Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

Remember that it is not the passion of Christ that defines the Person of Christ, but the Person Who defines the passion. Remember that it is not the suffering that bears the meaning, but the meaning that bears the suffering…that it is not the cross that carries the love but the love that carries the cross…that it is not crucifixion that encompasses salvation, but salvation that encompasses even the tragedy of crucifixion… and that it is not the long sentence of Holy week, with all its phrases, dependent clauses and semi-colons that completes the gospel, but it is the punctuation to come, the last mark of the week, whether it be the exclamation point of Peter, the full stop period of Paul or the question mark of Mary—Easter defines Holy Week, and not the other way around. Oh, we want to be clear, now: the resurrection follows but not replace the cross, for sure. Still, it is also true that the cross precedes but does not overshadow the resurrection. It is Life that has the last word.

posted in Uncategorized on 04.5.2009 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

The passages of the New Testament we have were not written, in the main, with an eye to posterity. Their authors had no conception that they would form a part of Holy Scripture. They were written in the moment, for the moment, out of the moment. They are occasional in every sense of the word. ‘Military directives sent along to the outposts on the battle front’—this is how we may describe them. They are meant to encourage, to shore up, change, to augment and foment conversion.

At virtually every point they invite a new response in faith to life. They are a fight song of faith, played in various keys and with various verses, with accompaniment by various instrumentalities. To our hearts and minds they propose a question.

How do you deal with decision?

The long weeks of wilderness which form our yearly Lenten pilgrimage prepare us. We deal with division, decision, and derision, with Jesus, in the wilderness.

Notice that John has rearranged the furniture of the gospel. He has placed the temple cleansing at the outset of the story.

We become who we are by daring to decide. We discover the power of imagination by daring to find the courage to decide.

Some years ago, following a dark re-enactment of the events of Holy Thursday and Good Friday, a ten year old, guided by his mother, asked, of the Jesus so depicted, ‘What did he do that was so wrong?’ What was the linchpin for the move to the cross?

Well, I mumbled something about blasphemy and treason.

But Matthew, Mark and Luke, the gospels other than John, mark Jesus’ downfall at the temple. As he attacks inherited religion, as he cleanses the temple, his doom is sealed. In John, it is the resurrection of Lazarus, long chapters later, which seals his fate. But John too sees the power of decision in Jesus’ appearance in the temple. In fact, in the second chapter, John opens with Cana, and the promise of incarnation enshrined in that wedding, and closes with the temple, and the forecast of the cross, the hour, the word, which is his abiding interest. Jesus is himself the temple which others will destroy. Here, he gives his new view of the future, not to be awaited somewhere in the clouds. It is taking place now in the life and destiny of Jesus. All throughout, throughout his life, and throughout your own, there is the struggle for truth and grace. This too is Jesus’ struggle. He becomes himself, his own most self not his almost self, in dealing with decision, in this today’s decision to affront and confront inherited religion.

Faith is finding the courage to choose. Faith is dealing with decision.
Memory is our aid here. Remember Proust comparing the low and shameful gate of experience, and the other… the golden gate of imagination’ (RTP, 401). Memory feeds imagination. Faith is finding the power, receiving the power to choose, to reflect on choosing, to take responsibility for the choice, to learn with choosing, and to address the consequences of choice. Dealing with decision means dealing too with regret and failure. This too is faith in action. Listen again to the regret in Yeats’ poem…

No single story would they find
Of an unbroken happy mind,
A finish worthy of the start.
Young men know nothing of this sort,
Observant old men know it well

It is the heart of living to deal with decision.

The long wilderness days, biblical and personal, may prepare us to deal with decision. John opens his gospel with the temple decision, the others close their gospels with the temple decision and its portent. You will want, now Sunday, to consider the manner of decision. Here are six practical suggestions. When you decide:

Think and pray with some care as you deal with decision.

Go ahead and use the time honored tactic of making a simple list of pros and cons.

Solicit the insights and thoughts of five or six close friends.

Consider whether or in what ways the choice is reversible, and what that means.

Consider whether, or in what ways the choice is universalizable—could all be advised in this situation to do this?—and what that means.

Test your prospective decision against the real dream of your ownmost, utmost self.

And here are three spiritual warnings…

Real decisions are real hard.

They are hard enough without a whole lot of self-denial thrown in. Sloth. There is a kind of self-abnegation that is a form of sloth. It is an unwillingness to do the hard work to say what you need. It is a kind of laziness, though sloth is so much more than laziness. The hardest, worst things are the things that everyone knows and no one says.

Some years ago I remember a young woman who came to talk in tears. That December her life had changed.

For two and a half years she had been in relationship, in love, with a young man. I elect to name him Bill. She and Bill were very happy, they loved each other and they were in love, and she simply adored him. She gave to him and gave to him. Yet there was no decision about the future. When the matter of commitment came up, the subject was unwelcome, and was dropped. Bill loved her, he said, but he just could not think about getting married.

That winter, she finally went to him in a serious mode. She confessed her love. She extolled his virtues. She reveled in their affection. She kisse
d and hugged him in tears. Then she said something that was very, very hard to say. She said that she needed something from him, some commitment, or she would need to depart. She would always love him. But she knew in her heart that she wanted the fullness of life that commitment, in their case, a commitment to marriage, alone, could provide. If he could not step up to that choice, then, for all the pain it would lastingly involve, she would have to move on. And she could directly say that this was as much for his sake as for hers. It would not do him any good, she said, to leave him listlessly in the doldrums of an endless adolescence. For his own sake, he needed to decide how he was going to live. She made and need have made no apology for this. Life is short. Season gives way to season. There comes a time to choose. “I need you to make a decision, to choose”. That is what she said. They parted, and she departed. This caused her immeasurable pain.

She spent four long, lonely years before finally finding, and being found by, a lasting love, which could be adorned by a commitment.

Please do not hear this as one size fits all counsel. It is not. It is intended to convey a much bigger reality. It may be that some part of your life has yet to open up, because you have avoided a choice. You have good reasons to stall. There is pain in choice, and no one likes pain. And sometimes the faithful choice is not to choose at all, for a time. But recognize that for what it is: a choice, still.

When Jesus guides us through the wilderness, he announces, among many other things, a time to choose. You have one life to live. Your life will be fashioned, to great measure, Sunday by Sunday, in the decisions you make. You need to make some decisions, come Sunday, come Lent. I do not say so to bring pain, though pain there is in any choice. I say it for your soul. For your health. Will you make some bad decisions? Probably. But when the time is right, and the season is ripe, you need to make a choice. Plan for the worst, hope for the best, then do your most, and leave all the rest. To do so, you will have to have a little faith. And faith isn’t faith, finally, until it is all you have to go on. Which is the bitter truth, when it comes to choices. You will have to have a little faith.

Real decisions are real hard.

They are hard enough without a lot of bad religion mixed in. Falsehood.

Last spring, as sometimes I do, I went late to Fenway, buying a reduced price ticket for the game, from the second inning on. I sat with a young family, with two young children. They, the kids, transported me back to a gone epoch of our own children, wild with life, full of joy, for whom hot dogs and the crack of the bat and crowd roars bring ecstacy.

My phone rang and it was a dear young friend. I found a deserted stair well where I could barely hear her. With the undulation of fan adulation roaring and pounding above, she asked what I thought. They had struggled, she and her husband, for two months to decide. Should they stay in the midwest? Should they move to the east? Stay? Go? They had one more day. I could only barely hear. Red Sox nation was part of that muffled reception. More of it was that no one else really knows what you are going through when you decide. Even those who know you best and love you most. We have this saying in English. ‘It’s up to you’.

Which? Comfort or adventure? Security or novelty? The new or the tried and true? Which?

They had already used up the six point advice proferred earlier.

In tears she asked, ‘which is the will of God’? I tune in when religion rears its head. Huddled in the stair well of New England’s religious capital, Fenway, I tuned my ears. ‘How do we know which is the will of God?’

‘You mean, which is right’? Which is the good, the right, and the true?

Yes.

Ah.

I said this. ‘You know, honey, while this might not always be the case, in this and in many, most cases, you are free. You are truly free. What you choose—east or west—whichever you choose, that will be, will become the ‘will of God’, the right and the true and the good. In part, because you will work to make it so. What you choose is what is right.’

So choose. Jump. Like Redford and Newman, in that iconic moment for one generation, with some humor and some daring, jump. Choose.

In your choice the future opens.

Real decisions are real hard.

They are hard enough without a covering of pride mixed in. Pride.

Our neighbor New Hampshire Senator has caught my eye this winter. He accepted then rejected a cabinet position.

There are other reasons to admire Judd Gregg. His openness, for one. His frugality, for another. His industry, for a third. I don’t know him from Adam’s house cat. Never met the gentleman. But it takes a kind of courage to re-decide, to think twice. Second thoughts are important, especially when you realize, in hindsight, that they should have been first thoughts.

In the wedding business, we call this the ‘flowers are already bought’ syndrome. ‘I have a feeling this is not right, come to think of it, but I already have my dress and the flowers are already bought, and the invitations went out last month.’

Once you are convinced of the primacy of the second thought, you have to face your pride. You have to face the difficulty of admitting you were wrong. As in, ‘I was wro…’ Hard to say. But the judgment and insight of the primary second thought is worthless without the courage to banish pride and change course.

Judd Gregg had that courage, and faced down that pride. On a big screen, on a high wire, which makes it all the harder. ‘It just didn’t feel right. It just isn’t who I am.’ He made a decision about what was his almost self—the cabinet—and what was his ownmost self—the Senate.

Life will give you ample practice in choosing between your almost self and your own most self, and you will not always get it right. Sometimes, you will need to think twice, to find the courage to face down pride, and to pay the florist and donate the flowers to the nursing home.

It is never too late to change your mind. It may be very costly, but your mind is your mind. What? You don’t want to change your mind because you might offend someone? You don’t want to chang
e your mind because you have to make a hard phone call? Really.

I remember a friend telling me that at age 20 he had to drive from Northern New York state down into Canada and retrieve an engagement ring he had given a young woman six months before. It just wasn’t right.

How was it? I asked him.

Not pleasant. He replied. But it was the rest of my life on the line.

Now you don’t want to remake every decision mid stream. Some apprehension and uncertainty goes with every choice. That is what faith is fully all about. If you were certain you would not need any confidence. You are not certain, so you need a little faith.

You see. Real decisions are real hard. Be sober, be watchful.

Avoid pride, sloth and falsehood.

Remember the greatest blunder of our nation in this yet young century, as a warning, and take heed. Our decision to go to war in 2003 epitomize pride, sloth and falsehood. It was fed by the falsehood of an arrogant nationalism, sold on the basis of sloth, unfinished work and faulty information, and carried forward on the strength of an overweening pride that dared not, lacked the courage to think twice, take a second look. Such a cultural cloud makes all lesser, personal decisions, all the harder, unless, collectively, we may learn, express contrition, grow up, and move on.

The Scriptures are written, as the good news itself is preached, ‘from faith to faith’.

In the teeth of their detailed intricacies, it is possible to forget or mistake the conversion invited by our lessons. Where are you headed? You are asked, today, to deal with decision.

A. N. Whitehead, of all people, at Harvard, of all places, wrote:

“The essence of Christianity is the appeal to the life of Christ as a revelation of the nature of God and of his agency in the world…There can be no doubt as to what elements in the record have evoked a response from all that is best in human nature. The mother, the child, the bare manger; the lowly man, homeless and self-forgetful, with his message of peace, love, and sympathy; the suffering, the agony, the tender words as life ebbed, the final despair; and the whole with the authority of supreme victory” (Adventures of Ideas, 170

To this manger, I invite you.

To this man, and his friendship, I invite you.

To this message, and its persuasive power, I invite you.

To this long-suffering, and its redemptive healing, I invite you.

To these tender words, and their encouragement, I invite you.

To the authority of this victory, I invite you.

One opens such an invitation by dealing with decision.

posted in Lenten Series 2009: Decision for Lent, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel, Uncategorized on 03.15.2009 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

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 great-mouthed shovel in hand, and dawn is breaking, slowly, over the fourth day of Nevada, the great snowfall. You are ready to start.

In our shared epiphany, this early winter, we have prepared to start. We encouraged you to begin by breathing. We pondered the possibility of a New Birth of Freedom. We noticed the early, first light of love in music, love and music. We announced and received a winter grace. We meditated on starting over. You have had already a homiletically busy year.

Yet there is a relationship between knowing and doing that dies without the strength of choosing. It is one thing to know the true and good and beautiful. It is another thing to do the true and good and beautiful. How do we move from knowing to doing? By choosing. Learning becomes virtue through piety. Learning becomes virtue through piety. Learning becomes virtue through piety…

In some best only known to you, by faith, you are ready to start. You have practiced the breathing of prayer. You have seen the horizon of freedom. You have heard the loving angels sing. You have admired a winter grace. You have seen the need to start over. Somehow. I do not know, fully, all of your new starts, though some are pretty clear, and shared. All share this: it takes strength to start. To change to a new path requires strength to start.

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

I sometimes long to leave all and teach Shakespeare, perhaps the only English voice needed for guidance, apart from the many voices of Scripture. 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 years of isolated pain and imprisonment. He knew the repetitions, generation to generation, of impeachment and trial and coverup and revelation. What this country needs 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 in Shakespeare!

As you start, at whatever dawn you face, ponder this: Christ 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. Christ offers strength to start.

To you remains the decision to choose what you know you should do. Here are three encouragements to such a choice.

In the first place, we may plainly affirm that we find strength in Christ.

At the start of his long letter to the feisty Corinthians, St Paul places the few choice verses read aloud for us this morning. We listen to them 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.

It will be more obvious to the newer among us that every Sunday we hear two contrasting readings. One is from Mark, the gospel, a story, a narrative, an announcement of resurrection set in an account of Jesus’ ministry. The other is 1 Corinthians, a letter, a direct statement about how to live, sent from Paul to his church. I believe we who are more used to hearing these parallel readings have grown insensitive to just how different they are from one another.

Having followed Jesus in his healing ministry for some weeks, we turn now to Paul. We have returned to the beginning of the letter from which we have heard so much this winter.

While these verses are a part of a standard letter opening, used in almost all of Paul’s epistles, they are far from perfunctory greetings or boilerplate thanksgiving. To the contrary, subtly here Paul surveys the whole of the coming letter and summarizes what he is about to proclaim. He starts with the whole and with the end in view.

We too must make our various beginnings, and so we are not displeased to find here an inspired manner of entry. Paul asserts strength to start.

And what a generous start does he make! All of the pieces of the letter’s later puzzles are laid out here in the grand style. Where later there will be acrimony, difficulty, opaque philosophy, deep meaning, ethical admonition—scolding, and other standard religious fare, here there is great strength, a happy word, something good with which to start.

Our sixth grade teacher, a harsh task master as the day wore on, nonetheless began every morning with 30 minutes of simple reading--from Tolkien’s The Hobbit, or from Harriet the Spy, or from Tom Sawyer.
Then she would turn to math or history saying, “well begun is half done”.

Think of the Voyage of the Beagle, five years long, on which and through which, early in his life, Charles Darwin started to develop his lastingly powerful comprehension of our origins. We have a whole series of sermons on Darwin coming this summer.

The letter opens with joy, and with a new vocabulary of love and delight. This is meant to be our daily glossary, too, even as Paul now will teach it to the Corinthians.

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”.

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 Newton’s 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.

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

Whether we are babes in Christ or approved in Christ or wise in Christ—we make our starts with strength.

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 men of skill, but time and chance happen to t
hem all.

How well we remember the final game of the NCAA tournament in 1989, pitting Syracuse against Indiana. You remember the close finish, the wild crowd, the first place ranking at stake. Derek Coleman, then a freshman, somehow, inexplicably missed an easy shot at the end, and the player berating, chair kicking, opponent bedeviling Coach Knight went on victory. “O somewhere in this favored land the sun was shining bright, and somewhere children were singing, and somewhere hearts were light, but there was joy in upstate New York when mighty Derek struck out.” The race is not always to the swift…

On Monday the Rotary Club lunch began, in a deep and sorrowful reverie, broken only half-heartedly by the dejected President’s call to order, the weekly off-key singing of the national anthem, and then, as usual, with the prayer, offered that day by county judge Jack Schultz. “Dear God, we know that we cannot always win. We know that we learn from our losses as well as our victories. We thank you for many blessings that have come our way, even though this inferior Indiana team, lead by a heartless and ruthless tyrant, has stolen our one chance in this generation for glory. Lord, we do not expect always to win…but, but, but… we do demand justice in the future! Amen.” It still rings out as the most heartfelt public prayer I have heard.

No, the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill, but time and chance happen to them all.

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 those whose flight falls earthward
Not fair to you

Time and chance happen to all.

Jan and I know the Buffalo airport well. For many years, about half our flights began or concluded there. We know the little village become suburb of Clarence Center, and the Clarence Center United Methodist church. We know the rhythms of travel for women and men who go downstate to work and come upstate to live.

I remember living in the Syracuse University neighborhood in 1988, when the Lockerbie crash occurred, and 200 lives were lost.

Our hearts reach out to the lost and the grieving. We do not know what a day may bring, but only that the hour for serving good is always present. One of the reasons, over time, that we struggle to start something new is that we cannot see all the risks in and of the future. Things go wrong, in ways that we do not expect. It can make us gun shy. It can make us risk averse. It can make us think only twice but twenty times twice. So it takes strength to start.

So we long to hear an encouragement to start with strength.

I have a friend who loves to start almost anything, but has no energy to finish. He loves to take things apart, but not to put them back together. He loves to initiate ideas but not to see them through. He loves to begin, but not to complete.

St Paul had something of this spirit. Who can say why?

He loved to start people on the road to faith, to start the preaching of the Gospel, to start churches on the road of their common life. And so, he ignited a church in Thessalonaica, and incited a church in Corinth and initiated a church in Galatia and one Philippi and on he went, to finish preaching the good news through the whole inhabited world before Christ would return.

His was a dawn faith, a morning view, a salutation, a hello…

You can take some of his starting strength with you today.

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…

Martin Luther, whose sermon on these verses is one of his finest and most personal, recounts 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.

“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.”

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.

Strength in the Hope of the Future

In the third place, we may plainly affirm the strength that comes from beginning with the end in view.

The verb found here translated now as confirmed and then as sustained is really the same verb and it means “strengthened”. The testimony of Christ is strengthened among you….He will strengthen you to the end, blameless in the day…

You recognize here the language of ancient Jewish apocalyptic. Paul expresses his hope in the characteristic mode of his time and his people. He writes of the end and of the day of the Lord. Jesus in Mark 13, Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4-5 and John in John 14 say, in short, that speculation about dates and times is useless. “Of that day no one knows”.

But Paul here reminds us, and this is a source of strength for the beginnings of life, 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 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 too.

Only such a hope could have sustained Paul, even as it has sustained the church for these many generations. 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.” Only such a hope could have sustained Abraham Lincoln, and given him, after slaughter, the strength to start again, ‘with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right’.

Our young leaders here opened the world to breathing, to freedom, to love, to music, to grace, and to strength on Friday night. In a strange, humble way, our communal fellowship on Friday evening exemplified this strength. Our Valentine’s evening was beautiful, gracious, enjoyable, full, delicious, well-attended, and real. It was an experience of really being alive. Yet our young leaders had never done this. They had to summon the strength to start. Our hospitality team had to ‘worry the evening into existence’ as one said, finding a strength to start something new. Our musicians had to open the
mselves, give themselves to the moment, finding a strength to start something new. Our community in ministry had to come together, in a new way, finding a strength to start something new.

We looked back on all the similar new starts over the years. In Ithaca, a summer fair. In the North Country, a fall tea and sale. In Syracuse, a spaghetti dinner. In Rochester, a golf tournament. All very human, very humble moments. But people do not leave off being human when they come to faith. And people do not leave off being human when they come to university. Being in community requires a decision to be in community, and that requires strength to start, and that requires a choice, to choose to do what we know is true.

You start with confidence about the end. That is the main thing in Paul’s hope. You are strengthened to start in the hope of Jesus Christ.

I do not know, precisely, what you may be about to start. But I call you to decide to do so, to start with strength. The strength is God’s gift to you. The start is up to you.

Strength to start.
Strength to start in Christ
Strength to start in times of trial
Strength to start 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

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 IN CHRIST ARE YOU GIVEN STRENGTH TO START!

posted in Uncategorized on 02.15.2009 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

My friend visits his mother frequently. She is 100 years old. She now lives in a nursing home, a quiet place along the north shore. Over 100 years she and her family have known many places, other homes, many regions, other settings.

Sometimes, as here, a mother and son can share over many years a deepening and deeply loving friendship. I wonder how Peter and his mother-in-law got along. I wonder about you and your mom and your mother in law, too. I wonder if Peter’s affection and connection were as strong as that between my friend and his mom.

One day my friend was visiting, late in the afternoon. You are probably aware of the phenomenon tagged by the term ‘sun downing’. Later in the day, women and men who otherwise can function, who otherwise can be fairly clear headed, head into the twilight. As the sun sets, the sun sets for them. They lose track. They lose their way. They lose a part of their mind. We are not told of Peter’s mother in law’s malady, or of the time of day or night on which she was touched. She had a fever. She felt worse and then felt better. On the day my friend visited, he visited in the later afternoon.

I don’t know about you, but the prospect of losing one’s memory and mind, or a part of one’s memory and mind, chills me. For some years I have been reading Proust, a few pages a day, to marvel at the magic of memory. Now, in my mid fifties, I find, here and there, that my certainty in memory sometimes is proven to be in inverse proportion to the exact nature of the events remembered. The more certain I am of something, now and then, the less true is the memory, the less certain the certainty. I addressed a friend a few days ago, certain he had graduated from Cornell. He had not. Indeed, he had not and had not any affection or desire for the school. He was not offended at the mismemory, but neither was he honored. This is to say that even the younger among us can appreciate sunset. Carpe Diem…

My friend visited his mother at twilight. When he visits, they tell stories, and share cotidian morsels. They remember together. In that, they resemble our gathering here. We remember together, too. Some of that memory is in prayer, or liturgy if you like bigger words. Some of that memory, some of the best of it, is in hymnody. Some of that memory is in readings like this one, wherein St Mark in about 70ad, recalls a moment in 25ad. I wonder how certain he was as he wrote out these few Greek sentences? Mark seems to have been given a little collection of healing stories, which he then arranges, with a little attempt to give them form and order. Yet there is very little in the historical cupboard here, for us. No furniture in the room, for example, and no room. No words of healing, like ‘epratha’ or ‘anastasia’. No prayers, no hours, no murmuring of crowds. He gives us only the memory of someone who starts over. Sick, now well. Fever, now gone. One lone mother-in-law. Do you notice how the Gospel moves person to person? Do you notice how healing gives way to service? And she served them…

There is little need for the early church to go into detail. Their conviction is that the Lord of whom Mark writes, is the Lord who speaks in the community of the faithful, the same Jesus who is present to them…and to us.

There is an individual quality to the passage today, not always present, particularly in the fully apocalyptic passages, like this one, laden with disease and healing, laden with possession and demons, laden with quiet and speech. Truly new starts begin with individuals. Finally and fully, you have only one sort of control, self-control. And even that ninth fruit of spirit is fragile. The world gets better one person at a time. So Simon. So Simon’s mother in law. So Simon’s neighbors and friends. Then, at last the whole city. You start resurrection like you start a campfire. You start over, one twig at a time, the smaller the better. In resurrection, that is, there is a place for twenty year olds.

Once the sun had set my friend thought maybe he should be moving along. He is a minister and so sometimes he says a prayer by the bedside. Sometimes he reads a little bit from the Psalms, or from the Gospels. ‘That evening, AT SUNDOWN, they brought to him all who were sick…’ I like to think that he read to her Mark 1:32, ‘at sundown…. Finding a living connection, a nexus as Peter Berger calls it, between your life and your religious tradition, is like finding a way to start over. Sundown, in Palestine, in 25ad. Sundown, in Massachusetts, in 2009ad. I like to think of my friend, at sundown, with his mother, at sundown, reading and praying, at sundown. The image has a healing quality to it, a medicinal and transformative quality. The day begins at sundown. Evening and morning, one day. Evening is the sign and the time to start over.

The world gets better one person at a time. I want to leave my friend hovering of his mother for a moment, like Simon leaning over his feverish mother in law. Hold him there in your mind, just for a moment.

In the healing ministry of Jesus there was, and there still is, a powerful incentive to start over. He healed many… You may have missed several classes this term already, but there is time to start over. You may have fallen off the wagon year after year, over against much New Year’s resolution, but there is time to start over. You may have missed a chance or three to set things right with your partner, but there is time to start over. You may have now an enforced, a pink slip occasion to set out again, out onto the wide sea of a new career, but your time is time to start over. 82% of all job losses this recession have befallen men, not women. Men, there is time, time to start over. You might want to dust off your copy of an old book, Who Moved My Cheese?.

In the exorcist ministry of Jesus there was, and there still is, a powerful incentive to start over. He cast out many demons…This country may have let an unconscionable distance grow between the least among us and the elite among us, but there is time to start over. This country may have fallen off the wagon year after year, over against much resolution to eschew greed, but there is still time to start over. This country may have missed chances to build wise partnerships the globe over to support the things that make for peace, but there is still time to start over. We may now have an enforced, depression based occasion to set out again, out onto the wide sea of liberty and justice FOR ALL, but this is nonetheless, though perhaps unbidden and unchosen, still an occasion to start over. You might want to dust off your copy of an old book, The Courage To Be.

You sit in a likely place to start over. The gospel of Jesus Christ envisions a two way street between religious and intellectual life. One recent afternoon, on your behalf, with you in spirit and mind, I visited the Hillel House regarding a program on grieving, I visited the Islamic Society as they began their weekly prayers in the basement of the student union, I visited Swami Tyagananda at the Vedanta Society. We have nothing to defend and everything to share, if we remember who we are.

You sit in a likely place to start over. The
gospel of Jesus Christ envisions a two way street between the religious community and human experience. We sit together with those who ponder rules and policies for student life. We plan to celebrate with all who will come the non-religious holiday of Valentines’ Day, even as we already have observed Ground Hog day. We join with the Catholic Center and others in a mid-week celebration of Christian Unity. We have nothing to defend and everything to share, if we remember who we are.

Speaking of healing, we celebrated the funeral for a nurse here this week. Rose Dixon, a real human being! You may have seen her obituary in the Boston Globe. Born in 1949, an African American woman, Rose one day found the grace to start over. In 1967 she was working in drudgery, back in the file room of an insurance company. For someone of her vibrant personality, it must have been a prison. One afternoon a friend stopped in and told her about ODWIN, a new program for nurses. She graduated in 1972 from Boston University with a degree in nursing. She was healed, and she did heal!

Yet her healing was a part, a thin tradition voice across all these decades, of what life might be, a healing of the nation. Her niece, Melissa Christine Goodrum, an accomplished poet, put it this way:

Auntie Rose loved being Auntie Rose
And the billowing costumes of Masterpiece Theatre
The drama of the theatre, ballet and lights on Broadway
PBS, BBC and anything having to do with Jane Austin
Looking at the costumes, patrons and talking furs of the opera
Listening to the sopranos’ aria at the opera
Anrea Boccelli, Luciano Pavarrotti, Kathleen Battle, Mahalia Jackson and Sweet Honey and the Rock
Singing along with the soundtrack from the BODYGUARD
Listening to Mozart in her Mazda while driving along the Charles
The lights of New York City, Chinatown, and bargaining at the open market
Talking about the market and being savvy
Watching the pundits on CNN
Commenting like a pundit on CNN
Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, 60 Minutes and the Latest Breaking News
Watching Charlie Rose, listening to Charlie Rose
And watching his interviews with Johnny Depp, Denzel Washington and Sean Penn
Talking about the state of the world
Being hopeful about the future of the world
Talking about history and the politicians in the world

Another niece simply said, ‘Auntie Rose thought it was more important to look good than to be on time’.

She was healed, she healed, and she became a part of the healing of the nation.

The world gets better one person at a time.

To have time alone, Jesus rose early, and went out to a lonely place. The mystery of his life already prefigures the mystery of his death. The demons know him, so he will not let them speak. Preaching and healing, he continues on the way.

Did you notice the conclusion to our Psalm? Steadfast love is itself an inspiration to hope. An individual example of reliable love—and I have seen many this week among and within this congregation—is itself a source of hope. One by one. Peter, Mother in Law, Neighbor, Neighborhood, City, all…

On Thursday Boston University gathered for the single biggest photograph ever. Students, faculty and staff filled out onto the basketball court at Agganis Arena, following the twilight victory, after sundown, of BU over Albany. One of the students was dressed as Jesus: long hair, full beard, white tunic, sandals. And a BU scarlet scarf. Who would have known that our Lord was a Terrier fan? Through the crowd I moved to greet him. I felt it was my duty, as Dean of the Chapel. At last the crowd parted, and before the sea of students moved again, I had the chance to stretch out my hand. My mind was blank, my lips were dry, and my voice quaked. At last, not knowing what to say, I gurgled, ‘I have always wanted to meet you…’ He lowered his chin, piercing me with his dark eyes, paused, and then said, simply, ‘I understand’. We talk about Jesus every Sunday here in Marsh Chapel, but at the Athletic Department, you can shake his hand. We preach about him here, but there you can greet him. We sing his praise here, but there you can look him in the eye. Unfair competition…

Healing happens one by one. This week, during my annual physical, our doctor measured, and looked, and tested, and questioned. Mostly, though, she listened. If you want to heal others, first you must make sure you are healthy. Jesus went out early, alone, to pray.

Sunday morning is the time we start over. Every Lord’s Day, every Resurrection Day, every Sunday is a time to start over. We remember, now, who are, who are meant to be, who we want to be, who we are trying to be.

This summer I discovered in an old box, a prize possession, a copy of a sermon from 60 years ago.

It is GB Caird’s inaugural sermon as a professor of New Testament at McGill University, Montreal, in 1951. Here are some highlights:

“Today we have come to recognize that we have no knowledge of any Jesus of history other than the Christ to whom the writers of the New Testament bear united witness, that St. Paul made good his claim to have the mind of Christ and is in fact the greatest of all Christ’s interpreters, and that St. Mark’s Gospel is no less theological than that of St. John.

“Anyone who imagines that the contribution of critical scholarship to the study of the New Testament can be lightly brushed aside to allow for a return to the traditional orthodoxy must be totally ignorant of what he condemns.

“Sooner or later the demand was bound to be made for a new movement which should rediscover beneath the diversity the fundamental unity of the New Testament, which can be felt even by those unable to prove its existence. The prophet of the new movement was C H Dodd.

“We can still regard the Bible as the Word of God—a word communicated not by the automatic processes of verbal inspiration but through the fallible powers and kaleidoscopic variety of human speech and thought, yet a word unique in its authority and appeal.

“I propose to set before you in three illustrations a view of life which seems to me to be common to all the richly varied writings of the New Testament, and to be the peculiar contribution of those writings to the religious thought of mankind.

“The Sovereignty of God: God is the Lord of heaven and earth. It is he who makes his sun shine on the evil and the good…The invisible nature of God is clearly seen in the things he has made…Nowhere outside the Bible do we find such an exalted faith in the Living God…Only in the Bible and the religions derived from it do we find a belief in the sovereign purposes of God.

(Caird addresses Jewish nationalism, pessimism and legalism), before turning to the problem of evil, to which academic question the NT gives no answer, but rather responds to what can be done about it: “God has done something. His kingdom of righteousness has broken in upon the kingdom of Satan.” The NT supplants the above three with universalism, optimism, and spiritual freedom.

The Destiny of Man. “The NT always regards the life of man in the light of eternity…NT thought is always eschatological.” (NT combines vertical Greek with horizontal Hebrew eschatology. “The essence of sin is self-love and the essence of salvation is that the old self dies in order that out of it may rise a new self with its love set on the proper objects of love—God and neighbors.

“The Christian who knows and practices
the New Testament faith regards the world not as a vale of tears or as a house of correction, but as a fit setting for a life of heavenly citizenship…Perfection is a social achievement and only in the corporate perfection of the new society of God’s kingdom can a man find his own subordinate perfection.

The Argument from Experience. “Life in the New Testament is viewed in the light not of theory but of experience…It is impossible to describe an experience to one who is incapable of sharing it…It is no criticism of St Paul as a theologian if we say that he touches the deepest springs of our spiritual life when the theologian yields to the poet…The New Testament does not leave us in any doubt as to the nature of the equipment required for the appreciation of its testimony. To the humbling of all University professors, let it be admitted that it is not intellectual; there are things hidden from the wise and learned which are revealed to babes. The equipment is moral. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled...Whatever be the relation in other faculties between pure and applied science, we in the Faculty of Divinity are ever conscious that the science of theology must be subservient to the practice of Christian living.

“To the fatalism of those who see the world hustled by a blind impulse to an unknown destiny the New Testament proclaims that behind the manifold workings of the mysterious universe there is a personal and purposing power; to the loneliness of those whom the friendship of this world has failed to satisfy it offers the fellowship of a new society; to the optimism which still hopes to build utopia by social reform it declares that that society is already in being; to the materialism which has submitted to the facile attractions of worldly security and comfort it asserts that the kingdom is not of this world; to the rationalism which demands logical proof it responds with the testimony of personal experience; and to the pessimism which is overwhelmed by the burden of the world’s shame and sorrow it gives the assurance that the Lord God omnipotent reigns.”

Memory is such a fragile magic. I don’t know about you, but the thought of losing one’s memory and mind is chilling, to me.

Now it is sundown in the nursing home. Now my friend has read and prayed. Now he is ready to go, to go home, to go on to other duties and promises. His mother drifts a little at twilight. He puts on his coat and hat. He draws out his gloves. She gestures to him. ‘Tell me again who you are?’ And he does. ‘Oh, yes. Yes.’ He gives his love, and tells her of his love. He moves to leave. She gestures again to him. ‘Tell me again why it is that we love each other?’

Your memory is not as good as you think it is. Not for the big, old things, at any rate. So before the week begins, before I put on my gloves, before Monday morning hits, before we part company, we linger to remember why it is that we love each other. Then we are ready to start over.

posted in Uncategorized on 02.8.2009 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

On New Year’s Day we gathered with our family. Many of you did the same. Four generations enjoyed a meal and time to talk, in a home in upstate New York. This lovely home is located in the Stockbridge Valley, one of the glacial cuts that did not sink deep enough to create a Finger Lake. It is a long lake-like indentation in the earth, but without any water, a beautiful valley, dotted with farms and homes and fields of corn stubble shooting up through the snow.

Speaking of snow. Our nieces had come the night before from southern Virginia, with one fervent hope. That it might snow. And snow it did, all night long, so that the bright morning sun broke out over a white sea of freedom, change and hope, a white sea of glistening powdered snow. Children have a different view of snow. The Bible says we must become as little children. We see snow and we see trouble. And we are right to see trouble. Trouble for plows, trouble for cars, trouble for traffic and transit, trouble for those otherwise abled, trouble for the general routine and run of things. Snow is bad for business, unless you run a ski lodge. In this economy, we see what is bad for business as even more trouble than usual. We count the cost. We count the cost of pews empty, restaurants half full, theatres quiet, power lunches cancelled, programs postponed, government offices shut. We have to do this accounting. We are the adults in the room.

Not so, children. Here is what children see when they wake up in the Stockbridge Valley and there is a powder all down the fields and rolling hills as far as the eye can see. They see freedom. They see a day of pure joy, down and up and down and up. They see a natural grace, the gift of the heavens for every child with a sled. So while the adults ate and talked, the children, with a few of the more young at heart uncles and aunts, headed for the hills. Down with a great whoosh! Up again and down. A pause for lunch and again to the unfettered freedom of free white powder, fallen from the heavens, bringing freedom.

We see what we want to see. We see what we expect to see. We see what we are accustomed to see. Children see with different eyes. For them, a comb is not only a grooming tool. It is a musical instrument as well. A pan and spoon are not only for cooking. You can make music with them, too. Clothes go on the right way, and they go on the wrong way too. And snow? Snow means freedom. Snow is not trouble. Snow is snow forts and snow is skiing and snow is sledding and snow is a cost free day of joy. Snow is a blanket of entertainment, like the gospel itself, free of charge.

In May of 1992, in the middle of a big church meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, I got more than unusually lost, driving to church, an unfamiliar church, in that less than familiar city. I ended up somewhere I know not where on the other side of the wrong side of the tracks, driving on a peach of a spring Sunday morning, driving past row after row of terrible housing. Every city has such a neighborhood. Dirt where grass should have been. Rubble where porches should have been. Air where glass should have been. Peeling where paint should have been. And in front of this so-called housing, a range of quiet and taciturn children and grandparents. I guess this Louisville slum is not the poorest place I have seen but it stands out as the saddest poorest place, especially so on sleeping city sidewalk, and Sunday morning (coming down). Nothing as lonesome as that sound.

Imagine my shock to turn a corner, still irretrievably lost, to meet this sign: “The birthplace of Cassius Clay, Mohammed Ali, heavyweight champion of the world.” The prettiest, the greatest, the champion.

Bishop Robert Spain preached a wonderful sermon that morning, when I finally found my way. The music, teaching, fellowship and love of the suburban Methodist church were real and good. But God’s Word, that Sunday, was in the drooping porches and rat infested squalor that somehow, miraculously, gave birth to a champion. How could such a voice, a face, a body, a spirit, an intellect, a will, a mind, a man ever, ever, ever have emerged from such abuse and neglect? Why, it would be like saying that the divine could emerge from cattle stalls, or over-packed inns, or Palestinian slums, or neglected religion. Change is possible, change for the better.
How does something good emerge from what is not good? How does healing come out of ill health? While we have our more modern ways of describing the mystery, the same mystery met those listening to Jesus as he began his ministry. An unclean spirit, of plural dimension (‘us’), cries out. Jesus speaks: ‘Be silent. Come out.’ He speaks the same word still: be silent, come out. In apocalyptic mystery, ‘the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him’. All that long winter of hurt, and there, just there, grace. Wasn’t it Paul who claimed, ‘where sin abounds, grace over-abounds’? A winter grace…

Such a winter blast, life long, grants the courage of right prayer. Did you hear the beautiful Lowery benediction at the Inaugural?

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far along the way, thou who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray, lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee. Shadowed beneath thy hand may we forever stand -- true to thee, O God, and true to our native land.
We truly give thanks for the glorious experience we've shared this day. We pray now, O Lord, for your blessing upon thy servant, Barack Obama, the 44th president of these United States, his family and his administration. He has come to this high office at a low moment in the national and, indeed, the global fiscal climate. But because we know you got the whole world in your hand, we pray for not only our nation, but for the community of nations. Our faith does not shrink, though pressed by the flood of mortal ills.
For we know that, Lord, you're able and you're willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor or the least of these and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.
We thank you for the empowering of thy servant, our 44th president, to inspire our nation to believe that, yes, we can work together to achieve a more perfect union. And while we have sown the seeds of greed -- the wind of greed and corruption, and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.
And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.
And as we leave this mountaintop, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques, or
wherever we seek your will.
Bless President Barack, First Lady Michelle. Look over our little, angelic Sasha and Malia.
We go now to walk together, children, pledging that we won't get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone, with your hands of power and your heart of love.
Help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid; when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.
Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around -- (laughter) -- when yellow will be mellow -- (laughter) -- when the red man can get ahead, man -- (laughter) -- and when white will embrace what is right.
Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen.

I preached all but one Sunday service from mid-August until the New Year. Then on January 4 I had the day off. We were driving up from Princeton with our daughter and two little grandchildren (two cars, many stops). North of Hartford on route 84 I began to pick up WBUR and heard (with intermittent interruptions from a Spanish language rock music program) the Marsh Chapel service. I listened as we crossed into Massachusetts, and as we drove east on Route 90. I wondered how many of my fellow drivers were listening as well (as noted above, Peter Lydotes at WBUR numbers our radio listenership at 30,000; we are trying to find a way to gauge the additional internet listenership). The service made me proud and made me tearfully happy. The music, liturgy and sermon were of the finest excellence. A live, poetic, musical, beautiful voice, emanating from Boston University! I paused just to savor it that morning, and to be grateful for the work of my staff and colleagues. While I have listened frequently to recordings of our services, this is the first one I have heard live, ‘on the road’, as it were. God lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home.

A new year, 2009, and with it so much brisk, cool newness of life! As night fell on the first day of 2009, we drove through a nearby city. Gone were the fields and corn stubble, gone the farms and livestock, gone the open wide spaces. It was still light, though just barely so, that dusky twilight that says so much to us every day, if we will but listen with the heart of an evening prayer. Up and down the city streets we drove as gradually the street lights came on. And every corner what did we see? Sleds in tow. Oh, the children were somewhat different in hue, somewhat different in attire, somewhat different aspect. Somewhat more ‘colorful’, somewhat more Lincoln-connected. You knew you were no longer in the country. But as the children crossed under streetlights, corner by corner, there it was, again, unmistakable, adorned in snow. Carried with the toboggan, lingering in the wet mitten, pushing out with the frosted breath, stashed in the snow clogged boot, there it was, again. Freedom. The very same freedom given from the heavens by a beautiful Nevada, what children see in snow, a day of freedom. It is one snow, and one snow alone, and one snowfall under which together we all breathe.

Can you recall Romans 12: 9-11?

The pardon:

In Hebrew, the same word for iniquity is the word for punishment. Your iniquity is your punishment. Your crime is your punishment. (M Robinson).

Jack Boughton was included in a ‘general happiness’ when playing baseball. This is like what happens at Fenway. New England. It is preparation evangelium. (M Robinson)

posted in Uncategorized on 02.1.2009 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

This morning we see Jesus walking the shore of his beloved Galilee. He who is Love set to Music sets out at dawn, as the fishermen begin, casting and mending. This stylized memory from the mind of Mark kindles our own memory and hope, too.

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 shoreline he strides, one foot in sea and one on shore.

He meets two brothers, and they meet him.. 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 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 stiffs. 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, ogle 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 day.

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 one another, open to love, to the music of love.

I wonder whether we allow ourselves to drift a little too far from that first level of feeling, the feeling that love brings, that music brings. Those nearly pure moments of almost rapturous illumination, love set to music.

There must have been some moment, sometime, when you felt an intimacy with the universe, a closeness, a sense of really being alive. That too is a kind of musical moment, love breaking in.

A simple trust, like theirs who heard beside the Syrian sea…

I am told of a boy who goes to a winter vacation with his parents in Florida. They set him loose on the swimming pool. Before diving, he goes around the cement shoreline, a latter day Jesus on a latter day lake.

Are you a Christian?
Oh, no, I don’t go to church…

Are you a Christian…
Well, I do go on Christmas and at Easter. I was there last month. But you know I don’t read the Bible, or anything like that…

Are you a Christian?
You know, I used to be, but I kind of got away from it. So many other things…

Are you a Christian?
(An older man at last brings the reply he is looking for):

Why yes, I was baptized in my youth, and later made a moment of confirmation. I go to church every Sunday. I can’t stand to miss it. Yes, I tithe, I give away 10% of what I have each year, not all to the church, but mostly to the church, because that is the seed bed for future wonder, morality and generosity. I keep faith with my family and friends. I am a Christian. But why are you asking?

Well sir I want to go swimming, and have two quarters here in my shorts, and I wanted someone I could trust to hold them while I swim.
A simple trust, like theirs who heard beside the Syrian sea…

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 that elemental experience of love that sets to music everything else, that energizes everything else.

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 willing to accept that their casting will be imperfect. But that imperfection will not keep them from enjoying the labor of casting.

Meanwhile, back on the beach, Jesus heads south, cove by cove, with Andrew and Peter frolicking in tow. They had already left home. 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!

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. 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 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 never 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 yet? 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. 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. And there they sit, sober determinists, mending.

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

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 life, is the key to the meaning of the first, the eyeglasses which open full sight, the code to decipher the first. 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 is told among us all winter long to interpret the first. The life story is meant to make sure that the divine love is not left only to the cross, or only to heaven. The life story is
meant to open out a whole range of Jesus, as brother, teacher, healer, young man, all. It is meant to provide the mid-course correction that might be needed if all we had was Holy Week. And the life images are the worker bees in this theological hive. The days after Easter may announce the power of peace, but the days after Christmas name the place of peace. Jesus died the way he did because he lived the way he did. Jesus lived the way he did so that he could die 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! Such a passionate year we have had. Now come love and music 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. So he stops, and he 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. So many people live half asleep. They don’t live life, life lives them. 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. Watch. It is a moment of love and music. First one, then the other, stands and moves. Under the shadow of that paternal presence, under the sound of that maternal imperative of home, still they find the courage to rise. And they move. They are about to grow up. 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).

Feel the love. Hear the music.

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people’. And immediately they left their nets and followed him.

posted in Uncategorized on 01.25.2009 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Our gospel today can best be heard from the last sentence, wherein the clearly clairvoyant Johannine Jesus belittles Nathaniel’s marvel at him by acclaiming divine freedom, historic change, and a horizon of hope. Divine freedom: you will see the heavens opened. Change in history: you will see the angels of God ascending and descending. A horizon of hope: you will see the Son of Man.

First, freedom.

God is loving us into love and freeing us into freedom.

The nature and dimensions of freedom are very much on our minds this week. Others from other spaces will want to continue to explore more fully the political, social, and economic features of this freedom. We have though, first, another job to do. It is the job of preaching. It is our task to name freedom. In that sense it is a theological job, though preaching is more than theological reflection. It is our confession that Jesus means freedom.

The other morning I took my daughter and grandchildren to the Aquarium. With you I celebrate this cultural gift, and make common cause with their fine work in opening the world to wonder. Surely there are many fine places to spend an hour or two in our fair city. Is there a single one, though, that will pierce your soul and spirit with a sense of the creative power, natural wonder, and physical freedom of the world in which we live? I challenge to stand in front of the Pacific Rim tank, with fish of a hundred colors and shapes, and not be overtaken, in wonder, by the power of freedom set loose in the universe.

It is our conviction that the God who makes allowance for being, who calls us and all into being, is the God of freedom. Freedom on Sinai. Freedom on the Mount of Olives. Freedom on the way to Emmaus. Freedom itself set free. Freedom evolves.

Does your God, your apperception of God, make space for evolution?

Your patent or latent view of God makes every sort of difference.

If as the Scripture says, “God is love”, then human freedom is real...Freedom is the absolutely necessary precondition of love. (W S Coffin, Credo, 27).

Our incoming President made a fine speech last year about race. He did so to clarify his own thinking, and our thinking about his thinking, with regard race. This was widely known and acclaimed. But to do so he had to clarify his own thinking and our thinking about thinking, with regard to a form of religious thinking. To date, to my knowledge, no one has fully appreciated the theological depths and dimensions of his March 18, 2008 address. As we come to the inaugural, perhaps we could pause to appreciate his theological insight, all the more choice since it is offered by a lay person.

Obama that day said ‘No’ to Jeremiah Wright, in terms like these: unlike others, unlike another generation, we do not believe that our fate and our future are irrevocable chained to our tragic past. He offered his view, that change can happen, real change, which is real hard, over time, in real time, can really happen. He explicitly rejected a harsh, providential, divine determinism or damnation for a country that certainly has known its share of sin. He stepped aside from the litany of sin and atonement, and stepped toward the liturgy of confession and pardon. That is a layman’s theological statement about divine and human freedom. Life is not purpose driven, for ill or good. Life is not divinely ordered and directed, in the small or in the large. Life is not found in the rigid orthodoxies neither of fundamentalism nor of radicalism, neither in the Biblicist fundamentalism of a Rick Warren nor in the Liberationist radicalism of a Jeremiah Wright (produced by his teacher and mine, James Cone.)

I have yet to see a single serious writer, preacher or journalist identify the ironic similarity, the congruent similarity, the family resemblance of Warren and Wright. One is from the far right and one is from the far left. Nonetheless, they offer the same religious perspective. (In what I say I do not criticize them. They are good people. They do good work. Though I profoundly disagree with them and adamantly oppose them, I acknowledge their desire to know and do the right and the true and the good. I too fell in love early on with Karl Barth, so I know from inside the powerful pull of their perspective). Yet here is the irony. While they differ completely in politics, Warren and Wright offer the same religious perspective: The Bible is the sole Word of God, either in personal purpose (Warren) or in cultural judgment (Wright); God is known in providence, whether from the Law (Warren) or from the Prophets (Wright); it is God, not we ourselves, who makes all change, whether from the right (Warren) or from the left (Wright); the human being is left to submit (Warren) or rebel (Wright), finally doubly predestined as Augustine finally had to admit before Pelagius; history is tragedy, fore (Warren) and aft (Wright); freedom is an illusion (Warren) or a presumption (Wright). (You will note that this is not a very cheery world view ).

Both Wright and Warren are indebted, theologically, to Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr and the Neo-Orthodoxy against which Howard Thurman and others have unsuccessfully, but rightly, preached for fifty years. Thurman was 100 years ahead of his time 50 years ago. Warren is Barth from the front, and Wright is Barth from the back. But from front or back, it is still Barth. They both have taken seriously the first of Niebuhr’s grave points, about the tragic sense of life, and they both have neglected utterly Niebuhr’s second, his concluding sermon, that there is in the human being a divine freedom, a capacity for a spiritual discipline against resentment, and so an open future, a divine\human heteronomy. Both radically and fundamentally minimize the capacity of the human being to change, and the potential for human society to improve. They both radically and fundamentally mute freedom, whether for a new post-Biblical freedom for gays to find their place in society or for a new post-radical shared leadership of many hues in the cause of racial justice. They both (and quite successfully to this date) define American Christianity over against the liberal tradition. And, so far, they have won the day.

What astounds me, still, is that the theological insight of Obama’s race speech has had no attention. Against a purposey providentialism (Warren), against a denunciatory determinism (Wright), Obama affirmed freedom on March 18, 2008:

But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

Embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation.

The problem with radicalism and the problem with fundamentalism is the same problem: they see the future only from the past. “The sun also rises and the sun also sets. What has been is what will be. What has been done is what will be done. There is nothing new under the sun.” They see what they expect to see. And so the
y chain us, with all due sense of purpose, from right or left, to what has been. And so they chain us, with all due citation, from right or left, of the Bible, to what has been. Here is the key line: The profound mistake is that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.

In thrilling mystery this morning the Gospel denies that we are irrevocably bound to a tragic past! In the same way, this week’s inaugural denies that we are irrevocably bound to a tragic past!

Second, change.

John’s gospel exudes freedom. For John Jesus means freedom. With freedom, scary thought, things can change, either for the better, or for the worse.

At a wedding this weekend, guests from New York chose to spend Saturday at the Kennedy museum. I said a silent thanks that they had chosen that spot this weekend. It is a place that says, ‘I believe America should set sail, and not lie still in the harbor’ (JFK).

You remember, I expect, a time when the utter misery of others at last permeated your spirit, and you seethed with an angry hunger for change. You drove by the South Bronx, safe on the highway, riding in a new car, and looked down on the city and saw PS 131, with 6 year olds coming out, and you thought, “How do we do this? How do we let this happen?” Or you had to stop at the emergency room in a small town hospital—a toothache, a broken limb—and you looked around and for the first time the hidden poor of the land were real. You served in the dining center or suited in the storehouse or read books in the daycare. You heard Marion Wright Edelman, really heard her, when she said that 20% of our American children are raised in poverty. You saw something, of all places, on television, and it made you weep. You read an article about children hurt, wounded, killed, in the fog of war, as they took shelter in a school house. You crossed the border into Tijuana and all those brown little faces and browner little hands reaching for coins sent a chill through you on a sunny, hot day. Your club offered a day of service and you ended up, not on the sunny side, but on the slummy side of the street.

God loves: especially those left out. With the divine gift of freedom there comes the chance for change.

In two fine novels, Gilead and Home, over the past several years, Marilynn Robinson has given you a sympathetic reading of determinism (fundamental or radical), which, ultimately, though cautiously, she rejects. Here is the climax of Home:

Her second book places the apparently damned Jack in earshot of a young woman who has married an old preacher:

“Just stay for a minute”, she said, and Jack sat back in his chair and watched her, as they all did, because she seemed to be mustering herself. Then she looked up at him and said, ‘A person can change. Everything can change’…Jack said, very gently, ‘Why thank you, Mrs. Ames. That’s all I wanted to know’. (p 228)

Third, hope.

Given the darkness, confusion and corruption of our time, it is more than tempting to turn a cynical eye and ear upon the earth.

The thrilling mystery of our gospel today, though, argues otherwise. The community that composed the Gospel of John knew a rare kind of freedom. Theirs was not only a freedom of religion, but also a freedom from religion. So, in this mysterious verse, the writer acclaims openness, even to the heavens; he pronounces motion, even among and between angels and men; he pulls forth what strangely for him is the highest title of Jesus, the Son of Man. An open heaven is a symbol of divine freedom given as human freedom. The Jacob’s ladder of ascent and descent is a symbol of power to move, to change. The heightened title, Jesus a divine figure, is a symbol of hope that will not let go.

On Christmas Day we stood outside Trinity church after a fine morning service. Hope was in the air. What the Aquarium is to freedom, what the Kennedy museum is to change, the churches of our community are to hope. They are living, speaking symbols of hope.

When you are tempted to lose hope that their might be liberty and justice for all, I hope you will think of the family just now about to set up housekeeping at the White House.

When you are tempted to lose hope that our education or medical provisions can be fair or just, I hope you will remember that one teacher who touched you, that one doctor who helped you.

When you are tempted to lose hope that peace might ever come between Arab and Israeli, Muslim and Jew, I hope you will remember that other peace, hard wrought, has come, in other places. I give you Ireland. I give you South Africa.

When you are tempted to lose hope that a durable economy might evolve wherein those who have much do not have too much and those who have little do not have too little, I hope you will remember the Hudson River voice of a crippled President, ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself’.

When you are tempted to lose hope that the voice and place of women, world-wide, might ever be sustained, I hope you will remember Susan B Anthony, ‘failure is impossible’.

When you are tempted to lose hope that the world can work, I hope you will remember Jesus’ thrilling mystery, ‘Truly, truly, I tell you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’ For just as freedom leads to change and change leads to hope, so also hope brings change and change brings freedom.

We enter a time in which there is the possibility of a new birth of freedom.

It was not a pretty June morning on which Abraham Lincoln spoke the words of this morning’s sermon title. It was not on a beach, in Hawaii or Florida that he spoke. It was not in the peaceful backwaters of a decade of progress and plenty. It was not after a long and easy life. It was not out of quiet reflection is a monk’s peaceful cell.

Lincoln spoke over the graves of thousands. He spoke in the roaring November wind. He spoke on the corn stubble of a Pennsylvania field. He spoke as a leader who might be losing a war. He spoke as a man more acquainted with sorrow and defeat than perhaps any other person of his time, or any time. He was our greatest leader, and a pretty fair lay theologian himself. In a couple of years he would himself be dead.

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from the earth.

posted in Uncategorized on 01.18.2009 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

You may be taking some of your first breaths this morning, as you wake up on a cold January Sunday. Breathe deeply.

You may turn on the television, or turn to the newspaper, or turn up the radio. Morning has broken, a Sunday morning at that. Breathe deeply.

You may wonder, come Sunday, this morning, and wherever you are, whether you have the spirit to get up and get moving at all. You may be driving on the snowy Massachusetts Turnpike, just past Worcester. You may be looking out onto Cape Cod. You may be brewing coffee overlooking the Back Bay. You may be sitting in a pew. You may wonder. What is there that I awake to find, here, other than darkness, other than ignorance, other than corruption? Breathe deeply.

Sin is one Christian doctrine that is measurably demonstrable and scientifically provable. We have no lack of darkness and ignorance and corruption on January 11, 2009. Turn on the television, turn to the newspaper, or turn up the radio. Sin: darkness, confusion, corruption. It takes your breathe away.

Darkness takes your breath away. In the 21st century men are still killing each other in the name of religion, and smiling about it. Darkness. We run the risk of seeing things from fifty thousand feet, where the air is clear and the sky is bright. But at ground level, with children sitting for days in the presence of their parents, their dead parents, there is a deep darkness. I look at my grandchildren, who are here today, and I wonder, if someone so treated them, just what I would do. No, there is no simple path out of the dank dusk, nor are there easy solutions to intractable problems of violence and self-defense. But there sure is plenty of darkness. Darkness. It takes your breath away.

Confusion takes your breath away. Once we were a land of 12. Now we are a land of 8. Somehow, in a few months, we moved from a net worth of 12 to a net worth of 8. A land, a people, a 300 million member corporation, once thought to be valued at 12, now is more like 8. Speaking of 8, one out of 8 employable men is not. Employed. You may be one, or your grandson, or your neighbor. What is utterly remarkable is the pervasive confusion about how this happened, how we got here, where exactly we are, and how if at all we get out. Ask someone over dinner: “What is a hedge fund?” As one writer put it, we are a people who have a very hard time understanding and handling large sums of money, that is, anything over $136.00. Confusion. It takes your breath away.

Corruption takes your breath away. There is a lasting corruption under foot, what Gardner Taylor called the ‘gone wrongness of life’. In accidents, avoidable or not. In tragedy, explainable or not. In breach of faith, intended or not. In the breaking of laws, foreseen or not. If you, in person and in particular, have been present at the careening out of control, the plunging down hill, of one or another part of life, this week, you will think twice about getting up too early of a Sunday morning. Our deepest corruption is religion, as Blake so well knew: When Satan first the black bow bent, and the moral law from the gospel rent, he turned the law into a sword, and spilt the blood of mercy’s Lord. We want to go to a better place, to take the world to a better, non-religious place. That is our common hope, preached here at Marsh Chapel. Religion, per se, is not a good thing. It may be a popular thing, or not, but it is not a good thing. All of this makes for labored breathing.

For the preacher, a direct review of darkness, confusion, and corruption knocks the breath out of you. You struggle to breathe. And maybe just catching your breath, Sunday morning, letting your lungs refill after violence and violation, can be counted as a meager blessing.

Given the condition our condition is in, on 1/11/09, an inverted nineleven dated, we may or may not be attuned to the way our Scriptures mirror the condition our condition is in. Today’s readings are all about beginnings. Of creation (Genesis 1). Of church (Acts 19). Of Jesus (Mark 1). Beginnings all. We begin a new week. We begin a new calendar year. We begin a new semester.

How are we to begin?

Oddly, our lessons about beginnings, themselves begin with darkness, confusion, and corruption. The announcement of what is good occurs inside what is not so good. At least this from Neo-orthodoxy, and existentialism ‘its mistress’ (R Hart), we may plunder: the Scripture is truer to life than life is to itself.

In Genesis, the priestly writer, borrowing from Babylon, pronounces the beginning of creation—in darkness. The earth was without form and void. Even then. Darkness was upon the face of the deep. Creation, always and ever, comes out of darkness. Where does good come from? From bad.

Luke, the church’s cheer leader in Acts, sets right the nature of baptism. Paul has spent months in Ephesus. He comes upon other disciples who already have been baptized, say they. But they do not understand baptism. Forgiveness it is, but it is more than forgiveness, says the apostle. Even then. Even among the earliest of followers there is a fog of confusion.

Mark, the earliest gospel writer, at the beginning of the gospel, places Jesus in the roiling waters of the icy Jordan, under the hand of John, a baptism for repentance, a cleansing from corruption. For all the familiarity of these readings, there is nothing particularly cozy about them, nothing particularly warm about them, nothing particularly easy about them. They face in the face darkness, confusion and corruption.

How do they affirm creation, church, and Jesus at their beginnings?

What good news do they offer you for life on the cusp of a new beginning, good news on a blustery winter morning at the beginning of the year?

Th
e gospel affirmation and offer today is slight. A mere breath, you might say.

Our lessons today offer breath. Breath.

Breath in darkness. The breath of God was moving over the face of the waters. Breath in confusion. When Paul laid his hands on them, the divine breath came upon them. Breath in corruption. The heavens opened and the breath descended upon him like a dove. Breath at the beginning of creation. Breath at the beginning of the church. Breath at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus.

Do you sense a pattern emerging here?

You veterans of Marsh Chapel preaching for many decades need no reminder that in both Hebrew and Greek the word for spirit is the word for breath and the word for breath is the word for spirit. I would not presume on your time to belabor what needs no labor, in your case. Spirit is breath. With our voice, our breathing is our most human feature. It makes or breaks a day, a season, a life. With breath, there is chance you can begin. So, breathe.

As we begin a new year let us extol the blessings of a simple existential ritual. It probably will not reach way up to the height of Acute Sacramental Piety. Apologies to the Liturgists. Nor will it, perhaps, plumb the depths of Anabaptist Piety. Apologies to the Fundamentalists. It may work, though, for the broad middle stream of life, personality, temperment, culture, tradition and experience with which, for all our messy middle of the roadness, you and I have the most experience.

You may call it a non-religious ritual.

Breathe.

Breathe to remember. Breathe in and out. It is a refreshing pause, and brings a healthy reminder that we are all creatures of our God and King—sheep in another’s pasture. We are made in the image and likeness of God. We are more human than anything else.

Breathe to listen. Hear and Overhear. While this is a matter of the ears not the lungs, of the soul not the body, it is the one single posture, a kind of relational bending of the knee, that represents our faith, the faith of Jesus Christ, who has listened to us, who has forgiven us, that we might, in Him, listen to others, that we might, in Him, forgive others. (Now look at that. Just like a preacher. Talking...about listening. Has there ever been a preacher who could listen?) Listen. It is who we are.

Breathe to sing, to smile and sing. It is the response most befitting those made in God’s Image and those forgiven in Christ’s Death. We have nothing to defend and everything to share. It is what happens when you finally realize, catch the Spirit, catch your breath, get religion, find love, learn to sing, recline into God in Christ, become aware of what God has done for us. It makes us the singing people we most want to be.

Breathe.

At the end of life. How hard it has been to watch our close friend laboring to breathe. At last he is able to breathe again without a tube. What a lesson to us about the simple, essential blessing of breath. To see him at the culmination of his breatherhood, his life, is perhaps to catch a glimpse of what the psalmist meant:

O Lord, our Lord,

How majestic is thy name in all the earth!

Thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted

By the mouth of babes and infants

Thou hast founded a bulwark because of thy foes

To still the enemy and the avenger

When I look at thy heavens

The work of thy fingers

The moon and stars which thou hast established

What is man that thou art mindful of him?

And the son of man, that thou dost care for him?

Yet thou hast made him little less than God

And dost crown him with glory and honor

Thou hast given him dominion over

The works of thy hands

Thou hast put all things under his feet

All sheep and oxen

And also the beasts of the field

The birds of the air

And the fish of the sea

Whatever passes along the paths of the sea

O Lord our Lord

How majestic is thy name in all the earth!

Breathe.

At the beginning of life. One night we stopped at the hospital. In the hallway we became surrounded by a dozen young couples, evidently pregnant, carrying pillows and booklets, being led on a tour that apparently was to conclude in the birthing room. Those of you who have been “lamazed” know that they were about to be taught to breathe. Breathe. The trained breathing of the mother, rhythmic, panting, pushing, blowing, following the increasing strength of each contraction, and with the assistance of her ostensibly helpful coach, finally gives way, in that miracle moment, to the image of God, the likeness of God, born again. And the nurse holds the child, spanks the child, and the child—breathes! Every single one of the six billion breathers now on earth carries that unmistakable patent, the imago dei.

With our morning breath, may we concentrate, may we find wisdom, may we recall in Whose shape we have been formed.

Yet how distorted this image has so largely become! We treat people roughly, we treat even children roughly, forgetting that each one is “a little less than God”! How easily we do so, until we are brought up short. When our breath is taken away…

We should make common cause with artists and poets like James Weldon Johnson:

And God stepped out on space

And he looked around and said:

I’m lonely—

I’ll make me a world

And as far as the eye of God could see

Darkness covered everything

Blacker than a hundred midnights

Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled

And light broke

And the darkness rolled up one side

And the light stood shining on the other

And God said: That’s good!...

Then God walked around

And God looked around

On all that he had made

He looked at his sun

And he looked at his moon

And he looked at his little stars;

He looked on his world

With all its living things,

And God said: I’m lonely still

Then God sat down—

On the side of a hill where he could think;

By a deep, wide river he sat down

With his head in his hands,

God thought and thought,

Till he thought: I’ll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river

God scooped the clay;

And by the bank of the river

He kneeled him down;

And there the great God Almighty

Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,

Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night

Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;

This Great God

Like a mammy bending down over her baby

Kneeled down in the dust

Toiling over a lump of clay

Till he shaped it in his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,

And man became a living soul.

Breathe, consciously, mindfully, personally. Breathe.

The breath of God gives us the miraculous, wondrous mystery of life! With every breath we sing God’s praise! This is the wonder of which the psalmist the poet did write. Shall we not live, and breathe, convinced that it is breathing this rarified air, that we should fashion our days?

Begin by breathing.

Darkness. I cannot yet perceive a final solution to all the questions of violence and conflict the globe over, but I am convinced that we should view the matter breathing a rarified air. Begin by breathing.

Confusion. I cannot fathom all of the complexities of national and state and city and school district budgets, nor do I claim to know their ideal shapes, but I am convinced that we should view such matters breathing a rarified air. Begin by breathing.

Corruption. I do not pretend to have all of the ultimate answers regarding ongoing issues of life and choice, but I am convinced that we should view the matter breathing a rarified air. Begin by breathing.

It is the breath of God that has made us who and as we are.

As you begin, take a deep breath.

Will you breathe with me this year.

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill

posted in Uncategorized on 01.11.2009 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

The wise men from the East are still, lectionarily, a few days journey away. We expect them tonight. We await their kingly gifts. They are at hand, but not in hand, like the gospel itself, like grace itself, like the Prince of Peace Himself. Kingly gifts…

These wise folks who carry the burden of the Christmas story tonight, and who bear such expensive gifts to the scene of Jesus' birth, also bring you gifts. We certainly can be glad for the gold and incense and medicine with which they have again showered the Prince of Peace. What gifts, other than our whole selves and our every resource, are worthy of a Messiah? But, in their journey, remembered again tonight, the wise professors from Iraq also present you with holiday presents, gifts of the spirit. It is good to recieve as well as to give.

In the first place, the kings are seekers and searchers. They embody the dominical saying, "seek and ye shall find." They do search, diligently, and they do find their hearts' desire. One card given me this year ended with the phrase, "may you find your heart's desire." These magi would applaud such a note. Not for them, the one storey life. Not for them, the one horse life. Not for them, the overly easy, overly simple. To search diligently for your heart's desire means work and loss and failure. To seek means to question, to reject, to give up. It may even mean changing your mind or your plan. I love Christmas eve because I know that at least some have come to church searching, or have come to church to represent to themselves that they still wonder, they still care, they still are yearning for the heart's desire. Here is a kingly gift for every one who is searching diligently. Our wise men tonight bless you. They may represent God's benevolence toward you, the benevolent watching and guiding of a shepherd, or of a parent, or of a teacher. If no church will encourage your search, if no popular movement will animate your soul, if no family member or friend finally will validate your seeking--fear not: the kings of the East know the precious value of your search, for it has been theirs as well.

In the second place, the wise ones offer you a gift which may not seem very religious, nor very fit for yuletide. Yet it is a princely possession for those who will recieve it. I refer to their capacity to sift and measure, to sift and separate wheat from chaff, true from evil. These kings remind you of your own high calling, to discern, to test everything, to consider and ponder and think. Life is more than activity and work. Life is more than running and stopping. Life is more than selling and buying. Actually, none of these outward acts means much, without the heart's desire. Here the magi have shared a remarkable, choice possession, yours for the asking. Herod's information is accurate but his motives are unclean and his purpose is malevolent. Herod is a wolf, in sheep's clothing. Wisdom knows the howl of the wolf. The kings could overhear the deception in Herod's claim to worship. Herod lives still, and the wise of this world learn to distinguish true from evil.

In the third place, the kings give you another look at the star. They encourage you to trust the inner sense you have of guiding, of light, of direction. You were not born without a moral compass. You have a conscience. It lives as long as you live. Through all of the valleys and hills of life, this inner sense will orient you, if you will recieve it as the royal gift it is. All too often we forsake our own best insight, out of false humility, out of laziness, out of fear, out of self-doubt. Just here, the three kings have a Christmas gift to offer you. Train your ear to hear your own conscience. Strain your mind and heart to know the pure tones of the heart's desire. There is a difference, distinct if definite, between your almost self and your own most self. God is with you in your almost self, prevenient grace abounding before you know it. God is with you to guide you from your almost self to your own most self, the salt, light, peace, heart, soul, marrow of your being, the you the world is waiting to know, justifying grace abounding here and now, and making happy people, happy in God. God is with you to lift your own most self into your utmost self, sanctifying grace, day by day, decade by decade. Practice. Abstain from evil. Do good. Worship God

Strange gifts, for a strange story, and a strange night. Wise men from the east bring gold and frankincense and myrrh. Also, they bring you some gifts tonight. They are yours for the unwrapping. A blessing upon searchers. A blessing upon thinkers. A blessing upon believers. Go and search. Go and measure. Go and trust. Then, with these ancient travelers, you too will have something to lay at the feet of the Messiah.

posted in Uncategorized on 12.24.2008 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Looking Down

There are two ways to sing of Christmas. Christmas is a sung gospel, a sung Psalter, a sung liturgy, a sung word of grace.

There are two perspectives on the Gospel read this morning.

One is to look down and see the Gospel. One is to look up and see the Gospel. One is to sing Christmas from memory. One is to sing Christmas in hope. Both are good, both are glad, both are glad tidings of great joy, to all people.

First.

The song of Christmas is one that we remember from days gone by, beginning with the days of Herod the King. Christmas has a depth, a past, a root, a ground. Christmas grounds our being, gives grounding to our souls, grinds out our salvation, generation to generation. We remember the Christmas song.

The other day with a friend I visited the Hattie Cooper House in Roxbury. More than a hundred years ago, a Methodist minister’s wife began teaching and shepherding neighborhood children, needy children in a tough setting. The work continues, generations later. The remembered Christmas song, there, is sung. That morning a class of four year olds, conscripts for music for the visitors, were marched before us to sing. They sang como si fueran angeles. Their last number was ‘He’s got the whole world in his hands’. Do you know how many verses there are to that song? About 200. One happy boy in the middle kept murmuring something. Verse by verse passed. The wind and the rain, in his hands. You and me brother, in his hands. You and me sister, in his hands. Everybody, in his hands. But, like Rachel of old, my favorite four year old conscript chorister was not consoled. He whispered: what about the itty bitty baby? He stammered, after the next verse: what about the itty bitty baby? And when the song was finished, and his verse was not heard, he resoundly remonstrated: WHAT ABOUT THE ITTY BITTY BABY? So we all sang together verse 201. From memory.

We may look down as we sing. Down to depth, down to past, down to root, down to ground.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is down deep, down there. We trust that in Christ, contrary to any and all appearance, there is an explosive impulse for lasting good, peace, good will, among all. This is deep Christmas, sung from the diaphragm. We learn this language, and have learned it, our mother tongue.

Such ground, root, depth, past and memory encircled our Christmas tree, here at Marsh Chapel, when on a Thursday night a dozen undergraduates trimmed the tree. One was from Southern California, another from Minnesota, a third from Florida, one from Washington, another from New York, a sixth from Texas. They made up the tree, and made this nave their home, away from home. They remembered, and acted the memory through.

A deep recession is not as deep as the Christmas impulse for lasting good. A deeply disturbing swindle is not as deep as the Christmas impulse for good. A deep darkness of mistaken warfare is not as deep as the Christmas impulse for good. A deep, dark fear of unemployment, real and tragic, is not as deep as the Christmas impulse for good.

We remember at Christmas, remember the itty bitty baby.

We remember the house and lineage of David. David moves from pasture to palace, from shepherd to King. The impulse, an impulse for lasting good, will appoint a place for all people.

We remember the terse Pauline formula of the Christmas impulse for lasting good: “the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret but is now disclosed, to bring about the obedience of faith” (Romans 16: 26).

We may note, as we look down, that this teaching is found nowhere in the letters of Paul, our earliest record of Christian hope. We may also record that the other Gospels make no place for the teaching. Mark, our earliest gospel, records nothing of the sort. Matthew and Luke, where they share material, make no provision for it. Later stories in Luke 2 seem to assume the opposite, a natural role for Joseph in the natural birth of Jesus. Only the first chapter of Matthew has anything similar, and is drawing on a reading of Isaiah 7: 14 (‘a virgin shall conceive and bear a child, and his name shall be called Emmanuel’)

Absent any first century hospital records, noting the shock and awe of a miraculous birth, we have no possible way to confirm or deny anything of the historical renderings here. Like the resurrection itself, the account is a call to faith, not a proof for faith. In fact, the narrative has a strong and strange effect on us, today, for the following reason. In our time, we tend to focus on the question of the Divinity enmeshed here. How could God enter a womb? How could the Spirit impregnate a woman? How could the supernatural invade the natural? As Sojourner Truth said to her patronizing patriarchs, ‘He was born of God and woman—man had nothin’ to do with it’! Our gospel does acclaim this mysterious and miraculous event. Yet, its purpose drives down into the human dimension. Luke, here and throughout, is not mainly intent on showing a divine birth (of which the ancient world had many accounts). His purpose is to make sure the Christ of God, God with us, is utterly and certainly human.

It is the humanity of Jesus which is at stake for Luke, not his divinity. Jesus was born of Mary. He grew up, like any other boy. He grew older, like any other young man. With the exception of early teaching prowess and later miracles of healing, his life is like ours, early, middle and late, except without sin. The doctrine of the Virgin Birth was meant to secure Jesus’ humanity as much as his divinity. Our modern concern about the latter, in the white heat of Resurrection faith, was not the central point of the story.

It is our sung Gospel, our sung memory, in the first place, which is our Christmas song. For 2,000 years, women and men of keen mind, good heart, and strong faith have trusted the Christmas impulse for lasting good. In that faith, the world has tasted salt and seen light and gotten better.

The gospel of Christmas is a call to faith. Everything lastingly good in my own life has come in Christ: name by baptism, faith in confirmation, community in Eucharist, vocation and employment in ordination, partnership in marriage, pardon by day and decade in forgiveness, and the hope of eternal life on the last day. I am irremediably Christian, irretrievably so. Yet, when I look up, in Christmas song, I have a sense something more. Look with me as we sing.

Looking Up

There are two ways to sing of Christmas. Christmas is a sung gospel, a sung Psalter, a sung liturgy, a sung word of grace.

There are two perspectives on the Gospel read this morning.

One is to look down and see the Gospel. One is to look up and see the Gospel. One is to sing Christmas from memory. One is to sing Christmas in hope. Both are good, both are glad, both are glad tidings of great joy, to all people.

Second.

Presence. Enchantment. The Christmas Story—which, let us note again, we mainly sing, year by year, rather than teach—turns us toward a capacity to live in the new. To be, and be present. To worship, and be enchanted. Christmas calls you to the possibility of a real, religious experience.

We are in the presence of all that enchants. With ears deadened by entertainment, we are turned to enchantment.

To hear of an angel, Gabriel is to move into Presence, to be grasped by enchantment.

To hear the angel voice quoted—the Lord is with you

posted in Uncategorized on 12.21.2008 at 11:00 am