Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

Frontispiece

You will no doubt recognize the more apparent deterrents to worship, having weathered them over time. Empty sanctuaries deter worshippers as do cold ones. Empty sermons deter worshippers as do cold ones. Empty hearts deter worshippers as do cold ones. The ancient condition of buildings, the comparably ancient condition and average of preachers, the ancient condition our condition is in has severed the head from the torso of northern historic Christianity. In some places we are dormant and convalescing, in others simply dead. Most parts of northeastern Protestantism have lost half their membership since 1977. There has been virtually no leadership acknowledgement of this deterioration and death. We remember William Tecumseh Sherman’s quip about a soldier’s death—‘to die a hero’s death and have one’s name misspelled in the newspaper’. Two centuries of toilsome (and some tiresome) preaching we have let go, with hardly an accurate report. Abuse, denial and neglect of the body by the head, of the church by the leadership of the church, have taken their toll.

There are other deterrents too.

Among the lesser impediments to church attendance are the Scriptures themselves, so wild and different in their variety. Our lectionary tries to corral this wildness with a set schedule for the readings. One wonders about this, this sort of quenching of Spirit. Maybe one reading, readily read, is sufficient. Kathleen Norris, author of Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, wrote recently of her own return to the cold, empty church of the Great Plains. She complained most about the words, the many, full, heavy, exacting words. As a poet, she would go home from a 50 minute service, three hymns, three readings, and a sermon, utterly exhausted, to nap all afternoon. The wild variety of words plum wore her out. Today, for instance, Isaiah, the Psalmist, and Luke–who have virtually nothing in common.

The Scriptures

1. Isaiah springs from the eighth century before Christ. The prophet speaks, many would say, in a chamber of the court and with the mantel of a court prophet. His voice is high and lifted up. The great tumults and sufferings of Israel in the sixth century have yet to occur. He is recorded and remembered in Hebrew. He may use a word like ‘holy’ without the slightest pause for definition. He affirms the audition of calling without equivocation, difficult to be sure for those of us who have never directly heard the voice of God. As you have not. As I have not. Isaiah may be both fiery and austere. Israel to whom he speaks is at peace, for once well kept, somewhat well led, and able to seek the higher things, like epiphanies in epiphany.

2. The psalmist writes two hundred years closer to us in time, in the fifth century bce. He mixes metaphors and types. He takes most of his time and song to introduce his thought. Somehow he has not yet been brought fully to monotheism, so witness his mention of the ‘gods’. His is first order language, the language of worship, prayer, preaching and praise. Gone is careful reflection. Excised is the search for understanding. Left aside are the needs of the mind to comprehend. Nor do we learn the nature of his malady. We hear his sincere thanksgiving for deliverance, and his trust. Though I walk in the midst of distress, thou leadest me. Unlike the austere, stately court prophet, our psalmist prizes what is lowly. After all, his history and context are utterly different! The false security of Israel’s earlier experience, and that of the prophet Isaiah, has been wrecked on the shores of Babylon, on the shoals of exile, on the sheer devastation of defeat. Isaiah hears, the Psalmist sees. Isaiah shouts, the Psalmist prays. Isaiah is thankful not to be like other men, but the Psalmist prays, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner’. The lesson and the psalm are separated by 200 years, by historical moment, by context and experience, by place in culture, and by personal experience. They do not see, I to I, let alone I to Thou.

3. We have also asked you, both those present and those present by broadcast, to listen for the gospel in Luke. Here the language is Greek not Hebrew. The genre is prose, not poetry. The event is miracle, not mystery. The Lord is Jesus, not Jehovah. The location—in all cases speculation—is Galilee not Jerusalem, for the narrative, and Rome not Jerusalem, for the gospel. We have moved from one tongue to another, from one tradition to another, from one tale to another. The Lord who is the great catcher of fish has already dispensed with the Sabbath, made for the human being, and not the other way around. We have verbal whiplash from Isaiah to the Psalmist to Luke. With Kathleen Norris, we are ready for a nap. The wild variety and jarring differences in the Scriptures themselves are a kind of impediment to worship. For all their varieties, we may pray and implore, do these Scriptures have nothing in common, nothing of a shared, a conjoint proclamation?

A Sense of Dependence

In fact, they do. They have in common a sense of dependence. Humans depend. Perhaps, coming to the table of freedom in love as we do this morning, we might pause briefly to consider our shared dependence.

You could call it, with Isaiah, a condition of unclean lips. You could name it, with the Psalmist, a need to be lead. You could identify it, with Peter, as sheer amazement.

You could call it, with Isaiah, the need to be cleansed. You could name it, with the Psalmist, the priority of humility. You could identify it, with Peter, as shame: ‘go away from me for I am a sinful man’.

In all the dizzying diversity in our readings, today, there is to be found a common ground, a common faith, and a common hope. To be clear: there is a common experience of dependence. What we most need: life, forgiveness, eternal life
, we cannot manufacture. We depend. We may pretend not to depend. But in the end, we do, depend. All six billion of us are alike, in this regard. We depend.

And when, in the wee hours, or in the fox hole, or in the hour of surgery, or in the moment of epiphany, we come to ourselves, we come before God. With Isaiah we may cry: ‘unclean lips’. With the psalmist we may pray, ‘lead me’. With Peter, we may shout, ‘go away from me’. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Once we wrote and spoke, in the church, about a scandal of particularity, in the Gospel of Christ—particular name, place, cradle, tradition. Fair enough. But this Lord’s Day, and this century of global determination, and the readings resounding around us, say something new. The scandal of the gospel is not so much a scandal of particularity as it is a scandal of universality. Every human being has a place at the table. We find our place through a feeling of dependence.

A scandalous universality is this—our shared dependence.

Bishop Solomon told a story about a dream of heaven, where entry required 100pts. One man walked to St Peter, head bowed.

‘What say you?’ asked Cephas.

‘Well, I once helped Habitat for Humanity’

‘Good—one point. What else?’

‘Well, I remember once I gave to my alumni fund’

‘Good—one point. What else?’

‘Uh, I was always kind to animals.’

‘Good—one point. What else?’

‘Oh St Peter, I just do not have enough points! At this rate I would only get in by the grace of God’

‘Grace of God—97 points! You’re in!’

The lesson and the psalm and especially the gospel today move us from our material success to our spiritual dependence. The great catch today is immediately understood not as advice for entrepreneurial fishing, but as the announcement that every one, like many a netted fish, has a place at the table. The mysterious event has a meaning, for the earliest hearers and for us. Before God we shout—unclean, amazed, sinner, led. But the event is meant to open the future, wherein every one has a place at the table. Here is the heart of the tradition which formed Marsh Chapel, the Methodist tradition of an open table, where every one has a place. It is a scandal of universality of global proportions.

The pressures of guerrilla terror, the warmed planet, perpetual warfare, disparities of wealth, and unmanaged cyberspace may perhaps make us somewhat more addressable by Isaiah, the Psalmist and Luke. Our complicity in the roots of violence, the degradation of the environment, the perpetuation of strife, the increase of injustice, and the coarsening of communication may give us better ears for today’s readings. But the word was there all along. Fear not, for now you will be catching people…

Table Manners

You have a place at the table. Yet this sense of dependence, this scandal of universality, this place at the table, all ask something of us. If we are to have a common future, we shall need a reliable common hope. A common faith and a common ground are not enough. We shall need a reliable global hope, a residual trust that life has meaning and the world—this world, not some Gnostic other world–can work.

When we preached a common hope in the autumn some wisely asked what the contours of this common hope might be. What may the religious communities, not Christianity alone or as the arbiter of truth but the religious communities, offer to the announcement of this common hope?

One spiritual sensibility, crucial for a common hope, which we may offer, is presented today, in Scripture and at table. The practical, ‘cash’ value of dependence and universality is a sense of compunction, a language of contrition, an awareness of failure, a desire for pardon, a daily prayer of forgiveness: forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

We will all do better if we watch our manners.

Listen before you speak… Serve others then yourself… Offer a prayer as you come to the meal… Enjoy others, and let them enjoy you… See if there is anything you can bring along… Perhaps someone needs a ride… You will no doubt send along some kind of thank you note… Serve from the left, clear from the right… Be sure to thank the host, and to bid farewell to the hostess… Try
not to eat and run… Watch for those who are missing…Be grateful…Give thanks…

All these table manners, and personal graces, are ways of living out, and so remembering, our capacity to jostle, to bruise, to harm, to maim others. These table manners are ritual acts of kindness thrown up in the teeth of much unkindness. They have their root in a profound sense of dependence—on others, on God, on Pardon.

May I be excused? You may be excused. Pardon me. I beg your pardon.

There is a kind of scandalous universality to life and to faith. The Marsh Chapel pulpit carries no shadow of amnesia about the needs of various particularities. We have carried, and carried well, a long tradition of particularity. But this is another day, another Sunday, another century, another set of readings! All have a place at the table. Our manners, and their inculcation, come as reminders of our dependence. We depend. On God. On others. We are prone to need forgiveness. From God. From others. So we ask God continually for pardon, as those who can ask because we trust already to have received. If you do not trust pardon to be offered, you will not have the courage to ask for it. So we continually ask others for forgiveness as those only who can ask because we trust already to receive.

A Place at the Table

To have a world we shall need world citizens. One hallmark of such global citizenship, offered through the religious communities, is a profound sense of dependence, from which comes a sense of compunction, a feeling of contrition, a need of forgiveness, a hope of pardon. We shall have no peace without a sense of compunction.

Those in the religious communities are not a few resident aliens, strewn about amid a see of quasi-human non-believers, the last few good people this side of Armageddon. No. All our distinctions matter not here. Not our differences in raiment and garment. Not our distinctions in custom and language. Not our distinctions in order and vestment. Not our distinctions in liturgy and homily. Not our distinctions in denomination and tradition. No.

Scandal, scandal, scandal…the scandal of universality.

No, we have nothing to defend and everything to share. We are in the hands of the Holy God. Our colleague Henry Horn, longtime Lutheran pastor at Harvard, died this week. Many of us heard his life story as he told it, in resonant voice, at age 93, on January 18, two weeks before his death. Of his own vocation, his own faith, he said, ‘it is in my bones’. His denomination wanted scripture, chapter, verse, liturgy, order, custom, hymnody, psalmnody, vestment. Said he, ‘it is in my bones’. That is the kind of scandalous universality that surrounds us today. You have a place at the table!

posted in Uncategorized on 02.4.2007 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

We listen, in faith, this morning, to the ancient voice of the Psalmist, who acclaims a dialectical gospel, and says…

There are two kinds of confidence, one of the morning and one of the evening.

There are two kinds of confidence, one of youth and one of age.

There are two kinds of confidence, one fit for going and one for return.

There are two kinds of confidence, and you are blessed with both. You are blessed with both. The Lord is my light and my salvation…One is a smooth stone in the right hand, marked ‘light’, and one is a smooth stone in the left hand, marked ‘salvation’.

Light

There you were, not so long ago, with the light falling on your

back. There was a skip in the bicycle, a chain guard out of place. You

chose to walk. The sun dappled that brown and yellow shirt and your hair returned light to light. There you were—I think it was you, was it not?—walking out a spring road, looking and dreaming and looking at the light as it fell on a small smooth stone. You threw the stone. You tossed the stone. You kicked the stone. Then along a heavy flowing spring stream you knelt down and washed it clean. It was stored in your right pocket. Into the light of youth you traipsed, and then I could you see you no more. In the mind’s eye you were gone. I suppose it could have been someone else. Her, or me, or someone—the light was brilliant and from the back it was hard to tell for sure.

It takes a certain confidence to walk off one stage and onto another. You have that confidence. You can do it. You can. I know you can. Look you can see that young one just going down over the hill, holding a stone in the light. ‘Youth is a terrible thing to waste on young people’.

This sacred poem promises, again, that you shall have confidence. In fact, the psalm identifies this spiritual gift, this habit of being, this faithful obedience, as, simply, THE LORD. The Lord is…light, my light…The Lord is…salvation, my salvation. Who is the Lord?

The haunting, poetic, hymnic, refrains of a latter day Psalmist, Howard Thurman, come to mind: a man’s only witness is the witness of his own experience…do not cut against the grain of your own wood… the most important thing in the life of any man at any time is the development of his own best self, the incentive to actualize his potential…a man cannot be at home everywhere unless he is at home somewhere…When people come to church they ask, ‘Who am I’. The church answers; ‘You are a child of God’...

There come moments when the confidence to try, to change, to learn, to grow (there is no growth without change) is our deepest longing. Are you facing any choices? Are you set before any decisions this season?

From an early age we learn the importance of choices. At odds with mom and dad, the eight year old decides to run away. He speaks his last word. He packs his suit case, and dons his cap. Out the door he goes at dusk. The family cat watches and purrs. Parents watch through the blinds. He sits under the lamppost, and night falls. And after a respectable time, he comes back inside, closes the door. His parents know better than to say anything. They wait, reading the paper and smoking the pipe. The cat purrs, and rubs a long brown tail against the boy’s legs. The boy has grown. Having said a real good bye in life, he is ready now to say a real hello to life! With the maturity of someone who has now said farewell, and survived it, he says, to show his adulthood, “Well, it’s good to be back….I see you still have the same old cat.”

Viktor Frankl reminded us that we become who we are by making decisions.

Faith is an act, a personal commitment to an unverifiable truth. Faith is a daily affirmation that life affords meaning as well as happiness. Faith is the confidence that life is meaningful. Faith is the affirmation that if life has meaning, it is known in this confidence to choose.

Choosing in love and passion makes us human, our own best selves.

When I asked one study group to name their favorite verse in Scripture, every one was an expression of confidence: Psalm 137, Philippians 4—every one. Confidence in vocation, like that of the boy Jeremiah. Confidence in mission, like that of the young man Jesus. Confidence in the labors of love, like that of the missionary Paul, to bear, believe, hope and endure all things.

Colin Williams, Dean at Yale, used to say that what Christians need on Sunday is a restored sense of confidence with which to return to the world of choices and make a difference.

John Edwards is running again. He left his earlier campaign with two thoughts: first life is full of hurt and heartache; second, people can choose to live in ways that make a difference.

If we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all our sin.

This Psalm can even give a preacher confidence… As the preacher gathers her mind and thoughts, either on Sunday for ordered worship, or at mid-week during a service of memorial, the cadences of this Psalm may spring upon the imagination. The preacher may recall that most commentators consider Psalm 27 to be, really, two songs, 27A and 27B, divided at the 7^th verse. The first is a hymn of thanksgiving and faith. The second is a song of loss and lament. The psalmist lifts a hymn of faith, a song of courage in the face of adversity.

He speaks from his experience. He teaches, like a grandfather teaching a grandson;
spinning a fishing fly; boiling the sap down in the sugar house; watching a basketball game; watching the sun set. What do grandsons learn from grandfathers? Confidence.

In the North Country (New York State just south of Montreal) I knew where I could find my men in a mood to talk. In the month of March, between milking times, you could find a circle gathered in the sugar house. The shadow of the roof made all seeing dim. The steam from the boiling tank made of the hut a sauna, a steam bath, a welcome warming in the frigid March air. There is something so purely and pleasantly sweet about the scent of the boiling sap: have a donut, dip the donut, drink the syrup. Fathers and sons talking.

Friday, as a member of a defeated and ejected pick-up fivesome, I watched our two sons running the court at Agganis. Youth is a terrible thing to waste on young people! But I could have wished not only for two but for twenty such sons. Confidence comes in part from the interplay of generations, the thanksgivings of youth and the laments of age.

It may be too that the preacher will remember, in considering these two Psalms (27A and B), some of the features that they share with the rest of the Psalter. For instance, verse 7, dividing itself from verse 6 before, recalls quickly how much writers need editors and how much editors need writers. The Bible overflows with the interplay of editing and writing as the Psalms exemplify in the Hebrew Scripture, and as the Gospel of John best displays in the New Testament. Both have confidence! Writers need the caution and care of editors; editors need the fire and life of writers. Writers need the prudence and judgment of editors; editors need the breath and novelty of writers. Writers need the criticism and perfecting interest of editors; editors need the life-blood and faithful courage of writers. The community of faith includes natural writers and congenital editors. Sometimes a set of conflicts can be ameliorated by arranging things so that particular gifts may be spiritually used to the upbuilding of the church. Let those who are creators be creative and those who are redeemers be redemptive!

Think of the utterly confident words used to declare our country’s independence: we hold these truths to be self-evident that, all (men) are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now that is stellar writing. But all writers need editors, too. Grace edits history.

The author may have consigned his own slaves to 3/5 humanity, but his confident phrases outlive his less faithful deeds. The author may have ignored the fairer sex, his own mother and sister and daughter and all, but his confident phrases outlive his less faithful deeds. No, there is an ever expanding circle of freedom ringing across our time. Equal rights under the law finally have no lasting enemy, as this Psalm would remind us. Freedom will continue to ring. It is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave. Wisdom to the mighty who will hear, and honor to the brave who will care.

Salvation

Two kinds of confidence, one of morning, one of evening, one of youth and one of age, one the courage to set out and the other the courage to come home, one of doing and one of being, one for faith in Jesus Christ and one as faith of Jesus Christ.

There you were again, just the other day. You were walking toward me, on the way home. You were a little bent, a little gray. I had to imagine what your hands were like. You were to far off to see. It was you that I saw, was it not? Or was it her, or me, or does it matter. You had that second stone, heavy on the left palm. I could see the first, still in the pocket, still ready, still at the right hand. But somewhere along the way you had a found a second. Light and salvation. The confidence of morning and evening, going and coming, youth and age, doing and being. All in a lifetime.

You can tell so much from the manner of one’s gait, one’s approach, one’s cadence. It seemed to me, that day, that with you came the learning of a lifetime. Not all problems find solutions. Not all relationships end well. Things often do end badly. That is why they end. Not all illness finds temporal healing. That not all tragedy happens elsewhere. That some things do not give way to the light, to the confidence of morning and youth and sunny departure. That it is a great life but few get out alive. You were coming home, I could tell. You had that homecoming look about you. And the second stone, dark and heavy, that told me too. There is confidence for going out. You have that confidence. You can do it. You can get home. You can. I know you can. And there is a confidence for coming in. The Psalms have both, both thanksgiving and lament. A few Psalms like 27 have both in one.

I watched, as you did, the eyes and face of Jimmy Carter this week. He is walking home. Our finest ex-president, one who has found confidence amid the lament of defeat, one who has found voice in the aftermath of loss. You need that biblical confidence to get on home, at the end of the day, at the end of a day when no good deed goes unpunished. In those eyes I was hurt but also strength. In that voice I heard disappointment but also resolve. Going home, at twilight, you draw and the second part of the psalm for today, the lament. There is an evening prayer in every evening, meant to give confidence in age, and at every age.

Here is a strange reality. There is often much youth in age and age in youth. I think of the 80 year olds in one church who continued to lead a student fellowship, and of the superannuated preacher who ran a youth group. Then I think of Jessica Miller, and Jacob McKecknie, and Beatrice Ponce, and Majar Madek, and Michael Robertson, students who from August to January, and from Fine Arts to Theology, found the end of life in only a second or third decade. As soon as you are born, you are eligible, old enough, to die. Chronology is shot through with ontology, beyond our poor power to add or detract.

So, in our churches a portion of this Psalm is frequently offered, during one particular hour of worship, in a soaring musical arrangement, sung by a strong baritone soloist. The particular hour of worship in which this Psalm appears, at least in some churches, is the funeral service. In the face of sin, death, loss and a form of the threat of meaninglessness that surpasses most others—with the body of the deceased before us and the tear wrung family to tend—here a great hymn of faith is regularly affirmed
: The Lord is my light and my salvation…

Those gathered before burial are ready to hear the wisdom of faith that comes in the experience of the community of faith.

To such similarly familiar rhetorical forms—the experience of faith learned in the community of faith-- a congregation and grieving family may regularly and healthily return during the time of saying goodbye.

Both may well fit into a set of forms for worship, and they may in fact fit well together (as some earlier editor has clearly decided). Yet they make two distinct movements and statements. Within the movements of all the Psalms (recall H. Gunkel’s five types of psalms: hymn, lament, royal, personal, thanks), they capture the two most significant themes: thanksgiving and lament. A congregation that knows how to face disappointment with honesty, and death with dignity, is a congregation being prepared for the singing of this Psalm. Recently Elaine Pagels, known mostly for her scholarship with regard to Gnosticism and the New Testament, spoke about stopping for a moment in the vestibule of a church at worship, and realizing that “here is a family that knows how to face death” (Pagels, Beyond Belief, 3). Honest lament and faithful thanksgiving are both parts of facing the uncertain present in light of God’s future.

In addition, the lines of Psalm 27 (A and B), carry examples of other typical features within the Psalms: rhythm, and parallelism (synonymous, antithetic, synthetic) which these give the psalms their beat (vss 1&2); poetic echoes which later reverberate in the New Testament (vs. 5); hymnic cadence that makes the Psalms so healthy for regular prayer (the Benedictines reputedly recite the Psalter every week, and St Patrick legendarily recited them once a day!).

There is one exegetical curiosity embedded in 27A that may provide a final interest for the one charged with speaking a divine word, in life and before death. A possible translation of 27: 4b reads: “to behold the beauty of the Lord “in the morning” in His temple (so, among others, E Leslie, The Psalms, 354). After a time of trouble, has the singer gone alone to the Temple? Has he there prayed and stayed all night long? Has he lifted his heart to God in the darkness of the dark night of the soul? Has he then watched through the anxious terrors of the night to see the sunrise, and so been cleansed and healed? Death, he seems to say, is not a candle snuffed, but an oil lamp turned down—because the Dawn has come! In the morning.

Here is Jesus, in the season of Lent, making his way home. Like Odysseus or the prodigal or Cold Mountain’s Inman, walking home. Whence his confidence? What is the meaning of his cross? We revere the suffering of the cross most when we accept the cross as the final sign of God’s own divine giving, “who loved me and gave himself for me”, “so loved the world that He gave his only Son”. The divine gift of Calvary says, “Yet, I will be confident”. You can withstand even what you never will understand. Every step of the via dolorosa—let the reader understand—is embedded with the “yet”, “nevertheless”, “nonetheless” of this Psalm. The confidence of the Gospel is named by a mere adverb, “yet”. It is not the suffering that carries the meaning, but the meaning that carries the suffering. Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley knew this well.

Closing

Teach me your way. Lead me on a level path. Though conflict rise against me yet I will be confident. Confident. Confident.

There are two kinds of confidence here, that of doing and that of being, both.

What was that preacher talking about on Sunday when they read Psalm 27? Oh, I think he is saying that we have a right to be confident. Confident to change and confident to endure. Confident. Not certain? No, not certain, but confident. Not sure? No, not sure, but confident. Not arrogant? No, not arrogant, but confident. You cannot prove for sure, that is the thing about faith; there is always a leap in it somewhere…

There is a confidence of the morning and of the evening, of youth and of age, of going and coming. You have both, all you need of both. Confidence that is light to see. Confidence that is salvation to hear. Confidence to do what you can do—that is faith in Jesus Christ. Confidence to endure what you will endure—that is the faith of Jesus Christ. Confidence, two kinds.

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?

posted in Uncategorized on 01.28.2007 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

(Excerpts from MLKing, Letter from Birmingham Jail)

Isaiah 49: 1-4

It is not mainly an ethical imperative that directs us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, heal the sick and visit the prisoner. Should we do these things? Yes we should. Is it our Christian duty to do them? Yes it is. Is this a moral imperative for us, to follow the teachings of Amos and Jesus? It is so. Then is this the gospel, the good news for today? It is not. Not an ethical imperative, but a divine gift awaits us in the Gospel of Jesus the Christ.

When you feed the hungry, then you will be christened. When you clothe the naked, you yourself will be given a confirming gift. When you welcome the stranger, it is your own joy in eucharist that emerges. When you heal the sick, you find your own anointing and absolution. And when you visit the prisoner, it is your own soul that is fed. We are directed ethically to the periphery of life (hunger, nakedness, loneliness, illness, abandonment) so that our ethical zeal can be used for a real, a high purpose, far beyond our stunted enjoyment of moral achievement. Amos and Jesus knew well that morals and ethics only take us to the foothills. There is a great high mountain before us. We find our way toward this height when, by surprise, in the midst of our prideful, necessary, and superficial duty…we are accosted by God.

So it is for those who will hear, some forty years later, six healing words from Martin Luther King, in the finest document remaining from the civil rights era, his Letter from Birmingham Jail. Those in prison, from Paul of Tarsus to Nelson Mandela, have wisdom to share. They have time to think, and so, now and then, something to say. The finest document from the civil rights era, now forty years past, is this letter. Its burden of truth, carried in soaring prose, is largely conveyed in six words: impatience, justice, time, love, disappointment, and hope. In the quiet of this winter weekend, let us carefully meditate together on the gospel as heard through these six words from Birmingham.

1. Let us meditate on impatience:.(SYS)

For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear… with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited .for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God- given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark jab of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six- year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored";…when you are harried by day and haunted by night… living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and (we) are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience

2. Let us meditate on justice: (JJO)

One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all"

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distort the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I- it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression 'of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

3. Let us meditate on time: (RAH)

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth."

Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of (those) willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to 6e solid rock of human dignity.

4. Let us meditate on love: (SYS)

Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that an men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we viii be. We be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime---the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jeans Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

5. Let us meditate on disappointment: (JJO)

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and.hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? l am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great- grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

6. Let us meditate on hope: (RAH)

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom, They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jai with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.

I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation-and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible crueltie
s of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

Let us pray: (RAH)

In a season of stagnation, dear Lord, make us impatient.

In a season of unfairness, dear Lord, help us yearn for justice.

In a season of delay, dear Lord, cause us to prize our time.

In a season of decay, dear Lord, inspire us by love.

In a season of disappointment, dear Lord, grant us courage to be.

In a season of desire, dear Lord, may we hope for what we do not see.

Amen.

posted in Uncategorized on 01.21.2007 at 4:04 pm

By Marsh Chapel

Luke 1: 39-45

Overture

There are two kinds of Christmas and both are blessed.

The search for truth and the gift of faith are both blessed. Elisabeth and Mary; John and Jesus; the true and the good; both and all are blessed, in Luke’s Gospel, by God’s healing of the world in Christ, who is both holy and lowly.

There are two trails to Christmas.

Hal Luccock preached in the south and in the north, over many years, and said: ‘In the south the hymn is always “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing’, and in the north the scripture is always ‘Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name’.

With the southern many or the northern few, come again, twice born, to Christmas.

There are two sorts of Christmas.

That of body and that of soul.

That of flesh and that of spirit.

That of reality and that of Being.

That of doubt and that of faith.

That of honesty and that of courage.

That of experience and that of hope.

There is a Christmas of northern efficiency and there is a Christmas of southern charm.

That of culture and that of narrative.

In this morning’s Gospel, following earlier separate scenes, the two stories come together—John and Jesus, Prophet and Pastor, two Kinds of Christmas—John soon to be out by the river, Jesus soon to be in his Father’s house.

We shall test today the weight bearing strength of Horace Bushnell, 1849, in his two phrases: ‘In one view faith is grounded in evidence, but it also creates evidence by the realization it makes of spiritual things.’(God in Christ, 301).

Evidence?

Spiritual things?

Two kinds of Christmas…

A. Christmas Doubt

One kind of Christmas begins with the search for truth, and, therefore, with the real experience of doubt. For today, then, a full look at war, greed and silence.

Facts are stubborn things. Take a hike with me, down by the river. One Christmas Sunday, late modern or post-Christian, commences at the river, let us say at the head of the Charles. A riverfront Christmas, for which John the Baptist was given lung and voice, that perhaps of the cultural congregation, even late modern and post-Christian, listens in the dark for the truth.

1. War

A pause at the Charles. To begin.

The world looks nothing like Christmas.

We are so anxious and fearful of what has become of our fragile planet that we burrow into feverish work, feverish drink, feverish sex, feverish exchange—getting and spending. But we are a people at war. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Here is the clothing of hubris: the shirt of pre-emption, the coat of unilateralism, the hat of imperialism, the waistband of incompletion. No, come this Christmas Sunday, one does not see the wordflesh fully abroad.

We watched Carmelo Anthony grow up. He led Syracuse to the championship, and smiled all the way. I loved to watch him. Lose or win, he smiled. Down thirty, up ten, he smiled. Coach Boeheim smiling or scowling—and it wasn’t mostly smiling—mellow Carmelo smiled, happy to be alive.

Unlike him, it was, last week, to throw a first punch. Not his own self. To strike first, to act alone, to swing with temper, and to cause unforeseeable consequences. We live out of the future, but understand out of the past. So, in hindsight, he can see, and confess,
and apologize, and receive and rework forgiveness. I noticed he apologized to a long list, but he mentioned his mother. That’s the young man we watched grow up.

We have watched good people across four years engage this young country in the worst strategic error of our history, our single biggest military mistake. We swung first. We acted alone. We did so with temper, angry and arrogant. Without foresight, limit, or breadcrumbs to mark the path home. Pre-emptive, unilateral, imperial, unforeseeable. Hindsight is 20-20. People of good heart and mind differed as to whether the invasion was a tragic necessity or an unnecessary tragedy. There is little doubt now.

What would the river say? John the Baptist?

Repent…

He would also ask where the churches were (with a few exceptions) to remind and confront, where the pulpits were (with a few exceptions) to challenge and teach, where the congregations were (with a few exceptions), to protest and reject.

Repent…

What are we to do now? In the large, it is difficult to know.

But in the small? We come to worship. That is, we must confess, and seek pardon. The center of Christian worship is the prayer of confession and the statement of pardon. To move forward we need to repent of the past, truly repent in numbers—3,000, 15,000, 650,000, 2,000,000 (dead, wounded, displaced, refugee). And seek the open future that comes with pardon. Do you know God to be a pardoning God? Carmelo knew his mother to be a pardoning mother, or he would not have asked pardon.

War is a long way from Christmas.

2. Greed

A pause along the Esplanade, say at the Arthur Fiedler statue. To continue. A place to honor music, the height of the invisible. It is a good thing that Arthur is so sturdy, for the ‘invisible’ faces steady headwinds and even cross winds in our time. The pervasive materialism, endless exurban expansion, and mindless consumption of a people hurtling down a highway focused on the speedometer and blind to the road ahead, are a long way from Christmas. This week, even from our national pulpit, the White House press conference, we are encouraged to shop. To buy! And to give? Both would strengthen the economy, but in different ways. One leans toward commodity and the other toward community. It may be, one thinks, along the river, that Immanuel—the college, or the doctrine, or the hope—have gone, left for a far country. As Vahanian said of ‘God’ 50 years ago, the symbols of faith have grown cold for the culture. Has such a fate of symbolic anachronism now permanently infected Christmas? Is the whole symbol set, from angels to straw and all between, become, simply, a once told tale? We know that symbols die. Sometimes from neglect, sometimes from abuse, sometimes from both. It is hard to find evidence that the poor manger has much traction to shape a culture any longer. Whither wonder, morality, generosity?

3. Silence

A pause at the Hatch Shell. To listen. Here is my friend awash in grief for the tragic and inexplicable loss of a spouse. Here is he, years later, still caught in the flow and ebb of that sorrow beyond sorrow. It is an empty time for this concert stage, and its empty loss, and lack, is one that many know better than any other truth. To hear the improbable predictions of Isaiah, about streams in a desert, is to this ear, just now, at the shoreline of the absurd.

When to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things

And to yield with a grace to reason

And to bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season? (Frost)

And from the hurt comes doubt. We are indebted to writers like James Wood (NEW REPUBLIC ON LINE) for careful reviews of speaking and thinking about God, today. Having in the churches exchanged much of our capacity in philosophical theology for a saltier mix of personal narratives and identity politics, we find ourselves scrambling a bit to respond to first level questions about evidence, about suffering, about creation, about content, about God. Overhear the fine stentorian British voice and impeccable speech with which Richard Dawkins flays theism, and more so the undergraduate cheering and jeering he evokes. Like the primitive Christians, thinkers today do not fear the charge of a-theism. Nor should they. The search for truth, by the presence of John, is blessed at Christmas.

At the river we listen to the silence…

The violence of the Tsunami has not yet been fully cured.

The destruction of Katrina has not been rebuilt.

The loss of safety, discipline and respect in urban and other public schools has not been improved.

The loss of life in Darfur has not been stemmed.

The rising ocean levels, something for shoreline cities to consider, have not abated.

The market for nuclear weaponries has not disappeared.

The threats of cancers in all forms have not been stymied.

The voice of Ivan Karamazov carries still, all the way down to the Science Museum, and all the way around the globe...

Here then is one Christmas trail and tale: a search for truth and an experience of doubt. The honesty and the courage of this account need naming.

(Reflexion)

Although… A pause, perhaps now at night, with the light shimmering on the Charles, to wonder…

Kind Sir. Just how sure are you? In the moonlight, with a shimmering. Lights and a light wind and the faint call of carolers. And…Other? Mystery? Spirit? The Luminous Numinous? A little faith tracks the trail of every doubt, and sometimes, come Christmas, even causes us to doubt our doubt.

All along the river of doubt there is a shimmering something alongside… Mystery. Being. Spirit. All the cultured doubt of a late modern, post Christian culture, still, does not erase what is just beyond saying, knowing, and hearing. Doubt is shadowed by faith.

B. Christmas Faith

And faith is shadowed by doubt. Another kind of Christmas begins with the gift of faith. A full hearing for wonder, and care, and peace.

Your Christmas trail may be ecclesiastical and not cultural, indoors and not outdoors, by candlelight and not moonlight.

You may be a cradle Christian at Christmas, or a cradle Christmas Christian. Then your trail would move not along the river, but along the rail.

3. Wonder (in the Silence)

A pause at the Gospel, in church. To think. Now inside, not outside. Now at the rail, not at the river. Now with Mary and Jesus, though hearing still Elizabeth and John.

All failure, folly and horror bracketed, for the moment, there is the start of this trail in carols of the English tradition, and in candles to evoke the numinous, and in word and sacrament to mirror heaven. Now thirty years of Christmas winters and Christmas Eve services later, I can testify that every year, as at no other time of year, there is an awareness of lasting life. The world does not lack for wonders, but only for a sense of wonder, as Chesterton never tired of saying. It is the imagination, that quality of heart and mind so necessary to being human, which quickens again, here at the rail. Step ahead, just a moment, as sometimes we do, to read the Gospel, moving the page itself into the heart of the church.

Wonder still appears on the candlelit faces uplifted at midnight worship. Good deeds, selfless and real, emanate still from hearts, homes, and communities of faith. Generosity, both of spirit and of wallet, emerges again in December.

Now the passage read from Luke for this Sunday prepares us for the very birth of Christ. Here is Elizabeth, the mother of the one on the river, and Mary, the mother of the one at the rail. There are two kinds of Christmas, that of John and that of Jesus, both blessed. One in the cold light of reason, and one in the warm heart of love. Both are good, both needed. Even in utero, according to this Lukan narration, John the Baptist is aware of, we might say prophetically aware of, the unborn Messiah. But there is a palpable portent of possibility shot through all of this strange reading.

We shall honor by acceptance its strange, numinous portent, pregnant with potential for the future. The Gospel creates its own audience, in the audience of its announcement. How you live creates a wake. How one speaks creates a set of possibilities. I like to think of the older English scholars at Christmas, like C H Dodd: ‘faith is an act which is the negation of all activity, a moment of passivity out of which the strength for action comes, because in it God acts’ (IBD 41) He renders a sense of imagination, that quiet surrender of the self to the spirit of God.

On a reliable hope hangs our global future. We can imagine more than war. We can imagine more than the stark Manichaeism of ideological rhetoric about ideology, as in ‘a conflict between the ideology of liberty and the ideology of hatred’ (GWB, 12/21,06). The greatest consequence of war is further war, but its second harshest consequence is the dulling of the imagination. Hear good news. Hear echoes of Deborah and Judith and David and even Obededom the Gittite. Bles
sed are those who hear the word and keep it. At Christmas, the open future of possibility lives. One range in that future includes conversation, dialogue, diplomacy, innocence, life, love.

2. Care (amid greed)

A pause at the lesson. To continue.

Who would begrudge to them their favorite hymn, as come midnight on Christmas Eve, all the secular shopkeepers, and mercantile stockholders, and non-religious vendors stand under the street lamp, besnowed and singing: ‘What a friend we have in Jesus’? Some giving of gifts, of course, is happy, right and good, a part of our mutual shepherding, one of another.

The earlier prophecy from Micah recalled David, born in Bethlehem, and was taken by primitive Christianity as a prediction of the Christ. The whole of the book of Micah realistically portrays the limits of human goodness. Here, for once, a sentence from Calvin: ‘Some are so excessively pleased with themselves that in order to shine alone they despise God’s gifts to their brothers, while others exalt men with such a degree of superstition that they make idols of them for themselves’ (Calvin, Commentaries, #1, loc.cit.). And yet, the image of the shepherd stays with us, and stands out. Many of our churches are over programmed and under pastored. A shepherd leads by example. Here is care: in the giving of money. Here is care: in taking the cloak as well, and going the second mile. Here is care: waking in the morning with hope, and praying into the night with hope. Here is care: investing in what can cross the bridges of difference. Here is care: the ability to see one’s own hurt and suffering, to some degree, as part of a larger labor pain, the birth of the future.

1. Peace (in a time of War)

A pause, too, at the letter to the Hebrews, and its early portent, even at Christmas, of the sorrow and struggle to come. To conclude. Suffering produces endurance. But God, in Christ, has acted to heal and cleanse. In faith, we have a way forward, even in the face of other ways forward that do not seem to go forward. Every day we can live a changed life.

Do we oppose pre-emption? We do. Then in our own lives let us, in faith, eschew any first strikes, on the cheek, or on the character, or on the person.

Do we oppose unilateralism? We do. Then let us in our own lives eschew any selffull, unilateral action that is not cognizant of circumstance.

Do we reject imperialism? We do. Then let us free ourselves, personally, from acting in overweening ways, in ways that use people and love things, rather than loving things and using people (Augustine).

Do we criticize lack of foresight? We do. Then let us learn patiently to plan, to foresee, with forbearance. (For this fourfold outworking of the Christ in the World, see R Neville, A Theology Primer).

We know the truth of Niebuhr’s distinction between moral man and immoral society. Individuals are free in ways that elude collectives. But collectives are shaped by individuals. And both, collective and individual, can develop Niebuhr’s saintly desire: develop a spiritual discipline against resentment, develop a spiritual discipline against resentment, develop a spiritual discipline against resentment.

“Plan for the worst, hope for the best, then do your most, and leave all the rest”. And when we worship, let us confess and be absolved.

Forgive us our sins…

If we do nothing else, let us worship, and if we do nothing else in worship, let us confess our waywardness, in the hope of pardon.

Here is a Christmas faith. In church, gospel, lesson and letter, we may surely affirm the gifts of faith at Christmas: wonder in silence, care amid greed, peace in a time of war.

(Reflexion)

And yet. Lest faith curdle to blind faith, and the gift of faith into the wrapping of fideism, we may take the test of reason, a pinch of doubt, with us too. ‘Test the spirits’, says the Scripture (1 Thess. 5: 22). We need the buried middle voice, lost in English, audible in Spanish, visible in Greek. (e.g. Me corte el pelo). While Luke surely means to place Jesus above John (cf. R Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, 333ff.), and that without a doubt, Luke nonetheless makes full space for both kinds of Christmas.

Coda

There are two kinds of Christmas. One of Elizabeth and one of Mary, one of John and one of Jesus, one of river, and one of rail. Yours may be one tinged by faith, though full of doubt. Yours may be one tinged by doubt, though robust in faith. Both are blessed, both the true and the good.

We might add, though, if your Christmas is of the indoo
r variety, take a walk in the moonlight; and if your Christmas is of the outdoor variety, come in to the beauty of the sanctuary at night. It takes a poet to get this middle voice, this reflexive, this nuanced announcement in the right key. So, Auden:

He is the Way. Follow him through the Land of Unlikeness; you will see rare beasts and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth. Seek him in the Kingdom of Anxiety; you will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.

He is the Life. Love him in the World of the Flesh: and at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.

posted in Uncategorized on 12.24.2006 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Luke 3: 1-6

Did you ever want to start over…?

Did you ever drag yourself, reluctantly, to church, in December, wondering whether anything good, anything new, anything other than the experience of the last six days might appear…?

Appear he does. John the Baptist, an imposing figure. Railing in the wilderness. Overshadowing the exhaustion, religious and secular, of life shorn of faith. Dressed in camel’s hair, a scratchy outfit. Feeding on locusts and wild honey, on the wild offerings of untamed nature. Set apart, for the moment, as is his wont, from history. A voice, not a face, crying, not speaking, in the wilderness, not the city…

It is healthy that we not approach the manger, let alone all the cozy secular trappings of Christmas, without this annual run-in with a truly rough diamond. He stands among us today, rude, arrogant, abrasive, demanding a hearing for faith in God’s future. The voice of one crying in the wilderness…

For the advent of the Christ, to whom John bears witness (all the chaotic nonsense which we make of Christmas to the contrary), if nothing else, if nothing else, suggests the frightening possibility, the struggle, of starting over…

Faith means starting over…

Sometimes faith means having the courage to start over, even in the midst of loss: New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth, one must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth…

This rough warrior, prowling in the wilderness, down in the depths, the depths, reminds us of the condition of our existence. The liminal, last things. As hungry as the heart is for immortality, we are mortal. As feverishly as we might like to think otherwise, we know deep down that we are accountable for our lives. As strange and non-descript as our belief in eternity remains, our consciences resonate with the image of a final sifting, heaven and its sub-basement. Death…Judgment…HeavenHell: the advent of Christ illumines these conditions of our existence…

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

Start, says John, down in the deep icy river of the truth, down where you find my wet camel coat, my long hard fingers, my rasping voice…

John, like a hanging, focuses our attention. What one thing should be said of Jesus this Advent? You can say many things. As Tittle repeated, ‘the preacher can always find something innocuous to talk about on Sunday’. What one thing? In Advent 1862, the one thing to have said of Jesus was that he was black, a person of color. In 1933, that he was poor. In 1944, that he was Jewish. In 1965, that he championed women. In 1986, that he was a child, born of a Mary’s womb. And today, coming toward 2007? What one advent word rings out from the dark Jordan?...

Just this one. That Jesus was the Prince of Peace…

Oh this railing Baptist cuts through our native pre-emption, our national unilateralism, our country’s imperialism, our shared lack of foresight. PREPARE THE WAY…

Start over...

Go back to the source, the start, where and when you once knew something clearly. Go there, and begin again…

Take with you the Courage to Be, in Life, in Family, in Work…

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

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

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

Faith means starting over, in life and in family and in work…

As we receive Jesus Christ, his presence and memory and thanksgiving, in bread and cup, MAY GOD GIVE US THE GIFT OF FAITH THIS DAY THAT WE MAY BEGIN AGAIN…

posted in Uncategorized on 12.10.2006 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Mark 13:1-8

1. Preface: Andrew Young on Faith and Religion

Boston University was recently graced by the voice and presence of Andrew Young—activist, pastor, theologian, congressman, ambassador, mayor and close confidant of Martin Luther King. One pastor said: “He is one of our ‘wise men’”. We were honored to be at breakfast with him, across a round table in the Howard Thurman center, guests too of the office of the Dean of Students. BU students, Ken Elmore, and Kathryn Kennedy provided the hospitality.

For those of a certain generation—those of us now with bifocals, aging joints, haphazard memory, thinning hair—Andrew Young is a wise man and an icon too. The newspaper carried his contorted visage in a photograph at the new King memorial. We are aware, too, that for ranges of humanity in other generations, his name is slipping from its household word quality into more of a vintage mode. C’est dommage.

Mr. Young answered several questions. One: “What should the relationship be of politics and religion?” You might be surprised at his answer. It recalls Paul in the 15^th chapter of Romans, extolling the virtue of those, his enemies, who nonetheless were preaching Christ. There is wisdom in magnanimity, and there is magnanimity in wisdom…

Every great revolution in the history of this country was supported by a religious revival or enthusiasm—the Revolutionary war, the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement…No, I do not agree with Pat Robertson and those folks, but I also recognize that they are doing some good in the world…they are sending missionaries and feeding the hungry and other good things. Faith and politics invariably go together.

2. American Eschatology: 21^st Century Consolation Literature

It is a particular, peculiar, and potent intersection of the two which concerns us this morning. In our time, religion and politics have intersected at an unusual point, that of the doctrine of the last things, of eschatology, or the doctrine of the Christian hope. As we have propounded all fall, on a reliable hope hangs our future. But to approach such a globe saving, history opening hope—I speak here of salvation in the little and in the large—we shall need to clear the ground of unreliable hope. The remaining historic churches (orthodox, catholic and protestant) have done a poor job in contesting the region of hope. We have not steadily and repeatedly reminded both church and culture about what, historically, and so theologically, we may understand regarding biblical teachings about hope. We have not done our job, to translate tradition into insight for effective living. To some degree we have turned aside from the apocalyptic language and imagery of the New Testament, in turn embarrassed, frightened, offended or simply baffled by the ancient hope, like that in Mark 13.

And what has become of the void of interpretation we have left behind? It has become filled by material about being ‘left behind’! Of all the dangerous literalisms which can infect the pseudo-interpretation of scripture, none has become more damaging than the literal, non-historical, rendering of apocalyptic material in the New Testament.

For many people living culturally outside the range of religious reality that encourages literal apocalyptic language, the broad reading and public enjoyment of such literature can seem unbelievable. How did 20 million homes accommodate copies of the fictional accounts of rapture, in the Left Behind series alone? How did this series become the primary lens through which, for many, the Christian hope is seen? Kevin Phillips recent work, American Theocracy, in his two chapters, Radicalized Religion, and Defeat and Resurrection, put a full spot light upon this phenomenon, including its connections to political agendas. According to Phillips, 55% of all Americans believe the Bible is literally true and 59% of all Christians expect the events of the Book of Revelation to occur (p 102). When combined with the sort of covenantal ‘exceptionalism’ and ‘righteous remnant’ perspective that often accompanies such a reading of the Scripture—found in Ireland, South Africa and the American South at crucial junctures—the influence of literal apocalypticism has become significant. ‘Lost Cause’ religion becomes the seedbed for left behind theology (p110ff).

Further, these affirmations and perspectives are often tinged with a particular kind of understanding of God’s will. During the outing of a bright, effective large church pastor who homiletically condemned apparently practiced homosexuality, several evangelical commentators reflected on ‘God’s timing’ in bringing forth this ‘revelation’ about Pastor Haggard. ‘God just decided that it was time to bring this to people’s attention’ is a comment typical of this position.

Timing is everything , but is everything God’s timing?

On this (mistaken) view, God is free, but we are not. God is free to be, but humans are slaves of providence. God is making the choices about when outings occur, not actual humans. At crucial points, there is, on this worldview, a hearty willingness to let go of human freedom, human responsibility, and human wisdom gained through hard experience, and to let God take the blame.

Which, of course, is the sad heart of literal apocalyptic. In apocalyptic, the future is not open, not evolving, not influenced by the myriad choices of individuals and groups--and so not my responsibility. I let that go. No, in apocalyptic, the future is assured by God, controlled by God, chosen by God and so is God’s sole responsibility. So, in letting go, I let God be, well, God. It is a temporarily consoling perspective for those who crave such fleeting consolation. It is a darkly fascinating rendering of the slogan, let go and let
God.

But it is not true.

Not to our reason, not to our experience, not to our tradition, and finally, in careful interpretation, not to our Scripture either.

3. Ancient Christian Apocalyptic Eschatology: 1^st Century Consolation Literature

On the basis of sound biblical interpretation, it is time to leave behind ‘left behind’ thought.

Mark 13 was written in or near the year 70, in the shadow of that century’s judeo-christian version of 9/11, the final destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Our chapter today assumes that the reader—‘let the reader understand’ (v14) will intuit the imagery of buildings and stones. More, the later Gospels are written in the ever lengthening shadow of a truth hard to swallow, at least for the early church. The end was not in fact in sight.

Jesus, Paul, the earliest church and most of the New Testament carry the common expectation that within days or years, but soon, the apocalyptic end of the world will occur. All were mistaken. Even 2 Peter, who changes the math, and makes a day equal to 1000 years, has grudgingly to wrestle with the delay, the postponement, of the first Christians’ fervent hope. Recite 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18 several times and you will get a sense of what this apocalyptic hope entailed. It is early Christian mythology. As with all myth, it carries meaning, including meaning for us. But as a world-view, as a view of history, it is wrong.

It did not happen.

What Jesus predicted, and Paul expected, and Mark awaited—did not happen. The end did not come. And centuries of further sparkles of expectation, from the Montanists, to the Medieval mystics, to the Millerites of upstate New York, to the Jonestown community of 1978, to the Y2K enthusiasts of just a few years ago, did not make it so. This biblical apocalyptic may be mythologically meaningful, but it is chronologically corroded.

Further, the language and imagery of the New Testament are apocalyptic through and through. Apocalyptic is the mother tongue of Christian theology, especially of Christian hope. So our beloved Bible must be interpreted anew, in a non-mythological way.

Fortunately, the New Testament itself begins to do so. Some of that reassessment is beginning in our passage this morning—‘the end is not yet, this is but the beginning’. Some of the ethical application and communal reinterpretation of this will come in a few verses: you have no idea if or when the end will come so, in scout fashion, be prepared. But most of the courageous imagination in this regard is found in the Gospel of John, aided somewhat by the later Paul.

The fictional, pseudo-biblical, consolation literature of our 21^st century apocalyptic literalism needs to be left behind. It is not true: not to the Bible, not to the church, not to the mind, not to your experience. Humans may make of this earth the scenery of the new novel, The Road. We pray, pray it may not be so. But even if it were to occur—the end is not yet. You cannot escape your responsibility for the future of planet earth by hiding behind the skirts of an unfounded, ultimately unbiblical apocalypticism. It will not do, in this sense, to let go and let God.

We are not free to avoid our responsibility to the environment, with the excuse that the Lord may return in a generation or two anyway, and who needs gasoline in the rapture?

We are not free to avoid our responsibility to seek a common global peace, cognizant of the hard won insights of pacifism and just war theory both, on the bet that time is running out for the late great planet earth.

We are not free to construe current events in the Middle East on the templates of colorful but unhistorical apocalyptic myths, for the consoling succor of somehow thinking that God handles the Middle East any differently than Asia or the Alaska.

We are not free to project our anxieties about the dilemmas of the current age—an age by the way that was supposed to have seen ‘the end of history’!—out onto a far-off falsehood, like the raptures of fancy, fiction or facsimile—in order to avoid what we of course have to do in every other sphere of life: negotiate, compromise, discuss, trade, and muddle through.

Most especially—places like Marsh Chapel with a rich heritage of hope must also expect of ourselves a rich offering to the future that comports with our inheritance, to whom much is given, from him much is expected—we are not free to neglect a common hope.

Here is our freedom. Pray daily for the hope of the world. Think creatively about the hope of the world. Act specifically, week by week, in communion with a reliable hope. The future is up to you.

And for goodness sake, leave behind ‘left behind’.

4. Coda: Andrew Young’s Worldview

Andrew Young has aged. He walks more slowly. His skin is weathered. He carries more weight.

But he is a wise man, our wise man. And he lives in hope.

Asked about his education, he recalled a single informal study group, led by Professor Bill Bradley of Hartford Theological Seminary. The students gathered for hours of conversation, encouraged by their teacher. “That group gave me hope. They gave me my worldview. The worldview I have to this day. It is a worldview centered in Christ”.

Young’s worldview owes something to Reinhold Niebuhr, with whom we close:

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime;

Therefore we must be saved by hope.

posted in Uncategorized on 11.26.2006 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

(The six summary meditations here were punctuated in worship by the choir singing the corresponding Frostiana pieces).

1. Vocation

Televised Tavis Smiley asked Maya Angelou this week to name the essence of what Dr. Martin Luther King, whose sculpture adorns our plaza this morning, was all about. “Love”, she said.

One untelevised scribe, records Mark, asked Jesus, whose people we are, to name the essence of what he was all about. “Love”, he said.

Simple but excruciating. Easy but difficult. Too good to be true, and too true to be good.

This autumn, while listening to the Gospel of Love in St Mark, we have awaited this word with choral embraces to help us each week. We lost our theological way, fifty years ago. Our choir has been asked to embed our preaching in the music and poetry of fifty years past, Frost and Thompson, for a purpose. The purpose has been to recall, and perhaps reclaim, a trail lost for a time, one of a common hope for love. Go back to the spot you last remember where you knew where you were.

Find your back to a sense of vocation, of calling. Life is about decisions. We have the choice to live as those who have survived and who have further survived our own survival, who have moved from guilt to gift. We have the power to choose a road grassy and wanting wear…

2. Invitation

You have what you give away. You only true possess what with joy

you can give somebody else. The most precious gift, in love, is your time, your welcome. Never discount the power of welcome.

Our liturgy, in the church, is our welcome.

Our teacher and Dean, Dr. Ray Hart, challenges and reminds us: What we have been culpably inattentive to is that in the same period of the modern cosmological revolution the arts have been more attuned to that revolution than has the Church. Is Schoenberg our Palestrina? Kandinksky, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollack our Raphael, Michelangelo? Merce Cunningham our choreographer? Et cetera, et cetera? Are we liturgically alive? (BUSTH matriculation sermon, 2004)

Power in the power of invitation is good news for the community of faith, for you. There is no greater joy in Christ than sharing the joy of Christ. You come too, you come too…

3. Communication

‘All life is meeting’, taught Martin Buber. If we are ever to be saved, to become real persons in communities of real persons, we shall have to seek the gifts of communication. Go and learn, we are taught. Would you see Christianity reborn? Be careful what you say.

Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice… Incarnation, Integrity, Interdependence, Theology, Tithing. Otherwise, we have a failure to communicate.

4. Leadership

The chancel choir harmony, SATB, reminds us of the four voices in every Gospel text: the soprano of Jesus’ teaching; the alto—most important—of its formation in the early church; the tenor of the evangelist; and the bass line of historic church interpretation.

Neither do the Gospels avoid engagement with the practical issues of community life. Chief among these is leadership. Every one of us has some power. If you have a pen, a telephone, a computer, email, a tongue, a household, a family, a job, a community, a church—then you have some authority.

Who taught you, by precept and example, how to use it? How much of what you picked up needs keeping and how much needs to be put out on the curb? A simple passion for the common good of the servants of God is at the heart of leadership.

Here is leadership: simple, authentic service. Tell me what it was you said…What was it that you thought you heard…

5. Freedom

You know, it is possible to miss the forest for the trees. Today we look at the full forest.

Stop for a moment, by the woods. East, West, South, and especially due North, here is a natural survey of majestic freedom, symbolic of the Bible—its main theme
freedom, and its four compass points of faith, fact, fairness, and future. The Bible is a book about freedom.

God is loving us into love and freeing us into freedom. The pulpit is freedom’s voice. The church is freedom’s defense. And the Bible is freedom’s book. The Bible is a survey of freedom.

We can pause for a moment and bask in the silent deeps of freedom, as if by the woods, on a snowy evening…

6. Hope

For we are a people in need of a rebirth of hope. On reliable hope hangs the future. Are we living with abandon? Are we living with hope? Are we living with hopeful abandon?

We are a people in need of a new rebirth of hope.

Hope that is responsible, communal, sacrificial, and orderly. Hope that moves us from political cowardice to religious courage. Look: she has given her whole life. Hope that, with Ruth and Wiesel and OMalley and Wright and Macquarrie and—especially—a certain watchful widow-- asks of us a certain height, a hope, so when at times the mob is swayed, a hope, we may take something like a star…

Coda

Others have shown us something of thanksgiving, of being truly alive, in vocation and invitation and communication and leadership and freedom and hope. One old north country exemplar comes to mind at this time every year, Max Coots, who wrote:

"Let us give thanks for a bounty of people:

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

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

For feisty friends as tart as apples;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For all these we give thanks."

by Reverend Max Coots

posted in Frostiana: Poetry & Preaching, Uncategorized on 11.19.2006 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Mark 12: 38-44

(This sermon concluded with the last of six FrostianaR Thompson pieces, in which the autumn preaching has been embedded. Our thanks to Mr. Jarrett and the Marsh Chapel Choir for their spirited, fine music this year, and through this season)

Twenty years after Jesus’ crucifixion, somewhere in the hills of Palestine, or perhaps in Jerusalem, a small group of radiant women and men gathered for worship. We are gathered here, 2000 years later, as descendents of this alto-voiced primitive Palestinian church. After song and prayer, a preacher stood to speak. Like all preachers he was carried both by memory and hope. His memory was as it was. Human, no doubt. His sermon was hope, all hope. And his hope was his sermon, too. In Christ Jesus, the preacher announced the possibility of living with hopeful abandon. We need to hear his word of hope. For we are a people in need of a rebirth of hope. On reliable hope hangs the future. To speak of hope, the preacher remembered, or realized, a story about Jesus and a widow, a poor widow, who lived with hopeful abandon. She gave all she had. She gave out of her poverty. She gave even her whole life.

I have felt her eye me—and you—all week. Are we living with abandon? Are we living with hope? Are we living with hopeful abandon?

1. Money

Neither hope nor abandon accrues to most of our thinking about money. And whatever else may lurk within the phrases of Mark 12:41ff, the gospel seems to be about money.

Asked to speak to his Rotary club about sex, the preacher replied, ‘it would be my pressure—I mean pleasure’. So, too, with money. It would be my pressure…

People are funny about money.

Jan and I are tithers. We have learned, from others, over time the freedom and joy of giving away 10% of the year’s motley earnings. I encourage all Christians to begin the walk of faith by giving away a percentage—a tithe—however you finally want to calculate it. For your sake. For your own joy and health. Some generosity is a preamble, call it a prevenient discipline, a preemptive overture, to the obedience of faith. It is habit that produces virtue, not the other way around.

2. Money (can’t buy love)

Yet the widow sees deeper into us. For though some of life’s problems can be solved by writing a check, most cannot.

Neither getting nor spending, nor giving nor receiving, warns our widow, will give us life. You cannot take it with you.

My friend David Mosser is a pastor in Dallas. He has a unique sense of humor. He and others, from Texas to Maine, are trying to raise church budgets this year to pay for staff and for service to the poor, and a whole lot in between. David’s strategy—he claims—is to visit in each home, aided only by the presence of a single layman. His strategy succeeds. So I finally had the insight, the presence of mind to ask him who he takes along. ‘The undertaker’, he says.

I have done 30 funerals a year for 30 years, more or less. Not once did the hearse have a trailer in tow. Nor did any hearse of 2” or 1 1/2” trailer ball. Nor did any have a car top carrier. Nor did any have a luggage rack. Not one in 900.

I find it remarkable, truly uncanny, just how few men and women, daily, understand this.

None of the real, abiding matters of life give way before money alone…

Who am I?

What do I believe?

Whom can I trust?

To what may I give allegiance?

Where is my loyalty?

What is love?

Where is love?

Shall I ever truly be loved?

To whom shall I offer friendship?

With whom should I share my whole self?

And where and when and how?

Who will remember that I have lived?

What will he or she remember?

Who cares that I live now?

Will I ever escape the loneliness of freedom?

Is there truly a way to forgiveness?

Which matters more: how smart I am in the prime of life, or how dead I am at the end of life?

Does love outlast death?

Is it better to love and lose, or never to love?

Can I trust my own experience?

Can I trust my conscience to be my guide?

Is there life after blunder?

Where is love?

No, the limits of lucre are lucid. Money does not buy love.

Yet here is the widow and here are her two copper coins and hear them clink and jingle in the midst of the gospel. What does the widow mean? She looks deeper into you. Will the preacher please interpret the text?

It would be my pressure…I mean pleasure.

3. Interlude: An Alto Voice

Hers is a second level voice. Not originally that of Jesus—not soprano. Not written only by Mark—not tenor. Not absorbed in the history of interpretation—not bass (only one Commodianus, of all the early Christian writers, fully cites this passage—Commodianus, ANF IV, 221)

This minatory saying is like others from the gospels: woes for the cities of Galilee, woes for the rich, criticisms of the current generation, threats to this generation, threats to Jerusalem, woes to the daughters of Jerusalem, woes to those who say ‘lord, lord’, rejection of false disciples, warnings about the parousia, and others (RB, HST, 49).

Following Bultmann, regarding this biographical apothegm, the widow came to life in the experience of the Palestinian church—a true alto. (“There are objective criteria which yield the sure conclusion that at least the greater part of the doubtful passages were formed in the Palestinian church.”) Furthermore, this is the kind of narrative which best supports Dibelius otherwise overwrought argument that this material originated in sermons. Here his ‘theory of sermon paradigms has its greatest validity…they are best thought of as edifying paradigms for sermons…They help to present the Master as a living contemporary, and to comfort and admonish the Church in her hope’ (RB, HST, 60)

Matthew has censored the widow. Luke keeps her. Mark puts her in here, because of the use of the word widow earlier. “Jesus is the champion of the people against their extortionate and hypocritical leaders”…. ‘To do nothing where an act of love is required would be to do evil’…“At the sight of the actual state of the leaders of the people and of the great mass of the people itself—at the sight of religion frozen into ritualism, at the

sight of superficiality and love of self and the world—Jesus’ message

becomes a cry of woe and repentance”. (IBD, Mark)

4. Just Concern

The coins still jingle.

She looks hard at us, this widow does. Do you not wonder whether Jesus objected to her naïve piety, since it was not reciprocated by the rich?

I heard a speech last Sunday night, delivered in Topeka, Kansas. My wife was born while her family was in Onega, Kansas. My son-in-law, a Chicago preacher, was raised in Olathe, Kansas. One favorite theologian, Dorothy Gale, came from Kansas. No place like home. The blood of abolitionists, and the preaching of Boston University School of Theology graduates, formed an earlier Kansas. Whatever happened to Kansas?

In Topeka, the Kansas capitol, a leader made promises about taxes and terror—fewer of the former, and none of the latter. You keep your money, and we will keep you safe.

Two further readings of the widow are possible. One justice, the other, hope. Paradoxically, they contradict one another. They may reflect different strata in the gospel history, a soprano voice, to one side, an alto to the other. They are not the same sermon at all. So here they both are, and you make take whichever you need home, or both, or neither. Uncannily, though, they both reject Topeka. One rejects our materialism. The other rejects our fear.

First, while this has seldom been preached, the widow may represent Jesus’ further skepticism about political and religious materialism, that causes a poor woman, naively pious, to impoverish herse
lf in order to feed hypocritical scribes and other leaders, religious and political. Here is how such a reading would sound…(harsh voice) This poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. They have given out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.

Here is Jesus the Sabbath breaker, Jesus the friend of outcasts, Jesus the consort of the poor, Jesus the prophet, rising up, flaring up in Mark against a country in which the great have much and small have little. What one of us today truly, truly wants to face eternity, God, heaven, Jesus, or even the bathroom mirror lusting for tiny taxes in a rich land where urban children cannot read, where executives earn 250x the salaries of workers, where 30% have no health care, where infrastructure, environment, and communal interests go begging? Frugality we all affirm. But injustice? We have not looked hard enough at the widow before us today. Here she is, looking us in the eye. Here is the widow whose life has been taken from her by our various inverted pieties. (The second use of the word ‘widow’ here at least makes this reading possible). Do you really want to be remembered as a generation of people who, when push came to shove, preferred to tolerate grave injustice rather than shoulder taxes for the common good? Look…she has lost her whole living…

5. A Common Hope

Yet the concern for justice—one every pastor who has watched lonely parishioners send money off to television land has known—is not the widow’s might, or mite. It is a just concern, to be sure. But her lingering eye upon you bears something more. She looks deeper.

That is, second, it may be that this dear widow is truly a reminder of the joy that comes from tithing, from living with abandon, and giving with freedom. “She has given out of her poverty”. On this reading, not justice, but liberty is hailed. Do we want to be remembered as a people and a generation who let a few suffer in uniform for a war most have long since judged mistaken? As those whose hope was limited to security for ourselves, with little thought of those policing for us, let alone those maimed along the way? As those so imaginatively starved, so hope deprived, so love limited that all we can see is the fencing in of our own position? All protection and no risk?

This poor widow, like the babushkas of Russia who kept the Orthodox church alive under Stalin and Kruschev and Kosygin, stubbornly hopes. She embodies a hope that gives her courage, not cowardice. She lives with abandon. She lets her life speak. More: she lets her life preach. Do you? Do we? Do we glisten with that common hope that is the hallmark of the friends of Jesus, the communion of saints, the good church of every age, and the bones of Marsh Chapel?

For once, the lectionary does help us by retelling the story of Ruth, whose story is well worth your afternoon re-reading. Ruth and Naomi cross boundaries, love one another, and live with hopeful abandon. Our text today carries the culmination of that hope, Ruth’s reward. With the poor widow, Ruth lives leaning forward. Do we? Do we live with hopeful abandon?

Do we lean forward with the craggy chin of Elie Wiesel, who gently said on Monday, 10/23/06…Respect is the contradiction of fanaticism…information leads to knowledge, and knowledge to sensitivity, and sensitivity to commitment (2x)…I thought anti-semitism would have died in the camps but it did not…(RAH lecture notes)

Do we lean forward with the riveting gaze of Cardinal OMalley, who said on Tuesday, 10/24/06…What young people lack and need is a sense of calling, of vocation…I am speaking not of religious calling only, or mainly, but of a sense of purpose, of direction in life, of the investment of life in something of meaning and depth and power…What students need is a sense of calling, of letting their lives speak…(RAH lecture notes)

Do we lean forward with the English humor of NT Wright, who said on Wednesday…Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise…It is time, in the power of the Spirit, to take up our proper role, our fully human role, as agents, heralds, and stewards of the new day that is dawning. (Simply Christian, 229)

Do we lean forward with the spiritual and mental openness of John Macquarrie, whose book I finished that Thursday…With decline of myth as an intelligible form of discourse, religious faith too has tended to decline and Christianity has become less and less intelligible. On an ability to reformulate the insights of biblical faith in an intelligible, non-mythical way that will nonetheless avoid the reductionist error…may well depend the question of whether our Western culture will continue to hold to its Christian heritage in any lively way, or whether it will turn increasingly in the direction of a pure secularism. (God Talk: 180-181)

We are a people in need of a new rebirth of hope.

Hope that is responsible, communal, sacrificial, and orderly. Hope that moves us from political cowardice to religious courage. Look: she has given her whole life. Hope that, with Ruth and Wiesel and OMalley and Wright and Macquarrie and—especially—a certain watchful widow-- asks of us a certain height.

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud --
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn

In your reserve is not allowed.

Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.

It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

posted in Frostiana: Poetry & Preaching, Uncategorized on 11.12.2006 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

posted in Uncategorized on 11.4.2006 at 5:37 pm

By Marsh Chapel

Philippians 4: 1-9

Greeting

(As with the other sermons in this autumn 2006 series from Marsh Chapel, the choir sang immediately prior to the sermon one of the Randall Thompson ‘Frostiana’ pieces—for this Sunday, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening)

What is the Bible about?

You know, it is possible to miss the forest for the trees. Today we look at the full forest.

Stop for a moment, by the woods. East, West, South, and especially due North, here is a natural survey of majestic freedom, symbolic of the Bible—its main theme freedom, and its four compass points of faith, fact, fairness, and future. The Bible is a book about freedom.

God is loving us into love and freeing us into freedom. The pulpit is freedom’s voice. The church is freedom’s defense. And the Bible is freedom’s book. The Bible is a survey of freedom.

What James Smart decried a generation ago, “The Strange Silence of the Scripture in the Churches”, is true of you as well. All books suffer in a video culture, including the Good Book. You may yourself continue as literate (not one who can read only but one who does), but your grandchildren are stumbling about in other thickets. So if the content of the Bible is ever stranger and more foreign in an increasingly illiterate (not those who cannot read but those who do not) culture, then how much greater is the lack of capacity to interpret the book whose contents themselves are distant relations.

The old levees of biblical understanding have given way to the great flood of video culture, whose hurricane forces have carried in the disease of Biblicism, the destruction of literalism, the rampant looting of Providentialism, the tidal crash of unbiblical bibliolatry. These levees cannot be rebuilt in a New York minute. They have to be painstakingly renewed, sermon by sermon. We are doing some of this today. What kind of book have we given them? In what key is the music of scripture best played? What is the Bible about? From what angle of vision do we best see the Bible?

Faith

Stop by the woods. Turn East. We see the Bible with the eyes of faith. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. The righteousness of God is from faith to faith. Abraham had faith and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Yes, we may affirm, the Bible is a survey of faith. Faith is trusting reliance upon God. Says Huston Smith: “we are in good hands and in recognition of that fact it behooves us to bear one another’s burdens.” You are committed to a combination of a deep personal faith and an active social involvement. Holiness, personal and social. Ruth had faith to leave. Esther had faith to speak. Eudaia and Synteche had faith to work. Faith is the courage to shake of sleep and worry and get to church on Sunday. Faith is the courage to tote up one’s income and give away 10%. Faith is the courage to keep faith with one’s partners, through thick and thin. Faith is a personal commitment to an unverifiable truth. Yes, the Bible is about faith. We give our children the grammar of faith, the language of faith, the mother tongue of faith, when we give them their Bibles. Whether or not they choose to speak is their decision. Here is Paul’s testimony of this faith: “Do not be anxious about anything but in all things by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

For 2000 years women and men have found faith in the hearing of the Scripture. These are the stories and events that give us the courage to face death with dignity, disappointment with honesty, and failure with a steady hope. In the apocalyptic language of the New Testament, this faith is revealed to us. It comes by inspiration, imagination, invocation. Faith is being grasped, being seized by a love that will not let go. As Karl Barth said, visiting New York City, and asked to state his faith: “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

But faith alone, with due respect and apologies to Luther, is not the whole story. In fact, such a reading of the Bible can become the Bible’s undoing. The Bible is not to be memorized, but interpreted. It is not meant only to be repeated, but to be read. It opens its pages best not to faith alone but to faith seeking understanding. In our tradition, the Bible is not the only source of truth, primary though it be. There are many places where the Bible may be theologically though not historically accurate, which leads to another thought.

Fact

Stop by the woods. Look South. We understand the Bible with the mind of reason. The Bible is, second, a book of fact. For more than 200 years, generations of scholars have critically studied the 66 books of the Bible. We have learned a great deal about its languages, history, geography. We have seen the four different hands at work in the writing of the books of Moses. The Greek influences on Ecclesiastes we now appreciate. Isaiah’s three different modes we comprehend. Jesus meets us in these wondrous pages, and the few facts of his life of which we are certain we can list, as James Sanders did years ago. We know that Paul probably did not write 2 Thessalonians, any more than he wrote 3 Corinthians, a document from the third century. The Revelation to St John we now understand, if that is the right word, in the context of similar apocalypses from antiquity. The withering inspection and criticism of the Scripture since 1750 have borne fruit. Law, Prophets, Writings, Gospels, Letters, Apocalypse: all six parts of the Bible have factual features. We have searched the Scriptures for 200 years. Here Paul names names: two women, one man, many co-workers. Facts. Earliest Christians. Facts endure. He
re Paul discloses his worldview: time is short, the end is near, the day is at hand, as Dave Brubek would put it: ‘it’s later than you think’. Or, in verse: “The Lord is near”. It is a fact that Paul’s worldview is not our own. But his world is, and that too is a fact.

In fact, the factual limitations of the Scriptures have been the primary learning of this period. The world was not created in 7 days, unless by 7 days you mean 15 billion years. The human being was not made in a day, unless you mean by a day, the emergence out of primordial ooze that began 3 billion years ago, and is still continuing today. The words of Moses and of Jesus are not video recordings of speeches captured by unerring scribes, but are far more—words formed in the community of faith. Most famously, the scientific--religious showdown of the 20^th century was captured early on in the Scopes trial of 1925. We remember or misremember the trial largely through the play Inherit the Wind which itself was more theologically than historically accurate. William Jennings Bryant was not the buffoon caricature of that fine play, nor was his enemy Darwinism as much as it was Social Darwinism, nor was the generally insipid cast of old time religion anything like accurate with regard to golden rule Christianity, then or now. Bryant is made to say, “I am more interested in the Rock of Ages than in the ages of rocks”, and is pilloried by the protagonist, Clarence Darrow: “the Bible is a book, a good book, but not the only book”. In the matter of fact, the Bible carries a more limited weight and role in our time.

But science, and its measured facts alone, can only carry a part of the sacred story. As Justice Holmes said, science gives major answers to minor questions. Religion gives minor answers to major questions. Science alone—as wonderful as it is—does not cross the bridge from fact to value, cannot swim the river from flesh to spirit, has not forded the creek from brain to mind, and cannot judge about the things that matter most—love, death, memory, hope, thought, desire, heaven and God. To the one most important question of life, God, science has no response. Because there is no conclusive evidence. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (H Smith). Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence…

Fairness

Stop by the woods. Look West. We hear the Bible with the ears of fairness. The Bible is, third, a hymn to fairness. To justice, equality, the right and the good. In our time, African Americans and others have found again the liberating power of the Hebrew Scriptures, of Exodus and Amos. The suffering masses of Latin America and Asia have returned to, and been nourished by, the abiding picture of God in the Bible, God who has a preferential option for the poor. Most lastingly, the feminist movement has found in the pages of the patriarchal Bible, a warning about justice, justice delayed, and justice denied. The deep rivers of fairness and justice have been diverted to flow over the dry land of prejudice, injustice, and patriarchy. The Bible is a testament, on this view, to fairness. What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God? It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. So, the Bible is a resource for liberation movements of many and good kinds, and the record of the churches in peace and justice is improved. Here in Philippians Paul asks for unity and peace. For fairness. He exposes his reliance on the kindness of strangers and the company of women. Paul had great regard for his partners in the Gospel, Eudaia and Syntyche, whatever he may have written elsewhere about liturgical proprieties. “I urge Eudaia and Syntyche to be of the same mind…help these women for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel”. Beside. Not beneath. Not behind. Not before. Beside.

It is difficult to overestimate the crucial significance of this perspective on the Scripture. Real religion is never very far from fairness, from justice. Fairness does not always mean equality, nor justice always similarity. There are varieties of gifts. But the renderings of Moses, the citations of Micah, the meditations on Job, the pictures of Jesus, the readings of Paul and even the explorations of the Apocalypse which in our time have focused on fairness, and justice, have a penultimate power. “The moral arm of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice”, said Martin Luther King. None of us fully ever deconstructs our own background, our own culture. We need, however, the whiter and maler and straighter especially that we are, to acknowledge our own privileges. The sense of limitation and injustice to which the Biblical measure of fairness responds is the gift of our time to the unforeseen future. Still, fairness alone is not the full Bible.

Will we see the Bible in our time, in full, through these lenses of faith, fact, and fairness? No, important and good as these views are, they are not the heart of the matter. They are not the heart of the Bible nor the heart of the church nor the heart of the matter. They are good, but not the final good. You will sense in them the predominant views of the Bible to date—pre-modern, modern, post-modern, or, traditional, scientific and liberal. Faith: the traditional view. Fact: the scientific view. Fairness: the liberal view. Let me show you a still more excellent way….

Future

Stop by the woods. Look North. Follow the drinking gourd. The Bible is preeminently more than faith alone, fact preserved, or fairness defended. The Bible is a survey of freedom, divine and human. In a word, the Bible is a book about freedom. God’s freeing love, and our freedom in love. God is loving us into love and freeing us into freedom. God’s way with us is loving and free, free and loving. You cannot coerce another into freedom, and you cannot frighten another into love. BUT NOTE THIS WELL: this freedom is mostly known as hope—hope for this earth and hope for eternal life, the future of freedom promised today.

Strangely, then, the Bible is fully and precisely the word we need in our emerging 21^st century.

This is the heart of what Paul writes to the Philippians. Yes, with pre-modernity, his words celebrate faith. Yes, with modernity his words carry fact. Yes, with post-modernity, his words seek fairness. But if that is all you have heard, you have missed the marrow of his meaning. Paul is s
inging here, a song of freedom. With the best insights in all of Scripture, these words of his carry us out into the open space of God’s future. Rejoice always…no anxiety about anything…whatsoever things are true…the Lord is near…Here is the radiance of resurrection, the freedom for which Christ has set us free. To the word of faith, Paul will say, yes, but work out your own salvation in fear and trembling. To the word of fact Paul will say, yes, but who hopes for what he sees. To the word of fairness, Paul will say, yes, but I know how to be abased and how to abound. The Bible is more than a source of inspiration, or of information or of insurrection. It is all those. But it is more. It is hope for the future! It is a survey of freedom, real freedom, the freedom from love and the freedom to love. The future holds an indestructible promise of freedom—of peace and joy in this life and of everlasting peace and joy in the life to come.

It has the shocking temerity to recall for us our utter dependence on God and one another, our utter similarity before the cross, before death, before God. Personal faith, yes. Factual understanding, yes. The struggle for fairness, yes. But there is more. Our age has the chance to interpret the Bible in full, as a survey of freedom, divine and human. It is this shared gift of freedom that will deliver us from the evil of this age. We are free, and in the hands of the God of freedom. All of us. The same. In our time, we need, desperately need, to reclaim our religious commonality. Across this small planet, we are all more alike than we are different. And spare us, please, as Freud said, “the petty narcissism of small differences”.

We all survive the birth canal, and so have a native survivors’ guilt. All six billion.

We all need daily two things, bread and a name. (One does not live by bread alone). All six billion.

We all grow to a point of separation, a leaving home, a second identity. All six billion.

We all love our families, love our children, love our homes, love our grandchildren. All six billion.

We all age, and after forty, its maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. All six billion.

We all shuffle off this mortal coil en route to that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns. All six billion.

Ringing out—it is unmistakable in this text and on this morning and within this sanctuary—from the heart of the Bible is a transcendent hope of a future freedom, on earth as it is in heaven, but not for all that lacking in heaven. The transcendent beauty of this nave, the transcendent glory of this sanctuary, the transcendent loveliness of this music, the transcendent history of this congregation, the transcendent height of pulpit and depth of prayer here, hold a future freedom that will endure well beyond the days that all the bongo drums are in garage sales, and all the horizontal worship spaces have been reconverted to Wal-Mart’s.

This hope is for earth and for heaven. For a day when the lion will lay down with the lamb, and lamb will be able to sleep. Asbury First, this year, in a time of change, we truly need the Bible’s perspective, its survey of freedom. We need its steady affirmation of faith, to steady us when we are anxious. We need its craggy collections of facts, when we might be tempted to avoid the harder facts. We need its preference for fairness, when we might be happier to take an easier, less far route. It will take faith, fact, fairness and more for us to prevail in this year. And more. We have no words really with which to name this. But the survey of freedom that is the Bible rests on resurrection. On a reliable future. You sing your courage and confidence:

And thou our sister gentle death

Waiting to hush our latest breath

Alleluia! Alleluia!

Thou leadest home the child of God

And Christ our Lord the way has trod

O praise ye

O praise ye

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Coda

Howard Thurman could have spent his whole ministry absorbed in the inherited expressions of faith. He chose to move forward instead. He could have spent his whole ministry engaged in the science of history and psychology. He looked farther out. He could have spent his whole ministry upon the vital issue of racial justice. He saw a farther horizon. He saw, knew, felt, and heard the Bible as a survey of freedom. One night he spent walking the beach, wading in the surf, and listening to the stars above in a cloudless canopy. He wrote,

“The ocean and the night together surrounded my little life with a reassurance that could not be affronted by the behavior of human beings,” wrote Thurman. “The ocean at night gave me a sense of timelessness, of existing beyond the reach of the ebb and flow of circumstances. Death would be a minor thing, I felt, in the sweep of that natural embrace.”

posted in Frostiana: Poetry & Preaching, Uncategorized on 10.29.2006 at 11:00 am