Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

The beginning of the Gospel.

The same phrase with which Paul concludes his letter to the Philippians here opens the Gospel of Mark. The beginning of the gospel. The Greek phrase, without article in either case, is the same, arche tou euaggeliou. The reference in Paul is to the start of friendship and the creation of an addressable community in Philippi, to the inception of a new dawn of hope. The reference here in Mark is to the start of a narrative, a gospel, a new kind of literature for a new kind of story, to the inception of a new dawn of hope. Mark 1:1. Philippians 4:15.

The beginning of the Gospel.

Today we come to the Altar of Love, to the Table of Grace, to the Real Presence of Christ in Bread and Cup. As a community, we lay down the work of fifteen weeks. For we have traced the nexus of Commonwealth Avenue and our commonwealth in heaven, week by week. We have walked the lovely lanes of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, week by week. We have strolled the beautiful shared space of the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, week by week. Now we are done. It remains, only, to recognize, in retrospect, our common hope. It remains, only, to recognize, in retrospect, our duty to respond to a call to decision. (For those who have deferred attendance or audition until the holidays, you may consider this your makeup sermon for all fourteen, August to December!)

There is an echo from heaven to earth and back again. That echo is the preaching of the Gospel. Walk along the lovely lines of Paul’s best letter, Philippians, for a moment. Walk along the lovely lanes of America’s best avenue, Commonwealth, for a moment. Faith is calling to faith, and hope to hope, step by step, verse by verse, street by street.

Scripture and Life, both, acclaim a common hope. To hear and heed hope’s echo is to walk in the light, as He is in the light. You have one life. One day, your life will find completion. On that day, whatever your life was, it is. That is who he was, they will say on that day and that is who he is. On that day, will these marks of a common hope be remembered? Will we be remembered as those who lived on Commonwealth Avenue, as those whose true commonwealth is heaven?

Hope echoes partnership. Paul acclaimed partnership. Abigail with John Adams lived in partnership. Listen in love for the cadence of mystery that befalls us in partnership.

Hope echoes courage. Paul faced the unknown with courage, with no anxiety. Leif Erickson sailed fearlessly across an uncharted sea. We know the pull of gravity whose spiritual dimension is fear. Our commonwealth is from heaven, of heaven, heavenly

Hope echoes forbearance. Paul taught forbearance. George Washington modeled forbearance. Hardly a decent thing ever gets done without the power of forbearance, patient restraint, the willingness to keep oneself in check, to refrain from retaliation. Look hard, look deep. If it is good, it was made with forbearance. Forbearance is prevenient forgiveness, the presupposition shot through the gospel, and the radiance of hope shot through life.

Hope echoes service. Paul affirmed service. We honor firefighters and others who serve the common good. Ministry is service. The word means service. We are taught, here, to hunt for life, to find real life, to have the experience of really being alive, in ministry, in service.

Hope echoes beauty. Paul exclaimed that we should meditate on beauty. Our one street, our lovely setting exudes beauty, from Arlington to Massachusetts Avenue. Beauty opens the world to grace. Beauty may prepare you for the gospel of faith, the faith of the gospel. Beauty is a ‘preparatio evangelium’, a preparation of the gospel. Beauty, like that of the music of Bach is a prelude to faith.

Hope echoes generosity. Paul challenged his people to generosity. The shared common space in our city is a reminder of common hope. You will live exemplary lives, when it comes to money. You will give generously, ten percent a year, to something, someone beyond yourself. You will avoid debt like the plague. When someone offers you the enticing shackles of debt, you will say, be gone. You will save ten percent a year, in anticipation of something, someone, beyond yourself. You will see the challenge of saving as a sport, frugality. You will see the challenge of honest labor as a sport, industry. You will see the pressure of exact reporting as a sport, accounting. And you will exercise, develop, grow and prosper.

Hope echoes equality. Paul honored women. He names Euodia and Syntche. We remember Lucy Stone and Phyllis Wheatley. The full range of women and women’s voices across the centuries has yet to receive ample appreciation. In our time, we shall do our part to fill up here what is lacking. We know the power of a diaconal mystique.

Hope echoes vocation. Paul experienced vocation. At Marsh Chapel of Boston University on Commonwealth Avenue we revere vocation, and remember those, like Schweitzer and Addams and Thurman who help us define the word. Vocation leads to God. The kingdom of heaven is at hand when your passion meets the world’s need.

Hope echoes memory. Paul remembered the beginning of the gospel, and so had access to his own best past. Our libraries in Boston provide access to hopeful people from our past like Allan Knight Chalmers. Here is one definition of hell: losing access to your own best past. Here is one description of heaven: finding access to your own best past.

Hope echoes excellence. Paul approved what is excellent. So do our Commonwealth heroes and heroines. We travel in the company of the blessed, those who have guided us into the deep and the good, the beautiful and the true.

Hope echoes grace. Paul preached a material grace. Alexander Hamilton championed a kind of material grace. At the opening of the Commonwealth Mall an
d at the heart of the letter to the Philippians there stands, in timeless symbol, a respect for material grace. Christianity acclaims an incarnate faith, one that takes place and takes its place on the street where you live.

Hope echoes joy. Paul sings of joy. It is joy to walk the commonwealth mall. The Bible records loving, wise and faithful responses to pain, hurt and failure, to exile, and to execution. Its remarkable trait is honesty about pain. Paul writes from inside a prison, a cave, Jonah in the belly of the provincial whale. How stunning his word. Paul, in Philippians, writes largely about joy.

Hope echoes thanksgiving. Paul worships in thanksgiving. With our predecessors along this avenue we do, too. This very year, 2008, after forty years of wandering, after forty years of the apotheosis of difference, after forty years of wrangling about particularity, after forty years of a distinction unto distrust, after forty years of languishing in a spiritual malaise, after forty years of exile without nostalgia awaiting return without remorse, after again a biblical forty years of private tears and narrow fears—look! Today!—a meadow lies before us. A green meadow of responsibility. A brown meadow of maturity. A harvest meadow of liberality. We have come ‘round again to a place of ardent possibility, of common faith, common ground, and common hope.

Partnership. Courage. Forbearance. Service. Beauty. Generosity. Equality. Vocation. Memory. Excellence. Grace. Joy. Thanksgiving.

Here are the hallmarks of a common hope, a way, a path into the future. A sidewalk on which to wander, to walk, to live. What kind of a future will it be? It is ‘up to you’.

My friend met a spiritual person and their conversation went as follows.

So you are a spiritual person?

I am. I am a spiritual person.

You are—spiritual?

I am. Spiritual.

So, then, do you pray?

No, oh no, I do not practice formal prayer.

Do you meditate?

No, I do not meditate. There never seems to be the time.

Do you walk and wander?

I don’t. I do use the excercycle, but I usually watch QVC then.

What about reading? Do you like to read?

I never really got into reading, no, I am not really a reader.

Do you hike in the woods?

You know, that has always seemed a little boring to me.

Do you have a community of faith and friends?

No, I am more of a spiritual person, not really religious.

Do you give your money to help younger or poorer people?

I don’t. Those appeals to give turn me off.

How about your time? Do you volunteer, say in a food pantry?

No, I don’t really go into volunteering, it’s not my thing.

So, let me get this straight.

OK.

You are spiritual.

Yes, I am a spiritual person.

You are spiritual?

Yes.

You do not pray, meditate, walk, read, wander, commune, give, or serve.

Right.

But you are spiritual?

Yes, I am a kind of spiritual person.

Friends at Marsh, Friends in New England, Friends abroad: the exciting claim of a common hope calls out to you, this morning, for a decision. Our season invites, no, implores a resounding Yes!, to echo the marks of a common hope. This is the ‘beginning of the gospel’!

When your friend asks you if you are a hopeful person, what will you say?

Yes.

Yes!

Yes to Partnership. Courage. Forbearance. Service. Beauty. Generosity. Equality. Vocation. Memory. Excellence. Grace. Joy. Thanksgiving.

posted in Uncategorized on 12.7.2008 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Those of you who were here over the summer when I preached a sermon entitled “Pay Attention” are probably getting tired of the propensity of young preachers to employ sermon titles toward mundane ends. You may be thinking, “Apparently ‘pay attention’ didn’t go so well, so now he’s hoping we’ll just stay awake!” Just you wait until Dean Hill assigns me to preach the parable of the wedding banquet, when the sermon title will be “Show up!” No, far be it from me to discourage any impulse to congregational vigor during the sermon. Nevertheless, like last June, I hope the sermon itself will draw attention to other ends toward which the title might be pointing.

May God be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray:

Almighty God,

give us grace to cast away the works of darkness

and to put on the armor of light,

now in the time of this mortal life,

in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;

that on the last day,

when he shall come again in his glorious majesty

to judge the living and the dead,

we may rise to the life immortal;

through him who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

As a matter of fact, it should not be too terribly difficult to keep awake during this first, (or is it the last?), Sunday of the Christian year. After all, anxiety makes it hard to fall asleep. Advent is nothing if not an anxious time, the first Sunday especially. Time itself seems to have gotten wrapped around. It is the start of the Christian year but simultaneously the end of all time. The hallmark of advent is the theme of waiting, waiting for the Christ child to come and waiting for Christ to come again, all at the same time. And so, perhaps, we can understand something of our experience, about this time last year, that may not have been as strange as we once thought, when we found Dean Hill meandering through the basement of the chapel, singing “Have an anxious, edgy advent, it’s the worst time of the year…” (to the tune of, “Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas), in his out-of-tune way.

Indeed, it is an anxious time in anxious times. We don’t know quite what to expect. Will the stock market continue its dramatic climbs, as it has since the next economic team was announced? Or will it take another staggering drop as yet another financial firm, or an automotive company, announces insolvency and bankruptcy? Of course, it could be that our anxiety about the economy is blinding us from other concerns that should be more pressing. Will ten men with guns, wearing designer t-shirts and blue jeans, come shooting into our favorite restaurants and hotels, even our places of worship, as happened this past week in Mumbai? No! Say it isn’t so! This is the season of HOPE! At least, we hope so.

Surely, some of the hostages in the Oberoi hotel harbored a few apocalyptic thoughts, perhaps along the lines of those proffered in our prophetic text this morning:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,

so that the mountains would quake at your presence—

as when fire kindles brushwood

and the fire causes water to boil—

to make your name known to your adversaries,

so that the nations might tremble at your presence!

When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,

you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.

From ages past no one has heard,

no ear has perceived,

no eye has seen any God besides you,

who works for those who wait for him.

It seems like a good idea, we think, for God to show up right about now and overcome our adversaries. As we hide under a table, we can imagine the archangel Michael striding forth, knocking the gun out of the young man’s hands and cleaving his head from his shoulders with a fiery sword. After all, surely we are God’s elect, and our Gospel lesson tells us, “he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”

Imaginations of supernatural interventions in the face of extreme terror and distress are probably coping mechanisms. They distract us from the carnage going on about us and provide a sense of calming and assurance that holds back the instinctual fight or flight reactions that could draw more attention to us. To such ends they are surely good things. But what are we to make of them when the terror and carnage stop? How might we understand such experiences in the light of day? And what are we to make of the fact that there was no angel with a fiery sword? The first thing we might do is give thanks that the God who creates us creates us with coping mechanisms so that we have a better chance of surviving such acts of terrorism. Not all did survive, we know, and for them, their families and friends we pray especially this morning.

Of course, it may be that the next morning, in the light of day, we find ourselves quietly relieved that no angel with a fiery sword actually showed up. If one had, then there really would be some explaining to do! No, in the scientific age, our problem is less explaining why God does not intervene in mundane affairs and more how to understand our traditions
and texts that make claims to past and future divine interventions. Such understandings are especially hard to come by when it is Jesus who predicts the intervention. After all, no one wants to be caught claiming that the Son of God was wrong! On the other hand, it may be less that Jesus was wrong and more that there is something inadequate in our interpretive framework, more specifically in our understanding of time. Let us consider, for a few moments, what Christ’s coming, and our watchfulness, might mean from the perspective of eternity.

A recent dean of Marsh Chapel is fond of pointing out that “God is not in time, time is in God.” God’s perspective is not temporal; it is eternal. And eternity is not static; it is dynamic. In eternity, the past, present and future of things are held together. In time, things have pasts that do not change and futures that are open except as constrained by the unchanging past and present choices. But in eternity, we are both our present selves, conditioned by all of our past choices, and our past selves prior to having made those choices, and all of the future selves that are possible given the choices we have, or might have, made.

That’s enough metaphysics for one sermon, or perhaps too much. But what does it mean for our texts? It means that Jesus is absolutely right that no one but the Father knows the day or the hour. The day and the hour is a concern of temporal creatures, not a concern of the eternal God. God comes to us in all the modes of time: past, present and future. God comes to us in the present by offering us our past selves, out of which we choose to continue or change course in light of future possibilities. God comes to us in the past as the value we have achieved in our choices as they were present according to the possibilities that were future. God comes to us in the future as the possibilities we might actualize by changing past actualizations in present choices.

And so Jesus was also right to say that, “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” By the time each generation passes away, God has come to all of the members of that generation in their past actuality, in their present choices, and in their future possibilities at each moment of their lifetimes. So too, “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Heaven and earth are parts of creation and so are subject to temporality. Time passes. This is obvious. But Jesus’ words will not pass away. God is eternal and so God comes to us in all of the pasts and all of the presents and all of the futures of our lives.

What, then, does it mean to keep awake? Does it mean that we are to be on the lookout for angels with fiery swords? Well, maybe for those brief moments while the gunmen are shooting up the dining room and we are appropriately cowering under the table. But the rest of the time, to keep awake is to attune ourselves to the coming of God in every moment of our lives in eternal perspective. God is continually coming to us in each moment as it has a past, a present and a future. Jesus is surely right that we “do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn.” We do not know when because “when?” is a question of temporal creatures. The eternal God comes to us in the evening and at midnight and at cockcrow and at dawn as each watch of the night passes from future possibility into present choice and then into past actuality.

But before we go on about our way, happily rejoicing that God is eternally come, it is important to pause for a moment and remember that God’s coming is not always such a happy or pleasant thing.

Did you hear it? Did you hear last week, as the choir sang Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cantata 147: Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben? Well, perhaps you didn’t if you don’t speak German. But hopefully you read it in the translation. “Heart and mouth and deed and life must give testimony of Christ without fear or hypocrisy that he is God and savior.” Indeed, all of this talk of God coming to us in each and all of the modes of time is a giving of testimony that Christ is God and savior. But to what do we testify? The tenor recitative declaims Mary giving thanks for the Christ child, and we too give thanks, but it also announces Christ as both liberator and judge. We can rest comfortably with the freedom Christ brings, but are we willing to welcome the coming of Christ in judgment, as our rose window depicts? Later the bass depicts Christ coming both to throw down and to lift up. Surely we all know both moments in our lives worthy of being cast down and times worthy of being lifted up. As the tenor sings at the beginning of the second half of the cantata, we are in need of help to acknowledge God who comes to us “in prosperity and in woe, in joy and in sorrow.” Bach leaves us resting in the arms of a loving and caring Jesus, but we would do well to remember that God’s coming is as sure as the sunrise and not always so docile: our God is a consuming fire.

Here, in the first week of advent, time does indeed collapse together and we catch a glimpse of the coming to us of the wild God who creates the world out of eternity. The good news for us today is that a day of peace does shine for us, albeit dimly. It shines to us out of the future through which God is also present to us, through our hopes and prayers and dreams. It shines to us who are awake to the eternity out of which we are created and judged. “And what I say to you, I say to all: Keep awake.”

Amen.

posted in Uncategorized on 11.30.2008 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

On this Thanksgiving Sunday, 2008, we pause to utter a word of thanks. With appreciation we remember Deans Thurman, Hamill, Naismith, Thornburg and Neville who have preceded us here. It is Thurman’s prayer we remember today, as is our custom, come Thanksgiving. How fitting today, it is, to do so!

After forty years of wandering, after forty years of the apotheosis of difference, after forty years of wrangling about particularity, after forty years of a distinction unto distrust, after forty years of languishing in a spiritual malaise, after forty years of exile without nostalgia awaiting return without remorse, after again a biblical forty years of private tears and narrow fears—look!—a meadow lies before us. A green meadow of responsibility. A brown meadow of maturity. A harvest meadow of liberality. We have come ‘round again to a place of ardent possibility, of common faith, common ground, and common hope.

Howard Thurman was a hundred years head of his time fifty years ago. His poem:

posted in Uncategorized on 11.23.2008 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Plato, 500 years before Christ, described the world as a great cave, in which dim reflections of an external light sent figures and shadows dancing upon the dank cavernous walls of life.

You do not have to be Greek or a philosopher or a Greek philosopher to appreciate his thought. We have our own spelunking experiences, our own caves. I think we come to church, Sunday, sometimes just hoping that somehow, someone will light a birch bark torch for us, to put a little more warmth and brightness into our cave.

Do you remember the end of Tom Sawyer, when Huck and Tom disappear into such a cave? A neighbor is assaulted, a friend falls ill, a job falls through, a limb gives way, a child falls ill or very ill or worse still, a theological certainty cracks and crumbles, a relationship rolls downhill faster than a barrel over Niagara, and we sit among the stalactites and stalagmites, listening to water drip below or behind, shivering in the near dark.

Some years ago I attended a meeting, in which people I knew well and loved deeply, for some reason became--not themselves, ghosts really of their real persons. They were reticent, somber, afraid, defensive, and touchy. I cannot say why. As a newcomer to that circle, I wondered, though, whether there were memories, long-toothed but not forgotten, that returned with the rejoining of that meeting. Memories of past things—hurts, angers, betrayals—that still hung like mold and mildew on the wet walls of that cave. It felt like we had all gone down into the earth, into a cave.

My childhood friend’s father ran a slaughter house. Though we didn’t usually go when the cutting was done, you could feel and sense the past brutality there—it hung in the air, it flew through the spirit like a bat through a cave.

Life can become one long stint of hard time in a cave, in the calaboose.

St. Paul is writing to the Philippians, and so to us, from a cave. He is to be heard today, from the heart of the Roman prison, where he evidently awaits execution. The Bible records loving, wise and faithful responses to pain, hurt and failure, to exile, and to execution. Its remarkable trait is honesty about pain. Paul writes from inside a cave, Jonah in the belly of the provincial whale.

How stunning his word.

Paul, in Philippians, writes largely about joy.

All of the New Testament, but particularly the letters of Paul and especially the Gospel of John, bear witness to the earliest church’s experience of Spirit. “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”, wrote Paul. And the Epistle of John, in a clear warning to those living in times like ours says, “test the spirits, to see whether they are of God.” It is not enough to be full of spirit. Rather, the question is, which spirit? Which spirit?

Here again, the Scripture guides us. As we know people by their deeds, their fruits, so we are to recognize the footprints of the Spirit in the fruit she bestows, ripe in this spiritual season. The Spirit gives…joy (Gal 5:22).

My friend Don Harp preaches in a big Atlanta church, Peachtree UMC. When he moved to Atlanta he liked to walk in his new neighborhood. One day he came upon dark skinned girl and red haired boy selling lemonade. He spent 25 cents on a cup. Being a pastor, and being pastoral, he struck up some conversation. Finally, the girl asked if he was finished. He said he was. Then she asked for his cup. “If you don’t mind, we would like the cup back. It’s the only one we have and we expect to have another customer in a little while”.

For those who will stop and drink, there is a river of joy in every day.

The good news of Jesus Christ, toward which we are summoned today, is throughout a glorious expression of joy. We trust the Bible as it records this open secret. Joy is truly native to God alone, and in God’s word this joy enters our life. “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little, we will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master!”

Wise men from the east at last find a star and a child and they rejoice with great joy.

Common shepherds hear tidings of great joy, meant for all people, and are shaken to their boots.

Some seed falls on good ground and…you and you and you…receive the word with great joy.

A servant is faithful over a little, and is set over much, and enters…the joy of the master.

There is more joy in heaven over one who repents than over 99 who lack nothing.

Even the evening of his death, Jesus sings with joy his affection for his disciples.

And early women go to the tomb, and finding it empty are turned upside down and leave with fear and great, great joy.

Peter Berger puts it this way: Faith is faith in the validity of joy. (QOF, 18)

Furthermore, in this passage, St Paul reminds us that the Lord is at hand. Nearby. At hand but not in hand. Absent, yet close. It is the risen Lord whom we worship, in this and every age.

You are people of faith, those for whom the pattern of struggle and rest, pain and glory known in Christ Jesus forms the basis of life. You are people of faith, attentive to the Spirit who bestows such ripe fruit upon us. And we are in a season of spiritual harvest.

Where I run much of the summer there are apple trees. Most years, in summer, I have only been able to enjoy their sight. This summer, though, the fragrance of ripening fruit has been covering the dirt path along the lake for some weeks. The fruit is ripe, and surprisingly early. The fruit is ripe, and surprisingly ample.

The Spirit bears this fruit, of joy, into our common life, like a baby born into an expectant family. Yours is the family of Christ.

Which is, to put it less gently, to be reminded that we are people of faith. For example, if we are Christians, we are Christians, not Jesusites. That is, we are Christians, not Jesusites. We worship Christ, the risen Lord, incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. We are not enslaved, but freed. We are not Jesusites. We do not live in Palestine, nor do we feel we must. We do not wear robes and sandals (except at bedtime), nor do we feel inclined to do so. We do not travel by donkey or chariot. We do not, most of us, speak Aramaic. We do not read Hebrew. We do not think that David wrote all of the Psalms, or that the world is flat, or that the Rock of Gibraltar is the end of civilization. And some of us are not celibate. We are not Jesusites.

The millennial question is not “What would Jesus do?” Rather, the question is “What does the Lord want me to do?” Where do I taste the fruit of the spirit? And blessed as we are with a mission to fulfill, it is the sun of vision, not the moon of mission, which awakens us to real life. God is giving us a vision of joy! Joy in worship, joy at judgment, even joy amid persecution.

1. Worship

Sunday can bring joy. Yes, there is routine and there is atte
ntion

Required. Someone asked my son a couple of years ago about worship and he said: “Church is church.” Well, yes. Surprisingly, though, joy can overtake us here. In fact, this is an hour meant for joy. In prayer, or worship, or devotion of any real kind we enter the presence of what is given us and leave behind the cloying grasp of what we make. Joy finds us here—freedom in fellowship, through all our silliness and sanctimoniousness.

Do you remember David’s dance? King David had won battles, slain foes, built a kingdom, defeated both Goliath and Saul (fightings without and fears within), yet, perhaps due to his many achievements, he could reckon with their limitation. In his older age he searched for joy. Way up north, in the hill country, he found an old ark, a box, mysterious and potent. Last month, we heard about the ark and its landlord, Obededom the Gittite. The ark still brings joy! In thy presence there is fullness of joy! And when David found the ark—the Presence of the Holy—he danced! He made merry! He worshipped with song and lyre and harp and tambourine and castanet and cymbal, clad only in an ephod, which lies somewhere between a napkin and a handkerchief. Since God is present, joy is in the air. Worship is the one time in the week when we don’t have to celebrate ourselves.

Remember the tides of the sea that swell up along coast, the coast so near and dear to us. Think of the twinkling stars that stand mute, seemingly motionless, light years away. Picture the great brown fields of the northern reaches of Vermont. Another hand has given us our home and guided our history. Another heart speaks to yours in worship. We can say with Jeremiah, “O Lord, your word was unto me a joy!”

Our sermon title is borrowed from C.S.Lewis. Think of the very end of the film Shadowlands. A slow walk, with cane and dog. A meadow, an English meadow, an English meadow in the warming spring. A memory, searing painful yet ultimately joyful, of love, unexpected love, love which seizes us, love whose way to surprise by joy.

2. Judgment

The invasion of worship by joy is nowhere near as surprising as the next invasive step in joy’s march. For after worship, joy inhabits judgment. Down under the happy word of joy, caused by God, is the awareness that sometime we will need to give an account for our living. People of faith have never questioned this. Scripture and Life, two sides of one truth, conspire to remind us. We have exactly one life to live, one string of days, one complex of history and hope, just one chance. Sometime, someday we will give an account of how we have lived.

As some of you have done this fall, I lost a dear friend recently. It reminds you--does it not?--to prize your time, while you have it.

Paul’s letter points to the day of Christ toward which we run, and not in vain. You can approach any and all accounting with joy. All that is good will have its just reward. Nothing is ever as good now as it will be later, and nothing is ever as bad now as it seems. Or as Barbara Brown Taylor said one summer, “The bad news is that we do not get what we deserve. And the good news is that we do not get what we deserve. God is more than just. God is gracious.” We can approach the border, every border, with a joyful anticipation.

Let us be honest that we are all equally in the dark as we approach ultimate borders.

For some years I traveled across the northern border of our nation almost every week day. I never lost completely a sense of anticipation and even dread at the border. One very cold morning, near 5am, down in the dark beyond Huntingdon Quebec, I stopped in the snow alongside a lost trucker. I lowered the window to catch his question “Ou est le frontiere?”. When I had finally translated the simple sentence, “where is the border”, I leaned back and haltingly replied in French, but before I could say anymore he caught my accent, or maybe it was my abysmal grammar. Sensing a common soul, and jumping for joy he said, “You speak English!” There is a surprising joyful anticipation, in faith, as we approach the border. At the border, the same language we have used for a lifetime is in use, the language of grace. We cross the same border with every confession of sin and every acceptance of pardon. We cross the same border with every awareness of idolatry and every word of forgiveness. We have crossed over before in the daylight, so that when night falls, we need not fear. We know what the Psalmist meant, we can hear it on the lips of Martin Luther King Sr at his son’s burial, “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

3. Persecution

More surprising still, even than joy’s eruption in worship and

Judgment, is the presence of joy in the hearts of people persecuted. Joy abounds in the fellowship of worship, in the prospect of accounting and as promise for the persecuted. Mt 5:11 “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad.”

This seems at first a hard word for us, partly because we do not think we know much about persecution, and partly because we doubt it as an occasion of joy. We sense masochism and recoil.

Yet, I think some of you have known more persecution than you think. Some have learned the hard way that real virtue is not always rewarded on this earth. Some have paid dearly for speaking and living a less than popular truth. Some have seen the cost of accepting a calling in life: a life with purpose is not necessarily one free of pain. Some have been exposed to the difficulty of having to choose between home and work, between friendship and honesty, between the short term and the long haul. Look back. I bet you are heartened most by the running you did with unfairly added leg weights. In the long run, there is sweet, sweet joy in choosing the narrow gate and the straight path. The altar of this church and its cross are signs of promise that when persecution comes it will also carry a kind of joy. You can read about it in Philippians, or in CS Lewis’ book, Surprised by Joy, or, probably, if you will invest the time and energy, simply by getting to know well the person sitting next to you in the pew. Every heart has secret sorrows. Yet every heart is made for joy.

It is hard to lose. We know what Lincoln meant by his phrase, ‘too hurt to laugh and too old to cry’. I loved what Governor Tim Pawlenty said this week. He said he came back from the campaign trail, trying to help others of his party. He looked in the mirror and said to his wife, ‘Look at me. I’m looking old. I’m looking tired. My hair is receding. I’m going bald. I’ve put on ten pounds. My belly is leaning over my belt. Is there anything you can say to cheer me up?’ ‘Well’, she said, ‘there is nothing wrong with your eyesight!’

For those who will stop and look, there is a vista of joy in every day.

posted in Uncategorized on 11.16.2008 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Preface

Let those refuse to sing, who never knew our God. But children of the heavenly King must speak our joys abroad!

This fall we have traced through the etched, earnest marrow of Paul’s last, best letter, the Epistle to the Philippians. The letter acclaims our actual identity: your commonwealth is in heaven. Philippians is Paul’s loveliest letter. We interpret it along America’s loveliest avenue, Commonwealth Avenue, Boston.

It is kind of you to share my trouble. And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving except you; for even in Thessalonica you sent me help once and again. Not that I seek the gift. But I seek the fruit which increases to your credit. I have received full payment and more. I am filled, having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.

You only have what you give away. You only truly possess what you have the freedom and power to give to another.

Stroll today on Commonwealth Avenue, you whose commonwealth is heaven. At Arlington—does this surprise you?—look up at Alexander Hamilton. There is discussion this week about a Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton was our first. Born in the West Indies, educated in New Jersey and at Columbia, felled in the end in his duel with Aaron Burr, Hamilton labored in the service of material grace, or at least of one version of material grace. He first sought to establish the credit of the young nation (see how contemporary history can be!), by paying all the nation’s debts in full. As my friend said about leadership and development, ‘you have to give people a reason to trust you’. Then he funded the new government with taxes on imports, and taxes on whisky. The latter landed him in something of a mess, known as the Whisky Rebellion. Against Jefferson, he argued for a mint, a national bank, and a strong central government. His was a singular voice in our Constitutional Convention, supporting the form of government we now enjoy. (As an aside: In the forests of upstate New York a college was named for him, he its first Trustee. Hamilton College (1793) regularly required four years of public speaking education for every graduate, speaking of material grace).

At the opening of the Commonwealth Mall and at the heart of the letter to the Philippians there stands, in timeless symbol, a respect for material grace. Christianity acclaims an incarnate faith, one that takes place and takes its place on the street where you live. We are learning again that when grace abounds, grace enshrouds the material world. Come Sunday, in resurrection spirit, we steadily announce a material grace.

Paul and Material Grace

Paul’s triumphant letter to the Philippians may be read as a thank you note.

This may puzzle us given the majestic poetry of the letter. When we think of Philippians, we think of the trumpet voluntary of its last chapter, ‘Rejoice…!’ Our mind, turning to Philippians, turns to Paul’s self-disclosure, and self-abandon, counting all his achievements as ‘rubbish’. This is the mountain top letter, in which Paul gave all time and our time the great hymn to Christ’s humility, ‘taking the form of a servant’. In Philippians we find enshrined the definitions of excellence—truth, honor, justice, purity, love, grace, praise. Here is the peace of God which passes all understanding.

Yet the letter serves a purpose, a very practical purpose as well. As has long been noted, Paul is expressing gratitude in this letter for some gift, perhaps some monetary gift, which the congregation has sent him. The gift has touched and inspired him, as any real gift really does. There is a magic art in gifts, when they truly match the moment and the recipient.

The other day our daughter in law and son moved into a new residence, a brownstone flat, in the city of Albany. We had the wisdom to call on them after their belongings had been moved, moved by a volunteer crew of friends and church members.

With them we celebrated the transition, admired the new space, enjoyed the historic neighborhood, and imagined future life for a young couple in a charming city. But on the back porch, over refreshment that evening, our son expressed his sense of the day: “what makes me happiest about all this is that our friends were willing to come and help us move—what a gift!”

A gift colors space with a new hue of grace. Something spatial and physical changed in Paul’s prison cell with the arrival of Epaphroditus, and of the Philippian gift.

Paul was not surprised. His practice, over decades, was to make his own living as a leather worker, a tent-maker, in the cities of the Roman Empire to which he traveled. He regularly admonishes his congregations that they are to support their leaders, their spiritual teachers, verses that are clerical favorites for preachers to this day. Clergy know them by heart, and sing them in the shower. Yet, for his own part, Paul took nothing for his missionary work, in order not to burden his fledgling flock. In addition, through much of his recorded work, we know he is raising money in another direction, his major work of collecting support for the Jerusalem congregation. We can date many of his letters with reference to his work on the collection. Philippians shows no evidence of the Jerusalem collection, so it may perhaps be a later, and even the latest, of Paul’s known works. With the Philippians, things were different. Paul did accept their gifts, early and late. Somehow, they found a way to give, and he a way to receive, that was not typical of his relationships.

Friendship is found in such gifts. For all the difficulties which beset Paul in his work of building the primitive church, here, in Philippians, here, in prison, we see Paul enjoying the rare delicacy of friendship, known in a gift. He writes the letter as a bread and butter note.

As a New Testament scholar and teacher, of course, I have a vested interest in seeing spiritual or theological insight embedded in the quotidian utmost. It was in the development of church life that the sayings and doings of Jesus were remembered and rehearsed. It was in the occasional needs of the churches that the biblical letters were called to life. It was in the dire conflict between Christian Judaism and Jewish Christianity that the theological essays of the newer Testament were forged. It was in the later construction of church leadership, pastoral care, service to the poor, and relation to culture that the pseudonymous writings were composed. But even so, here at the end of Philippians, without any special scholarly or pedagogical pleading, we can see the extraordinary in the ordinary. Paul’s thank you note becomes his Hallelujah Chorus.

You may not have any particular need of a sermon about material grace. Your financial affairs may be all of a piece, all in order. You may live in a country that long ago paid off its debts and deficits and built a trillion dollar endowment for the future. If so, listen to the rest of this sermon as if you did, or with the recognition that some day you may.

Paul teases out some fascinating advice about money, here. We know he is deadly serious, because he pulls his favorite iron from the bag to
swing at the outset. Koinonia. ‘Kind of you to share’—a weak translation to be sure. ‘Truly generous of you to enter my soul in fellowship’—a little closer. He reflects, with some nostalgia, on their earlier creativity, during a time Paul identifies as the ‘beginning of the gospel’. Here the gospel is not faith speaking to faith, but is a time and a place and a friendship. Again Paul uses the favorite eight iron, when he could as well have chosen another instrument. Koinonia. No other church entered into koinonia, at least this kind of koinonia, this kind of partnership with me. You did, in giving and receiving. This recognition and remembrance pulls Paul farther along, and us with him. He needs nothing—‘I do not seek the gift’. He knows how to be abased and how to abound. Yet he sees something else in the giving. There is fruit in giving. There is fruit—love, joy, peace, and so on.

Giving, the encouragement of generosity, is for the benefit of the giver. Paul reminds us of this. Again, he relies on God to supply every need, is full to overflowing, needs nothing further, holds onto the riches of glory (itself a pregnant phrase). It is the Philippians who benefit, to whom increase of credit accrues.

A non-fundamentalist, unselfish non-moribund expression of responsible Christian liberalism has everything to do with the use of money. The founder of Methodism said of money: get all you can, save all you can, give all you can (not borrow all you can, spend all you can, take all you can).

Along with worshipful use of time, and earnest faithfulness in partnership, tithing, disciplined generosity, is the threshold of faith, the beginning of real faith.

The deepest part of Paul’s teaching about money is found in 2 Corinthians. There, particularly in chapter 8, Paul offers us his heart and mind on money. The very phrases he selects, even apart from their composition in argument, are compelling, to this day:

Experience of Material Grace

The happiest side of ministry—by complete surprise—over thirty years, has come in admiration of generosity, the material grace of gracious people, including you and you all present today.

We began one capital campaign in the fall of 1987. Timing is everything. Another started in the fall of 2002. Timing is everything. In a way, the struggles made them both all the sweeter.

Mike Mckee, my friend, said as he left our home in January 2003: “Bob, one thing about this work: enjoy it. You are going to have some real fun.” He was right.

By Christmas of 2003, we had raised $1M in pledges. By May of 2004, $2M. By Christmas of 2004, $3M. And so on…

I have chuckled and laughed and felt tears all along the way.

The first gift of $500 came from the most veteran of our Tuesday AM men’s group. It made me smile.

We asked many people to join us at the leadership level ($50,000). Many did. It makes me smile.

One woman came to say, “I can only give $5 a week more—will that make a difference?” Together we did the math, over 5 years. It does make a difference. It made me smile.

Out of blue, a couple made a large deferred gift, 6 figures and more. It made me pause, offer a little thanks prayer, and it made me smile.

A retired preacher called up to say, briefly and bluntly, that he was surpassing the $50,000 level in giving. Just wanted me to know. It made me smile after it made me emotional. Then he left a tongue in cheek message asking why the stock market went down after he made his gift. He thought he was assured of prosperity! That really made me smile.

I remember pulling many pounds of silver out from under a bed, to get it ready for sale, and a significant pledge. We all smiled at that.

Several times we came away from homes of newer members, who had made really strong pledges, and there was a silence, a full silence, a happy, full silence in the car. It does make you smile.

One refusal letter was so well worded, and so caring, and so on the edge of commitment, that it made me want to smile, too.

There was a family together who made an unexpected and strong named gift. The way they planned and prepared it made me really smile.

We had a couple in the office, who had to bring their teenager along, due to other commitments. I watched her watch her parents—such truly good people—filling in the pledge card. I wondered what her 15 year old mind made of all this. I found myself smiling on the way home that night.

The other night I sat with one of our Trustees. She said something that I want you all to hear and remember and cherish: “You know, if you didn’t raise another dime, you have done wonderfully! Already, at $3.3M, you have done beautifully.” What a gracious thing to say. She said it smiling.

Of all the Easter signs of Christ, raised, other perhaps than the preaching of the Gospel itself, I do not think of any others that more majestically announce Life in a world of death than these moments of sheer generosity. Here is a material grace. This is the sense, the feeling—far more than emotion by the way—which Paul knew in his prison cell. I am filled, having received the gifts you sent...

To whom much has been given, from him much is required.

The Power of Material Grace

Some years ago I officiated at a wedding. It was beautiful autumn day as so many have been this year. The service was wonderful. The organist played a version of "Love Divine" with bells that rounded off the service to perfection. I was proud to be here. Later, in the ready room, a woman who had attended the service asked about my family.

We talked, and I discovered that she was from the North Country, and had been raised with some difficulty by a single mother.

"Near Alexandria Bay?"

"In Alexandria Bay."

"Did you know Rev. Pennock, who was there in retirement?" (who is Jan's grandfather)?

All of sudden her face became red and her eyes filled. I wondered what I had said to upset her. This is the "joy" of the ministry - you enter a room and everyone is uncomfortable! You make small talk and women cry!

"No", she said, "you don't understand…When I was a young woman, I barely could go to college. Every semester I received a check from the Alexandria Bay Church, money that was to pay for my voice lessons…This kept me going in college, not just the money, which was significant, but more so the thought, the fact that somebody believed in me, could see me with a future, outside of my struggling family and small town, and invested in me…."

What does that have to do with me?

"I learned a few years ago that your wife's grandfather is the one who gave the money for those lessons! His gift formed my life!"

What are you doing today?

"I am the Director of Music for a church near Albany. The bride grew up in my youth choir. She invited me to the wedding. Music is my life."

Over all those years, and so many miles, across such a great existential distance, look what happened: A moment of material grace. I was given an experience of God, emotion laded and heartfelt and real and good, and even in church or at least almost, as a consequence of a gift made long ago and far away. The hidden blessing of gen
erosity is that giving opens the world to the possibility of experiences of God. Rev. Harold Pennock is long dead. His wife Anstress is long dead. Their time in the parsonage of a small town on the St Lawrence River is long gone. But one autumn day, many years later, after a wedding, in the late afternoon, his thoughtful kindness opened the world.

The Radiance of Material Grace

There is a radiance that comes shining through a material grace.

I see this radiance in generosity well invested. Recently we visited a newborn baby. The plaque on the hospital wall read, ‘This hospital was built and endowed by the people of this city’. Built and endowed. I wish every church we had built we had also fully endowed, and every college, and every seminary, and every hospital.

I see this radiance in young people who are eager to endow, with material grace, the world which that new born child enters. To endow it with clean air and water. To endow it with stable justice. To endow it with colorblind equality. To endow it with a rigorous preparation for peace. To endow it with virtue which has place neither for selfishness nor for sloth. To endow it with the wisdom of a Lincoln, on whose lap we all would sit this week. To endow it with a heartfelt trust that there is a self-correcting Spirit of Truth loose in the universe.

I see this radiance today. Paul in prison and Hamilton on Arlington would agree. Lord grant us a material grace, a grateful generosity.

I see this radiance out in front of our chapel this morning. Outside Marsh Chapel there is a materially gracious monument to Martin Luther King. On Wednesday of this week, following lunch, my colleague and I passed the front of the King memorial. In front were bunches of flowers. Beautiful bouquets of flowers. More appeared on Thursday, and more still on Friday. Only one carried a note. To Martin Luther King: thank you.

We close with a prayer King used in 1959, citing a slave preacher (related in a NYTimes column, 11/6/08): ‘Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we oughta be; we ain’t what we gonna be; but thank God, we ain’t what we was’.

posted in Uncategorized on 11.9.2008 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

All Saints Communion

Beatitudes

We travel in the company of the blessed, in Jesus’ teaching: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those persecuted. We travel among the many, the communion of saints. Lift up your hearts.

Philippian Benedictions

We travel in the company of the blessed, those over whom Paul gave his benedictions, in the radiant letter to the Philippians.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit
To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever
The God of peace will be with you
The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus
God is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure

May your love abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent, and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruits of righteousness which come through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God

We travel among those who also have been found in the heart of an addressable community, those addressed and blessed by benediction. Lift up your hearts.

The Beautiful and the True

We travel in the company of the blessed, those who have guided us into the deep and the good, the beautiful and the true.

Dante calls to us. As Peter Hawkins taught many here:
In Virgil’s company he (Dante) learns that the ascent must be prefaced by a descent, for to move toward the light he must confront everything that is murky and tangled not only within himself but within all of humanity (Hawkins, 7)

Hopkins makes us shiver:

Thou mastering me
God giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.
(GMH)

We travel along behind those who have opened the world to grace. Lift up your hearts.

Newton Falls NY

We travel in the company of the blessed, among those who know that all of this, life as given, is not about somebody else. It is about you and me and we together.

Remember: You can if you think you can.

Eight years ago the paper mill closed in Newton Falls, taking with it 100 jobs out of a town of 75 houses in the Adirondacks. The mill is open again, as of June 5 2008 (NYTimes). Levi Durham and Andy Leroux would not let it die. Starting in 2000, they cleaned the closed mill. They kept the machinery oiled and running. ‘We had to do what we had to do to get our mill going again’, said Leroux. Today the mill is open, running 24/7, making paper for cookbooks, for newspapers, for catalogues, for biology textbooks. 104 people have good jobs there, near the great timber forests of the great Adirondack mountains. ‘We decided to stop thinking about our mill and actually do something to save it’. They worked almost for free for many. At 20 below with 30 mile winds, winter after winter, they shoveled the roof. ‘To us, the mill was idle. There’s a difference between closed and idle’. A town group of small business people, retirees, teachers, and elected officials hunted for a buyer, a buyer who would let the mill be the mill, as a whole, not sold off bit by bit. They called people. They searched the internet. Finally they found Dennis Bunnell of Buffalo who, along with a Canadian partner, bought the mill for $20M. Bunnell said: ‘All there is to a mill is machinery and people. What makes a difference in this case is that the people who work here truly care about this mill’. Maple trees, birch trees, spruce trees, responsibly harvested nearby, produce fiber that is bleached, soaked, stretched, smoothed and steamed in a 300 foot long machine. All of this adventure, in the middle of nowhere. 7 hours north of NYC, in a picturesque setting of rivers, lakes and mountains where you can buy a home for $20,000. ‘We’re hard workers. We’re stubborn and even when it looks like the whole world is against us, we don’t give up. Today 100 workers make $22\hr and have medical, dental and retirement plans.

We travel in the company of those who wrestle with angels, who wake in the morning to say, ‘Surely the Lord was in this place, and I knew it not’. Lift up your hearts.

Prayer for November 2, 2008
We travel in the company of the blessed, like my friend Ken Carter whose prayer, SURSUM CORDA, is ours today:

posted in Uncategorized on 11.2.2008 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Preface: Chalmers

I am holding a worn black and white Kodak photograph, 1954, in which a black suited man with a great shock of white hair is holding a baby boy. The white hair is that of Allan Knight Chalmers.

You may wonder where sermons come from. Surely they arise out of careful interpretation of the Scripture. Certainly they are born in the struggle and uncertainty of prayerful life, especially in a time like ours. Necessarily they emerge from the manifold dialogues and discussions which are the marrow of community life. Occasionally they burst forth from the abject need of a person or a public situation. Sometimes, all of these are catalyzed, together by a single remark. Today’s sermon was lit by the match of a friend’s single sentence.

Where do illumination, imagination, inspiration come from? Why did I use the adjective ‘erstwhile’ in conversation last week? How did he find a way to solve a scientific problem by turning it upside down? Where did her inclination, accurate inclination, to doubt what she was hearing dwell before it came to live in her mind?

My friend stopped to talk. We talked. As in all real conversation, there was a mixture of memory and imagination. She said: ‘it is so sad when people lack access to their own best past’. It is. It is so sad when someone lacks access to his or he own best past. It is tragically sad when a country, or a people, or a denomination lacks access to its own best past. Her sentence arranged, as a host arranges a dinner table, today’s sermon. Her comment placed the Scripture in the right light, caught the temper of prayerful struggle today, dipped into the theme of this weekend’s remembrance, burst out of her own pathos, and, thereby, caught fire. Here is one definition of hell: losing access to your own best past. Here is one description of heaven: finding access to your own best past.

Over thirty years of pastoral ministry, we have seen women, men and groups lose their way, lacking access to their own best past. They can be cut-off from such blessing through accident, change, job-loss, migration, divorce, or other endings in relationships. Over thirty years of pastoral ministry, we have seen women, men and groups find their way home, gaining access to their own best past in memory, dream, reconnection, reading, prayer. This is what Sunday morning is all about!

Isn’t this what happened to Martin Luther, blocked from his best past in the dark loneliness of his monk’s cell, blocked by fear and anguish and dread? He found the Psalms, and understood them. He found the letters of Paul, and interpreted them. He found Augustine, and learned from him. He burst out—sola fide!, sola gratia!, sola Scriptura. (I might have left off the sola!) He found freedom and grace by gaining access to his own best past.

I want to offer you the gift of memory as a help for imagination. I want today to offer access to your own best past, in the specific memory of a forgotten person, whose legacy is our best past and our desired future. Allan Knight Chalmers expressed and embodied preaching, change, and wholeness—kerygma, metanoia, oikoumene.

Here is a sketch of Chalmers’ life from the King Center:

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1897, Chalmers received his B.A. (1917) from Johns Hopkins University and his B.D. (1922) from Yale University. He joined the faculty at Boston University in 1948 after serving as minister of New York’s Broadway Tabernacle Congregational Church for eighteen years. During his career, he was chair of the Scottsboro Defense Committee during the 1930s, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, treasurer of the NAACP, and active in the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Religion and Labor Foundation. Chalmers retired from Boston University’s faculty in 1962.

Chalmers was a personal and professional supporter of King and the movement. In early 1956, as treasurer of the NAACP, he wrote to King promising to support the Montgomery bus boycott: “We will back you at the national level without any question” (Papers 3:173). In December 1960 he organized a meeting of leaders from various civil rights organizations, such as FOR, the American Friends Service Committee, the National Council of Churches, CORE, and SNCC, to discuss how they could cooperate to move desegregation forward in the South. Chalmers remained active in the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and in other peace, religious, and political groups until his death.

1. Kerygma: Chalmers’ Preaching Voice

We remember Chalmers on a good day to do so. Our lessons today, particularly the reading from St. Matthew, connect closely to the project of his life. We shall lift out simply one sense in which this is so. Today’s reading offers a wonderfully broad gospel, for those with eyes to see it and ears to hear it. One of the dangers of interpretation, compounded by years of study, can be the inability to see forest for trees. The reading today, seen whole, is universal, broad, magnanimous, liberal, inclusive, free, gracious, embracing, and itself whole, and so, holy. How shall we summarize religious teaching? Love God, love your neighbor. Granted the long histories of rabbinic debate about the law and its summary, granted the further Messianic dispute underneath the argument about David, granted the particular changes Matthew makes of his inheritance from Mark here, granted the various other fine points that we would lift out on another day and in other sermon, still, the main point holds. In Christ there is no east or west, in Him no south or north, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth. The river of love will ever surmount the banks of law. The river of love will ever surmount the banks of religion. The river of love will ever surmount, and ever overtake the endless banks of boundaries we seek to set. I suggest we think about that a bit, in late October of 2008. Such breadth is at the heart of Allan Knight Chalmers.

Here is a taste of his pulpit voice. Chalmers preached:

You will in many cases
fail to understand with absolute correctness the
meaning of words, since words are symbols of
thought and are not accurate; but you will come
closer to the truth if you give the benefit of a deep
desire to reveal a truth and not to hurt, to any
set of words you hear or see. ( A Candle in the Wind, 29)

They are lost who lack access to their own best past. One is lost who lacks access to his own best past. You are lost who lack access to your own best past.

Chalmers told his students that a B was required to pass the preaching class. A lower grade meant taking the class again. Chalmers encouraged his students to ‘read a book a day’. He meant the habit to continue through a lifetime. Chalmers believed in preaching without notes. Still, if the student wanted to become a manuscript preaching Chalmers would aim to make him a strong manuscript preacher.

His classes met three times a week, an hour at a time. He required weekly ‘interstitials’, which were two or three paragraph reflections on a moment, experience, event, theme, or idea. Mrs. Chalmers attended the Edith Buell Club (for seminary wives).

My Dad remembers hearing Chalmers in the spring of 1950. Pacing the platform of the Oneida Methodist Church (where in 1968, at age 13, I was confirmed), Chalmers held a packed sanctuary enthralled in the retelling of the Scottsboro Boys story. Chalmers lead t
hat early civil rights crusade to free 9 unjustly convicted black teenagers, a successful crusade that over a decade freed them all. He whispered. He shouted. He stepped off the exact measurement of the prison cells in which the lads had been held. He kicked the pulpit (I have no idea what that gesture aided). He placed before that gathering of 500 young adults the cause of justice in their time. My parents heard, and chose Boston over Drew (always a wise choice).

2. Metanoia: Chalmers Social Gospel

The other day I feasted in the stacks of the Gottlieb Archives. Ryan brought me pencils, paper, white gloves and three long folders of original Chalmers writings. One contained letters from and to Martin Luther King. Another contained writings related to the NAACP and the civil rights movement, and correspondence with Thurgood Marshall (there is a photo of Chalmers, Fosdick and Marshall). A third contained two reflective essays, Chalmers remembering, not Chalmers remembered. The first of these was written at the behest of Harrison Salisbury and the New York Times. One handwritten short letter is from a ten year old boy, offering the NAACP a gift of 22 dollars (my mother is writing you this check in her name because I don’t have a checking account—I’m only ten years old)..

Writing to King, his student, colleague and friend, Chalmers strongly propounded time to think: A man gets thin if he does not read, becomes inaccurate if he does not write, but most of all loses profoundness if he does not think; or if he is deep he may only be in a rut because he has not had time to think anew as time and circumstances have gone on. (AKC-MLK, 3/6/60).

Writing to donors, raising money for Freedom Riders’ legal defense, Chalmers urges action: Each of them faces four months imprisonment, $200 fine, and a permanent record of criminal conviction that can mar his future. Their only offense was: they had faith in the rule of law in our country (AKC, 11/20/61, NAACPLDEF REPORT).

Writing to the Times editor, now in the 1970’s and commenting on that troubled time, Chalmers offers an exemplary rendering of responsible Christian liberalism: the silent generation slogged; the violent generation slugs. Too many did not think back historically or ahead creatively…Separate is not equal…(This generation) has not yet produced leaders, both intelligent and selfless…We are in a phase where the icons and the iconoclasts are in control. Where are the bulldozers who know that what they do is part of a building plan? Time will have to tell.

Chalmers had a supporter in Paul Tillich.

“Social institutions as well as personal habits have an almost irresistible tendency to perpetuate themselves in disregard of the demands of creative justice in a new situation or under unique conditions both in the communal and in the individual life.” (Tillich, 56)

“What kind of knowledge can create moral action? It cannot be the detached knowledge of pre-scientific or scientific inquiry, nor can it be the knowledge of the day to day handling of things and people, even if such knowledge is elevated to the level of technical expertise or psychological skill, for any of this can be used for the most anti-moral actions. (Our most flagrant example of this is the Nazi system).” (ibid)

Chalmers had a kindred spirit in the poet Hayden Carruth, who died in Munnsville, New York a few weeks ago.

Hayden Carruth: “Regret, acknowledged or not, is the inevitable and in some sense necessary context—the bedrock—of all human thought and activity. Intellectually speaking, it is the ground we stand on”.

Chalmers would admonish us to remember, as Colin Powell did last week: 30% of all American teenagers do not graduate from high school. For African Americans, the number is 50%.

One of my favorite quotes of Daniel L. Marsh is cited in his book, The Charm of the Chapel, where he states: “We hope that the procession of immortal youth passing through the halls of Boston University for the next thousand years will be vouchsafed a vision of greatness, and that that vision of greatness will become habitual, and result in moral progress.”

3. Oikoumene: Remembering Chalmers Today

I looked this week at Chalmer’s books: Candles in the Wind, As He Passed By, A Constant Fire, and others. The rhetoric is dated but the passion is timeless. Chalmers believed that this world could change for the better. People, individuals and groups, could turn around, think again, change their mind, think twice. Change happens. Real change is real hard, but this world can become a better place. After many years of division and discord, I hear a remembrance of Chalmers and others like him. This summer and this fall, across multiple perspectives, there has been a lifted a set of voices like his.

This country is beginning to remember Chalmers. We remember Chalmers best by remembering today’s Gospel best. We are beginning to remember…

To remember that our differences are not our definition. To remember that real leaders are plow horses not show horses. To remember that, in the balance of liberty and justice, those who have much should not have too much and those who have little should not have too little. To remember that warfare that is preemptive, unilateral, imperial, unforeseeable, reckless, and immoral stands outside of Judeo-Christian just war theory, let alone outside of Chalmers’ pacifism. To remember that a passion for justice comes in more than one shade, more than hue, more than one color. To remember that no one person and no one tribe have a corner on the market of the true, the good, and the beautiful. To remember that people, all people, belong to one another. To remember that God loved the world, the cosmos, the oikoumene. To remember that you only have what you give away. To remember that you are your brother’s keeper. To remember that love of God and love of neighbor are love together. To remember that Scripture is errant, tradition affirms equality, reason accepts evolution, and experience counts. (You folks, if you give me enough time, I will make you Methodists yet!) To remember that the measure of success is found the treatment of the least, last and lost, those at the dawn, twilight and shadows of life. To remember that real liberation means the possibility of salvation for all, not some. To remember that you whose commonwealth is heaven are citizens of the globe, the oikoumene.

Coda: Crawford

After about twenty years of preaching, and with much reluctance, I finally enrolled in a continuing education program. I had come to the edge of these waters other times, sometimes even showing up for opening events, only to turn around and head home, disappointed at what I could see coming. In the winter of 1999, somehow, I went down to Princeton for a preaching week. One evening, a man whose name I vaguely knew stood in that chaste chapel to preach. An African American, the venerable dean of a venerable university chapel, the man’s stealth and subtlety drew me. He preached on the Psalms, and as he preached, the other failed educational moments of other years and of the days preceding began to fall away. He turned his slight frame, twisting in an elliptical pose. He darted and wove and scampered and paused. Then, unexpectedly, he stopped and said, a propos of what I know not: ‘No one here will remember Allan Knight Chalmers. But let me tell you who he was.’ On that cold Princeton night in 1999 Edgar Evans Crawford told the story of my name, and of my life. It was a strange, wonderful, true moment—kerygma, metanoia, oikomene—as strange a moment as I can recall. When you gain access to your own best past, then you are set free. When you gain access to your own best past, then you are given grace.

I am holding a worn black and white Kodak photograph, 1954, in whi
ch a black suited man with a great shock of white hair is holding a baby boy. The white hair is that of Allan Knight Chalmers...for whom I was named, by whom I am held. Still.

Preaching, change, common hope. Kerygma, metanoia, oikoumene.

You see, as all sermons, this one is very personal. I was named, Robert ALLAN Hill, named for Chalmers. I am holding a worn black and white Kodak photograph, 1954, in which a black suited man with a great shock of white hair is holding a baby boy. The white hair is that of Allan Knight Chalmers, for whom I was named, by whom I am held.

He holds me still.

posted in Uncategorized on 10.26.2008 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

At this time in the year, at Boston University, we meet with parents and students who are on the cusp of coming and going, sending and being sent. It is a bone jarring moment. It is reality, the reality of time and eternity, change and love. Most of our words to parents and students are meant to convey our sincere commitment to excellence, our attention to detail, our trustworthiness, if you will, as an institution and as individuals. The message is sincere and true, important and timely. This is a good place, and your sons and daughters will be here among good people. So we say, week by week. We mean it and it is the truth.

But another reality of Parents Weekend, for parent and student, is not about us at all, but is about them, about feelings, feelings wrought by coming and going. We also should speak of and to them.

I see parents with their freshman children and I overhear feelings.

There is a feeling of gratitude, so thick you can see it in the air. I do not mean only the word of thanks that one more teenager is leaving home, one less bell to answer, one less egg to fry, though I suppose that is there, too. I mean the feeling that comes with a gasp in the throat, ‘thank you’. I mean the feeling of seeing, my goodness, 18 years have gone by, and here, look, look at that young woman, that young man, my son, my daughter. These parents have seen Fiddler on the Roof thirty years ago on Broadway, but they only understand it this summer. It is a feeling of thanksgiving, for life, for youth, for children, for family, for affection. Every now and then, you catch a smile on a dad’s face, a lightness in a mom’s eyes, and you know gratitude, a real feeling.

There is a feeling of loss, too. In fact, loss is next door neighbor to gratitude, funny as that is. I don’t mean only the loss you feel with the first tuition check sent, though that is truly a real feeling. In these summer meetings, I see sometimes a parent turn away, with eyes brimming, a private moment that even as a pastor I feel unworthy to engage. I know that feeling. We took all three of our children from Rochester to Columbus, to drop them off at a small Methodist college for small Methodists. We dropped them off at Ohio Wesleyan and then drove home. All three times I thought the tears would stop by Cleveland, but they didn’t, or the time we got to Erie, but they didn’t, or at least in Buffalo, but they didn’t. In some ways, they haven’t stopped yet. You feel a prayer on the lips, when you say, and you must say it and mean it, ‘goodbye’.

There is a feeling of hope as well. You cannot be around many hundred eighteen year olds and turn a cold heart to the future. That much energy brings its own promise and these parents feel it. At matriculation in two months we will sit in front of 4000 young hearts, 8000 young eyes and ears and hands, 4000 souls. When they cheer together there is a tingle, a mixture of awe and fear and wonder, like the feeling of a ten foot wave breaking right in front of you. ‘Bless you’ we say and pray, and so do our parents. There is a new day upon us and it brings a sense of promise.

Now our parents have other things to think about and bigger fish to fry than to connect their feeling (far more than sentiment or emotion by the way) with the birth of Boston University. Yet these three feelings of gratitude and loss and promise created this school in 1839. Oh, John Dempster and the other 19th century founders would have used other, more religious, more technically theological terms, but the feelings were exactly theirs too, as they served as midwives at the birth of Boston University. In place of gratitude, they would have spoken of grace, prevenient grace at that. In place of loss, they would have spoken of itinerancy, the spiritual journey that is the heart of life. In place of promise, they would have invoked the gospel word of freedom, in the name of the God who is loving us into love and freeing us into freedom. But the feelings—that is, the realities—are the very same.

With such feelings we meet the beginnings of Paul’s teaching in 1 Thessalonians and the beginnings of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. The authority of Jesus’ ministry is today transferred to disciples, ancient and modern. Both passages ask us about vocation.

To follow Jesus means to take up where he and his earliest companions left off.

‘Do you love Jesus? Then you must do something for him.’

Jesus has taught, preached and healed. This ministry he has bequeathed to his disciples, his apostles. We have been seized by the confession of the Church; we are Christians. Now his ministry, this ministry, is ours. Which part of this ministry draws you?

Where does your passion meet the world’s need?

What are you ready to risk doing, to plan for the worst, hope for the best, then do your most, and leave all the rest?

What are you going to give yourself to, to offer your ability, affability, and availability?

Who calls you, who called you, to your own real life, your vocation? We began this spring to gather people here at the University to ask them this. Who gave you your sense of direction, vocation in life? Robert Pinsky revitalized poetry by asking communities to gather and read their favorites. We are trying to revitalize vocation by asking communities to gather and remember their mentors. What about you? Here are three examples.

Schweitzer

Maybe we need to remember Albert Schweitzer.

A child organ prodigy, a youthful New Testament scholar, a young principal in his Alsatian theological seminary, a man whose books and articles I used with profit in my own dissertation a few years ago, Schweitzer’s life changed on the reading of a Paris Mission Society Magazine.

As a scholar, he wrote: He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word, ‘Follow me!’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.’ (QHJ, 389).

What he wrote of Jesus became his life. He left organ and desk, studied medicine, and practiced in Africa for 35 years, calling his philosophy, ‘a reverence for life’.

Vocation leads to God. A decision about vocation leads to nearness to the divine.

Addams

Maybe we need to remember the young woman from Rockford Illinois, Jane Addams. She grew up 130 years ago, in a time and place unfriendly, even hostile, to the leadership that women might provide. But somehow she discovered her mission in life. And with determination she traveled to the windy city and set up Hull House, the most far reaching experiment in social reform that American cities had ever seen. Hull House was born out of a social vision, and nurtured through the generosity of one determined woman. Addams believed fervently that we are responsible for what happens in the world. So Hull House, a place of feminine community and exciting spiritual energy, was born. Addams organized female labor unions. She lobbied for a state office to inspect factories for safety. She built public playgrounds and staged concerts and cared for immigrants. She became politically active and gained a national following on t
he lecture circuit. She is perhaps the most passionate and most effective advocate for the poor that our country has ever seen.

Addams wrote: “The blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation must be made universal if they are to be permanent…The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in midair, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

Yet it was a Rochesterian who, for me, explained once the puzzle of Jane Addams’ fruitful generosity. This was the historian Christopher Lasch. Several times in the 1980’s I thought of driving over here to visit him. But I never took the time, and as you know, he died seven years ago. Lasch said of Addams, “Like so many reformers before her, she had discovered some part of herself which, released, freed the rest.”

Is there a part of your soul ready today to be released, that then will free the rest of you?

Vocation leads to God.

Thurman

Maybe we need to remember Howard Thurman. The first page of his autobiography announces today’s gospel, that Jesus empowers his disciples, whose vocations lead to God:

At the end of my first year at the Rochester Theological Seminary, I became assistant to the minister of the First Baptist Church of Roanoke, Virginia. I was to assume the duties as pastor during the month that the minister and his family were away on vacation. I would be on my own. On my first night alone in the parsonage I was awakened by the telephone. The head nurse of the local Negro hospital asked, ‘May I speak with Dr. James?’. I told her he was away. ‘Dr. James is the hospital chaplain’, she explained. ‘There is a patient here who is dying. He is asking for a minister. Are you a minister?’

In one kaleidoscopic moment I was back again at an old crossroad. A decision of vocation was to be made here, and I felt again the ambivalence of my life and my calling. Finally, I answered. ‘Yes, I am a minister’.

‘Please hurry’, she said, ‘or you’ll be too late’.

In a few minutes I was on my way, but in my excitement and confusion I forgot to take my Bible. At the hospital, the nurse took me immediately into a large ward. The dread curtain was around the bed. She pulled it aside and directed me to stand opposite her. The sick man’s eyes were half closed, his mouth open, his breathing labored. The nurse leaned over and, calling him by name, said, ‘The minister is here’.

Slowly he sought to focus his eyes first on her, and then on me. In a barely audible voice he said, ‘Do you have something to say to a man who is dying? If you have, please say it, and say it in a hurry.’

I bowed my head, closed my eyes. There were no words. I poured out the anguish of my desperation in one vast effort. I felt physically I was straining to reach God. At last, I whispered my Amen.

We opened our eyes simultaneously as he breathed, ‘Thank you. I understand.’ He died with his hand in mine.

Vocation leads to God.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand when your passion meets another’s need. Jesus empowers his disciples. Vocation leads to God.

posted in Uncategorized on 10.19.2008 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

“Have no anxiety about anything but in all things in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your needs be known to God, for our commonwealth is in heaven.” (Phil. 3:20, 4:6)

In the resurrection of Christ Jesus, anxiety is eclipsed by joy, fear is overcome in thanksgiving.

If there is somewhere a lovelier avenue than Commonwealth Avenue on which to stroll, lollygag, walk, saunter and promenade, I know it not, and we know it not. Our commonwealth is in heaven, and Commonwealth is heavenly.

Boston, you have carefully placed statues, on the Commonwealth commons, not a statue to an unknown god, but statues to under known goddesses, the women who gave voice to women in this land. Abigail Adams, Lucy Stone, and Phylis Wheatley adorn the mall at Fairfield street.

Jan and I share your interest, and your perspective. Our most recent pulpit but one, in Rochester, NY, was located along the Genesee River, well within earshot of the work for women’s suffrage 100 years ago. Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton have set their ghosts free to patrol the waters of Lake Ontario still, even as Abigail and Lucy and Phylis, by spirt, keep us honest here. Susan and Elizabeth and their ghostly spirits inhabit the long, deep fresh waters of the Finger Lakes still. Abigail and Lucy and Phylis hover over the head of the Charles, and look out onto the salt sea still. They live in memories, hearts, minds, yearnings, souls and hopes.

This Chapel does what it can to freshen the memory, conscience and soul of a great city and a great university, whose heritage includes full inclusion of women from the get-go. The Methodism which created Boston University, and whose clergy gave continuous Presidential leadership to the school until just two Presidents ago, vigorously advanced the rights of women. Boston University graduated the first woman to become ordained to the ministry in the Methodist Episcopal Church, Anna Howard Shaw, and over many decades has been a beacon of encouragement and support for women in orders. Euodia and Syntche have many contemporary daughters. The current assembly of faculty in the School of Theology, wherein several of the senior and leading faculty are women, female scholars of national and global standing, is living, personified testimony to an older and earlier covenant with freedom. Living statues all!

Today, broadly speaking, 60% of our seminarians in United Methodist schools of theology are women. The ordination classes in my home conference included 8 women out of 8 ordained two years ago, and 7 out of 8 ordained this year. In my most recent staff but one, 3 out of 3 of my clergy colleagues were female. One church nearby, now served continuously by various women for more than 25 years, invited a male guest to preach last summer. A friend’s child said to her parents, “Oh, so men can be ministers too?”
We are not yet, to be clear, arrived at the gender kingdom of heaven. Inequities continue and abound. A dramatic percentage of women entering ministry leave within 5 years. The number of women leading large churches, arguably both the most difficult and most influential positions remaining in cataclysmically declining denominations, is still miminal (2 of 44 at one recent gathering of large church pastors). The number of daughters of women in ministry who themselves are drawn to ministry is exceedingly small, an indication of the kind of perception and experience in ministry as it currently exists. Furthermore, the actual working partnerships of women clergy and women laity across the churches are of mixed strength, as are, to a greater degree, the actual working partnerships of women clergy and male laity. I would estimate that a woman in ministry has a job 20% harder than her otherwise equally gifted male colleague. You can still hear these voices: “we have never had a woman…I just can’t hear her voice, it’s too soft…My fiancé really wants a man to perform the ceremony…I just feel more confident having a man in the senior position…she will be too preoccupied with her family…I doubt she will understand the finances of the church…there’s something about it I just don’t like”. To which we say: build a bridge and get over it. And, hither and yon, believe it or not, there are still some Christian groups that do not ordain women, or who chafe at their ordination when it does occur, and some of these are churches with large populations around the globe.

So we press on, we do not lose heart, we persevere. “Stand firm thus in the Lord my beloved.” Paul will help us.

Paul, you say? Yes, Paul.

On the journey, on the way toward the commonwealth of heaven, it may be of some mild and surprising encouragement, for you, to discover Paul, the feminist.

I recognize that raised eyebrow, that quizzical look, that unspoken question, that muttered retort. Paul? Feminist? Paul of Tarsus?

You may not yet have discovered the feminine side of Paul. Allow me to be your guide.

We will begin with today’s lectionary epistle.

Toward the end of Philippians Paul mentions by name two women, Euodia and Syntyche. The strong, leadership roles of these women in this earliest of churches should stand out strongly for us, listening in twenty centuries later. Paul commends them, commends them heartily and warmly and strongly. They are fellow workers. They have labored intimately with Paul, side by side. They have labored in the gospel. They have worked alongside Clement. Their names are written in the book of life.

Furthermore, the thematic flow of the letter reaches something like a climax in this pastoral, practical moment. Paul encourages the two women to be ‘same-minded’, (the Greek means something like ‘live in harmony of mind’) and, in a marvelously tantalizing aside, enlists a mystery guest, a true supporter, to help them. The levels of intimacy proven in Paul’s communication with the two, with the yokefellow, and thus with the church, are heart filling and heart warming to this very day. But the functional, crucial role the women are playing is also shown, and clearly. Paul relied on the leadership of women in Philippi, as he did regularly in his churches. (W. Meeks best described this some years ago in his great book, The First Urban Christians). Let me repeat that: Paul relied on the leadership of women in Philippi, as he did regularly in his churches.

Philippians is Paul’s happiest letter. The fourth chapter is the happiest chapter in the letter. And the communication to Euodaia and Syntche, begins the happiest of Paul’s paragraphs, preceded and succeeded as it is by joy. Make no mistake: at the pinnacle of his pastoral engagement, Paul turns, happily, to women.

This should not really surprise us.

When Paul announces the apocalypse of Christ, what is, not what should be, what Christ has wrought, not what we might do, he unmistakably honors the full humanity of women. He writes to the Galatians: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is ‘no male and female’’ (Gal.3:28).

When Paul wants best to describe his relationship with the Thessalonians, his pastoral embrace of them, he reaches out beyond the bounds of any expected metaphor to name himself a nurse, ‘gentle as a nurse’ (1 Thess. 2: 7). The Greek word here does not mean medical assistant. It means breast feeding wet nurse, a woman with a child suckling at the breast. Of all the overlooked verses in the Pauline corpus, this transgendered self-description, 1 Thess. 2:7, may be the most potent.

When Paul furiousl
y hunts for a way to characterize the present age, for a way of speaking that will carry the force of his thought into the hearts as well as minds of others, he speaks of child birth. The creation, he tells the Romans, is like a woman in the throes of giving birth. “The whole creation is groaning in travail” (Romans 8:22).

When Paul wants to describe spiritual nourishment to the otherwise inclined Corinthians, he compares meat and milk, and commends the use of milk for those who need it (1 Cor. 3:2). This milk is not pasteurized or homogenized.

When Paul speaks of the impending crisis, the coming of Lord, in the face of which he generally counsels stasis (1 Cor 7:25), he nonetheless affirms (to our ears an oddly unnecessary assertion) that marriage is not sinful, and that those who marry, who take wives, though Paul himself does not and wishes everyone were graciously celibate as is he, are not committing sin.

When Paul grounds his teaching in the experience of his churches, the single central word to which he returns, time and again, is ‘koinonia’. Fellowship, partnership, sharing, commonality. (Phil 1:5).

Paul’s way of thinking rests, as stated, on a number of metaphors and images drawn from the feminine side of life. Given the status and role of women in his ministry, his utter reliance on Euodia and Syntche and others, we should not be that surprised.

What a friend we have in Paul, the feminist!

This is 2008. We may now at long last be at a point in history when we can observe the full range of women’s gifts in ministry. The women in Paul’s ministry, and their influence in his mission, have not been fully appreciated, at least in the popular mind, where Paul is largely known for trying to keep women quiet and covered in church (1 Cor. 11:2). The full range of women and women’s voices across the centuries has yet to receive ample appreciation. In our time, we shall do our part to fill up here what is lacking. For instance, to conclude, I take an unlikely, perhaps unexpected example of women in ministry.

Our granddaughter, Ellie Elizabeth Cady, notice that proud feminine and feminist name, stands in a long, proud line of women in ministry. Not ordained women, but women nonetheless and very much the more in ministry.

Women who served the church, with little or no pay. Women who willingly or grudgingly moved at the direction of Bishops and spirits. Women who lived in houses decorated by other women, houses overseen by committees, houses, parsonages or manses, funded by uncertain sources. Women who served dinner in parsonage dining rooms decorated by Aunt Tillie’s ancient moose head. Women who organized groups, lead Bible studies, raised money, taught children, listened endlessly to groans and hurts. Women who, without a paycheck, without a ceremonial robe, without a formal title, without a professional office, without a regular routine of recognition, served the Lord and his church with gladness. Women who carried and cast a diaconal mystique. (There is no decisive, divine ministry of any kind or order without a diaconal mystique). Women who chose, chose to marry men whose projected incomes would make their parents shudder as they sent their daughters to the altar. Women who must have married for love because they sure were not going to get anything else. Women who would find the patience and wisdom to cajole, encourage, correct, admonish, chasten, and challenge the pastor of the church when no one else would, could or should. “You call that an Easter sermon?” “If you’re so smart, how come you aren’t rich.” “Now, just wait a minute, my dear love, and think about that.” (These last sentences are words actually uttered and heard in human life). Women who raised children on subsistence wages, clothed and shod them with pride and without resource, and sent them off themselves to serve the Lord with gladness. Women who suffered various daily indignities—a line of credit at the market, a clergy discount at the shoe store, a donated box of vegetables in the fall, a kindly castoff dress for Easter, a longing, perhaps buried and unspoken, and largely unfulfilled, for some forms of finery, never uttered so never to discourage their beloved. Women who, for the laity, and when things worked, showed with their husbands, in daily tandem and daily yoking, just what partnership, real partnership, the partnership of the gospel, could mean, and could be. Women who, with and for the laity, when things worked, showed with their husbands, in daily tandem and yoking, just what radiance could come from a diaconal mystique. Women who silently heard the confessions of waywardness from other women unwilling or unable to go to the pastor. Women who somehow found, lacking much of any remainder of optimism in their own hearts, the giving courage to encourage a drained husband to make one more call, preach one more sermon, accept one more appointment, convene one more parsonage committee meeting. Longer ago, women who planted gardens in the spring, before annual conference, and then left them for others to harvest, as they itinerated elsewhere, in the summer. Women who watched other women in the community—sometimes, could it be, let us imagine, less generous women, less intelligent women, less gracious women, less giving women, less thoughtful women, less mature women—enjoy things they would never have. Women who even found the time to support others in their own roles, with letters, with calls, with luncheons, with friendship. Women, in short, who received all of the various difficulties of ministry, and none of its few rewards.

Do you sense I have some feeling about these women? I should. One gave me birth. One I married. One gave my wife birth. One gave her father birth. One, born to us, gave us the first real experience of real joy, as only a daughter can do, and the second real experience of real joy, as only a granddaughter can do.

It has been politically impossible for thirty years to celebrate the heroism of these other women in ministry, these with others who have radiated a diaconal mystique. While it may still be politically incorrect, it is not, I judge, or at least I hope, altogether politically impossible any longer, and I am happy to do so today, in rendering a contemporary meaning to the reading about Euodia and Syntche.

Ellie’s mother is a minister’s wife. Ellie’s grandmother is a minister’s wife. Ellie’s great-grandmother is a minister’s wife. Ellie’s other great-grandmother is a minister’s wife. And Ellie’s great, great grandmother was a minister’s wife.

Let me show some real women, really in ministry. Emily, Jan, Marcia, Elizabeth and Anstress—and thousands like them—are women in ministry, truly and effectively in ministry. They, and so many like them, have given us a diaconal mystique!

posted in Uncategorized on 10.12.2008 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Cantata Sunday #1

Beauty opens the world to grace. Beauty may prepare you for the gospel of faith, the faith of the gospel. Beauty is a ‘preparatio evangelium’, a preparation of the gospel. Bach is a prelude to faith.

You will recognize the two sons of today’s parable. One strong and one weak. One secular and one religious. One defiant and one compliant. One directly negative and one indirectly positive. One comes to faith.

Nineteen year olds, strong and secular and stepping away from their primary identity, recognize our gospel’s dilemma. Whether to say a meek ‘yes’ to cradle religion, when the heart is steadfastly in the ‘no’ column, or whether to speak up, to rise up, that is, to stay away, to stay in bed on a Sunday morning, and so be honest to God, if not happy in God. I walk past snoring dorms full, brother, every Sunday morning.

Forty one year olds, conditioned and religious and doubting in the pew, recognize our gospel’s dilemma. Whether to say a meek ‘yes’ to Biblicist religion, when the mind stays steadfastly in the ‘no’ column, or whether to rise up, that is, to step away from the fundamentalism that has swamped American religion today like a hurricane turning good cities into mud, or to stay put, to smile, to murmur Sola Scriptura, and so to be dishonest to God, as well as unhappy in God. For thirty years I have served in churches among such struggling souls, every Sunday morning.

Sixty five year olds, who have avoided pride and falsehood since 1968, but when it comes to faith have succumbed to sloth, to a kind of personal laziness, a deadly personal ennui, recognize our gospel’s dilemma. Whether, having said a good, honest, heartfelt ‘no’ some years ago, whether to look real hard at what condition your condition is in, and then whether—HOW HARD THIS IS—to think again. About what? About love, about meaning, about eternity, about God, about faith. It takes a leap. And the leap takes some preparation. Yes, when it comes to faith, there is always a leap involved. And that leap requires some preparation.

Paul Newman charmed us for fifty years. You remember when he sat next to Robert Redford on a high cliff. In the natural beauty of the great western mountains. In earshot of a beautiful musical score. In the theatrical representation of the beauty of friendship. In the terrific beauty of a liminal moment of choice. In the playful beauty of rhetorical humor. They, the two, faced a leap, which would save or drown. ‘I can’t swim” said Redford. ‘Are you crazy? The fall will kill you.’, chortled Newman. And off they went, and over they went. Faith requires a leap, too.

And leap requires preparation. Our colleague Peter Berger has written about this preparation: “I can find in human reality certain intimations of (God’s) speech, signals, unclear though they are, of His presence…joy, expressed in (great music) which seeks eternity…the human propensity to order which appears to correlate with an order in the universe…the immensely suggestive experience of play and humor, the irrepressible human propensity to hope, the certainty of some moral judgments, and last, but not least, the experiences of beauty…”(Questions of Faith, 12).

Beauty prepares us for faith. Bach is a prelude to the gospel.

When you stand before your grandchild, in the hour of birth, you might think about that. When you look into your father’s eyes, as he lies critically ill, you might think about that. When you realize that you have a real friend, one real friend, you might think about that. When you look at your beautiful country, in a mess, and wonder whether you should bestir yourself to write a check or make a phone call, you might think about that. When a sunset seizes you, when a poem teases you, when a sermon freezes you, you might think about that. It takes a leap. Faith takes a leap.

The beauty of our gospel, in part, is found in its silence about what caused brother one to take his leap, to turn around, to come back, to seize, I mean to be seized by, Love. We do not know. Only Matthew tells this story. His telling is misremembered in five different versions in its textual history. Its challenge and promise are the same: “the irreligious can often be awakened to a realization of their spiritual need, while those who are actually more righteous are sometimes impervious to the gospel and make no progress beyond the formal morality which they already possess” (IBD, loc. Cit., 510).

Something beautiful may have prepared our brother. Bach may prepare you today. Bach may lift your soul beyond youthful grunge. Bach may raise your soul out of religious hiding. Bach may sear your soul with beauty, and call you out of forty years of spiritual sloth. It would not be the first time. Today we hear a song of thanksgiving, a grateful and beautiful anthem. “Bach’s cantatas, in fact, were conceived and should be regarded not as concert pieces at all, but as musical sermons; and they were incorporated as such in the regular Sunday church services”. (The Cambridge Companion to Bach, 86). I wonder whether the beautiful holiness of this music will touch you? I know that you swore an oath on your last visit to the Vietnam Memorial that you had turned your back on all that, all this, all gospel, all God. I know. I did the same. But I wonder whether there is preparation this morning for your return. I believe there is. I know that the flat building, shallow music, one dimensional fundamentalism you hear as faith has soured you. I know. It did me too. But I wonder whether there is a preparation this morning for your return. I believe there is. I know that the lonely, awkward wastelands of freshman year can make you question anything lovely and lasting. I know. They did me as well. But I wonder whether there is a preparation this morning for your return.

“Son, Go and work in the vineyard today.” And he answered, “I will not”. But afterward, he repented and went.

posted in Uncategorized on 09.28.2008 at 11:00 am