Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

For the last two weeks I have been preaching on how the Church should handle passionate and divisive conflicts among Christians about moral issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and the war in Iraq. Other religious communities also struggle with such conflicts. Last week I talked about the appeal to scripture in the conflict over homosexuality and argued that the very few mentions of homosexual acts in the Bible reflect cultural assumptions about dominance and subservience between men and women that themselves are wrong and that should be corrected by the Christian gospel. Unfortunately, because of a technical difficulty with our phone line, last week’s service was not broadcast; copies of that sermon can be obtained from the Marsh Chapel office or from our website. This morning I want to consider other arguments about homosexuality that do not have to do particularly with Biblical references.

Homosexuality is usually claimed to be unnatural by those who oppose it, and this claim is often a very deeply held emotional conviction, a gut feeling. Most hold this conviction because they have been taught it. When we ask whether it is justified, however, the first question has to be what is meant by “unnatural?” Perhaps one or more of several things, and the Church needs to sort them out. The biblical discussion last week considered the case that social custom dictates that all sexual relations should be of dominant over submissive partners and that men should be dominant and women submissive. In this case male homosexuality is “unnatural” because one partner needs to assume a submissive role, and female homosexuality would require one to assume a dominant role. If, to the contrary, the social custom emphasizes equality and reciprocity instead of a hierarchy of dominance, homosexual relations would not be unnatural in this sense. In many parts of the Western world, we have in fact substituted suppositions of equality and reciprocity for the ancient world’s hierarchical assumptions, and often have written them into law.

But same-sex desire might be unnatural in a deeper biological sense. Many in the ancient world believed that each thing has its own purpose or final cause, as Aristotle put it (though not everyone expressed the view as carefully as Aristotle). The sole purpose of sex, according to many of the ancients and some of our contemporaries, is procreation. They say that any use of sex for purposes other than procreation is unnatural because contrary to its purpose. Following this line, many Christians have condemned contraception and solitary sex, as well as gay and lesbian sex. Aristotle and the other philosophers who believed procreation is the purpose of sex saw it in the larger picture of the continuity of the species.

Contemporary biologists agree, of course, that sexual behavior is necessary for the continuity of the species, but with a significant shift from ancient thinking. We now understand sex and continuity in terms of populations, not individuals. A given group or population needs sufficient new births to fill its ecological and social niche. When the niche expands or a disaster decimates the population, more children are needed, and in hard times the birth rate needs to go down. Within a population, however, not everyone, or every couple, needs to have children, so long as the group as a whole produces enough children for its niche. So whereas the ancient world put a terrible onus on barren women, we do not, so long as the population has enough fertile women for an appropriate birth rate. Moreover, not every sexual act of a couple that wants children and can have them needs to be potentially fertile, only enough so as to have their children. Hence contraception might well be used to time the birth of children by a couple who wants to have many. It is not biologically unnatural for some people never to marry or have procreative sex. By the same token it is not unnatural in the modern biological sense for some people to be homosexual and to have sex that is never procreative so long as others in the population reproduce so as to fill the niche. Non-reproductive sexual impulses, including same-sex ones, have a biologically natural place in a larger reproductive population. Christians who believe homosexuality is contrary to biological nature need to come to terms with the modern definition of nature in population biology.

If not biologically unnatural, homosexuality might be culturally unnatural, as so many people argue, perhaps not distinguishing this from biological nature. Societies organize themselves into families, and families are intergenerational. The natural cultural expectation is that one’s children will have children. Some of the deepest opponents of homosexuality I know argue from bitterness about the fact their children will not give them grandchildren. To fit into organized society by living out an intergenerational family seems natural. That’s how ordinary life defines itself for most people. The pull of intergenerational social roles is so great that many gay and lesbian couples want to serve as parents and do so by adoption, artificial insemination, or temporary heterosexual liaisons, perhaps even marriages. Gay and lesbian couples sometimes become parents in part to satisfy their own parents’ longing for grandchildren.

That intergenerational family life is a culturally natural way to live does not mean, however, that it is the only culturally natural way to live. I know of no society in which everyone gets married to have children. When Jesus defined marriage as a man leaving his family to become one flesh with his wife there was no mention of children. Most societies have celibate social roles, and also roles for sexual life without or apart from marriage. Many heterosexual couples marry who do not have children, for one reason or another, and there are natural places in our society for couples like that. Why are there not natural places in our society for gay and lesbian people to live together as couples or in other social arrangements? There is no reason, so long as those social places do not inhibit the general welfare and richness of society. Why should we not enrich social diversity with social roles that fulfill the happiness of gay and lesbian people?

The moral weight of some social roles such as marriage, is more complex than I have indicated so far here, and next week I shall talk about the normative ritual character of social roles in connection with marriage.

Some people object to homosexual life, or life-styles, on moral grounds. They complain about pornography, violent abuse, pedophilia, shallow promiscuity, or sex acts that seem gross to them. Surely many issues of sexual behavior have important moral dimensions, but they apply equally to heterosexual and homosexual behavior. By far the most pornography, abuse, pedophilia, and promiscuity is heterosexual. Like heterosexual behavior, homosexual behavior can be immoral, degraded, and in deep need of amendment and redemption, not because of its sexual orientation but because of how that orientation is lived out. As to sex acts that seem gross to some people, they do not seem gross to those who find fulfillment in them.

In sum, whereas I argued last week that the Bible does not warrant believing homosexuality to be intrinsically sinful or immoral, I’ve argued now that is it not sinful or immoral because it is biologically unnatural or because societies ought to regard it as culturally unnatural. Gay and lesbian people might be thieves and murderers, disrespectful to parents and abusive of partners, lazy, gluttonous, drunkards, prideful, deceitful, and ready to use sex for demeaning and selfish purposes, just like straight people. From thes
e vices they and everyone else need redemption. But gay and lesbian people should feel no guilt at all for their same-sex desire as such, I believe. They are no less creatures of God in their sexuality than those with other-sex desire, and both together can contribute to the flourishing of the human community.

The Christian Church, like most other religions, has inculcated guilt and self-hate into gay and lesbian people and that has been a grievous mistake. As the Church should apologize for its complicity to those who have been enslaved because the Bible endorses slavery, and to women because the Bible endorses their humiliating subordination to men, so it should apologize to gay and lesbian people whom it has demeaned on mistaken biblical and philosophic grounds. Thank God, through such contrition the Church still can carry on God’s work of redemption.

Now I’m sorry that the clarity of this conclusion cannot stand by itself. Giving recognition, respect, freedom, power, and support to gay and lesbian people is not the only value to which we must attend, however important and overdue it is. Many competing values also exist, for harmony in families, the Church, and society, that are threatened by a challenge to the cultural assumption that homosexuality is sinful. The values having to do with social harmony are extremely complicated and I shall address some of them next week in talking about marriage. So long as many people believe that homosexuality is sinful, and do so out of deep convictions lodged in the assumptions through which they see the world, any challenge to that stigmatization of gays and lesbians threatens family, Church, and social order. For all their insistence that their lives are lived now and that they cannot wait generations for cultural change, many gay and lesbian people themselves are deeply pained by the hurt their sexual identity causes their families, and to a lesser extent perhaps their church and community. To know that your parents are disgraced, embarrassed and shamed by your socially stigmatized sexual identity causes double disgrace, embarrassment and shame, as well as anger, pity, and potential alienation. Because they love their families, churches, and communities, or would like to, most gay and lesbian people, like straight people who agree with their cause, know the social problem is to keep the faith with what is right while tolerating the compromises of a slow rate of cultural change toward holiness.

How slow? When I was a child growing up in St. Louis, my father tried to explain the racial prejudice that produced segregated water fountains and toilets in public places. When he was growing up, he said, everyone just knew that left-handedness was the sign of a deformed character, and in his grade school the left-handed children had their left arm tied down so that they had to use the right hand for writing. In the modern 1940s and 50s of my grammar school education, we knew that to be a false, silly, and harmful prejudice. Many of my classmates and their parents, however, had an equally false, silly, and harmful prejudice about the inferiority of African Americans, or rather about the superiority of white people that was so easily contaminated by intimate contact, as my father put it. He told me that within my lifetime, the racial prejudice that made the sharing of drinking fountains and toilets seem unspeakably gross to my white friends would fall away, and he was right. Were he alive today my father would say that within the lifetime of our college students the prejudice against gay and lesbian people will fall away, not completely, of course, any more than racism is completely gone, but to a very large degree. We see that happening as more people come to know “out” gays and lesbians, especially within their own family and intimate communities. As Christians concerned with the moral right for gays and lesbians on the one hand and for holiness for the whole people of God on the other, we pray that the changes in false cultural assumptions and unjust social arrangements come soon.

But we also pray that the rights and pains of those who are still convinced that homosexuality is sinful, with their personal and communal identity depending on that conviction, genuinely be respected and loved. Only in this way can the Church respect the depth of this moral conflict.

While we are waiting for this New Jerusalem to come down out of heaven, however long the wait, we should acknowledge that gay and lesbian people have been forced to live in the Church, and elsewhere, as if under a shroud. They have had either to leave the table or to deny that they are fully alive as sexual beings. Now is the time to proclaim to them the redeeming word of God. If you will pardon the pun, which I fully intend, John’s Jesus “cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’” Isaiah said, “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.” Behold, the feast of the Lord. Amen.

posted in Uncategorized on 11.2.2003 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Last Sunday I spoke about divisive moral conflicts that have serious religious dimensions, mentioning for purposes of illustration the issues about abortion, homosexuality, and the war in Iraq. Christians of good faith are in deep conflict with one another about these and other issues, and I argued that the conflicts should be addressed within the Church. Christians need to hold their divisive passions in check and work through the issues together. A university pulpit such as this one at Marsh Chapel has a special obligation to provide analysis and guidance.

Today I want to consider the role of scripture in such deep moral conflicts because scripture is the first authority for Christian discussion. Although in a reflective sense the Bible bears upon all moral conflicts in ways mediated by traditions of analysis, the Bible does not directly address abortion or the war in Iraq. So I will discuss the biblical background of homosexuality as our test case, and next week will discuss non-biblical aspects of conflicts about homosexuality within church debates.

To discuss homosexuality from the pulpit is dangerous. Although I will treat no topic half so risqué or violent as the standard fare on evening network television, we should note that in a University Church there are few if any small children who might be confused or offended; any small children glued to the radio for morning worship have this preacher’s permission to go play elsewhere and return when they hear the next hymn.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah was long taken to be the definitive condemnation of homosexuality. (The Bible speaks only of homosexual acts, never of homosexuality as a lifestyle or orientation.) The Sodom text is Genesis 19, and it is printed in the bulletin insert. You will remember that Abraham’s nephew Lot was visited in Sodom by two angels who looked like men. All the men of the town, young and old, gathered outside Lot’s house and demanded that the angels be sent out to them to be raped. Lot offered his two virgin daughters instead. When the townsmen started to break down the door the angels struck them blind and led Lot and his family out of town while God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone. In time, the name Sodomy became synonymous with homosexual and some disapproved heterosexual acts, but that time, surprisingly, was not until the European middle ages, about the tenth century. I commend to you a book by the scholar Mark D. Jordan called The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1997, for a documentary history of how the story of Sodom and Gomorrah came to be associated with homosexuality. In biblical times and long afterward it was associated instead with a brutal violation of hospitality. Raping a person under the hospitality protection of a town-member was about as bad as inhospitality could get. A parallel to the Sodom story, similar in language and plot, is in Judges 19 according to which a visitor to Gibeah was taken in by a townsman, the men of the town demanded he be sent out to be raped, his concubine was sent out instead, and she was raped to death, leading to a disastrous war. In those days, hospitality was valued so high, and women’s lives so low, that protecting one’s guest, even when a stranger, was worth sacrificing women you love. Westerners do not share that balance of values now. That the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was taken in biblical times to be about violations of hospitality is confirmed by Matthew 10:5-15, also on your insert, in which Jesus says it will be worse in the last judgment for the towns that are inhospitable to his disciples than for Sodom and Gomorrah.

Let me remark here on an important point for biblical understanding. The authors of the biblical books shared with their intended readers a particular imaginative background or context in which what they wrote made sense. This imaginative background contained cultural assumptions, such as the high premium put on hospitality, the low premium put on women, and the acceptability of slavery. It also contained scientific assumptions, such as that if you go up far enough you get to heaven and that there is a world of angels and spirits to which we have access. Most of us in the West now have a vastly different imaginative background from that of biblical times, especially regarding matters such as physical cosmology, the spirit world, slavery, the role of women, and even hospitality. Many contemporary Christians in Africa engage the world with an imaginative background rather like that of biblical times, sharing assumptions about spirits and women, for instance. For them there is little cognitive and emotional dissonance over such matters. Most of us Westerners, however, feel sharp cognitive and emotional dissonance with much of the ancient imaginative background. We always have to distinguish the religiously binding truth in scriptures from the cultural and scientific assumptions in the ancient imagination that we reject, for good reasons. We need to work around elements in that imagination to which we believe our own moral and intellectual world is superior, say, about slavery as an evil, the equality of women, and scientific cosmology. We can dismiss the biblical readiness to sacrifice women in order to protect the honor of hospitality as deriving from a cultural assumption that we reject. The contemporary Islamic societies that sacrifice women for honor strike us with horror. How shall we read what the Bible says condemning homosexuality? Does it come from mere cultural assumptions that we rightly reject? Or is it religiously authoritative?

The book of Leviticus is clear in condemning homosexual acts. Chapter 20 repeats and expands upon a list in chapter 18, saying you should not lie with a male as with a woman in a long agenda of proscribed acts having to do with adultery, incest, bestiality, child sacrifice, sex during menstruation, witchcraft, and cursing one’s father or mother. Scholars know this list as the “Holiness Code.” Death is the punishment for adultery, child sacrifice, cursing father or mother, incest with mother-in-law or daughter-in-law, bestiality, and lying with a man as with a woman. Banishment or barrenness are the punishments for the other forms of incest, sleeping with a menstruating woman, and using mediums or wizards. All the laws are directed at men even when women are involved in the proscribed behavior and are punished. Women were not regarded as sufficiently important moral agents to be addressed in law.

Does anyone today accept the Holiness Code fully and literally? Few of us would put to death people for the acts Leviticus proscribes. The violent gay-bashers who kill people such as Matthew Shepard do follow the biblical commandment to put to death men who lie with men as with women; nevertheless such gay bashers are regarded in the United States as murderers. That we reject or seriously modify the biblical approach to punishment means we do not follow a purely biblical rule for morals, and that we already make discerning judgments about what to accept. We in the West do not believe in witches and would be very slow to believe that cursing parents deserves the death penalty. Concerning the proscription of lying with a man as with a woman, should we liken that to child sacrifice, which we condemn, or to consulting mediums or making love during menstruation, which we do not?

Turning to the New Testament, no mention of homosexuality or homosexual acts is ascribed to Jesus, although he repeatedly condemns adultery, divorce, greed, and other sins. No author in the New Testament except Paul mentions homosexuality unless the author of 1Timothy is someone other than Paul, which probably is t
he case. In 1 Corinthians Paul clearly lists homosexuals in what scholars call a “vice list” along with fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, and robbers. In 1 Timothy the list includes the lawless, disobedient, godless, sinful, unholy, profane, those who kill parents, murderers, fornicators, slave traders, liars, and perjurers. You have the texts in your insert. The word used in both 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy for homosexuals is arsenokoitai, which is a rough Greek translation of “lying with a man as with a woman.” 1 Corinthians uses an additional word, malokoi, which means “soft” and probably referred to the passive, perhaps younger partner. Paul has other vice lists that do not include any reference to homosexual acts or desire (Galatians 5:19-21; 1Cor. 5:10-11; Romans 13:13).

In Romans 1, which the only biblical mention of homosexuality as more than an item in a list, Paul says that all nations know that God is creator, but that people suppress that knowledge with idolatry, become confused by sin, and “exchange natural intercourse for unnatural,” women with women and men with men. This is the only mention of female homosexuality in the Bible. Scholars have debated what “natural” and “unnatural” meant in Paul’s world, based on Greek philosophy that I will discuss next week. Part of what is meant is the hierarchical ordering of things Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 11, also in your insert. God is the head of Christ, “Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife.” (11:3) A man is the image and reflection of God, and woman is the reflection of man. “Indeed, man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man.” (11:7-9) In Paul’s culture, although not all Hellenistic culture, sexual relations reflected those hierarchical relations between the sexes. Sexuality was conceived always to have dominant and submissive partners. It was natural for a man to dominate a woman, but unnatural to dominate a man who was supposed to be his equal. A sexually passive man is unnatural because men are supposed to dominate in sex. Similarly with women, the active sexual partner is unnatural because women are supposed to be sexually dominated. It is not the case today, I should note, that homosexual, or even heterosexual, relations always have dominant and submissive partners.

In many parts of the world the hierarchical dominance of men over women, in sex as in other matters, is enthusiastically asserted, often on these or other biblical grounds. Some traditional Asian, African and Islamic societies are close to this biblical tradition. For most Americans, however, that dominance relation has been successfully challenged by an ethics of equality and reciprocity that largely has been written into law. Although feminists might claim that true equality is yet to be achieved, our current American customs and law are very far from the oppressive biblical model. Most liberal, moderate, and even conservative Christians reject the extreme cultural model of male dominance and female subservience expressed in Paul’s writings. Even Paul qualifies his own hierarchy by saying, in our 1 Corinthians text in your insert, that men and women are mutually dependent and that really both come from God. He says in Galatians 3 that gender differences like ethnic and slavery differences make no difference for those in Christ. The gospels are filled with stories of Jesus treating women as equal to men in deserving respect and attention. The dominance hierarchical model is in strong conflict with the model of reciprocal love already present in the Bible, which applies to sexual love as well as friendship and social roles. To the extent that Paul regarded homosexual acts as unnatural because they perverted the so-called “natural” hierarchical dominance relations between men and women, that sense of unnaturalness is to be set in opposition to the biblical ideal of being one in Christ and friends among whom true leadership or dominance is a matter of service. Whereas hierarchical dominance might be natural in the sense of being the customary way, that cultural assumption was criticized and rejected, however unevenly, by the biblical ideal of the unified community of God’s children.

The few biblical references to homosexuality need to be understood as part of a larger cultural imagination defining the relative roles of men and women in a dominant relation that includes sex as well as other matters. Our contemporary Christian brothers and sisters (Islamic as well) who share some of those assumptions of male dominance are likely to share the Levitical and Pauline condemnation of homosexuality as unnatural to the hierarchy. I count myself among those who reject that part of the imaginative background of the ancient world and find it troubling in contemporary society anywhere in the world. The women’s movement has introduced a reformation to the Christian church far more profound than the Protestant Reformation that we also commemorate today. The women’s movement is global and all religious cultures are feeling its effects. It is the only element of moral progress in civilization that matches the scientific progress of the last several centuries.

Not everyone agrees, of course, with the ideals of equality and reciprocity among men and women, and the argument in that respect must take into account many considerations other than biblical ones. With regard to the Bible, however, I believe that the liberating gospel itself is so central to the great drama of creation and redemption that it thoroughly trumps the cultural assumptions of hierarchy. With that, the Levitical and Pauline condemnation of homosexuality as unnatural, because it confuses the hierarchy, falls to the ground. The explicit condemnations of homosexual acts in the Bible stem from a hierarchical culture that denigrates women and forces all people into relations of dominance and passivity. That culture is incompatible with the larger themes of the Christian gospel. Therefore I see the explicit biblical condemnations of homosexuality as merely reflective of a culture against which the Church should witness, and as non-binding in any authoritative way on our current moral reflections, unless extra-biblical considerations prove the contrary, a topic for next week.

Let me close by reminding us of the larger scale of the Christian gospel, the grand story of creation and redemption. Created with the infinite bounties of God’s grace, we are rich beyond measure and yet have let ourselves be estranged from God. This estrangement affects everything we are and do, including our sexuality. Our redemption in Christ, for which God be praised, allows us to overcome estrangement and, in sanctification, redeems our lives in all aspects that can be corrupted. Is homosexuality nothing but the corruption of heterosexuality, as Leviticus and Paul can be read to say, and therefore to be given up as part of redemption? Or is it a form of sexuality subject to alienation but also capable of being redeemed, and therefore to be lived out in a holy way by those whose impulses are for same-sex love? The scriptural case for the former is ruined by its connection with the corrupted hierarchical dominance model of human relations. The scriptural case for the latter celebrates the goodness of creation and the sanctifying grace of redemption.

Redemption also means, however, engaging with love and respect those Christians who share the ancient world’s assumptions about hierarchical dominance and persuading them that those assumptions are counter to the central trajectory of the gospel. If my conviction is mistaken, it is the obligation of those who oppose it to engage those of us who hold it and persuade us lovingly of the error. That would be the way to engage moral conflict within the Body of Christ. Amen.

posted in Uncategorized on 10.26.2003 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

We at Marsh Chapel extend a special welcome to all our guests who are at Boston University this Parents’ Weekend for Homecoming. College years are probably the most vivid memories we have. They are usually the first big break from home, we make new friends in large numbers all at once, we encounter a range of culture unimaginable from the perspective of high school, and we are forced to discover who we are, or rather, to balance discovery with making the choices that constitute who we are. We come to college as the products of our background and we leave with the responsibility to contribute to the background in which we and others will live. In college we learn to take responsibility for what we stand for and for the communities and causes with which we affiliate. So I hope that all of you participating in homecoming remember the good times with vivid clarity and that you have turned the bad times into fables that no one will believe, including yourselves. You parents watching your children, note how awesome their experience here is. Welcome home.

The gospel this morning contains the line made famous by the popular hymn, “Are Ye Able,” written here at Boston University in 1926 by Earl Marlatt who subsequently became dean of the School of Theology. We’ll sing it in a few minutes. Marlatt’s verse begins, “’Are ye able’ said the Master, ‘to be crucified with me?’ ‘Yea,’ the sturdy dreamers answered, ‘to the death we follow thee.’ Lord, we are able. Our spirits are thine. Remold them, make us, like thee, divine. Thy guiding radiance above us shall be a beacon to God, to love, and loyalty.” Marlatt’s hymn is straightforward Wesleyan theology, which does not always agree with the Reformation emphasis on divine initiative alone. Wesley held that although God’s grace saves us we have to receive it, and in receiving it we have the responsibility for sanctification. For Wesley, if not for Luther and Calvin, salvation has to transform actual character. Marlatt sang “Our spirits are thine. Remold them, make us, like thee, divine.” That’s a clarion plea for holiness that centers our faith through times of trouble.

Mark’s gospel is subtler than Marlatt’s hymn, which indicates the complexity of the passage only by calling Jesus’ interlocutors “sturdy dreamers.” In the gospel story, James and John, who are identified as the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus in private with an adolescent request. In Matthew’s account of the story, it was not James and John themselves, but their mother, who made the request. I would guess from this that they were very young disciples, perhaps college age, perhaps a freshmen and sophomore repesctively, identified by their father’s name and spoken for by their mother. In Mark’s account the boys first asked Jesus to promise to do for them whatever they asked. Jesus sidestepped that and asked what they wanted. They answered that they wanted to sit on his right hand and left when he reigned in glory. How presumptious! Perhaps both were sophomores. They surely were dreamers!

In a sermon on Jesus as friend, Professor Wesley Wildman of our School of Theology has pointed out how gently Jesus responded to them, not ridiculing their dreams nor rebuking them with a lecture about servant ministry as he later did the other, presumably older, disciples when they had a jealous fit about James and John. Rather, Jesus gently told them they did not know what they were asking. He asked whether they were able to drink the cup he would drink and be baptized with his baptism. By the “cup” he meant his destiny to be crucified; later in the Garden of Gethsemane he prayed that this cup would pass from him, but affirmed the courage to drink it if it were his true destiny. By his baptism he meant following his Way, what would later be called the Christian Way, which was subject to much persecution. Mark’s gospel was written about forty years after the crucifixion in the midst of Roman persecution, and his readers would know what those expressions meant, but the boys did not have a clue. As sturdy dreamers, they answered, “We are able!” Jesus must have sighed at the innocence of these young disciples he loved. He told them only that it was not his right to grant who was to sit at his right hand and left.

Mark pictures Jesus as a lonely man, surrounded by enthusiastic followers who do not understand the horror to come or why that has to be borne. Peter had proclaimed him the Messiah and then rebuked Jesus for gloomy talk about persecution, death, and resurrection; Jesus responded, “Get behind me Satan.” Young James and John had no better understanding.

The fate of the disciples, in fact, was to drink Jesus’ cup of suffering and to be baptized with his Way that brought persecution. According to Acts, James was killed by Herod Agrippa in a great persecution of the church. Tradition has it that John, who was identified as the Beloved Disciple, escaped with his life to live to a very old age on the island of Patmos, writing his gospel and the letters bearing his name. However romantic and innocent their sturdy dream that they were able to follow Jesus, in point of fact they were able. And through the vicissitudes and persecutions of the church they, like Jesus, were made perfect through suffering, to use the phrase from the Letter to the Hebrews.

For ourselves, the situation seems to be dangerously similar. Christians don’t have Romans out to persecute them these days, although Christians in many parts of the world do practice their faith in jeopardy of their lives. The specific danger I have in mind, however, is moral conflict that has the power to distort, pervert, and ultimately ruin Christian faith and practice. By moral conflict I mean issues on which good Christians take opposite sides, issues so identified with the heart of their faith that the intense passion of loving God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and their neighbors as themselves—that passion gets transferred to their moral stand. Transferring infinite religious passion to moral stands is dangerous. Consider three examples, out of the dozens that could be called to mind.

Abortion is a moral conflict so old to Americans that it has been reduced to slogans, pro life versus pro choice. How could such a complicated issue be reduced to slogans? It raises questions about the role of law in regulating medicine, about the morals of medical practice, about communal responsibility for the care for families and for people born without families, about the institutions and various conditions of marriage, as well as the obvious questions of freedom and self-determination, the definition of human life, the claims of human life on legal and social protections, and the responsibility of religion to think through such complex issues and to protect the weak.

The important thing to notice is that the issue is one of balancing competing values. Even the slogans, pro life and pro choice, show that the moral conflict is over how to balance values that nearly all people share. Who could be against protecting prenatal children? Who could be against women’s rights to determine how their bodies are to be used? Yet instead of approaching the abortion debate with humility, fear, and trembling at its complexity, often Christians leap to choose crude sides with demonic passion.

The second example is homosexuality, conflict over which has reached the Supreme Court of the United States. Moral conflicts in politics have centered on anti-discrimination protections and legal rights of homosexual partners likened to marriage; this fall the highest state court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will decide on the legality of gay marriage. Reli
gious denominations, especially the Protestant Christian ones, nearly all are in desperate conflict over a number of issues concerning homosexuality. The most recent is the response of Episcopalians to the denomination’s election and confirmation of a gay bishop in neighboring New Hampshire. Again, the moral conflict is a matter of balancing values that are nearly universally held. Who can be against the right of gay and lesbian people to fulfillment and happiness? Who can be against social responsibility for the moral structures of such institutions as marriage and ministry? Passions in the moral conflicts about homosexuality are so high that surely more than sexual ethics is involved. It seems a matter of religious identity.

The third example is the series of moral conflicts that have arisen in connection with the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. While seemingly topical issues raised by events such as 9/11, the conflicts have raised to consciousness deep divisions about fundamental political values. What are the conditions that should be met to justify the United States becoming an aggressor nation as it has? Have they been met? Patriots on one side justify the use of overwhelming force by the righteousness of the cause. Patriots on the other side condemn the use of force because the cause is not righteous. These conflicts have not even begun to be articulated with the subtlety and complexity they obviously need. And yet Christians in good faith are divided against each other with holy passion.

Are we able to follow the Christian Way while we are persecuted by our own divisions on these and the many similar issues that divide Christians?

Two tempting strategies exist that I believe will lead to disaster. One is to treat religion as a private matter and refuse to address in church public issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and war and peace. In practice, this is what many Protestant pastors attempt to do, for the obvious reason of maintaining harmony within the community. The ongoing life of religious communities has many more values than just the resolution of these hot-button issues, and the cost of addressing them within the community is very high. Nevertheless, religion is not merely private, and when it deliberately blinkers itself against the issues about which people feel so passionately it makes itself irrelevant to the real religious issues.

The other disastrous but tempting strategy is for the church to address issues like these without a solid theological base, as if they were merely political or moral issues. Without its theology, Christianity has nothing in particular to offer to the resolution of deep moral conflicts. Many preachers, however, get so excited about taking a “prophetic” stand on moral issues that the self-righteous fact of their convictions pretends to excuse them from justifying the convictions. Yet surely, the convictions need to be justified with careful argument, with sensitivity to the ways people with conflicting convictions weigh values, and with humility based on the plain recognition that our judgments are fallible at best. Only careful theology can put the measuredness of moral analysis and judgment in ultimate perspective. The justifications need to be theological to address the reasons for putting infinite religious passions on moral convictions.

However much pastors would like to avoid conflict, the riveting moral conflicts of our time need to be brought into the church so that we can live them through with intelligence and love. A university pulpit such as this one—especially this one with its history of moral leadership—cannot escape the obligation to articulate, analyze, and offer guidance, with all humility, on the issues that shape our watch. I shall be preaching about these issues from time to time, beginning next Sunday with a reflection on how to read scripture when it offers support to more than one side in conflicts, using homosexuality as the test case.

I invite you into the arduous task of sustaining a congregation in the midst of deliberately addressed conflict. If you agree with my analyses and judgments, I hope you shall do so with arguments at least as complex as mine, and that you will share with us your better ones. If you disagree with me, I hope you take that as a special sign that you belong here to correct me and those whom I might mislead; to stay away in anger, or because of the pain of conflict, would be to fail the community. You are invited to the Sunday Theology Class that meets here at 9:30 to discuss the previous week’s sermon; let your voice be heard in addressing issues of importance. You can get a copy of the sermons from our webpage or by calling the Chapel office. I invite you into a theological conversation that will not run from divisive issues but will incorporate the process of dealing with divisions in pursuit of truth into the life of the community. This church should be one you can come home to in order to address the religiously weighted conflicts of our time, not a place that suggests you escape. As Jesus said, the Way leads to crucifixion, and to many in the Church these moral conflicts feel like that. Beyond the crucifixion, however, is the new life of resurrection. Like love in a family, love in the Christian community can bear up through the realities of conflict. Because this is Christ’s family, resurrection love calls us to the joy of being real when faced with conflict, staying in love with those with whom we struggle. A Christian community that embraces and works through conflict with brothers and sisters shines with the redeeming light of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Are we able to sustain the Christian Way when it engages the flesh and blood issues that command conflicting religious passions? I invite you to answer, We are able! Amen

posted in Uncategorized on 10.19.2003 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

The topic of today’s lectionary readings and of this sermon makes me extremely uncomfortable. I preach about it with reluctance and only because it would be worse to avoid it. The passage from Hebrews states the theme: “Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.”

The phrase, “the Word of God,” has many meanings in Jewish and Christian history. In Genesis, for instance, “the word of the Lord” came to Abraham and Moses, telling them to do something. Throughout the prophetic writings in the Hebrew Bible, “the word of the Lord” is what the prophets hear and then proclaim, and often it is of a critical nature regarding what the people are doing. In the New Testament the “word of the Lord” or “word of God” is used to describe the gospel, the content of Jesus’ preaching. In another sense of the phrase, the Gospel of John begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” After saying that the Word is the agent of creation, John goes on to say that the Word became flesh, and this is Jesus.

When the author of the book of Hebrews talks about the word of God, living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword, he does not mean the high metaphysical notion that John used, nor does he mean it to apply directly to Jesus. Rather he means something like the word of the prophets. Jesus’ treatment of the rich man is a case in point, as described in the text from Mark. Matthew’s version of the story says the man is young, and Luke’s says he is a ruler. The rich young ruler ran up to Jesus as Jesus was setting out on a journey, probably surrounded by his followers. Boasting of neither his wealth nor political power the young man knelt at Jesus’ feet and said, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He seemed a model of earnestness and humility. Jesus, alas, must have been in some kind of negative mood about himself because he snapped at the youth for calling him good, saying that no one is good except God alone. This is odd: the young man probably only meant “Good Teacher” as an honorific title to indicate that he thought Jesus would have good advice, and Jesus was rude. On other occasions Jesus claimed great importance for himself and his message, putting a high price on those who would follow him. At any rate, on this occasion Jesus dismissed the appeal for advice, telling the rich young ruler that he already knew the commandments. Jesus listed a few in an off-hand manner, probably still distracted by the need to get his entourage under way.

Then something dramatic happened. The young man said quietly that he had kept the commandments from his youth. Jesus looked at him suddenly, probably paying attention for the first time. If the young man had kept the commandments and still came asking how to inherit eternal life, he already knew that keeping the commandments is not enough. The young man knew that Jesus’ offhand response to his earnest question was not enough. And Jesus knew that he himself had given a wrong answer: keeping the commandments is not enough. In this way the word of God came to Jesus, piercing as if to divide his soul from spirit, joints from sinews. He knew that in this instance he had not been a Good Teacher and he was shocked out of his self-indulgent sulk.

Then what did Jesus do? Looking at the young man, he loved him. Why did he love that young man whom he had just met? Perhaps it was because, even with his wealth and authority, the young man was winsome, humble, and so very earnest about eternal life. Perhaps it was because the man was serious when Jesus had been dismissive. Perhaps it was because he unwittingly had become the teacher and Jesus the chastened student. Perhaps it was because Jesus was grateful for the ever-so-humble correction. Perhaps it was because love was what Jesus felt toward people to whom he paid serious attention. I think all of these factors were involved.

Looking at the young man with love, Jesus knew immediately what was wrong and what he needed to do. For all his genuine virtue, the young man had identified himself with his wealth and station, and needed to give them up. This diagnosis was confirmed in the youth’s response, which was to be shocked and to go away grieving. How Jesus must himself have grieved at that response! Jesus was by no means against wealth and he did not demand that all his friends follow him around; witness his friendship with Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and the household of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Those people were not in bondage to their wealth. The rich young ruler was. We do not know what happened to him subsequently. Perhaps he did sell his possessions and come back to follow Jesus. Perhaps he lived in denial of his bondage to wealth. Perhaps he knew Jesus was right and simply could not bring himself to act upon the truth. Perhaps in fact he was Joseph of Arimathea and developed a different relation to Jesus without disposing of his possessions. The point is that Jesus’ diagnosis and remedy was the word of God that cut him like a two-edged sword.

That sword hurts, does it not, when it cuts us? Most of us here or listening on the radio are rich in comparison with destitute people in the many hellholes of our planet. Like the young ruler we have more control over our lives than people do in many places, especially Afghanistan and Iraq, given recent events. The word of God points out our privilege and also our attachment, our identification with it.

Permit me a side comment here. If you feel guilty about your relative wealth, I have a wonderful suggestion: give generously to Marsh Chapel—practice tithing. We do good work here, and yet because we are a university church only a few people understand that we need support just like a parish church, with activities and ministries to fund and a building to keep in repair. Contributing to Marsh Chapel will do wonders for your guilt. I hope you are awash in guilt about your wealth.

Alas, however, salving guilt is not the same as abandoning attachments, like the rich young man’s, to the identity of being wealthy and powerful. What kept the man from eternal life was not his wealth, his authority, his virtue, or even his charity. It was that he let those things define him so that he was in bondage to having them. We too are often in bondage to wealth and power, and to many things besides. We need our jobs to give us identity, or our controlling roles in family, or our serving roles in community. Of course jobs are good, the exercise of authority in family nurture is good, and serving others is so good that many people believe it to be the essence of religion. Yet we all know people who pour out their lives in service to others for the sake of being recognized as doing so. We know people who go to church too often to display their piety, who send too many cards of condolence so as to be recognized as sympathetic. We all know people who use virtue for the sake of gaining importance in the eyes of others and in their own eyes, not for its own sake. We might be people who do that. Service should be invisible; piety should be inconspicuous, seen only by God, sympathy should be genuine and spontaneous. Charity should be for the sake of the need, not for the appearance of generosity. The word of God cuts especially sharply into the bones and sinews of good people, church people, the people who would run up to Jesus, kneel at his feet, and ask how to obtain eter
nal life.

The reason for the pain of the two-edged sword is that it makes us see ourselves suddenly in God’s ultimate perspective. The word of God tells us that how we appear to others does not matter ultimately. The word of God tells us that the fables we rehearse about ourselves to bolster our egos, about our virtues and our vices, about our successes and also about our troubles, do not matter ultimately. What matters is what we do and who we are in God’s eyes. If we possess wealth and exercise power for the sake of status rather than because of the good they can do, we cannot accept God’s perspective until the word of God cuts the bondage of attachment. If we perfect virtue and practice generous charity for the sake of the recognition it brings rather than their intrinsic worth, we cannot accept God’s perspective until the word of God cuts the bondage of attachment. By all means be economically productive and exercise responsible leadership. Perfect the virtues of humane living and don’t forget Marsh Chapel. But we should not be bound by these good things any more than we should be bound by sin. The sharp word of God is not only for the evil-doers and sinners, for the despairing and lost. It is for winsome people like the rich young ruler. And ourselves.

Jesus’ remedy for the rich young man was to ask him to become a follower, and to free himself up so that he could do that. The young man recognized his bondage when he realized how much it hurt to give himself to God, and grieved. As your preacher, I ask you to give yourself to God. We already belong to the Creator, and giving ourselves to God merely acknowledges that truth. That truth strips us naked of self-serving pretenses, but naked is how we come into the world and how we will leave. Does something hold you back? It might not be money or power; it might not be a need for reputation or anything I can imagine. You will know it when you hesitate. If you don’t understand it, you can find help in discernment, perhaps a lifelong process.

I don’t know what giving yourself to God means in your case. It might mean becoming morally serious for the first time, or truly committing yourself to your relationships, or abandoning a false patriotism, or finding more socially useful work, or giving up on feeling sorry for yourself. You can tell when you have given yourself to God because you love God’s creatures for just what they are, not for what they pretend to be or for what they do for your benefit. You take joy in praising God for the glories of creation and also for the troubles of your life, knowing that had the rich young man followed Jesus he would have arrived at the cross, not at social or political victory.

The rich young man knew right where to come to find the word of God for himself. God has graced the world with countless witnesses to the word. But the young man turned away from it and grieved his own bondage. Isn’t that our trouble too? When Jesus and his disciples discussed the young man later, Jesus said it is almost impossible for the rich to shed the baggage that keeps them from God. But then, he said, with God all things are possible. So I invite you to the throne of grace. Please leave behind your wealth and also your poverty. Leave your power and also your victimization. Leave your virtues and also your vice. Leave your good fortune and also your troubles. Leave your pleasures and also your suffering. Leave your successes and also your failures. Pray without baggage for a word of God that lets you see yourself as God sees you, however sharply that sword bites.

Jesus looked at the rich young man, and loved him. That is God’s regard for us. Can we accept that love which, like a two-edged sword, severs the truth about us from the pretences to which we are bound? With God, all things are possible. Amen

posted in Uncategorized on 10.12.2003 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

I grew up in a Midwestern Methodist Church that celebrated the Lord’s Supper because it had to, and only because of that. The Methodist rules in those days said each congregation had to serve communion once a quarter and most of the people in my church thought that was much too often. A great many stayed home on Communion Sundays because the service was too long, running over into the Sunday dinner hour. My parents used the excuse that my brother and I would fidget too much if we tried to sit through the service. Perhaps this was after he and I poured grape juice on each other from those little cups that were in vogue then.

The Eucharist, along with baptism, is a nearly universal sign of the unity of the Christian movement despite the diversity in how it is done. Christians of all kinds have celebrated some form of the Lord’s Supper in every culture since the beginning. The only exception I know is the Salvation Army which does not use that rite but considers every member to be part of the communion loaf. Some Christian communities celebrate the Eucharist daily, others weekly, monthly, or quarterly. The forms of the liturgy have varied greatly, as well as the languages used. The theologies explaining the Eucharist have also varied, and often been at odds with one another. Some Roman Catholics believe the elements are changed into the very blood and body of Jesus; some Protestants believe the service is just a memorial; some Orthodox believe it is an enactment of heaven; and there are many positions in between. In point of fact, the Eucharist is a symbolic act with many meanings all interwoven, and to single out any one as theologians like to do nearly always results in a distorted abstraction. Whatever our theologies, nearly all those meanings are operative in the soul of individuals and communities when they come to the Eucharistic table.

The placing of the table itself has variable theological significance. More common when I was young, and more among Roman Catholics and Anglicans than liturgically free Protestants, was the practice of putting the table against the wall at the back of the Choir. The presider at the Eucharist, that is, the minister or priest in charge, turns his or her back on the congregation to face the table, usually called an altar, and enacts the sacrifice of handling the symbols of Jesus’ body and blood. The theological significance of this is that the presider leads the people to God and reaches up at the moment of consecration. God descends to meet the people in the consecrated elements. The wisdom in this way of performing the Eucharist is that it breaks the congregation’s sense that it is whole and complete in itself. No matter how harmonious, no congregation is complete in itself. No matter how cozy we are with the confidence that God is in our midst, we should know that God is wild, not a tame lion as C. S. Lewis warned in his Narnia books. We need to reach up beyond our boundaries to hope that God comes. And when God comes that is a mystery breaking in upon us that is not entirely predictable, not entirely contained in the consumption of bread and wine, and not entirely safe. That’s the good part of the Eucharistic practice of leading the people to God. The difficulty felt with this form of the Eucharist is that it seems to make the presider too special a person, a mediator, who in fact separates the people from God. The presider, a priest or minister, is a specially trained and accredited representative of the people, but only one of the people, not someone more holy than the people.

The more common Eucharistic form now is to move the altar forward and call it Christ’s table with the presider and helpers behind it, beckoning the congregation to come sit at the table as at a dinner party, or at least as close as can be arranged in a large group. This form runs the risk of domesticating God as a foodstuff in our midst. The Lord’s Supper is not merely a gathering of pals to remember good old Jesus. The virtue of this form, however, is that it symbolically establishes the context of the Eucharist as Christ’s table. Jesus’ dinners were the context in which he taught, learned, and practiced the love among friends that was his ideal and lesson. We are invited to go to dinner with Jesus, and though you might think rightly that we ministers have been a sorry lot of substitute hosts these last two thousand years, this still is Jesus’ table.

His table was no ordinary one, and never entirely domesticated. Like God breaking in upon a worshipping community, Jesus broke boundaries with his dinners. He ate with friends, but also with strangers. He brought tax abusers and prostitutes to his table. He ate with rich people and poor people. He ate with strange women, which Jewish men were not supposed to do. He healed Peter’s mother of sickness so she could cook his dinner. He ate with at least one man he had brought back from death to life. A woman washed his feet with tears and dried them with her hair at the table. Another poured embalming perfume on him. The crumbs under his table healed people. He washed his disciples’ feet before dinner. It was at the table that he asked to be remembered in the form of his bloody death, with bread as his broken body and wine as his spilled blood. At the table, the last night, as the Beloved Disciple lay against him, he told his friends that the community of love they had formed was what his whole work was about, that it was made possible because of God’s love which he had taught them, that this community of love would sustain them through troubles and persecutions, and that they should extend the circle of loving friendships around the world. It was at the table that Jesus said goodbye to his friends, knowing they would betray, deny, or desert him. Jesus’ table broke all the rules about who could eat together and what table fellowship means. God was at his table making all things new.

So we are all invited now to Jesus’ table set in Marsh Chapel on October 5, 2003, with just this present company. Some Christians believe that special requirements of confession and good faith with God must be met before coming to the table; our ritual has a confession, absolution, and a passing of the peace to symbolize a renewed people. But we do not require that you be right with God before you come. Jesus did not do that at his table. Some Christians insist that participants be baptized members of the community before being allowed to receive communion, and that is a conventional assumption. But Jesus had no such strictures for his dinners. Following John Wesley, the Methodist founder, who taught that the Eucharist is a means of grace, not only a privilege of membership, we say that Jesus’ table is open and invite you all.

If you feel guilty for sexual thoughts and misdeeds, there is an honored biblical place for you at this table. If you cheat and exploit others in business, crooked tax collectors were at the table before you. If you are an outsider, unused to our ways, remember the strange diversity of Jesus’ crowd for which he was criticized. If you are a devoted friend of Jesus, lean on him here. If you think Jesus has some good reason to judge you harshly, know that instead he invites you to dinner, leaving you free to mend your ways or not. If you feel uncomfortable with all these unlikely people Jesus has brought to the table with you, you need to laugh at your own discomfort when Jesus breaks the rules. This is not a domestic table. This is the table of a new world. God comes to this table. Come lean on him, and know that you are touching something holy. Amen.

posted in Uncategorized on 10.5.2003 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Have you ever longed for miracles, for what Jesus called deeds of power? They come in many kinds, not even counting prayers for the Red Sox or to find a parking place. Consider the story of Esther, Queen of Persia. She was not an aristocrat, merely a beautiful woman in the harem of King Ahasuerus or Xerxes who was made queen because of her sexual charms and docility. She was a Jew, and the Jews then were hated by a high Persian official named Haman who was a member of the House of Agag; Agag had been killed by the Israelite prophet Samuel, as you can read in 1 Samuel 15, and most of his people were slaughtered by King Saul. Haman plotted to destroy all the Jews who lived in Persian dominions and enrich himself. Esther found out about this, manipulated the King into killing Haman instead and put her own kinsman, Mordecai, into a position of great power, thus saving the Jews. This salvation of the entire Jewish community is commemorated in the festival of Purim that Jewish people celebrate to this day.

Would it not be a great miracle, a deed of power, if some world leader arose from obscurity to do just the right thing to turn aside the warring madness that engulfs our world? There must be some way to vent the hatred all around and to let the rich nations see their duty to be just to the poor. In the past great leaders sometimes have arisen in times of crisis—think of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. They were miracles in a very important sense, and they are rare. The international political world today needs a miracle. A great peacemaking leader would be a miracle because the odds are so great against such a person arising and having an opportunity like Esther’s to make a significant difference. Although the Jews were delivered in Persia, they were not delivered in the Holocaust, at least not enough of them and not early enough. Deeds of power are miraculous because they usually do not happen. Nothing in the Esther story, by the way, suggests that God had anything to do with the miracle.

Jesus’ own use of the phrase “deeds of power” is in reference to an anonymous exorcist who was casting out demons in Jesus’ name. Whatever you think of ancient exorcism, it was a power widely believed to be exercised by many people, not only Jesus or his disciples. Exorcism was not a matter of praying that God would work a miracle but rather a power inherent in the exorcist or the “patient,” something Jesus explained as deriving from faith in God. The disciples were upset that this anonymous exorcist was so successful when he was not actually a member of Jesus’ own following. Jesus, however, rejoiced with the remark that “whoever is not against us is for us.” Given the fact that Jesus’ own disciples had spotty records as exorcists, he was probably glad to get the outsider’s help.

Don’t we long for the surprise outsider miracle? We work so hard to cope with life’s troubles, many of which can be rightly described as demonic, and yet our efforts are not deeds of power. Then someone unexpected and not of our community comes along and does just the right thing. Who would have thought that the civil rights struggle in the United States could be transformed into deeds of power by Martin Luther King, Jr., stumbling on Gandhi’s philosophy of aggressive non-violence? I doubt Gandhi ever thought about African Americans, and the situation in India in his time was different from that in King’s America. Gandhi was not a Christian, not a member of King’s community. Yet his deeds of power in India sparked deeds of power here. How unexpected and rare! It was a miracle in its strange way.

Or consider the community James addressed in his letter. If you remember the texts we have been considering the last several weeks you know that his community struggled to be faithful to doctrine as James urged them that correct faith is not enough: they need to practice their faith. In today’s text James addresses very practical matters. If you are suffering, pray. If you are joyful, sing. If someone is sick, bring the elders of the community to pray over them, anointing them with oil, for “the prayer of faith will save the sick.” Confess sins to one another, and they will be forgiven. If someone brings back a member of the community who has wandered from the truth, the one who brings that person back will have a multitude of sins covered. “The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective,” said James.

Now we all know, as James’ community must have known, that not everyone who wanders is brought back. Not every sin confessed with the mouth is confessed with the heart. And not every sick person who is prayed over gets well. My wife and I know that from experience. We had a daughter who developed heart disease as an infant. We prayed and prayed. She was operated on and we prayed and prayed, as did our congregation, St. Stephen’s Methodist Church in the Bronx. Our daughter died six days after surgery. All that praying did not avail to accomplish our hearts’ desire. A miracle was there nonetheless. At the time of our deepest, most raw, soul-numbing grief, my wife and I were conscious of the prayers and support of the congregation, and were thankful. Yet that wasn’t the half of it. When our daughter was baptized, the entire congregation had stood up in joy as her God-parents. When she died a few months later, I believe the entire congregation took off work to attend the funeral. Our daughter was conceived in the life of that congregation, cheered by them at her birth, received into the Christian life in the arms of all the members, and was returned to God with universal tears and hallelujahs. That was a miracle. Her life and death in that congregation was fully powered by the Holy Spirit, a deed of power embracing her, the congregation, and ourselves. What a privilege and grace her short life was! I served as associate at St. Stephen’s another dozen years and don’t know whether it ever again was so God-filled. Nor have my family and I ever found a congregation that carried Christ and us together so well since. But because of that miracle of our daughter’s life and death in that congregation, with all the songs of joy, prayers through suffering, and tears of goodbye, I know what Christ’s people can be. I’ve seen the love. I’ve felt the faith. My hope does not shake, even when I wade through the Christian klutziness that has discouraged so many of you. There! You have my testimony that I have witnessed the Church as miracle.

How do we understand these deeds of power? To think of them as interventions of an anthropomorphic God who is persuaded by our prayers or needs is a mistake. The evidence is all to the contrary concerning either our persuasiveness or God’s consistency and good will relative to our hearts’ desires. That conception of God as a magical person is simply too small. Rather these deeds of power should be understood as grace.

Grace is the power of God to make good things. Ordinarily we let the goodness of God’s whole creation sink into the background of our consciousness as we focus attention on some particular good we would like to have. Most of us worry about seemingly inevitable conflicts in world affairs, with no end in sight. So we would like the grace of a miracle of peacemaking leadership, forgetting to be grateful for the grace of having cultures worth fighting for. We desperately want our loved ones to be well and safe, forgetting to be grateful for the grace of having lives with loved ones in them. We pray for the miracle of an A on an exam, forgetting to be grateful for the grace of getting an education. We long for the miraculous break for our career, forgetting to be grateful for a society in which c
areers are possible. Human attention just has this feature, that it focuses on some things by putting other things in the background. If we focus on the miracles we specifically long for, we forget the countless deeds of power in the gracious creations that surround us. And when we fail to get what we long for, our disappointment, perhaps even grief, can blind us to the rest of life that is so full of grace.

So let us recall and contemplate the graces that surround us, God’s creation of good things for which we should be grateful.

God the Father creates a world whose every part is a wondrous harmony of form and power, uniqueness and relation, assembly and dissolution. The Big Bang is grace. The singular swirl of cosmic gasses is grace. The clumping of galaxies is grace. The Earth is grace. Its hospitality to human life is grace. The Earth’s crust is grace. Its water is grace. Its atmosphere is grace. The evolution of slime-molds, dinosaurs, and mammals is grace. The Earth is a garden world and that’s grace. People have families, that’s grace. Cultures are grace. The arts are grace. Tilling the soil is grace. Building cities is grace. Flying off-planet is grace. Insects are grace. Birds are grace. Pets are grace. Laughter is grace. Crying is grace. Feeling so as to laugh and cry is grace. Gain is grace. Loss is grace. Birth is grace. Growth is grace. Learning is grace. Work is grace. Aging is grace. Death is grace. Wisdom is grace. Confusion is grace. Beauty is grace. Life is grace. “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” (Gen. 1:31)

Despite the cosmos filled with grace, we have not consistently responded with gratitude, the natural response to grace. Instead we have complained because the grace was not where we wanted it to be according to our personal lights. We complain there is no peace when we will to hold onto control. We complain that our loved ones die when there are others to love. We complain that others have the luck when we don’t take responsibility. And deep down we feel guilty for the price that our own civilized existence exacts from the environment, from others, and from our own freedom. With guilts and complaints, we turn from the Creator, ashamed, gratitude curdles to bitterness, and we forget the cosmos of grace.

Grace upon grace, Jesus came saying “Wake up! The Kingdom is at hand. Not your world of petty deeds of power but the cosmos of grace.” Jesus said “Blessed are the humble, not the power-brokers,” and that is grace. Jesus said our sins are forgiven, and that is grace. Jesus said that mercy is divine, and that is grace. Jesus said God loves us, and that is grace. Jesus said to love one another, and that is grace. Jesus loved his friends and made them lovers, and that is grace. Jesus’ friends loved others and made them lovers, and that is grace. Those others in the name of Jesus love us and make us lovers, and that is grace. Jesus nails our guilts to the cross and that is grace. Jesus turns our bitter complaints to songs of joy, and that is grace. Jesus redeems us from evil lives and that is grace. Jesus draws us to a cosmic kingdom filled with grace and that is grace. Jesus shows us God and that is grace. Jesus is our friend and that is grace. We flee from God but, meeting Jesus, God is where we flee, and that is grace.

So how then do we live as created, fallen, and redeemed people? The Holy Spirit fills life with deeds of power for sanctification. To pray our heart’s desire in things great and small brings grace. To sing and pray in the congregation of God’s people brings grace. To study Jesus brings grace. To live together as friends among Jesus’ friends brings grace. To spend ourselves for the poor brings grace. To risk ourselves for justice brings grace. To build homes brings grace. To serve communities brings grace. To play brings grace. To run brings grace. To think brings grace. To touch God’s creatures in all their gracious loveliness brings grace, even when the touch bears harm and finally wears us out. To bless the Lord who gives and takes away brings grace. The holiness of the redeemed life is to love God and all God’s creatures. We have the grace for that.

So I invite you to open your eyes to the deeds of power all around us. If you have troubles, cry to God with all your heart. But remember that your heart is also full of peace and joy because of the overflowing abundance of grace in our lives. If you don’t think your heart is full of peace and joy because it feels like confusion and despair, look deeper. For, the depths of the heart open onto God and the world to be loved. What a grace that is! Praise the Father who creates a world of grace, praise the Son who is the grace of salvation, and praise the Holy Spirit in whose grace we live by the love of God. Amen.

posted in Uncategorized on 09.28.2003 at 11:00 am

By Marsh Chapel

Ever since I took on the responsibilities of this pulpit people have been asking me to preach about the great social issues of our time. Those of you who have heard some of my previous sermons know that I hold theological sound-bites in contempt: the Word of God is complex and I apologize but do not repent for burdening you with the many distinctions required to see things in perspective. Ethical and political issues are equally complex, with no single perspective of analysis or simple solutions. Christians do not have any special advantage over others in the analysis of problems of international war and peace, global economics, racial prejudice, or distributive and retributive justice. But Christians do have deep underlying ethical convictions that need to be expressed in measuring our responses to those great problems. And so people are right to call preachers to the responsibility of addressing them. It would be wrong for preachers to avoid that responsibility for fear of alienating those who disagree with their conclusions. Preachers also need the humility to recognize that honest disagreements among Christians must be borne with respect.

The particularly insistent cry to hear the Word of God about war and peace in our time comes from the fact that America has suddenly become an aggressor nation. Americans are accustomed to believe that aggressor nations are the bad ones, and we have prided ourselves on opposing them. The events of 9/11 made all the world recognize that the United States was the victim of terrorist aggression. The terrorists were murderers, not martyrs: the sacrifice of someone else’s life for one’s cause is murder even if one’s own life is lost in the process. The response to 9/11 should have been an intense international multilateral police action to identify and eradicate murderous terrorists. But that police action was subordinated to the rhetoric of a war on terrorism embodied in a virtually unilateral American war against Afghanistan for harboring terrorists, as if the vile but pitiful Taliban government could have done anything about El Qaeda had it wanted to. The result has been to make Osama bin Laden a Robin Hood hero to the world’s populations that identify with the underdog against the American bully, and the government of Afghanistan has been returned to a death-dance of warlordism. Then the United States almost unilaterally and against the opposition of many of its traditional allies attacked Iraq, beginning with an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate its leader. The initial justifications for the attack on Iraq—stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and connections between Saddam Hussein and El Qaeda—were widely doubted at the beginning and in retrospect seem false. Many suspect them to be mendacious fabrications of the American government. I certainly don’t know the truth about that, but the increasing public feeling that the American government started the war for reasons other than the stated ones has brought our national conscience to a spiritual crisis: who are we to be imposing our will with such violence? We ask this while praying for our armed forces abroad who are at great risk.

The crisis in conscience surely comes in part from the fact that so little has been successful in the American aggressive wars. The Taliban are still a warlord power opposing Afghanistan’s puppet government, Osama bin Laden is still at large, as is Saddam Hussein; the government and material infrastructure of Iraq have been destroyed and their rebuilding with American money and military commitment is vulnerable to guerilla sabatage. The opposition to American bullying has now become a worldwide ideal of freedom and divine service, and does not need a leader. America’s traditional allies who had been rejected by our government’s unilateral policies are alienated. We will have decades of trouble. If the wars had been more successful, perhaps the crisis of conscience would not be so great. Nevertheless, now that the casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq far exceed those of 9/11, the American conscience asks what justifies America’s attempt to impose its will by virtually unilateral military force. The official answer is that righteous force is justified against dangerous evil. Whether the enemies identified by the American government are so evil as to justify eradication by force is a question I will not pursue here. The American conscience is in a spiritual crisis, however, because it has begun to doubt the righteousness of the American motive for war.

Where is the Christian gospel in all this? Where is our ethical bedrock from which we can erect a perspective for a Christian response? The ethics of most religions is based on a motif of reciprocity: as in the Golden Rule, do to others what you want them to do to you or, negatively, do not do to them what you wouldn’t want them to do to you or, more forcefully, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Anastasia Kidd of the School of Theology here studied popular music’s responses to 9/11 and found that the country and western community, which has a strong Christian base of sorts, celebrated vengeance and punished singers who sang of mercy instead.

Christianity accepts the Golden Rule, but tentatively. In point of fact, Christianity has a much stronger motif for ethical and religious behavior than the Golden Rule: if someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other also; if someone asks to borrow your coat, lend your cloak as well. Jesus’ chief lesson in leadership, according to John, was when he washed his disciples’ feet. St. Paul in Philippians said Jesus was in the form of God and took on the form of a slave. Jesus in Mark 10 said that it is harder for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven than the poor, and in the same chapter, with parallel passages in the other gospels Jesus said that “many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” We could multiply examples like these many times over. For Christians, the motif of humility trumps the motif of reciprocity. Humility trumps reciprocity.

In ethical matters, humility means something like putting others first. If someone slaps you in rage, do not reciprocate rage but turn the other cheek so that their rage can work itself out. If you don’t like someone slapping you, first you learn to love your enemy, the motif says, and then figure out the loving way to respond. If someone needs clothes, don’t give them just the minimum but see that they are cared for properly. Perhaps it would be better to change the economic conditions that make people needy in the first place.

Needless to say, this ethical dimension of the humility motif is not easy to reconcile with consumerism and the competitive elements of capitalism. And it is a stranger to American foreign policy in recent years, ironically at a time when Christianity is supposed to be influential in government. The ethics of democratic government is complicated because, as democratic, governmental policies and actions express the needs and wishes of so many constituencies. I do not want to suggest an easy reading of Christian and anti-Christian trends. The democratic process that reconciles so many diverse interests in concrete policies might easily look as if it is guided by a “me first” rather than humility motif. Nevertheless, Christians are among the interest groups in the American democracy and often have prevailed to put the needs of poor, disenfranchised, and angrily frustrated people, as well as enemies, onto the national agenda. Sometimes this has shaped large scale policies, for instance the development of the land-grant universities in the 19th century and the Marshall Plan for rebuilding the economies of enemies in the 20th.

Now, however, the “me first” motif seems to govern important American policies in fairly simple and uncomplex ways. Unilateralism in international affairs, coupled with the massive power to act unilaterally if we want, has resulted in a policy that allows us to stomp declared enemies and dismiss uncooperative allies as unnecessary. The motif of “me first” has been extended even to the government’s claim to define international evil. When the United States proclaims the existence of an “axis of evil” countries and then attacks one of them, no one should be puzzled when others, North Korea and Iran, hustle to develop nuclear deterrents.

The humility motif also has a psychological dimension that affects national policy, having to do with ambition: it is the opposite of arrogance and the desire for glory at the expense of others. In the passage read from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus had been telling the disciples that he was going to be arrested and killed. They did not like this, and surely did not understand it. Yet they thought it might mean that the Kingdom was coming and with divine victory they would all have places of importance. In fact, they argued about who would be the greatest. Jesus was disgusted that they did not understand the harsh reality of execution. And so he tried to alter their expectations by attacking their lust for greatness itself. They should not act like fancy rulers but like little children. Matthew and Luke have parallel passages. In the 10th chapter of Mark, Jesus is quoted as repeating the point, saying “whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whosever would be first among you must be slave of all.” Matthew and Luke emphasize that the first shall be last and the last first when they say, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (Matt. 23:12; Luke 14:11 and 18:14) Whereas Christianity has never denied the need for leadership, and in fact has insisted upon it, it has said at its best moments that the personal ambition of a leader should not be for the glory of being first. When the ambition for glory succeeds, it becomes arrogance. Rather, the ambition should be to have the humble mind-set of a child or a servant, innocent of prestige distinctions and focused on getting the job done.

We must be careful to extend the analogy of personal humility to national humility with great care, for in many respects the analogy does not hold. Governments have a responsibility to protect that individuals can set aside in a spirit of self-sacrifice. Nevertheless, the American government can conspicuously put others first by making sure that profits on oil, for instance, are fairly distributed in a country before the oil is taken out, and can make sure that poor nations in Africa have the most advantageous condition for the development of their agriculture in a world market. Nnational humility that puts others first calls for restraint and the acceptance of less than maximum profit for Americans, discipline clearly in line with Christian commitment. The American government can conspicuously reject arrogance by cultivating the advice and consent of allies, by entering into treaties to control arms and protect the environment, by subjecting itself to the judgments of international courts, and by charitably contributing in proportion to our wealth to the alleviation of pandemics such as AIDS. For humility to trump reciprocity, American Christians need to call on the government to find ways of being servant of the world so as to exercise true leadership as Christians see it.

Behavior expressive of the Christian humble way does not always lead to success. If the American government pursues a servant role in world affairs, building up the economies and cultures of weaker lands and submitting itself to the civilized judgment of nations with whom it should be allied, it might not remain the richest nation in the world, nor the strongest. Moreover, evil forces might arise that need opposition by force—I do not advocate a pure pacifism in the face of evil. Allies might need to be persuaded to join America in the use of force against their own immediate interests. But these things can be done in humble ways, using force with great reluctance and seeking to be persuaded against the need for its use. As we ask humility of our government, we must practice it ourselves, and reconcile ourselves to its material costs.

So I invite you into the humble way Jesus preached in the Beatitudes. Seek not arrogance but poverty of spirit, not vengeance but mourning for those who harm and are harmed, not a “me first” way but meekness, not avarice and materialism but a hunger and thirst for righteousness, not retribution but mercy, not conniving for position but purity of heart, not war but peace, not victory but persecution for righteousness’ sake. The humble will be persecuted for righteousness’ sake, do not mistake that. Humble people and nations are not life’s winners in the material sense. But they are indeed life’s winners in the spiritual sense that counts. The humble will be blessed. The arrogant will be brought down. The last shall be first and the first shall be last. Amen.

posted in Uncategorized on 09.21.2003 at 11:00 am
Tags: Robert Neville

By Marsh Chapel

Although not special to most of you, today is special to me because this afternoon I will be installed officially as Dean of Marsh Chapel and Chaplain of the University. At that service, to which you are invited, I’ll speak briefly on the special duties of a university pulpit, especially one in a university town such as Boston.

The lectionary texts for today are enough to give one pause about a university pulpit, however. The passage from Proverbs 1 starts happily enough with a strong speech by Dame Wisdom, one of the Bible’s most outrageous characters, that begins “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?” She goes on to say that she pours out her thoughts but the simple ones ignore them, leading to their calamity. “For waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them.” What an advertisement for higher education!

It is dangerous to be simple. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said that we should seek simplicity, but distrust it. He was right. The reason to distrust simplicity is the narrowness of evidence it takes into account. Unless simplicity is a state of mind and soul attained after mastering worlds of complexity—and this is not what Dame Wisdom had in mind—it lives on inherited prejudices for which a person can barely be responsible. Simple people of the sort Dame Wisdom criticized are ignorant of the cultures different from their own and of circumstances where things are at stake that are different from the issues of their own circumstances. This often makes them bigots with regard to different people, fools with regard to different circumstances, and complacent when some new beast comes slouching toward their holy place. The world today does not allow many people to meet only their own kind or deal only with their inherited circumstances. The University at its best sometimes imparts the vision and experience required for wisdom. A university pulpit should aspire to this task in religious matters.

Nevertheless, a great gulf exists between Dame Wisdom, the divine personage of the Book of Proverbs, and us mortal teachers. The University finds it easy to miss the mark in the wisdom department and should take to heart the admonition in the Letter of James with which I title this sermon: “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes.” James went on to say that the tongue of a teacher is like a bridle on a horse, a rudder in a ship, or a little fire in a tinder forest—small but capable of enormous consequences. We so-called teachers of wisdom need humility, James warned.

Perhaps James had in mind the incident related in our text from Mark’s gospel. The disciples were abuzz because people were saying that Jesus was John the Baptist or Elijah, or some other prophet come back from the dead. Jesus asked Peter what he thought, and Peter answered that Jesus was the Messiah. In Matthew’s account of this incident Jesus says that God must have revealed this to Peter, because Peter’s “flesh and blood” was not bright enough to get it. Immediately after this Jesus said that he, Jesus, would be made to suffer, would be rejected, killed, and then would rise in three days. Peter, back in the flesh and blood mode, rebuked Jesus for saying these horrible depressing things. Jesus retorted to his prize student, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Given Peter’s subsequent role in the Christian movement, we have a super object-lesson of teachers getting it wrong. Teachers can go from true witness to unwitting Satanic betrayal without batting an eye. Peter thought he was just cheering up Jesus when he got wrong the whole meaning of Jesus’ identity as Messiah.

Religious teachers have a difficult road to walk, responding to Wisdom’s demand to help the simple without making some small mistake, often out of a desire to comfort, that has very large and damning consequences. If the only teachers in question were preachers and professors, this point would have a valid but limited range of application. The problem is that we all are religious teachers for our neighbors, children and friends. James might well have written, “Not many should become teachers, but for better or worse you all will be.”

Therefore we should look more carefully at what Jesus said went wrong with Peter: “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” What can this mean? Perhaps it depends on the audience. Mark is particularly detailed in his account of who was talking to whom in this incident. Jesus asked his small group of disciples about his identity, and in that intimate group Peter said he was the Messiah; Jesus responded by enjoining the disciples not to tell anyone else about this identification and then explained to them that he would suffer, die, and be raised. Peter took Jesus aside in private to rebuke him, but Jesus turned back to the whole group of disciples to rebuke Peter as Satan: he did not respond to Peter alone, as he might have if he were gently correcting his favorite student. He meant it as a lesson for the disciples. Then Jesus immediately called the large crowd of followers to join the disciples and made the remarkable speech about how they would have to deny themselves and take up their cross in order to follow him. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

In Mark’s text, Jesus’ address to the crowd is an interpretation of setting your mind on divine rather than human things. The crowd diid not know that Jesus was the Messiah, only a spooky hero come back to life. They did not know that the Messiah is to be betrayed, killed, and raised from the dead, a point that only the disciples had heard and had not yet comprehended. What the crowd was told was that following Jesus is a matter of life and death.

In Deuteronomy 30 Moses had told the Israelites, as they were about to enter the Promised Land, that he set before them life and death: choose life, that you might live, he said. Jesus renewed that challenge but with a huge twist. Moses said that to choose life, which meant following God’s commandments, would secure long life and prosperity in the Promised Land. Jesus said that to choose life, which meant following him and his gospel, could lead to forfeiting both worldly success and life. Those who would save their life in Moses’ sense of gaining the world will lose it. Those who lose their lives to follow Jesus will gain it in a divine sense.

Jesus’ main point is at the heart of the Christian gospel, and it has two sides.

First, in the divine perspective, right living before God does not correlate with worldly success. To be good does not necessarily lead to long life and prosperity. As we would put it, there is no divine moral governance of the world, rewarding the worthy and punishing the wicked. Rather, Jesus’ paradigm is that the Messiah who restores people to a right relation to God gets betrayed and killed. Resurrection for Jesus did not mean that he returned with an army to drive out the Romans and establish justice, nor did it mean that he returned to set up a university that surpassed Plato’s and Aristotle’s in teaching divinity. In the most literal reading of the resurrection accounts, Jesus left Earth for Heaven after forty days. History remained ambiguous and treacherous for Christians ever after. So we should not expect the ordinary life of even the saints among us to be more successful in worldly senses than education, prudence and luck can ma
ke them. Nor is suffering a mark of divine disfavor, however much most of the world’s religions, including corrupt forms of Christianity, have believed that.

Second, the gospel is that the true meaning of life is to be found in the ultimate perspective of God. Jesus had a lot to say about this, including the readiness to deny ourselves for others, to build communities of love, and to witness to the divine perspective when the world has other values. Next week the gospel text is about how those who would be first will be last, and vice versa. The central task of Christian teachers—and all Christians teach one way or another—is to articulate what life looks like from the ultimate perspective of God, what its ultimate predicaments are in contrast to its worldly problems, and what its ultimate salvation consists in contrasted with the lure of worldly successes.

In pre-classical times many people believed in God as a kind of super-human agent, with human virtues and powers intensified to a supernatural degree. With this conception, the divine perspective was something like an all-powerful control panel for history. God could be imagined as a totally righteous and powerful king insuring justice within history. In classical times, including the time of Jesus, many people believed in God as an infinitely removed Spirit high above a cosmic stack of heavens and hells, and they believed that souls were immortal or, as in the Christian case, could be raised whole with a celestial body. The classical conception imagined the divine perspective as placing a soul after death in a level of heaven or hell appropriate to the person’s merit; for Pauline Christianity it meant that because of Jesus’ merit the saved went to the highest heaven where Jesus in a properly celestial form dwelt with God the Father. Some among us might share these pre-classical and classical assumptions, both of which are found in the Bible. But most of us read the Bible and imagine God differently. Our task as teachers today is to articulate the ultimacy of the divine perspective, and its significance for what is ultimately important in human life, for a world understood through modern science, shaped by confrontations of civilizations, and criticized by the prophets of imagination.

I invite you all to take seriously what it means to be a follower of Rabbi Jesus. Have pity on the simple people of the world, teach them the complexities of life, and strive for a new simplicity while distrusting it. Join with the disciples in learning that the most Satanic simplicity is to judge ultimate matters with worldly standards. Hear with the crowd that the choice of ultimately true life in following Jesus is costly in worldly terms. Please join with those who would deny themselves the ambition to gain the world and enter into the discipline required to teach divine wisdom to the simple. For the simple will be taught by us no matter what we do. I invite you into the Christian Way in which we catch a glimpse of divine wisdom through living a life patterned by crucifixion and resurrection, as Jesus told the simple disciples. Amen.

posted in Uncategorized on 09.14.2003 at 11:00 am
Tags: Robert Neville

By Marsh Chapel

In what senses are you religious? The modern world usually identifies religion with belief, on the one hand, and religiously defined good works on the other. When you ask what people’s religion is, most often you do so by asking about their religious beliefs. When you are in crisis about your own religion, most often it is because you doubt what you think you are supposed to believe.

On the other hand, we all know people of deep piety whose belief system is embarrassingly simple-minded and confused. For most of us, our grandparents were like that and, for many of us, we ourselves were like that only months ago. Yet we know that the sincerity of such simple-minded faith frequently characterizes saints who are self-sacrificing, deeply attentive to the needs of others, committed to steady support of family, unflagging in work, loyal to friends, and filled with joy, hope, peace, and love. St. Paul said these virtues are marks of the Holy Spirit. Most of us, in practice, follow the author of The Letter of James in the pragmatic definition of the religious life: it’s what you do that counts and that also is the clue to what you really believe deep down, below the level of conscious thought and choice. So two ways are commonly used to think about being religious: belief, and good works.

A third way to identify a person’s religion, however, is by looking at that person’s cult. “Cult” is a word with bad connotations for some people for whom it refers to a radical sect that steals people away from their home culture and brainwashes them into a new and narrow culture. The basic meaning of the word, however, is simply education, the taking on of a culture or way of life by practising its elements. We “cultivate” the educated life in the University by practices such as lectures and classes, research and study, use of the library and laboratory, coffee-breaks and informal discussions, artistic productions and athletic fanaticism, all-night arguments and exam-cramming, attending conferences, writing grant proposals, publishing papers, celebrating academic successes, especially in relation to Harvard, and telling congratulatory stories about what good teachers, students, and staff members we are. Individually these practices have their pragmatic purposes. Collectively they are rituals that inculturate us into the deep patterns of critical academic life. As we follow those practices as rituals, our habitual behavior and thought become patterned by them.

So it is with religion. People who have no practiced pattern of life for relating to ultimate matters have disorganized religion, or no religion, even if they have religious beliefs and do good works associated with religious people. Those people stumble on ultimate matters of life and death haphazardly, unprepared on the deep levels of habitual behavior and thought.

St. Augustine, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries, was one of the greatest of all Christian theologians. He was also the first person to write an autobiography, which he called his “Confessions.” The drama of his autobiography centered on his conversion to Christianity. Raised a Christian by his pious mother, he had strayed to other religions and distinctly non-Christian practices. He struggled with the intellectual content of Christian belief relative to other beliefs and could find no decisive argument. He also struggled with whether to give up his licentious but enjoyable life. The crisis came to a head one day when he and a friend were in a garden anguishing over whether to convert. Augustine heard some children on the other side of the wall singing “take and read, take and read.” He picked up a Bible that was open to Romans 13:14 where Paul said to “put on Christ.” The theologian Carl Vaught has shown that the Latin words were those used for a young man putting on the robe that marked manhood and citizenship.1 Augustine took that to mean that he should put on the clothing of a Christian, as it were, to vest himself in the Christian way of life, and to enter into the cultic practice of Christianity.

What did that mean for him? It meant taking up the Christian practices of worship and prayer, leaving his friends who could not tolerate that, and befriending Christians and those who were supportive of his vesting himself in the Christian cult. It meant reading the Bible, participating in the rituals of the Church through the liturgical calendar, and observing the sacraments of the Church. In quick time Augustine was ordained a priest and then a bishop. For decades he administered a diocese in Hippo in North Africa and was one of the most prolific theological writers of all times in any religion.

He “put on” the Christian way and, clothed in the Christian cult, worked out the belief contents of his faith. Augustine was one of the most rigorous, critical, questioning, and creative thinkers ever, and his theology is a root inheritance of Western Christianity, Roman Catholic and Protestant. He never pretended to believe something he really doubted. But his theology was worked out within the context of the cultic practice of Christian life. The cultic practice of Christianity gave him the freedom to question, doubt, and explore beyond the then boundaries of Christian belief.

The cultic practice most common to Christians around the world and from the beginning is the Eucharist, which we are about to celebrate. The form of its celebration varies, and we shall follow a liturgy derived from the United Methodist tradition. Participating in the Eucharistic liturgy shapes the soul, no matter what you might be thinking about on a conscious level. Repeated participation is a bones-and-muscle education in the deep grammar of Christian life. We have no rules here about who can take communion, not even that you have to be baptized, only that you should understand it to be a way of putting on the Christian life like a garment marking emerging maturity and citizenship in the Church.

The Eucharist is a liturgical rite with many layers of intertwined meaning resonating together to shape the cultivation of Christian character and community. First and foremost it combines symbols of death—Jesus’ spilt blood and broken body—with symbols of renewed life—the elements are food for life. Crucifixion and resurrection go together in many senses for Christian vision and practice. Second, the Eucharist symbolizes the universal table of Christians all over the world, even those whose civilizations are incomprehensible to us and whose nations are our enemies: more important than our differences is that we have all put on Christ and eat at his table. The Eucharist has many other levels of meaning, but perhaps the most disturbing is that it is a symbolic cannibal ritual in which we eat the symbols of Jesus’ flesh and blood. What could be so serious in life that we are drawn to consume symbolic flesh and blood? I’ll talk about that and other levels of meaning in the Eucharist on other occasions. But know for now that you have no more serious business with God than what is addressed symbolically by participation in the Eucharistic celebration. The Eucharist in the Christian cult is practice at being right with God.

So today I invite you to the Table. Come, you who are saints, to this cultic part of the Christian life that deepens your character and community: you shouldn’t miss this opportunity. Come, you who are Christian by mere custom and social arrangement: here your Christianity becomes more serious. Come, you who have fallen away from Christian practice because of boredom, or because of disagreement concerning belief or the direction of moral efforts, or because of guilt at moral failings: with this act you put on the Chr
istian way again and all the exciting power of thought and action are yours anew in freedom. Come, you who are considering the Christian way: try on our clothes and see how they feel. Come, you who are confused, self-hating, angry, despairing, fearful, lonely, loveless, or lost: come to this table and for at least a moment put on a Way of life that promises direction, forgiveness, joy, hope, courage, companionship, love, and a home in God.

We celebrants are not personally worthy to offer you these elements, and so we dress in liturgical disguises, vestments of the Christian cult. You, beloved, can come as you are.

Amen.

1 See Carl G. Vaught, “Theft and Conversion: Two Augustinian Confessions,” in The Recovery of Philosophy in America: Essays in Honor of John Edwin Smith, edited by Thomas P. Kasulis and Robert Cummings Neville (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), especially p. 241.

posted in Uncategorized on 09.7.2003 at 11:00 am
Tags: Robert Neville

By Marsh Chapel

Three calendars schedule a university church. Because of the university we are governed by the academic calendar, and this is the first Sunday of the 2003-04 academic year. Welcome to our students returning from summer work, and especially to our new students and their families. Welcome to faculty returning from summer studies, and to the administrators and staff of the university, as well as to our regular congregational members, who are here to begin a new year. Welcome also to our virtual congregation of radio listeners: feel free to sing along in any key you like!

The second calendar of a university church is the national one, and today is the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. America honors those who labor for a living by giving all of them recognition and most of them an extra day off this holiday. Boston University honors labor differently, because this weekend is a frenetic time of incoming and orientation. Labor Day at the university signifies that the life of inquiry is work, as any one at the university will tell those of you who are new.

The third calendar of the university church is the Christian liturgical calendar that divides the year into seasons and festivals highlighting the important emphases of the Christian religion. Today is the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, which is the longest season in the whole liturgical calendar. In the old Methodist calendar this season was called “Kingdomtide” and it signified—you guessed it—the work of Christians in God’s kingdom.

Does work itself have any specifically religious significance? Obviously work has a personal economic dimension—we have to make a living. Work has a social economic dimension—our community needs wealth to support fundamental social structures. Work has many cultural dimensions—accomplishments in the arts, music, literature, education, communication, the law, medicine, politics, engineering, adventure and countless other careers that make for a rich civilization and that can be disciplined in the university. Has work a religious dimension over and above all these?

Religion is the human project of living before God or, to put it more neutrally, living in ultimate perspective. The religiously important work we have is to construct lives individually and together that have worth in ultimate perspective. By “ultimate perspective” I mean our lives considered absolutely, without conditions or excuses. Of course some of us are born poor, others rich, some from powerful countries, others from oppressed ones; some of us saunter through life as if on a safe track and others are waylaid by tragedies, illness, and sudden closures of opportunities. Some of us are surrounded by loving people and others are alone. In ultimate perspective, we are what we make of the conditions within which we live, whatever they might be. In ultimate perspective we are what we have accomplished at the end of our days, with no more chances to do better next time. In ultimate perspective, God is our judge, not our parents, neighbors, critics, or children, however important those judges are in proximate perspective.

So what is this God whose perspective is ultimate? The baseline answer is that God is the Creator. Fundamental to the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, as well as the Qu’ran and many of the religions of India, this claim has close analogies in many forms of Buddhism and the religions of China. The ultimate perspective on life is the ultimate condition or source for the very existence of life itself. To live in ultimate perspective is to be called to gratitude for life itself, what the great American theologian, Jonathan Edwards, called "consent to being in general.” We should be grateful for lives in which we have opportunities to become serious people, to work together to build communities of worth, to mature into playing important social roles in families, professions, neighborhoods, and perhaps even history. We should be grateful to that wild Creator who made the universe with an ancient Big Bang, whose cosmic gasses have clumped briefly to constitute stars and planets, whose Earth through eons of evolution grew into a habitat for beings with sentience and intelligence. We should thank God for a cosmos in which we today have a part, with the struggles of history and civilization that set the contexts for our life’s work. We should thank God that every bit of this cosmic creation, from the fiery gasses of the Big Bang to the conditions for organic life on Earth to the fragile arts of civilized life, is inherited in our own personal constitution. In each of us run the power and history of divine creation, sweeping us along like a mighty river.

Although God’s creative power is infinite and ours is finite, like God we can make something out of the conditions of our lives that has worth in ultimate perspective. This likeness in creativity is part of what it means for people to be in the image of God, and children of God. What we create in our lives is the work we do before God individually and together, and we should be grateful for the chance to have such worth.

In our text from the Epistle of James we are told to be doers, not hearers only. Too many people are passive riders on life. They listen to talk about opportunity and responsibility, and might talk a good line themselves. And yet they do nothing. James says to take hold of God’s gift of life, which he calls the living word, and make something of it. The text from Mark is one of several in which Jesus criticizes hypocrites, especially religious hypocrites. These are people who talk piously and observe the religious rules but who do not really make anything that expresses divine creativity. As Jesus said, it’s not what goes into you but what comes out that counts.

Just to make something of life is not enough, therefore. Among the conditions for our life-making are real obligations, and differences between good and evil. . We need to make lives that are good, given our resources. In making our lives, for instance, we need professions to which our talents are suited. Not every such profession is a good one, however; the happy embezzler, grateful to God for rich fools, does not make a good life. We can be deeply committed to our family and yet if that commitment is abusive it is a wicked contribution to the family. We can be fully engaged in building our community, and grateful to God for the opportunity, and yet if our contribution sows disharmony, or diminishes the opportunities of others, or leads to hate and destruction, that community-building is evil. The fact that our lives are consciously lived in gratitude to God does not mean automatically that they are as worthwhile as they should be, given our circumstances and obligations.

Therefore part of living in ultimate perspective, of living before God, is to live in divine judgment. Divine judgment is a deep mystery, but it is akin to moral and aesthetic judgment. What we make of ourselves individually and together is subject to judgment according to its worth. The topic of divine judgment is the source of wonderful imagination in Christianity and most other religions, and I don’t know how you imagine it. Some people think of God as a bearded man on a heavenly throne passing judgment on newly dead souls, casting some into hell and rewarding others with heaven. Other traditional images are more like a divine courtroom with Satan as prosecuting attorney and Jesus as defense attorney. In popular humor, people imagine St. Peter at the Pearly Gates with a register-book of good and bad deeds, admitting some and consigning the rest to the fiery pit. (These days, of course, Peter would have a vast computer with an infinite FilePro program.)

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tever your imagination of divine judgment, know that ultimate judgment is God’s to make, not ours. We have the humbler task of preparing ourselves for judgment in ultimate perspective with the best lights we have. No magic rule-book, not even the Bible, can tell you how best to make your life in its particular details. Although a liberal education is a great help for living into a wisdom that prepares your life for judgment, it provides neither a blueprint nor the courage to act rightly. In the long run the decisions to make your life in ultimate perspective belong to you and you alone.

Think twice about that and you will see an infinite loneliness in God the creator. Loneliness is a condition for creating that comes from accepting responsibility. We should not worry if we are sometimes lonely. We should worry if we are never lonely, for that would mean we are not creating.

Work has yet another dark side, I regret to tell you. No life is perfect. In fact just about every aspect of the life for which you have responsibility is morally ambiguous. Study to get good grades and you neglect your friends. Be successful in a job and you discover that you’ve diminished the chances of someone you respect. No institution of employment or study fails to have its corruptions and social costs. Every community structure is hurtful to someone. Our best intentions are never pure and sometimes have disastrous consequences. The most we can hope for is to maximize the good and minimize the evil in the lives we build, according to our best lights. What we present to God in ultimate perspective is a vast life of compromises, mixtures of good and evil, blessings and curses. No wonder, then, that so many people hide behind the talk and avoid the deed, fill their lives with empty praise of God while resigning themselves to hypocritical self-serving!

But now here is the gospel, the good news: The source of our ambiguous conditions of life, from which at best we can build optimally compromised lives, is that wild Creator to whom we are grateful for our very being. No matter how bad things are, God comes to us, as Solomon sang, like a beautiful lover leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills, saying “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.” No matter how badly we have compromised our lives, no matter whether we have been hypocritical, no matter how we have avoided life, God’s creativity beckons us back to work. Do we owe a debt for failed life, for wickedness, for flight from life? The central story of Christianity says that God came to us in Jesus and cancelled that debt. We are free to live again. Even though we will never have unambiguous circumstances, we will always have our share of divine creativity.

“Creativity,” of course, is the metaphysical word for love on a divine scale. God’s cosmic act of love is the creation of the cosmos. God’s love for us is that part of creative love that manifests itself in our circumstances. Our acts of love toward one another are how we direct that creativity in building our lives. Our receiving of God’s love is how we accept the world God has created, with ambiguity, suffering and death. Our love for God is how we exercise the creativity given us, especially in loving others. Of course there is more to divine love and our love for God than this, but creativity is at the heart of it all.

So the take-home message is that the religious dimension of our labor is to build our lives with all the energy and wisdom we can muster, for this is who we are in ultimate perspective. Be prepared for the ambiguities and tragedies of our best efforts, but do not hang back. Be grateful to God for this world of joys and sorrows, and work to understand God’s love and creativity in all of it, even the worst of it. Know that we are not saved by our work, by what we make: we are saved by God’s wild creative love. But know also that what is saved is what we make of ourselves in our capacity as small icons of God. So work is important. Know finally that we cannot make of ourselves anything so bad that God cannot save it. We often cannot save our mistakes; God has no such limitation. None of us is a mistake in ultimate perspective.

Now I invite you to join this community of Christian inquirers seeking wisdom about the things I’ve barely glossed here. Who is this wild Creator of a world of joy and sorrow? Who is this Jesus that he can free us from the bondage of our moral failings and our flight from life? What are our moral obligations anyway? What is our historical place that gives us the conditions of our lives? What patterns of Christian life and thought rightly relate us to the ultimate perspective? How do Christian answers to these questions differ from those of other religions and the secular world? By what Spirit can we engage our own places before God in ultimate perspective? I invite you into this Christian congregation of inquiry and bid you welcome.

Amen.

posted in Uncategorized on 08.31.2003 at 11:00 am