on the edge of nowhere, but for me is the center of everywhere (If You Lived Here I’d Know Your Name , p, 9)

Only such a hope can sustain travelers like us, who seek wisdom and who seek love, even as that hope has sustained the church for sixty some generations. Such a hope strengthens the Magi:  unsung saints and heroines, and those whose names recall a sure Christmas strength.  Some are enshrined in Scripture:  Matthew, Paul, Mary, John. Some are known in Tradition: Ghandi, Heschel, Sadat, Teresa.  Some are from closer experience: John Dempster, Frances Willard, Daniel Marsh, Lawrence Carter. And one, more sung than unsung now, greets us on this plaza every morning, with birds in flight, emblematic of a real Christmas strength. Only such a hope could have strengthened Martin Luther King on August 28 1963 in Washington and all the long bitter way to April 3 1968, his last earthly night: “I just want to do God’s will.  And he has allowed me to go to the mountain.  And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land…So I’m happy tonight, I’m not worried about anything.  I’m not fearing any man.”

At Christmas, you start with confidence about the end. You are strengthened to start in the hope of Jesus Christ.

Christmas strength.

Strength in Christ.

Strength in times of trial.

Strength with hope for the end.

Put on the whole clothing of Christ!

As you stand at the dawn of the rest of life…

We will put it in terms familiar…

Put on the whole wardrobe of Christ, as you seize your shovel:

Put on the sweater of grace

Put on the boots of peace

Put on the mittens of thanksgiving

Put on the tuke of fellowship

Put on the scarf of faithfulness

Put on the snowsuit of sanctification

Pick up the shovel of salvation

And the ice-pick of hope

And the salt of happiness

For today, by grace, you are given a Christmas strength.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 01.1.2023 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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John 1:1–14

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Merry Christmas!

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

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel, Uncategorized on 12.25.2022 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 1:18-25

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You may be trying to find your spiritual footing. 

Other than the emergence of language itself, the stumbling child’s movements in learning to walk are perhaps the most tender in memory.    Adults learn to walk in various ways too.  I watched my father, nearly killed by an infection, and bed-bound for months, learn to walk again.  While I can see his first steps, baby steps at age 80, I would not be fully able to convey the power of those steps.  

You too may be trying to get your balance, to find your religious footing.  As with so many things, the decision to try is the main thing.  We learn to walk at different ages.  

On Ground Hog Day each year I set aside an hour to skate with students on the Frog Pond, though this year at the rink at 41 Park.  Some of those from South Carolina and Texas are just learning to skate.  They have the most fun.  

One day this late autumn the wind was swirling on Bay State Road, catching up the leaves in little multi colored cyclones, and twirling them around.   It was raining red an orange, yellow and brown, whipping the leaves to the cheek.  Then coming toward me a young woman, seeing the swirl, herself dropped her books, made a pirouette, and twirled in tandem with the leaves.  One loop, two loops, three…  I judge it was the right response to the wind. 

In an age and setting that demeans and diminishes mystery and history, she danced.  She found her footing, along our street.  She was learning to walk, in the spirit. 

 Yes, it is important to take it slow as you begin.  On the open path among leaves no step has yet trodden black, it makes sense to takes things slow.  A sermon about taking such primordial steps, should take a slow pace.  Don’t you think?  A sermon about, say, the beginning of the Gospel. 

Many women and men who do not regularly darken doors of churches are nonetheless trying to find spiritual footing.  I believe that a Sunday sermon, of all things, can bring the balance needed for the walk of faith.  In fact, if the sermon cannot, what can?  Like the bullfighter with the cape waving, like the boxer circling to find that one opening, like the private detective waving the flashlight in the cellar, here we are, everything at stake.  As Paul sang, To all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Will somebody please lend a hand?  Someone is trying to learn to walk.  I have been humbled to see people to learn to walk, especially in the imagination.  As a matter of fact, I think I saw some of you there. 

 If you are going to walk, you will need light to see your way.  It is dark in December, dark in Advent, dark as the readings shift from sunny Luke to dark Matthew, dark as the church begins another liturgical year, dark as finals befall, dark, dark, outside it is dark.  Dark as when Joseph slept, and an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. 

 So let us look for light in which to walk. 

 Look up.  Light falls to illumine the path, THE WAY, ahead.  Look.  Let us walk in the light of the Lord.  How many times this week have you touched something nearly 3000 years old?  Well, Isaiah’s words are that old, or nearly so.  Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel 

 Year by year as I hear again read these Isaian prophecies, they seem annually ever farther off.  They just seem so improbable.  I give you pollution, pandemic, Putin, prejudice, pistols, politics and pain.  And yet, the aspiration remains, the promise and prophecy endure: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel 

 Isaiah is not exclusively full of promise, though promise is the heart of today’s reading.  Isaiah predicts doom for the people of God.  Isaiah is like Amos and Hosea and Micah.  These were old and popular verses, to which both Isaiah and Micah repaired.  The oracles of judgment upon the people of God, which both precede and follow our lesson today, underscore one particular ailment within the body of God’s people.  This is a lesson we may do well to keep steadily before us.  One primary impediment to relationship with God is injustice.   Repeatedly all of these early prophets return to this single theme.  The relationship between God and people is torn, rent asunder, by mistreatment of the poor.  We will want to hear this as clearly as possible, as we find our footing, along the walk of faith.  It is not only true that justice is desirable.  Justice itself is marker along our path, a way of walking in the light.  But it is not an end in itself.  It absence is not desirable, but for a fuller reason.  Injustice impedes our walk in the light.  Injustice interferes with our relationship with God.  Doing justly is meaningful because…it leads to God. As bad as injustice is in its own right, its damage to our relationship with God is far worse. 

I believe this is why the pulpit of Marsh Chapel has resounded for so many decades in attention to the weight matters of justice:  Littell and the holocaust, Thurman and race, Hamill and war, Thornburg and cults, Neville and creation, Hill and a common hope.  My predecessors knew well that you have to look up in hope, look up in dream, look up in desire, look up in expectation.  To find our footing going forward we need the light that comes from a sense of possibility, a sense of promise.   Along comes Isaiah to remind us: 

There will come a day when the swords of terror are beaten into the plowshares of learning, the swords of conflict into the plowshares of cooperation, the swords of division into the plowshares of communion, the swords of despair into the plowshares of promise.  That is, in Isaiah, judgment is not the last word.  Without a sense of a final horizon of hope, without a sense of the love of God, without a sense of the prospect of lasting meaning hidden somehow in history, without a word to guide us about the latter days, no matter how far off, the muscle for the daily struggle deteriorates.  You’ve got to have a dream.  If you don’t have a dream, how are you going to have a dream come true? 

 Look up in hope, in promise. 

 Look down.  Look down every now and then, too.  In the quiet of late autumn, in the dusk of late Advent, we will want to look down at ourselves, not on ourselves but at ourselves.  We are listening to three ancient lessons, trusting that in their interpretation, we may find some light for the path ahead. 

 In his great letter to the Romans, whose greeting lines we hear today, the Apostle Paul offers his wisdom for living, to a church he has yet to visit.  As in Isaiah, the words are meant as advice for groups, for the chosen people of God and for the called people of God, for Israel and the church.  The Apostle’s advice is very earthly.  It causes us to look at our shoes, our actual manner of walking.  In fact, the advice sounds like it had been written as a challenge not only to culture at large but also to college culture.  The verses form a cautionary tale.  I think that almost every week there is someone here or listening from afar who may be ready to hear Paul’s greeting.  In fact, Marsh Chapel and places like it may simply stand as silent witnesses to the hope that students may emerge from their studies, and professors from their teaching, without undue regret, without too many regrets.  We all carry regrets.  None of us is perfect.  Including you.  And me. But if we love one another we will want them to be fewer rather than more.  Paul warns in his greatest letter, about regrets. 

What warning would we add today? 

For those of us working nearby young adults in this era, the manner and meaning of instrumental communication is a serious issue, or set of issues.  We are the grownups on the lot, and yet we are largely immigrants to a land far more native to our students.  In some cases, we are still back in the old country.  How are we going to bring to bear the wisdom of the ages, in the twitter age?  Are we attentive, curious, honest, straight, kind?  Or do we hang back, and let things take their own course?  I pose this not as a question for sudden answer, yours or mine, but as a lingering, daily, annual point of meditation.  How much blackberry and how much blackberry pie?  How much Facebook and how much face time?  

 For St Paul, learning to walk, to find faith, a personal faith, the walk of faith, for him salvation is close at hand.  He still feels the heat of the apocalyptic end, coming he expects in his lifetime.  Yet note for the all specificity of his warnings in the letter later (drunkenness, debauchery, quarreling) just how open, how free is his advice:  ‘put on Christ’.  And what, we may ask, does that look like?  He has no need to say, for he has said so just prior to our reading; ‘love your neighbor as yourself.  Love does no wrong to the neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law’ (13: 10) 

Look down.  Polish your shoes.  Watch your step.  A walk in the light requires a careful step, as responsible stewardship. 

And look out.  Look out!  Isaiah lifts our gaze.  Paul lowers our gaze.  Matthew lengthens our gaze. 

I believe that many people, perhaps you among them, are looking for ways to find their spiritual footing.  You may nod a quiet affirmation, with Isaiah, to the need for promise.  You may whisper a quiet agreement, with Paul, for the need for discipline.  But our third lesson, our Gospel, may at first seem less helpful.  It may in fact be less helpful. 

 You may wonder why a church, or this chapel, would have read such odd passages during the month of Advent, in these last few weeks, about the days of Noah, about sudden disappearance in field and mill, about thieves in the night, about the coming of the Son of Man.  Why do these ancient, foreign, strange chapters from the history of our religious families still occupy our attention?  After all, the fervent first century hope that the end would come before the first generation had passed away was disappointed.  Why listen any longer to these predictions?   

 The meal is over, and we are left with leftovers. 

 The apocalyptic language and imagery which appear here in Matthew and in Luke, and may have simply been taken over from contemporary Judaism, are made to serve, in this Gospel, another purpose than in their original serving.   Eschatology becomes ethics.  Expectation about the end is made to serve a moral point:  be ready; watch.   In our funeral service we repeat in our prayers, ‘we know not what a day may bring, but only that the hour for serving thee is always present’.   

Like Christmas dinner with an ornery uncle or disapproving great aunt, these Advent passages, which were the ancestors of the language of our whole New Testament, can prove hard to have around, but they also have stories to tell, and wisdom to share.   

 Like a strange uncle, they can remind us of how unexpectedly things can change.  “I lost everything I had in the depression”.  Like a feisty aunt, they can challenge us to be ready, “I never thought that day that I would meet my husband on a train to St Louis”.  Like a cousin we seldom see, they can jolt us because they look like us and sound like us when they say, “If I had known then what I know now I would have acted more quickly”. 

 You need those family memories, those familial warnings.  Look out!  Be watchful and mindful and careful. 

 You just never know what a day will bring. 

 It is not enough to generalize or specialize. We have to improvise.  You will probably need to ‘look out’ and improvise a bit too, now and then. 

 You may be trying to find your spiritual footing.  It is in fact hard to get started, in anything, and really hard in anything that really matters.   

 Walk in the light of promise.   

 Walk in the light of discipline. 

 Walk in the light of readiness. 

 If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. 

 Today’s sermon is a sermon for those of us who are trying to find our spiritual footing, to get started, to learn the walk of faith. 

 Sometimes the people who say or think they have the least faith in fact have the most.  I am not most interested in how many psalms you can recite, though I implore you to learn some.  I am not most interested in how many hymns you know by heart, though when you are ill or alone they could be saving companions.  I am not most interested in how many religious books you have read, though learning and piety are meant to live together.  I am not most interested in how many church services you have attended, though there is no better way to grow in faith, no better way to learn to walk, none.   

 But I am interested in this.  Are you putting one foot ahead of the other?  Are you trying?  Are you concerned about it?  Are you walking?  Are you walking in the light?  Are you letting some of the sunlight of promise fall on your shoulder?  Are you letting some of the inner light of discipline carry your feet along?  Are you watching for that unexpected ray of inspiration, burst of imagination or challenge to investigation? 

 Not:  are you running?  Not: are you winning?  Not:  are you starring?  Not:  are you succeeding?  Not:  are you finishing?  Just this:  Are you walking in the light? 

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 12.18.2022 at 11:00 am

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Matthew 3:1-12

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 12.4.2022 at 11:00 am

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Matthew 24:36-44

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

What is less clear is the meaning of the coming of the Son of Man.  What is the nature of this coming?  Who is the person so named?  What difference, existential difference, everlasting difference does any of this make?  What did Jesus actually say here?  On what score did the primitive Christian community remember and rehearse his teaching?  Did Matthew have a dog in this fight?  How has the church, age to age, interpreted the passage?  We shall pose these four questions to verses 36 to 44 in the 24th chapter of the Gospel bearing the name of Matthew, and then apply the verses to ourselves. 

Jesus.  Jesus may have used this phrase, though most judge that it is a later church appellation. It may have been both. This phrase, coming out of Daniel chapter 7 (did Jesus hear this read and hold it in memory?) and the stock Jewish apocalyptic of Jesus’ day, was as much a part of his environment as the sandals on his feet, the donkey which he rode, the Aramaic which he spoke, the Palestinian countryside which he loved, and the end of time which he expected, in the contemporary generation.  Did he understand himself to be that figure?  We cannot see and we cannot say, though I think it unlikely.  That is, Jesus used the phrase, most probably, but not of himself, most probably. It is Mark and the author Enoch who have given us the ‘Son of Man’ in its full sense, and it is Matthew alone among the Gospel writers who uses the ‘coming’ in a technical sense (so Dr. Perrin, IBDS 834, and others).  The soprano voice of Jesus is far lighter in the gospel choruses than we would expect, than we would *think or like. 

Church.  Mark, Luke and Matthew carry forward these standard-end-of-the-world predictions.  Our lectionary clips out the mistaken acclamation of 24: 34, just two verses ahead of our reading, but we should hear it:  Truly I tell you this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.  Like the waiting figures in the Glass Menagerie, the earlier church has hung onto these blown glass elements while awaiting a never returning person, like that telephone operator, ‘who had fallen in love with long distances’.  They preserve the menagerie in fine glass of hopes deferred that maketh the heart sick.  That generation and seventy others have passed away before any of this has taken place.  We do not expect, literally expect, these portents any longer.  Nor should we.  They are part of the apocalyptic language and imagery which was the mother of the New Testament and all Christian theology since, a beloved mother long dead.  The Son of Man was the favorite hope child of that mother.  A long low alto aria this.  Yet we should, and do, hear these apocalyptic passages.  They are a part of our shared, family history. 

Matthew.  To his credit and to our benefit Matthew makes his editorial, redactorial moves, to accommodate what he has taken from Mark 13.  The point of apocalyptic eschatology is ethical persuasion, here and in the sibling synoptic passages.  Watch.  Be ready.  Live with your teeth set. Ready and steady, ready and steady. Let the servants, the leaders of Matthew’s day, be found faithful.   After 37 excoriating verses directed against the Pharisees in chapter 23, white washed tombs which outwardly appear beautiful but within full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness—the hard truth about religion at our worst--and after 43 further verses in chapter 24 of standard end time language, Matthew pulls up.  He stands and delivers his sermon.  You must be ready.  Steady and ready, steady and ready. The figure of the future is coming at an hour you do not expect.  Hail the Matthew tenor. 

Tradition.  Immediately the church scrambled to reinvent and reinterpret.  Basso profundo. One example, found early in the passage, will suffice.  Of that day no one knows, not even the Son.  Except that some texts take out ‘even the Son’, in deference to Jesus’ later and higher Person.  It is, finally, and except for occasional oddball readings, like that of the Montanists in the second century and the fundamentalists in the twenty first, the church’s view that apocalyptic language and imagery convey the future as unknowable and the present as unrepeatable. The future as unknowable and the present as unrepeatable… 

To sum up: As soon, here at Advent 1, the edge of the church’s new year, as we reach out to grasp the future, it has slipped past us, already flying down the road to the rear, into the past.  The present itself is no better, because its portions of past and future are tangled permanently together.  We do have the past, neither dead nor past…or do we?  Memory and memoir spill into each other with the greatest of ease.  One agnostic admitted that music, performed, was his closest approximation of God, the presence of God, the proof of God.  Gabby Gifford showed her history of healing this past week, crowned in music, music that resurrects memory and empowers speech.  Somehow, she persevered.  In week with 6 dead in a Walmart in Virginia, 5 in a gay night club in Colorado, 4 on campus in Idaho, and 3 on a team bus in Virginia, all far more preventable than we have yet found the national will to make them, we think on those so maimed and those so lost.  We need music to carry us, to carry us toward the true and the good and the beautiful.  And to keep us steady and ready, waiting for an opening, a moment when something can be voted, passed, done.  Music can carry our deep memory, including in worship.  The ordered public worship of Almighty God on the Lord’s day is not a matter of indifference.  It carries the models of saving intervening words and soulful intervening notes that may just see us through.  We shall listen in a moment to a beautiful anthem, with rapt attention.  One trusted Christian—it may have been you—sensed grace and grace in the grace of worship, unlike any other. Every moment is a veritable mystery.  Music is a veritable mystery.  So next week, we shall hear:  My body and My blood, these are veritable mysteries, so named mystery, sacramentum, to this day.  How shall we respond? 

Sleepers awake!  There is not an infinite amount of unforeseen future in which to come awake and to become alive!  There does come a time when it is too late, allowing the valence of ‘it’ to be as broad as the ocean and as wide as life.  You do not have forever to invest yourself in deep rivers of Holy Scripture, whatever they may be for you.  It takes time to allow the Holy to make you whole.  Begin.  You do not have forever to seek in the back roads of some tradition, whatever it may be for you, the corresponding hearts and minds which and who will give you back your own-most self.  It takes time to uncover others who have had the same quirky interests and fears you do.  Begin.  You do not have forever to sift and think through what you think about what lasts and matters and counts and works.  Honestly, who could complain about young people seeking careers, jobs, employment, work?  Do so.  But work alone will not make you human, nor allow you to become a real human being.  Life is about vocation and avocation, not merely about employment and unemployment.  You are being sold a bill of goods, here.  Be watchful.  It takes time to self-interpret that deceptively crushing verse, ‘let your light so shine before others’.  Begin.  You do not have forever to experience Presence.  It is presence, spirit, good for which we long, for which, nay for Whom, we are made.  It takes time to find authentic habits of being—what makes the heart sing, the soul pray, the spirit preach.  Your heart, not someone else’s, your soul, not someone else’s, your spirit, not someone else’s.  Begin. 

You must be ready.  For the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. 

For example.  How do you deal with hurt that comes from a person you deeply love, a relationship you truly enjoy, an institution you firmly affirm, or a friendship you lastingly cherish? Was yours a contentious Thanksgiving feast?  It is one thing to think about pain, permanent or passing, that comes in collision with others whom we do not know well or care for.  These traffic accidents are perhaps to be expected in the rush hours of relational experience.  When we do not know one another, or not well, we can miss cues and generate miscues that those more familiar would avoid. Not knowing you I did not know and would never have expected that you are an avid Yankees fan, and if I had I would never have said what I did, directly, about the Yankees.  Well, I probably wouldn’t have done.  But what about the church you deeply love, when disappointment comes from the pulpit? What about that lifetime friend who says something unpleasant and hurtful?  What about that employer, whom you revere and admire, to whom you give both creativity and loyalty?  What about that community group whose organizational needs you have selflessly met, that then makes a statement or takes a decision that causes you pain? Or, what about the country you love, when its voice, its choice, deeply disappoint?  In short, what happens when those you love hurt you?  How do you deal with that? 

You must be ready.  For the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. 

Perhaps you will irrupt in the moment, lash out in reaction, without any due process of reflection, because the moment needs it, and you have or feel you have no choice.  Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay.  Be angry, and let not the sun go down on your anger.  This may cause more problems than it solves, of course, but you may have had no choice.   

Or, you may sense that you just want to put some distance between yourself and your source of pain, institutional, relational, or personal.  A little time, a little distance, a little pause, a little absence.   Thence a cooling off, it may be, not a squaring off.  In some measure that may suit you and the challenge.  You did not start it.  You do not need to take responsibility for it.  Shake the dust from your feet.  Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day. (You see how tough it can be even, especially when you know the Bible, to pick out the right Bible verse!)  The trouble is still there, though it may just dissipate on its own.  Not all battles have to be fought.   

Or maybe you want to just listen. You know, like animals do, they just curl up and become a log or a part of the scenery.   Let life go along, and let the conversation play out.  You do not need to oppose.  You do not need to repose.  You can just pose in silence.  You can offer the silent treatment—present but quiet.  This could work, though there is a quality of falsehood about it.  It may depend on just how substantial the fender-bender was, how hurtful the collision, how extreme the traffic accident.   Silence alone has limits to its beneficence.  Still, as the man said, ‘I would rather remain silent and be thought a fool than to open my mouth and remove all doubt’.  Sometimes it is better just to keep your own counsel, and play dead. 

You must be ready.  For the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. 

On the first Sunday of Advent, you are reminded, you have though at least one other option.  Fight, flight, play dead if need be.  Yet you might also, well, wait.  We are approaching Advent, are we not?  Wait upon the Lord.  That is, you might think through what happened, both putting the best and worst lights upon it.  You might pray about it.  Hold it in prayerful thought.  You might think out a couple of sentences that you would caringly use, should the institution, relationship, or person provide an opening for that.  And then you would have to ‘hurry up and wait’.  Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.  “You know, I have had that interchange in mind since it happened.  Honestly, for whatever reason, it did hurt.  But given the love, joy, happiness, meaning and help you give me over so much time, it is just one brief solar eclipse that comes once a decade, when all else is sunshine. Thanks for mentioning it.” 

Call it an Advent Gospel, an advent admonition:  

You must be ready.  Steady and ready.  For the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. 

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 11.27.2022 at 11:00 am

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Luke 23:33–43

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SAJ: In September, we opened our Bach Experience series with Cantata 147. Along with with Cantata 10, and of course Bach’s magnificent Magnificat setting, the first chapter of Luke has provided centuries of musical creativity and inspiration. The parables of Jesus as recounted in the Gospels are the departure point for many cantatas, but Luke’s voice is prominent in the liturgical schedule of readings for Bach. Of the cantatas Bach wrote in 1723 for the 26 Sundays after Trinity, nearly two-thirds are based on lessons from Luke --  the Sermon on the Mount, Zechariah’s benedictus, the parables of the unjust steward, the good Samaritan, the pharisee and the publican, prophesies of the great tribulation, and Jesus’ raising from the dead the young man from Nain. 

And once more, we interweave the power of Scripture with the glory of music, the word spoken with the word sung. Bach and Luke meet today in Cantata 70 Wachet Betet Betet Wachet, as Jesus foretells the second coming. Before Bach, help us regard St Luke. His voice has guided our Sunday by Sunday experience this past year. On this final Sunday of the liturgical calendar, Dean Hill, help us look forward by looking back to a year wherein we have heard the voice of St. Luke, Sunday by Sunday?  

RAH:  Yes, Dr. Jarrett, we indeed have spent the year with St. Luke, and conclude our conversation with him this morning.  There are some outstanding features of the Lukan biblical theology, which we may simply name as we set sail for other shores. On this Sunday which honors the reign of Christ, especially, this is most fitting. First, Luke displays a commitment to and interest in history, and orderly history at that.  Both Luke and Acts are cast in a distinctive historical mode. In fact, Luke has his own schemata for sacred history, in three parts: Israel, Jesus, Church: the time of Israel, concluding with John the Baptist; the time of Jesus, concluding with the Ascension; the time of the church, concluding with the parousia, the coming of the Lord on the clouds of heaven, at the end of time.  Second, Luke employs and deploys his own theology, or theological perspective, including this emphasis upon history and the divine purpose in history.   Third, Luke highlights the humanity and compassion of Jesus in a remarkable way. The Christ of St. Luke is the Christ of magnificent compassion, embodied in the humility of a birth among shepherds.  The poor, women, the stranger, the injured, those in dire need all stand out in Luke, as the recipients and subjects of Jesus’ love, mercy, grace and compassion. Fourth, Luke carries an abiding interest in the church.   History, theology, compassion, and church are hallmarks of Lukan biblical theology, and signs of the reign of Christ, and emphasize the promise of what God has done, in the indicative mood, over what we can do, in the imperative mood. 

SAJ: Indicative and imperative. Pluperfect. Subjunctive. Declension, conjugation. I can almost smell a pencil sharpener nearby, and I bet if we’d diagram a sentence or two, we might even recall the smell of the mimeograph machine!   

But back to our grammarly moods – indicative and imperative – In the eleven movements of today’s cantata, I count 23 imperative verbs: Rejoice greatly, Celebrate with the Angels, Triumph eternally, Lift up your heads, Be of good cherr, Tremble, o sinner, Sound the last trumpet!, Flourish in Eden. Serve God eternally. Lead me to the gates of heaven. Lead me to promised rest, lead me to everlasting joy. Cantata 70’s title has is entirely imperative verbs – Wachet betet betet wachet. Watch pray, pray watch.  

Bach and his librettist are creating a musical sermon, a theology of which is likely downstream of the great Lutheran preachers and teachers, all of whom are downstream of Luther himself, continuing all the way to the Ursprung – the evangelist’s record of the life and teaching of Christ.  

Is this river cruise similar to a pure science flowing downstream to its related applied disciplines? Philosophical or practical? Ideal or pragmatic? Visionary or realistic? 

RAH:  Just so, Dr Jarrett.  That is, indicative precedes imperative.  Indicative precedes imperative, in history, theology, compassion and church. The gospel is about what God has done, first, not about what we might do, a distant second, if that.  JS Bach, a good Lutheran, would heartily agree.  What God has done outlasts, outshines, overshadows, outranks, outdoes what we might do, or not.  That is what makes the gospel good news, rather than just news. What God has done! And let us hold most closely the divine compassion in Luke.  At every turn, there is a return to the least, the last, the lost; those at the dawn of life, those at the twilight of life, those in the shadows of life.  

Further, Dr. Jarrett, over 16 years we have endeavored to render the good news in a bi-lingual manner, on these Bach Sundays, Scripture and Cantata together, juntos, conjoined.  For those of us today, especially, who are listening from afar, who hear but do not see, what are two of the themes of this particular Cantata to which we should caringly attend, in the dialogue of the soulful song and sacred page? That is, first, what in the music should most listen for?   

 SAJ: Today’s images are exciting and dramatic, and Bach manages to cover all the ways in which one can be excited and dramatic. The second coming, in many ways, represents the ultimate test of faith. If we acknowledge that faith is that fuzzy intersection of doubt and certainty, here, the believer (also a sinner) is at once terrified of the day of judgement, then finds a deep breath an enough confidence to sustain their faith a longer. Repeatedly, at macro- and micro-levels, Bach meets us in a crisis of faith, neutralizes our fear through Christ’s love, giving the needed strength and confidence to match Christ loving embrace for eternal pardon and peace. The arias take this tri-partite journey individually and cumulatively.  

 Two extraordinary moments from the baritone bring us to the edge, a terrifying foretaste of the final destruction of heaven and earth. But the second instance might just model how each of us could meet that moment when it comes.  

RAH: And then, second, what in the word, in the words sung, is most telling for us this morning, listening to Bach?  

SAJ:  The signal of the last day, the day of judgement is the trumpet. “Behold I tell you a mystery, we shall be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. Bach features the trumpet throughout the cantata, in chorale tunes and in the triumphant arpeggio that is the motto heard in the first measure of the piece. Geoff Shamu is out trumpeter today – Geoff will you play the motto for us??  

SAJ: So, Dean Hill, in conclusion this morning, how shall we think about what he have heard, and shall hear? 

RAH:  Well, it may be, Dr. Jarrett, that our living of these days, and our life in Christ this day, carry both a dimension of practice and promise.  

In practice, our envisioned mission of Marsh Chapel is be a heart in the heart of the city, and a service in the service of the city.  Our use of President Merlin’s epigram means city as the global city, and service as worship and work.   Our foci guiding this envisioned mission are voice, vocation, and volume.  One aspect of this today is the work of sermon and cantata. 

Twice a term, you engage our collegium, choir, community and listenership in a full morning of teaching about JS Bach, and enjoyment of a Bach Cantata in worship.  This Bach Experience, lecture, gathering, brunch, worship, and sermon, are novel and experimental advancements, in learning and performance, a part of our practice of faith. 

SAJ:  And regarding promise? 

In promise, we turn to Holy Scripture. Our conclusion in the reading of St. Luke comes today with Jesus upon the cross.  Every benediction in ending for a service of worship, including this morning, carries a sense of an ending at hand.  Our own mortality, our own full physical limitation, our own death, at some unforeseen point, is both shadowed and overshadowed, just here in Luke 23, just now on Calvary.  Perhaps more than anything else, our own mortality, our limited humanity, dust art thou and to dust thou shalt return, call us to faith, and awakens us to faith.  Our Christ and his final consort address us, with a promise, a promise that in life and in death and in life beyond death, God is with us, we are not alone, thanks be to God.  Jesus even promises paradise in that hour, in that liminal moment.  The reign of Christ, somehow, says our Gospel, and somehow, sings our Cantata, continues and conquers, though how and how so who can say?  It may be that the single purpose of Sunday worship, every seventh day, every Lord’s Day, is a clinging to the ringing of this dominical promise, our own everlasting hope.  The Lukan Jesus has the last word, and offers that word a lasting promise, a last word in lasting promise…today you will be with me in paradise. 

We are given and receive in faith the divine promise: He keeps them in His hands, and places them in a heavenly Eden.  May it be so! 

RAH: We are given and receive in faith the divine promise: You shall flourish in Eden, serving God eternally. May it be so! 

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

-Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music

posted in Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, The Bach Experience, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 11.20.2022 at 11:00 am

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Luke 6:20-31

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My goodness, you certainly have come to know some colorful characters, some new friends, this autumn.  

One of these folks said to Jesus, ‘I will follow you wherever you go’.  But Jesus warned him, ‘foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head’.  I wonder whether he followed or not, don’t you? 

Then there was the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.  He fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and left him half-dead.  You remember that neither the priest nor the Levite stopped to help, but a foreigner, a Samaritan did, and brought him to an inn and paid for his expenses.  I wonder whether they became friends, wounded and healer, don’t you? 

Martha and Mary, worker and prayer, both, met you as they meet their Lord, in the pages of Holy Writ.  One thing is needful they learned.  I wonder whether that one thing is faith, don’t you? 

Then there was that woman who had been sick for 18 years, whom Jesus healed—on the sabbath—with a flick of the wrist.  I wish we had heard more about her, don’t you? 

Remember later that man who had two sons, and one went off to a foreign land and failed?  He came back having to climb the hill of defeat and seek help again, where ‘when you have to go there they have to take you in’, that is--home.  A best robe, a ring on his finger, a calf killed and cooked, and an older brother stewing out in the field.  Did they ever reconcile, don’t you wonder whether they did? 

And that fellow, that dishonest steward, he was a character for sure.  Yet he had something we can use too, a way to manage risk, a capacity not only to generalize and not only to specialize but also—to improvise.  How did he come up with that, I wonder? 

Then you met up with a rich man dressed in purple whose name was hidden, a poor man with sores and hunger, who had the name Lazarus.  There was a misty haze of judgment in the air, wasn’t there?  There was a recognition that there does come a time when it is too late, wasn’t there? 

Later you came into another place and found a persistent woman battling with an unjust Judge, who feared neither God nor man.  She wore him out, wore him out, with a blessed endurance.  Where did that long suffering come from, don’t you wonder? 

Or that tax collector, who said only one thing, and all around him could hear his cry, ‘God…be merciful to me, a sinner!’  A spirited kind of humility he had did he not? 

Then there is the wee little man sitting in the Sycamore tree—you remember him, I know, from just a few days ago.  He came down a notch or two.  What was that all about, don’t you wonder? 

My goodness, you certainly have come to know some colorful characters, some new friends, this autumn and this year.  You have Luke to thank.  Luke has assembled this chorus of life-long friends for you and me.   

Dime con quien andas, y te dire quien eres, say the Spaniards:  tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.  The saints of God include all of the church visible and invisible.  But then there are those close saints who have formed you.  Luke in his remembrance of Jesus teaching has given us these.  What a gift.  A particular, personal gift.  Your summer preachers brought others of these home to you last July and August.  Read through some of those homilies again when you have a chance.  I am so thankful for the new Lukan friends you have made together this autumn.  They are saints of God, Scriptural saints of God. 

What would your new Lukan friends say to you, to interpret these beatitudes?  

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. 

 Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 

 Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.  

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven. 

 For that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. 

Would they say to all, would they say a single word like, well, VOTE!! 

Would they say to all, a challenging word whether you have thought about what you did and sought a kind of contrition, compunction, lament for what those choices in retrospect have come to mean.  What you meant is not what it has come to mean, is it?  What you meant is not what it means. 

Would they say to all to watch for the failures and errors of our own perspective, like false equivalences, like the churchly willingness to supplant the great with the good, like the foolishness of some slogans? 

Would they say to all, what on earth are leaving on earth in respect of a healthy hopeful country, a healthy hopeful democracy, for your grandchildren? 

Vote, lament, critique, hope.  Seek the good.  What was good yesterday is good today, by the main. 

That is one of the hard things about making new friends.  They draw you out in new ways, which is truly wonderful but can be challenging.  Let them teach you, speak to you, converse, converse, converse with you. 

Luke teaches us by example, does he not?   

He is showing us, in his own biblical way, that we have every right and much reason to canonize our own guiding lights, our own formative figures, our own saints, come All Saints Sunday. 

So, let me ask you:  Who is the patron Saint of your life?  Who are the saints of God whom you would like to emulate, to be one too?  We have patron saints of entire countries, patron saints of schools and movements, patron saints of days and holidays.  Perhaps we should begin to add the patron saints of the faithful, of you and your neighbor and your sister and your brother.  What saints led the way, for you? 

In a jarring, jolting way, this question settled in during the past week.  A preacher of renown, of the first water, a little older but not much, who hallowed the halls of Union Theological Seminary in the 1970’s and then the crowded streets of New York City for the next fifty years as the Senior Minister of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem—the pulpit of Adam Clayton Powell junior and senior before—died at age 73.  His voice carries still, carries us forward, one of the great, leading African American preachers and teachers of our era, the Rev. Dr. Calvin Butts.  He was also, at the same time, for decades, the President of a NYC College, SUNY College of Old Westbury on Long Island.  That is, he was an academic preacher, a University pastor, a person committed to unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety.  Our fellow classmate sent an early morning email to let me know.  He showed many of us the way, the way of University ministry.  In mourning Dr. Butts, and then in thinking about All Saints Sunday, an avalanche of a world of memory, and maybe even understanding cascaded down. 

You are sitting alongside one of the historic, leading University pulpits anywhere, with six deans since its dedication in 1950.  How does one end up here?  Saints preserve us and prepare us, who toiled and fought and lived and died the whole of their good lives long.  You see it if you see it at all in hindsight, over long time.  By age 6, the Sunday morning preacher at Colgate University—Adam Clayton Powell’s alma mater—the gruff and growling Robert V. Smith was a known shadow presence in our Hamilton NY home.  He hosted Julian Bond, a young African American vice-presidential candidate in 1968, to preach in the Colgate pulpit, where many of us heard him for the first time.  By age 16, the Sunday morning preacher at Hendricks Chapel in Syracuse NY, the Rev. Dr. John Knight, who brought the first Mosque to SU and the city itself, was known shadow presence in our Syracuse home.  By age 21, the weekly preacher at Gray Chapel, Ohio Wesleyan University, the Rev. Dr. James Leslie, whose own father taught my father Old Testament here at BU, was a campus presence, and when asked where one should go to Seminary, replied in a quiet wise voice, ‘Yale, Union, or BU’.  The long time anti-war preacher on Sunday mornings from Bechtel Chapel at Yale, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, shepherded us from the high pulpit of Riverside Church in the heart of the Columbia University campus through age 25.  His successor, an academic preacher with a Pentecostal flair, and our own homiletics professor, the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes, guided us by precept and example from afar for 20 years.  Rev. Dr. N. T Wright filled the Henry Birks Chapel at McGill University over many years, including the 10—yes 10!—years, to age 45, of our doctoral study there.  Peter Gomes and Will Willimon, Harvard and Duke, drew us on, close competitors and rivals to the voice of Marsh Chapel, before and during our time here, who gave choral echo, retort and compliment to the deans of this Chapel, Franklin Littell, Howard Thurman, Robert Hamill, Robert Thornburg, Robert Neville, and Robert Hill.  Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor left church—see her book of that title—for the campus nearby, preaching all the while and everywhere and all the time.  Who could see, whether at Colgate in 1968, or coming to Marsh Chapel in 2006, who could see the weaving and interweaving of all these voices, Calvin Butts included, what somehow subliminally, in holy, ghostly way, prepared the way for the present work, the current and ongoing work, in his pulpit?  

In chorus, on this first Sunday of November, they would say especially to young adults, present this morning and listening, a single word:  Vote.  Lament. Critique. Hope. 

But two saints unnamed yet, a father and father in law, Irving Hill and Robert Pennock, who both and equally both loved both the church and the college, and showed it and lived it, along with but more personally than the others, could nudge and affirm and smile to say, when the chips were down, ‘yes, a University pulpit, the pulpit of Marsh Chapel would be a great place for ministry’.  You see?  We don’t see until we see in retrospect.  So all that was going on, wrote Thornton Wilder in Our Town, and we hardly noticed. 

Asked Carlyle Marney, ‘who told you who you was?’  When the chips were down?Who are the patron saints not of Ireland or Scotland or Boston or Boston University, but the patron saints of your life, your living, your calling, your vocation, your self, your soul, your very soul?  The pattern may not yet have formed for you, or may not have been visible, until this very hour.  

Luke had his.  We have ours.  You have yours.  Sing a song today, a song of the saints of God! 

For all the saints, who from their labors rest 

Who Thee by faith before the world confessed 

Thy name O Jesus be forever blessed! 

Alleluia!  Alleluia! 

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

posted in The Liberal Biblical Theology of St. Luke: Fall 2022, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 11.6.2022 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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Luke 19:1–10

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It is hard for me to tell, from this angle, which tree you are in.  Given the troubles of this autumn, it is hard for me to tell which tree I am in myself, day to day.  Has life chased you up the tree of doubt?  Or are you treed in the branches of idolatry—idol-a-tree? Or are we shaking or shaking in the money tree? Or stuck without faith in the religion tree?   Jesus calls us today, to come down out of the tree forts of our own making, and accept a loving relationship with Him.  May we measure all with a measure of love.

 Perhaps the presence of unexplained wrong provokes you to doubt the benevolence in life or the goodness in God.   To doubt that ‘God is at work in the world to make and to keep human life human’ (John Bennett).  Randomness may have treed you.  And that is a natural, real thing. 

For no one can explain why terrible things happen, as they do.  But if we will come down a limb or two from our philosophical tree of doubt, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we may hear faith.  God can bring good out of evil, and make bad things work to good. This is not a theological declamation, and certainly not a paean to providence.  It is just something we can notice together, as throughout the Scripture does. 

Joseph was thrown into a pit, and sold into slavery.  He had to find his way, as a Jew, in the service of the mighty Pharaoh.  He did so with skill, and rose to a position of influence, even with Potiphar’s wife chasing him around in his underwear.   Then, a full generation later, a great famine came upon those brothers who had earlier sold Joseph down the river.  They went to Pharaoh, looking for food.  And who met them, as they came to plead?  There was Joseph.  He so memorably said, as written in Genesis 50: “You meant this for evil, but God meant it for good, that many might be saved.”  Sometimes it happens that a bad thing in one generation prevents starvation in the next. 

So, in Jericho, as Jesus found the wee little man sitting in the Sycamore tree, his fellows grumbled (vs. 8).  Why would he take time with such a greedy, selfish person who makes his living off the sweat of others’ brows?  We miss the power of the parable if we do not see this.  This is Jesus taking up with those who have wished others ill, who have used the church for their own very well intended but nonetheless self-centered reasons.  This is Jesus consorting with sinners.  But sometimes a bad thing in the little brings a good thing in the large.  Zacchaeus changes, and in so doing provides great wealth for others’ benefit. 

Come down from this one tree, doubting Zacchaeus.  We know that bad things happen to good people, that not all rain falls on someone else’s lawn. Sometimes, though, sometimes—not always, just sometimes--a bad thing early averts a really bad thing late.  I have seen it, and you have too.  It is enough to give someone up the doubting tree a reason to come down at least a branch.  Think of it as existential vaccination.  Think of it as masking, a masking that protects, that causes hiding and sight both, but that may in the long run bring healing. 

It is the labor of faith to trust that where sin abounds, grace over-abounds.  Even in this autumn of acute anxiety and depression. But one of the redeeming possibilities in this season of cultural turmoil is the chance that as a result, enough of us, now, will become enough committed to the realization of a just, participatory and sustainable world, that these darker days will move us toward a fuller light. Our troubles may just catalyze some of us to get religion, to get disciplined about living toward a common hope, as we said in the sermon October 16. Sometimes a bad thing in one part of history protects us from a worse thing in another part.          

Let us not lose sight of the horizons of biblical hope, as improbable as they can seem.  The lion and the lamb.  No crying or thirst.  The crooked straight.  All flesh. 

 The divine delight comes still from saving the lost, including the forgotten, seeking the outcast, retrieving the wayward sons and daughters of Abraham.  God wants your salvation.  Your salvation “has personal, domestic, social, and economic consequences” (Craddock). 

 So come down Zacchaeus, come down from your perch in that comfortable sycamore tree, that comfortable pew, that skeptical reserve, that doubt.  Come down Zacchaeus!  And let’s all together get to work. The Lord Jesus Christ has need of your household and your money, and He responds to your doubt.    

Come down Zacchaeus, down from your overly zealous leanings, hanging out on the branch of life.  Idolatry comes when we make one or more of the lesser, though significant, loyalties in life to become a shadow of the one great loyalty, that which the heart owes alone to God.  Zacchaeus had governmental responsibility, community status, a welcoming home, a fine family, and we can suspect he was loyal in these regards.  Curious as he was, up on his branch, he had no relationship with the divine.  Into this relationship, Jesus invites him.  More precisely, Jesus invites himself into relationship with a man up a tree.  He is invited into a whole new life, a new world of loving and faithful relationships, that stem from the one great loyalty.   

We need to be careful about lesser loyalties this fall.  Watch your balances of integrity and humility.  Humility requires us to consider due process, to consider past practice, say, near elections, to consider the advice of others, and to consider the nuances of the situation and your conscience.  Integrity, alone, bulldozes blazes and blasts past all these.  Harm is done.  Integrity without humility is the worst of the seven deadly sins—pride.  We recognize the peril of integrity alone, the great steed of integrity, without the bit and bridle and saddle of humility. We hope to keep our righteous integrity in check with a steady, a sober, a non-apathetic willingness to continue on, a blessed endurance…even when in the short run what we hope for does not emerge.  The concession speeches after a contest are often far more moving, more meaningful than the shouts of victory by the victor.  Bless those willing to run and risk loss, and still stay committed to the lastingly right things.  

Yet all of this involves a lesser loyalty than the one owed to God.   We can forget whose water we were baptized into, if we are not careful.  Rather, let us remember the student of Paul who wrote 2 Thessalonians: your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing (2 Thess. 1: 4). 

 Do you see the danger?  Come down Zacchaeus, come down, before it is too late.    Make sure your lesser loyalties—to government, family, home, all---do not cover over, do not shadow the one great loyalty, that all of your daily tasks do not eclipse a living memory of a common dream, a truly shared dream. 

 A common dream, a dream that our decisions in life about our callings, how we are to use our time and spend our money, how we make a life not just a living, will be illumined by grace and generosity. 

 A common dream, a dream that women—our grandmothers, mothers, sisters, daughters, granddaughters, all—granted suffrage only about 100 years ago, will be spared any and all forms of harassment and abuse, verbal or physical, on college campuses, in homes and families, in offices and bars, in life and work, and long having suffered and now having suffrage, will in our time rise up to be honored, revered, and compensated, without reserve, but with justice and mercy, and be accorded freedom, especially freedom and protection of their own bodies, their own selves. 

 A common dream, finally a dream not of this world, but of this world as a field of formation for another, not just creation but new creation, not just life but eternal life, not just health but salvation, not just heart but soul, not just earth, but heaven.  

 Come down Zacchaeus, come down, at last.  Impediments to faith come through doubt and idolatry and resentment and religion, but none of these holds a candle to the harm that wealth can bring.  In global terms and in historical terms, every one of us is wealthy.  Ours are first world problems.  Luke’s entire gospel, especially its central chapters, 9-19, is aimed at this point.  For Luke’s community, the remembered teachings of Jesus about wealth were most important.  That tells me that the Lukan church had money, and so do we.  This is what makes the account of Zacchaeus, “one who lined his own pockets at other people’s expense”, so dramatic for Luke, and so Luke concludes his travel narrative with this clarion call:  come down.  The Gospel of Luke is winding down, right here, this morning, with the wee little man in the Sycamore.  Be careful not to trip over wealth, power or health.  We lose them all, give them all away, over time.  They are impermanences.  They go.  Better that we see so early.  Time flies—ah no.  Time stays—we go. 

Wouldn’t you love to know what Jesus said to Zacchaeus that caused him to give away half of what he had?  I would.   

Come down Zacchaeus, and feel the hurt of others.  And:  Soon we will all be dead.  Maybe we could find ways to use whatever power we have now to honor God, love our neighbor, reflect our mortality, and affirm the powerless.  Come down Zacchaeus, come down!  

Before we left seminary in NYC, on the day after Thanksgiving in 1978, an odd event befell us.  I worked nights as a security guard in those years and would come home to sleep at 7am.  Jan had the day off, and left to shop, but left the door to our little apartment ajar, by accident.  About noon a street woman found her way into the building and up into our floor, and then into our room.  I woke up to see a very poor, deranged woman, fingering rosary beads, and mumbling just over my head.  Boy did I shout.  She ran into the next room and I stumbled downstairs to call the police.  By the time three of New York’s finest and I returned to the apartment, the poor lady was in the bathtub, singing and washing.  They took her away.  Jan came back at 3 and asked how I had slept.  The moment has stayed in the memory, though, as an omen.  Our wealth is meant for the healing of the poor of the earth.  Perhaps the Lord wanted me to remember that, to remember the poor in ministry, so I have tried to.  Come down Zacchaeus, and use your wealth for the poor, as did Mr. Wesley and his followers.   

Let’s talk for a moment about religion, shall we?  Come down Zacchaeus, come down!  No amount of religious apparatus can ever substitute for what Jesus is offering today, and that is loving relationship.  No amount of theological astuteness can ever substitute for loving relationship.  No amount of righteous indignation can ever substitute for loving relationship.  No amount of formal religion can ever substitute for the power of loving relationship.  Jesus invites us into loving relationship with him, and so with each other.  That is salvation.  Are we lovers anymore? 

 Like Zacchaeus in the tree, religion can presume to dwell above Jesus, high and aloof.  Is it good to be above Jesus? It is not good to put myself above Jesus, not good at all. 

 It was the German monk Martin Luther who, in 1517, went alone and nailed his 95 theses to the door in Wittenberg, and thereby splintered inherited religion to bits.  The words of this same Luther were read, as interpretation of Romans 8, on the rainy night in London, 1738, along Aldersgate Street, as John Wesley’s heart, at long last, was strangely warmed, and he came down from the tree of religion, to sit at table with the Faith of Christ.  We remember Luther this Reformation Sunday every year.  We pointedly remember that we are saved by faith, by faith alone, by grace we are saved by faith, and not by any or all the works of the law. 

 Luther recalls us down from the religion tree, to sit at the table of faith:   

 I must remove the law from my sight and act as one who receives; I will acknowledge that I am justified, and desire to receive the righteousness of grace, of the forgiveness of sins, of mercy, of the Holy Spirit and of Christ, which he (God) gives, while we receive it and let it happen to us. 

 The earth receives the rain in this way.  It does not create it through any work, and cannot obtain water through any work of its own, but it receives the rain.  As much as the rain is the earth’s own, Christian righteousness is our own…God grant that we may appreciate this distinction just a little (cited in G Ebeling, LUTHER, p. 123) 

 Jesus calls us today, to come down out of the tree forts of our own making, and accept a loving relationship with Him.  May we measure all with a measure of love. 

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

posted in The Liberal Biblical Theology of St. Luke: Fall 2022, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 10.30.2022 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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Luke 18:9–14 

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One Friday on the walk into the office a dear friend caught up and came alongside to walk along with me.  As friends do.  Coming alongside that is, walking with us that is.  The luxurious, languid autumn of New England sometimes allows more outdoor conversation.  Conversation is a means of grace.  Conversation is a new opening to grace. The river to the right, the buildings old and new to the left, with students and faculty kicking up some leaves along the way.

We had not seen each other to talk since Covid.  We talked about exercise and failing knees, about what we done or not in the pandemic.  Outdoors, no distance, no mask, no immediate existential worry.  Just two friends, a while apart and now again together again.  What a simple joy, an authentic moment in the midst of various forms of work, life and service.  He like many at this good University gave humble service, over many years.

He then told me that in Covid he would come alone to the Chapel, now and then.  You have heard me say already and many times that the very best thing we do at Marsh is--nothing:  we do nothing, we unlock and open the doors and invite people come in, bask in the beauty of the nave, sit, relax, snooze, meditate, pray.  Yes, he said.  I know he said.  One day, he continued, I was getting up to leave and decided I would take a video on my phone of—nothing.  A video of the empty church.  A video of the quiet nave.  A video of stone and glass and wood and all.  He said, I timed it to one minute.  So that, every day, when I wanted to, though I was miles away from BU and Marsh, I could return, return to the simple, the authentic, the quiet.  Thank you, he said.  It was nothing, I responded, truly nothing, I replied.  It was nothing.  And that is the best thing we do.  Nothing.

Carrying some quiet then from Covid, we meet Jesus this morning on the hinges of the third Gospel, as the flow of the Gospel continues to swing from Lord to apostles. In the announcement of this good news is included a measure of empowerment for each one of us. This is the kind of day on which, for once, for the first time, or for once in a long time, we may be seized by, embraced by,  a sense of divine nearness. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. ‘All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted’.  (This is the second time Luke has placed this epigram on Jesus’ lips). When that sentence makes a home in a heart, or in the heart of a community, a different kind of life ensues.  There might be a new opening, even today, for some, maybe for you.

Now faith may come like a blinding light on the Road to Damascus.  It may.  But most of the time it rather comes one stumble, one step, one stop at a time, one walking conversation at a time.  One step.  One step on the walk of faith, wherein it helps to have a friend alongside.  As a person of faith.  Take a step a day, a step a week.  Health, healing, salvation, salvus, wellness, wellbeing come in small doses, occasional, discreet, bit by bit. Some of us like Paul are blinded by a moment on the road to Damascus. Most of us though are seized in faith, brought to healing, in a gradual way, over time, as our teacher of blessed memory Fr. Raymond Brown was used to say. Not lightening but enlightening, being enlightened, day by day. Sermon by sermon we could say. One step at a time. The Gospels tell us so.  Faith comes one step at a time.  This week can you take a step in faith? The step this week may just be toward simple, authentic service, akin to that of the Lord Christ, our Savior and Lord?

One step in faith comes in service, like the service my friend and conversation partner has modeled.  Now let us be frank, a sermon on humility runs the danger of the preacher whose title was ‘Humility and How I Achieved It’, with the subsequent sequel, ‘The World’s Greatest Sermon on Humility’. But the parable  today, that of the Pharisee and the Publican, tells us that authentic relationship, real responsibility are a matter of the heart:   In conversation, there abides, or lurks, the lasting possibility of heart to heart communication, heart by heart communion.  That potential seizes you, not the other way around.   There is a saving power, a saving grace in conversation. What are your models for this?  Do they include at least a little simplicity, a little steady service?  Can you take one step, a step this week, a step of faith, in some manner of service?  Perhaps in offering yourself in listening and conversation to another?

The Lukan gospel lessons about living are set in the humble reaches of the lake country of Galilee. There must have been some comfort, some folkloric encouragement for Luke’s community in these polished memories of Jesus teaching along the shores of Galilee. There is beauty along a lake. There is calm along a lake. There is peace along a lake. There is serenity along a lake. Along the lake there is space and time to sift, reminisce, remember, sort. Still waters still restore the soul to stillness.   Perhaps the regatta today, right now, outside our Chapel, at the head of the Charles, in its pristine beauty and vigorous discipline, can bring that kind of peace, too.

For Luke is determined to show that there is no real greatness, there is no service worthy of the name, without some humility, none without some anxiety, some struggle, none without a measure of discomfort, none without patience, the patience of Job (who today hears the crushing voice of the Lord from the whirlwind?) none without a caring heart for those who experience the consequences of decisions which others make.  If, in your work, you have seen humility, known struggle, felt discomfort, summoned patience, found empathy—for all the cost, take heart.  You have taken a step, one step, a step in faith.  Good.

There is a true kind of encouragement here, in Luke 18 for us, as we take one step in faith, toward a new opening.  My teacher Sharon Ringe: The tax collector’s prayer suggests that he acknowledges with anguish (the divine) assessment of himself—and simply entrusts himself to God’s mercy, simply entrusts himself to God’s mercy. (Ringe, Westminster, 225). Our Gospel reflects the misunderstandings of the disciples, and their reluctance quickly or easily to comprehend in full the nature of faith.  It takes them time.  That should reassure us.  It took them time.  And it takes us time.  It takes one step at a time.  It takes one conversation at a time. Yet that one step, that one conversation, can bring an opening to faith.

You may come to a morning hour, even this one, in which you sense a new opening, a desire to live a life that makes you smile, that makes others smile. To be more loving, in my heart… Step by step it may be, you may become kinder, happier, more generous, more forgiving. This is the purpose of being alive, to speak and act and be in a way that brings a smile to others, perhaps even to the divine countenance.  In your own life of service, of work, even of leadership, there may emerge, may be wrought, a fuller, a more authentic, a simpler way.  Even a humbler way.

Think of the Shaker community. Drive a couple of hours west on Route 90 and see their former home in New Lebanon. Think of their humility.  In their work, their dress, their furniture, their devotion, their relations, the Shakers lived simply. The heart of their simplicity, and ours at our best, is the desire to “lead a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called”. Every renewal in Christian history has had this feature: Paul mending tents, Augustine chaste again, Luther and Erasmus cleansing Rome, Wesley and his coal miners and class meetings, the Civil Rights movement with its various and contending interpretations today, the Latin American base communities, and every spiritual nudging in our own very human community of faith.

There is an authority that is visible in every person who has found the freedom of vocation, the freedom to live with abandon.  Look around at the windows in this charming Chapel, following worship, and you will see the faces of women and men who found an authentic simplicity, a way to live with abandon, to take oneself lightly and so fly, like the angels.  They learned, over time, to model a daily heartfelt affirmation of the shared good, the common good, the communal good.

Luke 18 is one of the spots in the third gospel at which the emerging institutional needs of the church are visible.  And Christianity wrestled with institutional, formational questions in the first century:  For whom is the gospel? What are the definitive texts? And especially, who shall hold authority?  What, How, Where. And Who?  That should reassure us too.  They struggled, sometimes with success and sometimes not, to make things go right in shared, communal, institutional life.  And so do we.  You resist triangles.  You reach for I and Thou relationships.  You give the benefit of the doubt.  Community requires all that and more.

That is, as this passage shows, from the outset it has been difficult for the Christian church to maintain its own authentic forms vested in humility over against the lesser models abroad in every age. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” said Paul.  Love, Joel would remind, gives the possibility for dreaming dreams and seeing visions, in real time.

In a time like ours, the very real fears of pollution, Putin, pandemic, politics, pistols, prejudice and pain tend to shove us toward a fearful taste for authoritarianism, here and around the globe.  The fears of the day and night can make us afraid of freedom, our birthright, as Eric Fromm showed us, and inclined to align with authoritarianism at all levels, including at the highest ones.  Be careful here.

A few years ago, my friend Charles Rice spoke of humility.  His story lodges in the memory. He told about an Easter when he was in Greece. He sat in the Orthodox Church and watched the faithful in devotions. There was a great glassed icon of Christ, to which, following prayers, women and men would move, then kneel.  Then as they rose, they kissed the glassed icon and moved on.

Every so often a woman dressed in black would emerge from the shadows with some cleanser, or windex, and a cloth and –psh, psh—would clean the image—psh, psh--making it clear again.  A humble servant of the servants of God, washing away the accumulated piety before her.  Maybe that is part of what we hope for come Sunday, a gentle washing away of accumulated piety, to make room for what is real and what is authentic and what is not simplistic but bright and simple and humble and good.

My friend Charles had a revelation about self-effacing service.  As he watched the woman in black cleaning the icon, he realized that this was what ministry was meant to be: a humble daily washing away from the face of Christ of all that obscured, all that distorted, all that blocked others from seeing truth, goodness and beauty. Including, well, a lot of piety.  Including pretense and presumption and position.  And such service, service that lasts, is both deliberate and also deliberative, it is steady, one step at a time.

Think of someone you have known who provided heartfelt humble service to others, maybe to you.  Steady, sincere, even struggling service.  Think of someone who helped you once when you needed, really needed, help.  And offer a prayer of thanks.

Every one of us has some influence.  If you have a pen, a telephone, a computer, email, a tongue, a household, a family, a job, a community, a church—then you have some influence. The question, one that provokes a response and that then allows us to take a step forward is just this:  how will you use, render, apply, shape and offer to life what you have?

Our gospel today suggests a response.  A humble passion for the common good.

For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. May there be a new opening, for you and me, even today! Sursum Corda!  Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved!

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

posted in The Liberal Biblical Theology of St. Luke: Fall 2022, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 10.23.2022 at 11:00 am