Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Luke 19:1–10

Click here to hear just the sermon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No Comments »

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Luke 18:9–14 

Click here to hear just the sermon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No Comments »

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Luke 18: 1-8 

Click here to hear just the sermon

‘Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart’

A conversation starts, somehow.  A conversation travels, somewhere.  A conversation ends, sometime.  After three years of screen, of zoom, of facetime, of text, of email, of distance, of attention to quasi-spaces, electronic spaces--to which nuance, humor, personality, humanity, and connection go to die--we have been returned to the land of conversation.  Here you are. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.  There is a robust magic in conversation, whereby John Wesley named conversation a means of grace, alongside prayer, Scripture, sacraments, and fasting. There is a saving power, a saving grace in conversation.  It costs nothing to listen, except time and risk.  And it costs nothing to speak, except time and voice.  And that is all our importune has today, time and voice.

In conversation, there abides, or lurks, the lasting possibility of heart-to-heart communication, heart by heart communion.  That potential seizes you, not the other way around.   You are longways into a talk with an old dear friend, and of a sudden, you realize, you intuit, just how much that friendship means, a friendship planted and grown in conversation.  Conversation is a means of grace.

Especially on Sunday however and moreover, grace is a means of conversation.  Worship is the hour when we most open ourselves not only to the idea of the holy, the mysterium tremendum, but to the grace of the holy, what matters, lasts, counts, to what is real.

Covid collapsed conversation.  Are we attentively, persistently striving to regain it, to return it?  Worship is the exemplary though not only hour when most we are in conversation with the holy, with the presence, with the freedom, with the experience of the holy.  In silence, in word, in song, in psalm, in chorus, in instrument, in communion, in prayer.  You and I are open to the holy, are opened to the holy—right now.  How we need all that is holy right now.

For right now we live in a perilously difficult time and season.

Hourly we are reminded of forms of cultural demise all around us, to the shame of us all, bullying, demagoguery, vulgarity, sexism, buffoonery, megalomania, and our helplessness—willingness?—to have to have our children and grandchildren so surrounded in a culture at its worst seemingly careening into a nihilistic abyss.

The seven not deadly sins but daily 2022 maladies may have brought their own reminders: Pollution, pandemic, Putin, politics, pistols, prejudice, pain—which breed anxiety and depression, in some measure, to one and all.

Institutions are far more fragile than we sometimes think, especially the bigger ones.  They all require trust, commitment, integrity, self-sacrifice, and humility on the part of their leaders, or over time they disintegrate, as one Congresswoman stated last week.  It is not just the processes, the systems, the organizations and structures that matter, it is the people.  No amount of systemic adjustment can ever replace the fundamental need, across a culture, for good people. No wise process has any chance against unwise people. Do not assume that institutions that have been healthy will always be so. Do not presume that free speech in newspapers, that due process in political parties, that honest regard for electoral results simply exist.  They do or they don’t.  It depends on the people who inhabit, support, and lead them.  Beware a time like ours when the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity (Yeats).

Giving ultimate loyalty to penultimate reality is sin at its depth.  To support an organization at the cost of honor, of integrity, of honesty is to give ultimate loyalty to penultimate reality.  That is, to support a political party at the cost of honor, integrity and honesty is to give ultimate loyalty to penultimate reality.  This is sin at its depth.  That is, to support a denomination at the cost of honor, integrity and honesty is to give ultimate loyalty to penultimate reality.  In the hour of judgment, the organization—party or church or other—depends on the courage and integrity of individuals to resist idolatrous loyalty to penultimate reality and to respond with courage and integrity to ultimate authority.  You cannot serve God and Mammon. Giving ultimate loyalty to penultimate reality is sin at its depth.  Not everything is for sale, nor should it be. Jeremiah told us so.

In 1980 with 12 Cornell students, and for a full year, we studied Jeremiah.  Two of those then young graduate students are now teaching at Brown University, and are part of the extended Marsh Chapel family.  They reminded me recently that the group had asked to study Jeremiah, high above Cayuga’s waters, and I had wondered ‘whether they were ready for him’.  They said they were, and they were.  In all these intervening years, with student and campus groups from Cornell, McGill, North Country Community, Syracuse, Lemoyne, Colgate Rochester, the University of Rochester, United Seminary and, now, in worship at Boston University, we have returned in to Jeremiah. (A student at BU who attends worship every Sunday for three years will hear the whole range of all Scripture in the weekly readings.  Not every verse of Leviticus, but every high and holy point, including Jeremiah today) Never, though, have I been more grateful for Jeremiah’s evocation of the stark suffering divine love of God, for Jeremiah’s unswerving realism, than this fall.  In this autumn of anxiety and difficulty, I kneel and kiss the ground, thankful for Jeremiah and his divine human realism.

I am eternally thankful for Jeremiah’s realism about what horrors can befall people and a people when they forget their identity.

I am eternally thankful for Jeremiah’s realism about what happens to a people when some of whose leaders have and live values diametrically opposed to the nation’s own values. Exemplum docet, beloved, example teaches.

I am eternally thankful, painful as it is to hear the words, for Jeremiah’s realism about how naïve in selfishness a people can become, and how earth shattering that foolishness can be.

I am eternally thankful for Jeremiah’s realism about the crucial importance of diplomacy rather than violence, and about what happens when megalomaniacal leaders mock diplomacy.

I am eternally thankful, if such can be said, for Jeremiah’s own wretched suffering as he watched his beloved country exchange their birthright of holiness for a mess of material pottage. Not everything that matters is for sale.

I am eternally thankful for the clarity, not confusion, for the courage, not timidity, of his voice ringing out across 25 centuries to say to you in a way you cannot avoid:  if you follow leadership that is immoral, unjust, unloving, unwise, you will get what you deserve, and the desserts will be disastrous.  In real time.

I am even eternally thankful for Jeremiah’s pitiless reproach for people whose own religion bluntly teaches them to tell truth, honor others, seek justice, protect the poor, who then are tempted to select leaders who say they have done and will do the opposite, and then are proven to have done.  We have been warned.

I am eternally thankful for Jeremiah’s realism which—did you hear?—includes at the end, encompasses at twilight, for all the suffering the divine love endures, including Jeremiah’s own slave death and unmarked grave in Egypt, a grace note, a ringing bell, a song sung, a word spoken, a hope, that one day ‘says the Lord,  I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah… No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord…

So we arrive today in the anxiety and perplexity of our time, at the town court of Nazareth, the honorable UnJ Judge presiding.   Hear ye, hear ye.  Hizzoner awaits. He of the powers that be, who fear neither God nor man. And Behold the Lord Jesus Christ dressed today in the apparel of a poor woman.  For those who, rightly, feel anxiety or despair or depression at the rampant sexism now latent and palpable, including somehow an amnesia regarding the fact that women’s bodies are first and foremost women’s bodies, and revealed by the events of this year and autumn across our decaying culture, take heart:  behold the Lord Jesus Christ dressed today in the raiment of an importunate, a persistent poor widow. A figure of blessed endurance.

Yes, in our autumn of anxiety, we can readily appreciate the Scripture’s utter realism.    Luke too needed to remember that Jesus told them about “losing heart”.  This phrase communicates, in a time like ours. Greater souls in easier times have felt such ennui.  So we are not surprised today to hear reports of increased therapy, medication and consumption of comfort food.  We can feel the depression.

Jesus pointed to the Town Court of Nazareth and therein to the simple figure of a persistent woman.  See her at the bench.  Watch her in the aisle.  Listen to her steady voice.  Feel her stolid forbearance.  Says she:  “Grant me justice.”

My beloved teacher Sharon Ringe reminds us: ‘The widow’s untiring pursuit of justice is translated into the ‘faith’ that should mark the church’s welcome of the awaited Son of Man’ (Ringe, LUKE, loc.cit.)

In Nazareth town court, all rise hear ye hear ye the honorable U J Judge presiding, a woman who exemplifies the Greek word ‘upomone’, endurance, employs time and voice.  You have time and you have voice. You have time and you have voice. Like Christ himself, she implores the implacable world to grant justice.  Like Christ himself, she comes on a donkey of tongue and patience.  Like Christ himself, she continues to plead, to intercede.  Like Christ himself, she importunes the enduring injustice of this world.  Like Christ himself she prays without ceasing.  Like Christ himself she…endures.  She is an example to us of how we should use whatever time we have and whatever breath remains–to pray, to attend to the holy, in conversation therewith, and so to work for good.  It is prayer that is the most realistic and wisest repose of the anxious of this autumn of exasperation.  By prayer we mean formal prayer, yes (more here another week). But by prayer we mean, too, the steady daily leaning toward justice, the continuous pressure in history from the voice of the voiceless and the time of the time bound.

Notice, waiting with us, this poor widow.  She lacks power, authority, status, position, wealth.  She has her voice and all the time in the world.  Like Jesus Christ, whose faith comes by hearing and hearing by the preaching of the word.

If we are not to lose heart, in the seemingly unending search for justice, we shall need to pray always, to “relax into the truth”, and to give ourselves over to the divine presence in our midst.  To give ourselves over to a real, common hope, and to be clear, not confused, courageous not timid about our hope:

In Jeremiah and in Luke there is a strange, eerie, abiding sense, one that we also feel, through it all, through it all, that we aspire for something better, we long and hunger for something better, a shared common hope.  In conversation with all that is holy, we find, know, trust this.

We await a common hope, a hope that our warming globe, caught in climate change, will be cooled by cooler heads and calmer hearts and careful minds.

We await a common hope, a hope that our dangerous world, armed to the teeth with nuclear proliferation, even now teetering on the brink of their use, will find peace through deft leadership toward global nuclear détente.

We await a common hope, a hope that our culture, awash in part in hooliganism, will find again the language and the song and the spirit of the better angels of our nature.

We await a common hope, a hope that our country, fractured by massive inequality between rich children and poor children, will rise up and make excellent education and health care available to all children, poor and rich.

We await a common hope, a hope that our schools, colleges and universities, will balance a love of learning with a sense of meaning, a pride in knowledge with a respect for goodness, a drive for discovery with a regard for recovery.

We await a common hope, a hope that our families, torn apart by abuse and distrust and anger and jealousy and unkindness, will sit at a long Thanksgiving table, this autumn, and share the turkey and pass the potatoes, and slice the pie, and, if grudgingly, show kindness and pity to one another.

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

We await a common hope, a hope that our grandfathers and mothers, in their age and infirmity, will receive care and kindness that accords with the warning to honor father and mother that you own days be long upon the earth.

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

 We hear the call to endure today.  It is a daily practice, a daily discipline.

An example of endurance, in the figure of an importunate widow.

‘Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart’

Blessed Endurance

Jesus Is Thine

O What A Foretaste

Of Glory Divine

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

posted in The Liberal Biblical Theology of St. Luke: Fall 2022, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 10.16.2022 at 11:00 am

No Comments »

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Luke 17: 11-19 

Click here to hear just the sermon

Jesus and his disciples are on their way to Jerusalem, toward the end of their time together.  In our text this morning they are in the borderland between Samaria and Galilee. These were once united as a country, but now are two separate countries, whose inhabitants despise each other due to religious and cultural differences that developed over time out of an originally common belief system.  In this political and social borderland, ten lepers approach Jesus, but do not cross the border of the distance between them.  These lepers are feared and outcast because of their disease’s contagion, and despised because of the common belief of their disease’s connections to sin.  One of them is even more feared, outcast, and despised, because while the others are Jewish, he is a Samaritan.

They call out to Jesus as “Master”, a term of respect, and ask him for mercy.  Jesus does not physically cross the border of the distance between them, but with his voice he somewhat conforms to Jewish norms:  usually showing oneself to a priest is directed after a healing occurs so that the healing can be confirmed, but here Jesus vocally directs them to do this before any healing has taken place.   It is when the lepers just obey and go that their request is granted, even before they complete the direction.  They are healed of their leprosy, all of them, including the Samaritan.  It is he who turns back, the only one out of the ten who were healed.  He praises God, and falls at Jesus’ feet in gratitude.  It is, as Jesus says, “this foreigner”, who not only has faith in Jesus and obeys his direction, but also recognizes – as the other nine do not – who Jesus is as the agent of God’s mercy and grace for him.

We have noted before the reminder from independent theologian and disability activist Sharon V. Betcher that the healing stories of the Gospels are never just about the healings – they carry social and political concerns as well.  A borderland is the setting for this healing, and, as here, borderlands are fluid spaces: at the same time barriers and marks of passage to safety; places where crossings both official and not, voluntary and forced, are made; where there is often a gathering of many diverse peoples and cultures that intermingle in peace or for war; and where unusual alliances are often formed.  The nine Jews and one Samaritan are forced out of the mainstream into the borderland by their illness.  And, they also remain there and find alliance together for protection and support.  After their healing, they all voluntarily are able to cross the border between disease and bodily health, back to their religious, social, political, and community life.  Perhaps the Samaritan, even more feared, outcast, and despised than the other nine, is also just a little more aware of how much of what God has done in his life, and of how much God has restored him to, through his healing experience.  Jesus is rather a borderland person himself, in his willingness to cross political, cultural, and religious barriers, his care for those rejected by society, and his willingness to engage with both the borderland and the people in it.

Jesus would have been familiar with the text from Jeremiah, that also talks about a border crossing.  This crossing was not voluntary.  The Israelites are in exile, forced into captivity in Babylon after a crushing defeat in war.  Bereft of all they have known, they have crossed a border into a strange land with strange people and strange ways.  They have crossed a border from freedom to captivity.  Jeremiah’s message tells them that their exile and captivity are a consequence:  of their having gone after other gods, and of rebellion against their covenant with God specific to Israel.  In our text this morning he describes how they are to bear their exile, so that their faithfulness might restore them to right relationship with God.  They are not to destroy themselves by direct resistance to their captors.  Instead, they are to make the most of their time in Babylon as they can.  They are to build houses and live in them.  They are to make friends of their captors, even ally with them through marriage and children.  They are to plant gardens, create places of beauty and nourishment. And even more, they are to seek the welfare of the city where they now live in exile, and pray on its behalf.  For it is in the welfare of the city of exile and captivity, full of borders and crossings, that they will find their own welfare and redemption.

Our lives too have many instances of borderlands and border crossings.  National, state, and city borders, certainly.  Social, cultural, political, and religious borders, now more fluid and more contested than ever before.  In New England, as in other parts of the country, we cannot help being aware of natural borderlands, often the most fluid, beautiful, and bountiful:  the borderlands between land and sea, mountain and valley, forest and meadow, town and country, garden and wilderness.  It is in our borderlands that we too find the most diversity and change, fluidity and barrier, conflict and alliance.

It is interesting that these texts about borderlands, about voluntary and forced border crossings, and about forced and voluntary encounters with strangers in the borderlands, come to us this year on Indigenous People’s Day weekend.  The word “indigenous” originally and still does mean plants and animals that grow, live, or occur naturally in a place; that have not moved there from, nor been brought to that place, from somewhere else.  More recently the word also encompasses the people who originally lived in a place, rather than the people who moved there from somewhere else, or especially rather than the people who colonized the original places of indigenous people.  The Boston University calendar marks tomorrow as Indigenous Peoples Day, a Boston University holiday on which to reflect, to remember indigenous peoples with ceremony, and to recognize and celebrate their endurance, resilience, and contribution to American life and culture in the face of so many generations, and counting, of settler colonialism. Certainly the borderlands and border crossings of indigenous people around the world bear some reflection, as they display distressing similarities, and have a bearing on our own American future.

Here I’m going to apologize for my pronunciation, as I have never heard his name spoken, and mean no offense if I mispronounce it:  Te Ahukaramu Charles Royal is a New Zealand Maori musician, university professor, and Maori-music revivalist. His work reflects the thought of many indigenous thinkers, including many of those in the United States, when he defines the term “indigenous” with regard to world view.  He uses the term “indigenous” to describe those peoples and cultures whose world views place certain special significance on the idea of the unity of humans with the natural world.  In these world views, humans are integral to the environment, and have a seamless relationship with nature which includes all of its components of seas, lands, rivers, mountains, flora, and fauna.

The borderlands and border crossings of the indigenous peoples in our country have to large extent been shaped, mostly in negative and even horrific ways, by the conflict between the American historical general view of the natural world and the indigenous cultures’ continuing general view.  Historically and practically the American general view of the natural world is that it is something to compete with and exploit, while a general indigenous view of the natural world values a more cooperative and relational model with the rest of creation.  This conflict has not only resulted in land grabs, resource theft, and widespread pollution of their earth, air, and water for indigenous populations.  Fueled by cultural assumptions of racist and poverty-inducing public policy, this conflict has led to devastating and continuing indigenous intergenerational loss and trauma.  Such a pattern of conflict is common throughout the world between colonizing and indigenous populations, with international and cumulative negative effects on both sides and on all of creation.  Such conflict is increasingly being regarded as unsustainable by many diverse groups of people. Resistance to it continues to be inspired to good effect by the courageous leadership of all kinds of people around the world, including many indigenous individuals and populations.  And, the chickens are coming home to roost, in the increasing challenges to human flourishing brought by the effects of such conflict in the midst of increasingly rapid climate change, which in turn increase the stresses on human freedom and community, and the economic, social, and cultural wellbeing of us all.

If we go back far enough, and granted, it may be pretty far – or not, we will all find an indigenous person in our family tree:  someone who was an original inhabitant of a land, and who was so interwoven into and with the land and its provision, that the land shaped their community, politics, social interactions, spiritual awareness, and wellbeing or lack of it, to an extent almost unimaginable to our current individualistic and mechanized way of life.  But while we all now, indigenous to a place or not, may be feeling that more “being more connected to nature” might be more essential to our well-being and even our souls than we thought, most of us, who are now not indigenous but are the results of forced or voluntary immigration, and most of us, who have been shaped by more or fewer generations of the historical and practical American general view of the land and natural world – most of us can never be truly indigenous, in the sense that our contemporary indigenous neighbors are.  And, we all may yet join with them, in the like negative experience of the land and its natural processes being so compromised through historic systemic evil and its present consequences, that its effects on our lives might become more negative than positive, and that it will take all of us to make an enormous effort to heal everyone’s environment, if that even remains possible.  We all soon may be involved in contemporary involuntary border crossings that we may not welcome at all:  geographic, social, political, and personal.  Many Americans of all sorts have already been forced into crossing borders into strange territory with strange people, and even into what feels like exile through floods and fire, hurricane and tornadoes and sea rise.  Migratory and breeding changes for birds and pollinators, as well as bloom cycle changes and unusual weather patterns with warming seas foretell changes in food resources.  The predictions of continuing and new pandemics threaten continuing loss of both loved ones, and of precious diversity and potential.  To think that we might escape any trouble by denying the situation, or by travel in our spaceships with our friends to a terraformed Mars, or that we can protect ourselves from change by buying up acreage and hiring armed guards, is only realistic up to a point, or not at all.  Unless the necessary changes in our consumption and unsustainable extraction, our prejudices and our pride, are made by everyone individually and together, we all may come to feel like exiles who have crossed a border, as we no longer recognize the place we live in, or the people, flora, and fauna we live with.

For now many of us remain in borderlands, and the borders still remain fluid.  In this meantime, we all can take the opportunity to wait upon, and work voluntarily toward, the border crossing back into health, and into social, political, religious, and community life for everyone, especially for those who have already suffered and continue to suffer great harm.  For it is in all creation’s welfare that we will find our own.

And, we can turn to back to Jeremiah also for insight in how to indirectly resist that which tries to hold us captive in hopelessness and despair.  We can live, really live, now in the places we are, locally and with a wider sense of how interconnected we are to a larger whole.  Build, or maintain, houses and live in them.  Make friends with those around us, strangers and familiar faces alike, and even ally with them – if not through marriage and children, through shared purpose and projects toward our mutual flourishing.  Plant gardens even in a Babylon, create places of beauty and nourishment where we are, even in unwelcome places.  Even more, seek the welfare of the place where we live, seek in the sense of knowing what that welfare is, and working towards it, no matter if we are there voluntarily or not.  And we can pray on behalf of that place and all its people.  For it is in the place where we live, really live, full of borders and crossings, that we will find our own welfare.

This is a tall order.  We have all been through a lot, and the “unprecedented” still seems to keep coming.  How do we sustain ourselves in the midst of all the challenges we face?

The author of II Timothy writes as a mentor to his mentee, who is a young man of faith living out a life of ministry in sharing the gospel and the teachings of Jesus.  As people of faith, we too can take the author’s words to heart, as he has also experienced challenge and hardship in his work, but is not discouraged.   He tells us, first of all, we can remember Jesus, and the power of God loose in the world toward resurrection.  We can look for signs of that power at work in the world today, and cooperate with it.  Even though we may feel chained by circumstance, the word of God is not chained.  We can endure the costs of sharing the good news of God’s love and empowerment for us, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, for our own sakes as well as for the sakes of others.  The words of vss. 11-13 are a Christ hymn – we can say or sing them to ourselves:

“The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him;

if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us;

if we are faithless, he remains faithful-- for he cannot deny himself.”

We can remind ourselves and others of these certainties.   We can warn ourselves and others before God against the destructive wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening.  Instead, we can do the work as best we can, rightly explaining the word of truth, so that God would approve of us as workers who have no need of being ashamed.

As we reflect on all this, we might also go back to the story of Jesus and the ten lepers.  Faith in Jesus is basic to faith, obedience to his directions will bring about healing just by going, before the direction is even completed.  And, it is the joyful praise of God, the gratitude to Jesus as God’s agent of mercy and grace, that marks this Samaritan, “this foreigner”, as a true person of faith.  It is gratitude for the mercy and healing of God, at work in our own lives of borders and crossings, that most of all will empower us to meet our challenges, and cross the border back into health and well-being for ourselves and for the world.

Amen.

-The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation

posted in The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation on 10.9.2022 at 11:00 am

No Comments »

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Luke 17: 1-10 

Click here to hear just the sermon

Our field work is no substitute for our domestic duties. 

Your outside, outdoor application of mind and body, in profession or employment or work, is not a replacement for the hearth, the home, the heart, the power of the dinner table, the beloved, the family—kinder, kuche, kirche, as Luther might have put it. 

 You cannot claim reference to bank account, degrees and honorifics, achievements and merit badges, when faced with a required response to the dominical claim upon relational duties.  It will not help me in the long run when I affirm a full bank account or a long list of peer reviewed articles or a world championship of whatever sort, if they are meant to cover over what matters, counts, lasts and has meaning, if they are meant to avoid grace, care, kindness and…well…love. 

My dear one, your field work is no substitute for your domestic duties. 

Says our Lord Jesus Christ, both to an ancient struggling church, and to you and me on World Communion Sunday: Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table”? Would you not rather say to him, “Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink”? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”  

The dinner table and all its conversations and claims make no allowance for a borrowing from the day’s own trouble.  A prayer is said, the dishes are passed, a conversation—glorious, golden, rhythmic, improvisational, personal, intimate, perilous, demanding, real, and so utterly human—a conversation emerges.  Something is said.  Something is heard.  The table has its own realm and kingdom, its own royalty and citizenry, its own claim and call.  Call it the power of the dinner table.  

Three years on into the twilight—perhaps—of Covid, we have missed a step or two, lost or forgotten our dinner table habits.  We have grown cold to the clink and charm of fork and glass.  We have become rusty, out of shape, flabby both in the form of host and of guest—so interesting in older English, the two are almost the same word.  We have been rightly busy with our field work, ploughing and shepherding, works and day jobs and zoom screens and all.  So, we have not been prepared to…be prepared.  To be ready to…prepare supper…put on our apron…serve the service of eating and drinking.  After all, we still try to assert, in the teeth of the hurricane gale—an image we have in mind as in prayer we remember those suffering now in Florida-- of this deceptively minimal saying of the Lord, that, well, we had a good day at the screen—didn’t we?, on the zoom—didn’t we? by the click click-ometer of the internet—didn’t we?, in our day job—didn’t we? Didn’t we? 

 Not so fast, Jesus says, not so fast.  

 Not so fast, says Mr. Wesley, not so fast. 

 Not so fast, says our own true and hard experience, not so fast. 

 Not so fast says life, presence, freedom, experience.   

 Not so fast, says God, not so fast. 

 Do what is commanded, says Jesus.  Conversation is a means of grace, says John Wesley (as real and powerful as sacrament, as prayer, as Scripture, as fasting)—a conveyance of grace.  Our late Covid experience is a hunger and thirst for--what satisfies hunger and slakes thirst.  The real hunger.  One does not live by bread alone, but by every word… 

There is an orb of reality, a realm of being, a place unto itself, around the common table, after the day’s own trouble, the power of the table, that will not be supplanted, outsourced, erased, minimized, or disregarded. 

And here we are.  At table, a table as big as all outdoors, and a table that spans the globe, and a table that serves a World Communion, a world communion.  And here we are.  Morning has come, the board is spread, thanks be to God who gives us bread, thank God for bread.  And the power of the table, the dining table, is just here—conversation--a saving, intervening power, especially for us, we who are coming in from the field work of 3 Covid years, without it.  And here we are.  Conversation is where imagination and memory dance.  Conversation is where one feels and says ‘I love you’.  Conversation is where the strict arts of listening are raised from the dead.  Conversation on the street, at home, along the park bench, before church, after church, outside church.  There is nothing more human, nor more healthy, nor more saving than a good conversation, which by nature begins in the unexpected and ends in the unforeseen and trails along in the mind for days to come. 

 A conversation starts, somehow.  A conversation travels, somewhere.  A conversation ends, sometime.  After three years of screen, of zoom, of facetime, of text, of email, of distance, of attention to quasi-spaces, electronic spaces--to which nuance, humor, personality, humanity, and connection go to die--we have been returned to the land of conversation.  Praise God from whom all blessings flow.  There is a robust magic in conversation, whereby John Wesley named conversation a means of grace, alongside prayer, Scripture, sacraments, and fasting. 

 In conversation, there abides, or lurks, the lasting possibility of heart to heart communication, heart by heart communion.  That potential seizes you, not the other way around.   You are longways into a talk with an old dear friend, and of a sudden, you realize, you intuit, just how much that friendship means, a friendship planted and grown in conversation.  You are gathered before dinner, and the children, coaxed, begin to sing the songs of memory, of history, of Zion, of nation, of upgrowing.  The folksongs, the hymns, the partner songs, the spirituals, the camp fire rounds, multiple rounds, give off an invisible glow, a kind of verbal hearth.  You sit with two colleagues who are also combatants.  There is an opening, and a joust, and of a sudden—unplanned, unexpected, unforeseen—one shatters the other with a truth spoken and heard.  The shattering is not in the end a mendable one.  Some things, like some malignancies, you can never cure, but you can manage.  They are manageable but not curable.  They can be managed, managed to ground, even though, unseen, the malignancy remains.  In conversation, in the magic of conversation, such hard and dark and difficult truth can surface.  Be careful with the shattering, in the moment and in the meantime and in the memory and in the future.  You realize afterward, that one loved one, in one seemingly innocuous conversation, was trying to say something, something like, I am worried about this medical procedure, and I think I may, well, I think I may not make it...  But the clues and hues and dues and schmooze are too indirect, too subtle, and you miss the marrow and meaning of the talk, only to recall it, only to get it, later, much later, too late.  You are in a meeting, and all of sudden the temperature shifts, and sunlight and warmth become cave darks, stalactites and stalagmites.  And the conversation flickers, withers, and dies.  Something is in there.  It would be utterly invisible and inaudible by zoom.  But in conversation, in presence, with embodied silence, and incarnate body language, you see and hear:   She is really hurting.  He is really angry.  I am really in over my head.  They want something they really can never have. 

 There is a saving power, a saving grace in conversation.  It costs nothing to listen, except time and risk.  And it costs nothing to speak, except time and risk.  Could you say that in another way?  What I hear you to have said is just this.  Do you really mean that, or do you mean half or double that?  It sounds to me like you are wandering around Robin Hood’s barn, and that makes me wonder why you are wandering like that.  When you say that, who do you have in mind?  Why do I have the feeling that you have a feeling about this?  Let’s talk about this again someday. There is a healing power, a healing grace in conversation.  Most people can in time solve their own problems, if they just have someone to talk to about them, who will really listen to them ( said Dr. John Hertel, Cornell University, 1979). 

 Pastoral ministry, cut to the chase, is the pursuit of an excellent 20-minute sermon a week, a twenty-hour task, alongside 25 genuine conversations a week.  The rest, all other ground, is sinking sand.  Most current schools of theology have still some faculty left who know pastoral conversation in person.  They are not ordained.  They have no ministerial experience to speak of.  They have not invested the time in listening to become adept at listening because their work and future depend on speaking and writing.  (They are largely introverts, usually extreme introverts, for whom human presence and engagement are profoundly enervating and exhausting.  Far better the buffers of libraries, books, papers, lectures, classes and grades, than the direct encounter with another heart.  I and Thou.) But through it all, they remember the grace of conversation, the saving intervening grace of conversation.  Likewise, most denominations and churches have at least some leadership left, a few circles of ministerial wisdom shared in conversation about…conversation.  Seward Hiltner, Homer Jerdigan, Henri Nouwen, Ann Belford Ulanov are not with us any longer, and not with us to remind us that the most the important things in ministry are the one on one things (said Bishop Joseph Yeakel, 1982).  Pastoral ministry is visiting and preaching.  Ministry is preaching. (It’s easy, as a generation ago Mike Royko said of his job to write a weekly newspaper column, ‘it’s easy, just sit down at the typewriter--and slit your wrists’.)  Pastoral ministry is conversation.  Ministry is conversation.  (It’s easy, just sit down and listen until the cows come home.) 

 The minister, the baptized Christian, for ministry is born in every baptism, and is emphatically not confined to ordination, the minister is part bull fighter, part heavy weight boxer, part private detective, part spy.  At stake, for all, is lasting health, personal salvation, individual growth, spiritual integrity, and the chance, the fleeting chance, to experience being alive before we die.  The cape ripples and the saber rattles.  The prize fighter dodges, weaves, ducks, swings, retreats, advances.  The PI looks through the back window, checks the mail in the mail box, notices the water still dripping from the faucet, puts two and two together.  The one disguised behind enemy lines smiles, demurs, nods, remembers, and then will try to bring home a truth, the truth in hand, without getting caught.  But these arts are practiced, sharpened, conveyed, by one pastor and another…in conversation. 

 Every hour spent on a machine is an hour spent apart from conversation, and so apart from full real life itself.  Your field work is no substitute for your domestic duties. Walk with a friend.  Sit for intercessory prayer.  Call somebody on the phone.  Set a lunch date.  Offer a coffee.  Receive with happiness the unannounced visitor to your office.  Steer the conversation, when you can, away from doing and out onto the broad meadow of being.  Keep a journal.  Write a sermon.  Craft a poem.  Design and experiment.  Take on some painting, some gardening, some creative craft, a piano lesson, beginning French or Swahili. 

 My grandmother grew up on a dairy farm near Cooperstown. Some of you have heard me mention her before. She graduated from Smith College in 1914.  She taught school and married later in life, raising three daughters.  She spent her later life in a modest Syracuse home, surrounded by piles of books, mounds of newspapers, and letters written or to be written and received, often long ago.  She and her college roommate wrote each other a letter once a week from graduation until death.  She feared no conversation, and celebrated all conversation, no matter how middling or shallow or tiresome.  Famously, she was thrilled, overjoyed, to have the Jehovah Witnesses come into her Methodist living room, on their mission.  She loved to talk with them about the intricacies of Leviticus.  She always wanted them to stay longer than they could stand to stay.  They left worn out, bedraggled, dog tired, exhausted, and utterly defeated.  

People do not always know what they think and feel until they say it, until they say it to someone they know is listening, someone who really cares. People do not always know what they think and feel until they say it, until they say it to someone they know is listening, someone who really cares.  This is not psychiatry, not psychotherapy, not formal counseling, nor any other of the—very wonderful and endlessly helpful and so much needed—forms of care.  This is conversation, a means of grace. 

 A conversation starts, somehow.  A conversation travels, somewhere.  A conversation ends, sometime.  After a year or three of screen, of zoom, of facetime, of text, of email, of distance, of attention to spaces, electronic spaces to which much goes to die---nuance, humor, personality, humanity, and connection go to die--we have been returned to the land of conversation.  It is World Communion Sunday!  Praise God from whom all blessings flow!  There is a robust magic in conversation, a means of grace, alongside prayer, Scripture, sacraments, and fasting. 

Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table”? Would you not rather say to him, “Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink”? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”  

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

posted in The Liberal Biblical Theology of St. Luke: Fall 2022, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 10.2.2022 at 11:00 am

No Comments »

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Luke 16:19–31

Click here to hear the sermon and cantata

Dean Hill:

Especially throughout the COVID summers, we came to rely on the radio, its classical music and occasional weather and news, for our summer technological engagement with the wider world, out in the woods of Empire State.  Alone in the earlier mornings, when the fitful restlessness of work life gradually abates, as it can over time if we give it time, sometimes there is momentous moment. 

 The announcer said something about Debussy, whom I remember from required (back in the days of required courses) college introduction to music.  Therein we sat on a carpet and listened and were tested later on baroque, classical, romantic, impressionist and modern music.  The French name made a mark.   

Then onto the radio waves came a light, flowing harp beauty.  It was a shimmering beauty, light and alluring, quiet, gentle, unlike really anything I could remember hearing before.  The host named the piece as an Arabesque, perhaps the second such from Debussy, though I may have mistaken that.  The lake breeze lifted the notes, and there was throughout the room for a few fine minutes a shimmering beauty.  For two summers and more we could not sing together, or perform together, or worship together, in COVID. We will never any longer take the thrill of congregational and choral singing of the hymns of faith for granted.  These are beautiful moments. 

Like its cousins, truth and goodness, such a beauty leaves a mark, makes a lasting mark, a beauty mark you could say.  Time stops.  Imagination awakens.  Troubles recede.  You are caught up in something larger than yourself, as sometimes happens in religious experience too. 

In this radio carried music, it seemed to this untrained ear, there rose and fell a kind of oriental melody, a lightness, a veiled impression.  And it seemed to me that the better person to listen was the kind of person listening in this moment, who has no formal musical education, other than that incurred through spouse, family, and various church organists and choir masters.   

 It is the ear, often, rather than the eye, voice rather than face, the audible invisible, that carries an uncanny power.  The triumph of the invisible over the visible.   

 It happens that my mentor Bishop Joseph Yeakel died in this same summer time week.  He taught us: you can only preach what you know…the one on one work is the most important ministry…your staff need to be creative and loyal both…people remember what you do more than what you teach...most of us need more reminder than instruction 

His contemporary, a long-retired minister, had a dream the night before, before he knew of Joe’s death, that he had been asked to preach at the memorial, but had not prepared a sermon.  Dreams are such strange things.  Invisible, shimmering, beautiful, too. 

 Across the radio waves again, Dr. Jarrett, we assemble our listenership.  With joy and peace in believing, with joy and peace in the true, good and beautiful.  For what, this Lord’s Day, shall we most listen? 

Dr Jarrett's section is not available.

Dean Hill:

In these weeks we listen also to, and soberly remember, Jeremiah. 

The prophet Jeremiah excoriated his people, hoping against hope to keep them in faith along. For four decades he challenged, criticized, and vilified his beloved country, and its leadership, and its people.  They heeded him not.  

Jeremiah exclaimed: False prophets deceive people with their optimism.  The temple has no efficacy in and of itself.  The true circumcision is not of body, but of mind and heart.  Even the Bible can lead astray: Even the Torah may become a snare and a delusion through the false pen of the scribes. 

Notice some of the themes from the sixth century bce:  Deportation, false optimism, betrayal of heritage, forgetfulness of history, ineffective leadership, personal failings which damage the nation, turning of a deaf ear toward the voice of God. “For my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good.” 

Jeremiah, whom we have heard in the background of our worship and preaching for some weeks, speaks to us again. today.  He warns us, he warns us, week by week he has warned.  And then, remarkably, in today’s reading, he stakes his life on hope, an unseen hope, a powerful hope of what may yet be. May his memory, just here, truly help us. 

The beauty of the music this morning is itself a sort of baptism of hope.  We sometimes long to take a spiritual shower, to bathe ourselves in the living waters of grace, faith, hope, life, and love.   Especially, it might be stressed, on any college campus today, the need for spiritual cleansing is continual.  We need both judgment and mercy, both honesty and kindness, both prophetic upbraid and parabolic uplift.  And we get them, thanks be to God, in Jeremiah and in Luke.  But look!  They come upside down.  In a stunning reversal, kindness and gentle hope are the hallmarks of our passage from Jeremiah, while wrath and hellfire explode out of Luke. 

Listen again to the voice of the prophet, one of the great, strange voices in all of history and life, one of the great, strange voices, in all of Holy Writ.  Jeremiah.  All is lost, in Judah, as Jeremiah addresses Zedekiah the King.  You will be a slave in Babylon, King Zedekiah.  You will be given into the hand of your sworn, mortal enemy, and so too will be the fate of your city, your temple, your people, and your country, King Zedekiah.  But. Nonetheless.  Nevertheless.  And yet. These are resurrection words. But. Nonetheless.  Nevertheless.  Still. Even And Jeremiah put his money where his mouth is.  Or was. 

With his beloved country in ruins, Jeremiah does something great, something remarkable and hopeful and great.  Jeremiah buys a plot of land.  One day, a long time from now, he muses and prays, there will be some manner of restoration: ‘I cannot see it.  I cannot hear it.  I cannot prove it.  Sometimes I cannot believe it.  But, hoping against hope, I will buy some land, and someday, somebody, somehow will use it’.  This is faith:  to plant trees under which you will not sleep, to build churches in which you will not worship, to create schools in which you will not study, to teach students whose futures you will not know—and to buy land which you will not till.  But someone will.  Or at least, that is your hope.  You have done some things this fall.  You offered a morning prayer.  You attended to worship. Good for you.  You sent a check to support something or someone.  Good for you.  You went and volunteered to make contacts and calls. Good for you.  You spoke up and spoke out, regardless of the fan mail, family disdain, and other costs.  You did something.  Will it make a difference?  Who can say?  But it does make a difference, for you, if for no one else.   

Go.  Go.  Go and buy your little plot of land. 

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

-Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music

posted in Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, The Bach Experience, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 09.25.2022 at 11:00 am

No Comments »

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Luke 16:1-13

Click here to hear just the sermon

Greetings to you on this international student Sunday! I am very excited that we are able to return to this tradition of recognizing our international student population this year, for the first time in three years. The start of this school year has been a return to more normal operations – as the Dean has said on multiple occasions you can feel a certain buzz in the air that hasn’t been present for a while. That includes having gatherings together, seeing each other’s faces, and having opportunities to connect with one another. As we come together in worship, we have the opportunity to hear the scriptures together, to learn together, and to refuel ourselves to go out into the world and share God’s love with others. 

That being said, this week’s gospel is a doozy. I mean that with all sincerity. If you feel lost having just heard or read it to yourself, you’re not alone. What is going on in this scripture passage? We get a clear “lesson” from the parable at the end of the reading – “You cannot serve God and wealth.” But what is going on in the rest of this story? It seems less clear than many of the parables we’ve heard before. I am not joking when every commentary I read for this week’s gospel said that this was an especially difficult passage to preach on, mainly because we are trying to read something out of context. We aren’t as familiar with the economic goings-on of the first century. We don’t know if there is deeper meaning in why Jesus tells this parable and what the author of Luke’s gospel intended in adding it to the scriptures. In fact, many commentaries I consulted suggested there were up to seven different approaches you could take in trying to interpret this scripture, but that no one is really sure what the original intention may have been. It’s much easier to speculate as to why this story is present in an academic commentary than it is to bring the text to life in our current context, but we’ll find our way through together. 

So, let’s start with a summary because the text is confusing upon first reading. There is a manager who reports to a rich man. His job is to collect what is owed to the rich man, but he hasn’t been doing it. The rich man effectively fires him because he hasn’t been doing his job, which would appear to be a reasonable justification to fire someone. We don’t know why the manager hasn’t been collecting what is owed to the rich man. The thought of losing his job puts the manager into crisis mode, a bad situation. He realizes that if he really does lose his job, he will be required to either do hard labor (which he claims to be unfit for) or to beg (which he is too proud to do). In this crisis situation, he must find a way out. 

The manager devises a plan – if he goes to the debtors and offers them a lower amount of what they owe, they may be more willing to pay it. Not only that, but they may be grateful to the manager for the reduction he has offered them. If he is to lose his job, these people are possibly the ones whom he will need to rely on for his survival. An expectation of reciprocity, a little “I’ll scratch your back if you will scratch mine,” fuels his deal-making. What originally seemed like a dead-end crisis becomes a win-win-win situation. It turns out, even though the manager has not collected all that is owed to the rich man, the rich man is happy with the way the manager handled the situation. Imagine that! The original reason that the rich man had fired the manager was because he was not bringing in the earnings the rich man though he deserved, and the rich man is still not getting all that he thinks he deserves from the situation. However, the rich man seems to better understand what the manager is doing to secure his job. If the rich man were to go back to the debtors and request the remainder of what he thinks he is owed, the debtors might not be so happy with him. The manager has now flexed his own power in creating a situation where the rich man must accept what he is given or else he will look bad to his debtors. In his response, the rich man praises the manager for being a shrewd business person.  He’s proven some level of trust to the rich man. Conversely, the debtors are happy with the manager and the rich man because they owe less money and will perhaps be more cooperative with them in the future because of this gesture. Win-win-win. 

All’s well that ends well, right? I mean Jesus even seems to suggest to the disciples that they can learn a thing or two from the manager about how to utilize shrewd or prudent behavior to their advantage. It’s not what we would expect Jesus to say, given the myriad of examples of how his parables work. What’s strange about this passage is that it’s not like a typical parable from Jesus. Usually when Jesus is telling a parable, there’s clear exemplars of one position or another. They provide examples of what God’s kingdom looks like, what justice and righteousness on earth could appear to be. But here, it almost seems as though there is no exemplar for behavior. If anything, it gives us a view of what everyday human existence looks like. The manager is making a way in a bad situation. The way he chooses ends up benefiting everyone, but it’s definitely not grounded in ultimate justice or righteousness. If anything, his shrewd behavior seems to be motivated more by self-preservation than a sense of what is right or wrong. He is looking toward his future alone instead of being stuck in the present moment in making a plan for himself. 

It is our instinct to protect ourselves in moments of crisis. When faced with the unexpected, it’s often hard to see past the circumstances of the immediate moment to think clearly. Sometimes all we want is to fix the problem immediately, whatever it is so that the crisis will stop. Most times, it’s not that simple to accomplish. Like the manager in the story who weighs his options if he really has lost his job, occasionally we are led on a somewhat precarious path of making the best out of what we’re experiencing. It is often also true that in these crisis situations, we receive help from the most unexpected places or in unexpected ways. For us, we remember that even in those lowest moments, we are not alone, but that God’s grounding presence abides with us. 

In our existence as human beings on this planet, as social creatures who must make their way through ups and downs in the context of other people’s behaviors, we have complex matrices of negotiation and decision making that we must undertake. Not one of us operates in the extremes of good and bad. Instead, we are constantly negotiating the realities of our lives. Our own needs, our commitments to others, and our faithfulness to God. It’s messy and complicated and a lot harder to live out our values than it is to claim them. Our interactions with others are never 100% neutral. Even though we might not want to think of ourselves as been shrewd in how we deal with others, there are times when the expectation of reciprocity motivates us to act in certain ways. We do favors for others, sometimes selflessly, but sometimes with the knowledge that the favor will be returned. “You owe me” we might say to a friend or a colleague upon assisting them in a crisis situation. Or we feel indebted to others for the favors or kindnesses they’ve shown to us and are more willing to assist them when they need it in the future. In crisis situations, it’s good to know who your friends are. 

Similarly, we might try our best in a situation that’s difficult to negotiate, but feel our efforts weren’t enough to solve the problem. There have been many times in my life when I’ve felt that I could have done so much more in a tricky situation. Upon review with a friend or a loved one, the refrain of “you did the best you could, given the circumstances.” There are many big-picture issues in our world today which might make us contemplate whether we are doing enough to meet the moment. Global issues, like the suffering created by the war in Ukraine, climate change, and participation in exploitative economic practices create anxiety and worry. We may feel like Jeremiah in today’s Hebrew Bible reading, crying out in the grief we feel about our earthly situation. When God is not centered in the community, all hope of establishing the kingdom on earth fails. 

An important thing to remember in this story is that we are talking about two different economies. The economy of earth, the children of this age, and God’s economy, the children of the light. As has been reiterated by so many of the parables Jesus has told during his travels to Jerusalem in Luke’s gospel, the kingdom of God is quickly coming, but it does not operate under the same systems which human beings have created for themselves. What the disciples can learn from the example of the manager is that they do not have to be victims of circumstance. They can change the systems that exist in order to establish new patterns of relationship. Essentially, that is what Jesus is teaching them to do through his ministry. God’s kingdom is all about dismantling the human-created patterns of behavior that cause harm and oppression to establish justice and righteousness. Even if the manager is not setting out to completely overhaul the economic system he is beholden to, in his small way he has altered the relationships that exist within that system. By making friends with the debtors and reducing what is owed, he establishes a relationship of trust and reciprocity with them, not merely a transactional relationship. 

We return to the lesson we are supposed to be learning from this parable, that one cannot worship or serve both God and wealth. This phrase might evoke a sense that Christians are not to be concerned with money; an idealized version of discipleship in which one is not tied to the economic practices of this world. However, for most Christians that’s not possible. We are human beings who exist in the world and we have vocations that require us to operate in the economic systems of our communities. However, as Christians, we should understand that the wealth, power, or privilege we might possess in any given situation are to be met with humility and generosity of spirit in witnessing to the needs of others. For as quickly as wealth or power can come, it can also be lost just as quickly. Our understanding of wealth must rest in a deeper commitment to justice. Rev. Verity A. Jones, in a reflection on this passage from Luke states this: 

Despite all the potential ethical and practical pitfalls and dangers of wealth accumulation, Jesus is suggesting in this reading that it is possible to manage possessions and money in ways that can lead us into life with God. The key, the starting point for knowing how to do this, is to know the endpoint -- to know what life with God is like. And if we use possessions to gain that life with God, Jesus may commend us, as he did the dishonest manager in the reading. Being shrewd, in this case, means using what we have for God's purposes, rather than squandering what we have for no gain at all.1 

Although the manager’s motivations for why he helped lower the amounts owed may not have been purely aligned with the mission statement that Jones puts forth in her assessment of what we are to take from the text, the point is that even small actions like these can help in moving toward what God’s kingdom looks like. 

You probably heard the news story this week about the asylum seekers who unexpectedly landed in Martha’s Vineyard after being sent north by the Governor of Florida. Viewing Martha’s Vineyard as a beacon of wealth, this attempt to either embarrass or prove a point about sanctuary communities for immigrants not really being prepared seemed to backfire. Even though the summer population of the island does tend toward wealthy, in the off-season, the island is populated by a small community used to supporting each other through the winter. The community, gathered around St. Andrew’s Episcopal church where the migrants were housed, provided aid for the mostly Venezuelan group at a moment’s notice. A situation in which no one was prepared for what was to happen – not the immigrants themselves, who had been promised housing, jobs, and help with immigration when they arrived in New England, nor the community who had no advanced knowledge of the immigrants arrival. However, they were able to make the best out of the situation that they could. It wasn’t perfect; the community couldn’t guarantee the asylum that the immigrants were searching for, but they provided for the basic needs of this small group in a moment of confusion and desperation with what they had. It may not have been perfect, but it provided relief and aid in a complex situation. 

Today’s gospel teaches us about the patience required for us to make a way that leads us toward justice in our complex world. When crises arise, we do the best we can with the situation at hand, remembering our faith and acting prudently. Our faith in God provides the only relationship which requires nothing from us, but we cannot live our lives with the expectation that all actions we undertake will be completely selfless. We should feel called to reflect on what we have; what wealth, what power, what influence we can muster in shaping the relationships around us toward God’s purposes. If we can find ways to make our systems more just, so that people and our world are not exploited, we can inch toward the reality that Jesus foretells in God’s kingdom.  

Amen. 

-The Rev. Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain for International Students

posted in The Rev. Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain for International Students on 09.18.2022 at 11:00 am

No Comments »

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Luke 15:1-10

Click here to hear just the sermon

“Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Perhaps it is fitting that this week’s lesson presents Jesus, in his primary colors, not as teacher of righteousness, but as savior of sinners. One whose joy comes in finding the lost.

We long for, hunger for, good news, in a time of loss. Come September 11, a nation remembers 3,000 dead 21 years ago, a time of loss. Come Thursday afternoon past, the globe remembers the decades of selfless life and service of a Queen, and now grieves the death of a global Queen, a time of loss. Institutions near and far experience transition in leadership, with a sense of loss. A denomination reels from the shocks of sudden and coming division, and there is loss. A freshman, class of 2026, away from home for the first time, feels loss. You can feel lost in a time of loss. As Queen Elizabeth said in 1997: We have all been trying to cope in our different ways. It is not easy to express a sense of loss, since the initial shock is often succeeded by a mixture of other feelings: disbelief, incomprehension, anger and concern for those who remain (NYT, 9/9/22). Entering the autumn of 2022, together, for all our losses, we are intent on sewing together again, knitting together again, the fabric of our common life. Jesus’ parables tend to remind us, through thick and thin, of what matters, lasts and counts. As today. Those who follow and heed him, as we are trying to do, can rejoice in that: joy in the presence of the angels of God.

This Sunday, this year, ‘September 11’ we remember both in the opening prayers and in the sermon for today. Our bulletin for the day, as in other years, lists the names of those BU men and women lost on that tragic day, 9/11/01. In 2011, we telephoned the families of those who died that day, to express our continued remembrance of them, and our shared sense of ongoing mourning and grief. They were some of the most memorable pastoral conversations of my time here at BU thus far. Boston University memorial services have been held every five years at Marsh Chapel and on Marsh Plaza (2006, 2011, 2016, 2021). The service for 2011, held on the Plaza, included in leadership President Robert A. Brown, Robert Pinsky

(former Poet Laureate of the USA and current BU faculty), the University Chaplains, and the Marsh Chapel choir.

In addition, throughout this past week we have joined with others in welcoming a new class of students, the class of 2026. Throughout this past week on campus there has been a palpable, shared, expressed desire to connect, to know, to invite, to welcome. You make it evident right now in our service of worship. You all have more than done your own part in this: an opening brunch, a chaplains’ meeting, a Marsh Chapel matriculation service, the University Matriculation, a first class day breakfast, a greening of the dorms, a midweek worship service, a co-curricular programs fair, a religious life fair, a garden party, choir practices and auditions, staff gatherings, a completed term book, a reception for theological students, a big Saturday SPLASH, barbecue luncheon today following worship, and many individual greetings, conversations and prayers. All this in aid of helping, supporting, and guiding 18-year-olds toward places, spaces, and gatherings wherein they will be ‘found’, wherein they will find themselves at least in part, wherein there will be a shared joy, a heavenly joy, an angelic joy, joy in the presence of the angels of God.

St. Luke encourages us with a word about finding the lost. It is notable that here, in this congregation and listenership, the numinous oddities of language in Luke 15 you do understand and use. We hear you use these great words, and use them well. One says to his son, in the pew, as the Scripture is read, “I remember—a parable is a story with a message, and I remember that Jesus always taught using parables. He taught by telling stories. These parables were set in the countryside, and were about people and about justice. Jesus taught adults with simple stories.” You understand ‘parable’. Someone else, driving home today, interprets the word ‘joy’ for her rider: “Joy is God’s delight, given us by God’s spirit. Joy is one of the footprints, hallmarks, earmarks, landmarks, benchmarks of the Holy Spirit. What pleasure is to the body, joy is to the soul.” I might have thought that ‘repentance’ would throw you, but no. In the choir, disrobing, an alto tells a bass, “Repentance means to turn around, to head home, to dust off and try again, like that story about the son and the pigs.” And angel, you might add, means messenger, and presence means joy, and heaven means the message of the presence of joy. Then, at Monday evening community dinner, talking to a theological student, an engineering student might ask the definition of sin. The response: Well, it literally means to miss the mark, but it has two parts. First is the personal part, ‘lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy, pride’. Or as Howard Thurman would say, ‘cutting against the grain of

your own wood…listen for the sound of the genuine, listen for the sound of the genuine…you are the only person like you, just like you, that the world has ever seen…listen for the genuine inside you’. Second is the pervasive part, the gone-wrongness in life. Sin is the power of death, throughout life. Sin is the condition of life under which treachery takes place. Sin is the absence of God. Sin is an orb of confusion in the world. Personal, pervasive. Well said!

We could add, sin is personal like that expressed in our epistle, 1 Timothy. Jesus comes for others, as 1 Timothy said, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost”. When one is lost, as here and also in the later account of the Welcoming Father, one can become anxious, depressed, dislocated, and alone. Someone found is the cause of inexpressible delight, joy. Including the lonely, discovering the dislocated, reconnecting with the disappeared—these moments provide a heavenly joy, (vs. 7), a consequence of the discovery of the lost we are intent on sewing together again, knitting together again, the fabric of our common life.

We could add, sin is pervasive, like that expressed in our reading from Jeremiah. Sin has a corporate, expansive, even institutional reality. We mistake its power, if we see it only, say, in personal life. That of course is real, and true. Sin is like the advance or retreat of a great thunderstorm, a frontal advance, though theological not meteorological. Sin is like a city blacked out, a power far beyond any individual lamp turned down, any individual light switch hit. Sin is a shadow, the one great shadow. Whatever is not of faith, is sin. And that is quite a lot in this world. Sin is all that mutes the voice. Do we blame sheep—hardly by the way a comprehensively intelligent beast--for getting lost? It is his nature. Do we blame the coin—inanimate, hardly noticeable—for getting lost? It is Isaac Newton’s gravity at work. But we only see sin clearly when we are ready to see it, by revelation, and often only once we have left its borders behind. Like all lasting reality, we know it in retrospect.

Sin is what Jeremiah, in all the autumn readings of 2016, was warning us about, what we could and would not see in the coming religious, cultural, social and ultimately political condition of our country. It is hard but saving to have Jeremiah with us again all fall this year. Sin is what Jeremiah was warning us about in all the autumn readings of 2019, what we could not see in a coming pandemic, and an unprepared infrastructure and a mendacious national leadership, and ultimately, touching home right in these pews, the

deaths of a million just in our own land. It is hard but saving to have Jeremiah with us again all fall this year, and to hear his harsh warning again today.

That is, the power of sin vastly surpasses any individual, human attempt at cure. Individuals may behave morally or immorally, usually some of both. But corporate, pervasive sin lives on, as R Niebuhr taught so long ago: “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary”. Sin is that ‘inclination’. And, “if social cohesion is impossible without coercion, and coercion is impossible without the creation of social injustice, and the destruction of injustice is impossible without the use of further coercion, are we not in an endless cycle of social conflict?” Sin is that ‘impossible’.

As Wesley said, “sin remains even when it does not reign.”

We have much to do to wrestle with pervasive sin, with the global challenges of pollution, Putin, pandemic, prices, prejudice, politics, and pain. Jane Addams said it of our nation, but her insight now fits our world: “The blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation must be made universal if they are to be permanent. The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in midair, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life”.

Jesus’ parables tend to remind us, through thick and thin, of what matters, lasts and counts. We smile to recall Queen Elizabeth saying and repeating, as was remembered this week, ‘our determination to do the right thing will stand the test of time’. As today. Those who follow and heed Jesus, as you are trying to do, can rejoice in that. Daniel Marsh was one such. Boston University has had ten presidents since 1869, and the chartering of our school. Five were Methodist Ministers—Warren, Huntingdon, Murlin, MARSH, Case. The other five—Christ-Janer, Silber, Westling, Chobanian and Brown—were a lawyer, a philosopher, an historian, a physician, and a chemical engineer. Daniel Marsh came in 1926 from the Smithfield Avenue Methodist Church pulpit in Pittsburgh, and retired in 1951. In 1968 with his second wife, Arline, he was interred here in the chancel of Marsh Chapel, a long time by the way before cremation and columbaria were widely practiced. He built the buildings to the left and right of us, and he built the chapel later named for him. But he did so through thick and thin. A lack funds. A great depression. The second world war. Post war inflation. But he persevered. He wanted this great university to have at its spiritual, geographical, historical, architectural and

religious center, a chapel, devoted to gathering the lonely, healing the broken, comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable, and especially, especially, finding the lost. He wanted the partnership of the gospel—the fellowship, sharing, commonwealth, partnership of the gospel to be spoken and lived, that those lost might be found, that those enmeshed in sin and death and the threat of meaninglessness, might be discovered, embraced and loved. Until her passing in autumn 2019, his daughter, Nancy Marsh Hartman, was in church in the front pew every Sunday—that is every Sunday, teaching others by example how to sing, sing lustily, the hymns of faith in the Methodist tradition. She could tell you about pursuing what matters, lasts and counts, through thick and thin. You know she must smile from on high, to see her chapel filling up in the autumn of the year. She would remind those in, or entering, ministry, that the minister is present for those who are not yet present. She would ask, without speaking, who is not here, not yet here who yet could be? She would whole heartedly share the sentiment of Queen Elizabeth, Christmas 1957, I cannot lead you into battle, I do not give you laws or administer justice, but I can do something else, I can give you my heart (NYT 9/9/22)

You beloved come from a long line of warm-hearted people. In the spring of 1973 at Ohio Wesleyan University, a small Methodist college for small Methodists, the telephone rang in the hallway of the TKE fraternity. You know that the telephone was invented in a Boston University laboratory by Alexander Graham Bell about 1880, a beautiful, human, vocal mode of discovery and communication. No one answered because, well, it was early morning. The phone was across the hall though and without voice mail to interrupt, it continued. Bleary eyed, I woke and answered. Is that you Bob? This is Professor Freiburg. Your biology final exam began 10 minutes ago. WHERE ARE YOU? The next ten minutes witnessed the fastest bicycle ride on Sandusky Street in recorded history, and the taking of the one empty seat and the taking of a last test in a great course by a beloved teacher, one who cared enough to find the lost. God is at work in the world to make and keep human life human, but good in history never comes without humans at work on it, without a faithful people of warm heart.

Hear Good News: Entering the autumn of 2022, together, for all our losses, we are intent on sewing together again, knitting together again, the fabric of our common life. With confidence. Our 10th President Robert A. Brown used that word, confidence, Latin con fide, ‘with faith’ this week: “I think we’re just a very different University today, not just for students, but for faculty and staff, too,” Brown says. “We’re much more mature. We’re

much more confident… I think the best is yet to come.” Jesus’ parables tend to remind us, through thick and thin, of what matters, lasts and counts. As today. Those who follow and heed him, as we are trying to do, can rejoice in that: joy, joy, joy.. in the presence of the angels of God.

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

posted in The Liberal Biblical Theology of St. Luke: Fall 2022, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 09.11.2022 at 11:00 am

No Comments »

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Luke 14:25–33

Click here to hear just the sermon

Gracious God, 
In this holy moment, a day of new beginnings: 
We summon the better angels of our nature to sit quietly before you in gratitude. 
For the gift of your love to inspire us in our freshman year, to quicken us to try, to join, to sign up, to get out, we are peacefully thankful. 
For the gift of your presence to sustain us in our sophomore year, to strengthen us to continue, to persevere, to stay up, to move on, we are simply thankful. 
For the gift or your power to embolden us in our junior year, to encourage us to achieve, to give, to change, to travel, to grow, we are spiritually thankful. 
For the gift of your peace to illumine us in our senior year, to steady us to plan, to finish, to complete, to leave, we are personally thankful. 
Help us to love what is lovely, to be present to what is real, to find strength in what lasts, and to know peace in what honors, but surpasses, understanding. Help us to listen to our lives, to learn deeply from our own experience. 
Inspired by your love, sustained by your presence, encouraged by your power, confirmed by your peace, day by day our life before you flows on in endless song. 
Empower us we pray to listen to our lives, with keen care to listen to our lives 
For the privilege of these coming few days, these fast four years, we are thankful. Amen. 

Beloved children of God, hear the Gospel, so befitting Matriculation, the Gospel According to St. Luke in the fourteenth chapter and the 25th verse. 

Count the cost.  Ahead of time, count the cost.  By way of illustration:  in business, and in war.  And in everything in between.  Count the cost.  How could we not think this morning of those suffering the terror of warfare in Ukraine?  How could we not think this morning of those—so regularly the least, the last and the lost—suffering the jolts and tides of inflation and coming recession? 

Do the arithmetic, study the detail, count. 

You, careful listener, you recognize that Luke 14: 25-33 is not Jesus talking, but Luke writing.  You realize that Jesus left no written record, like Socrates in that.  You recognize that he spoke Aramaic, not Greek, and whether or not he was literate.  You recall the arithmetic of his life, death and destiny, the years 4bce to 33ce, and the distance of those from our reading, Luke 14, in 85ce, at the earliest (some would date Luke much later).  What we hear this morning is, in the first instance, not the voice of Jesus but the composition of Luke.   Of course, and granted, there will be traces of Jesus’ voice, along the way, particularly in Luke 9-19, especially, and especially there in the parables, his own mode of teaching, without which nothing.  In all, though, and on the bigger whole, this is not Jesus’ voice but Luke’s writing.  This makes all the arithmetical difference in the world, these 50 years and 2 opposed forms of rhetoric. 

Now, it may be, gazing again at the bulletin, or ruminating on the remembered reading of the Gospel, the high-water mark of our worship each Sunday, you begin to wonder, to ponder, to question.  Good.  We learn most from the questions we ask, and most of us most of the time need more reminder than instruction. Sitting in the balcony, seated with your family, pondering whether to join the choir, or whether to return to Chapel for dinner or study.  Perhaps these are your questions, or some of them. 

Why this discussion of hatred, when the Gospel in other clothing is centrally about love?  Why this denigration of family, when the family is one of the protected entities in the Decalogue, the ten commandments:  protection of truth, of communication, of speech, of worship, of family, of life, of property, of marriage, of law, and of commerce?  Therein, whence the rejection of life itself, when otherwise the Gospel acclaims life, having life, and having life in abundance?   There seems to be some counting and accounting needed. 

More so:  What is the mention here of the cross?  Jesus in this narrative, in these chapters, is preaching, teaching, healing, going about in Galilee and Judea a free itinerant prophet.  All of a sudden, here comes a word from much later, ‘cross’.  Was Jesus making a prediction that only he could see and understand?  Or is this a clue to the fountain and origin of this passage, the church’ struggles and the mind of Luke?  Cross?  Cross?  I thought we were sharing parables and blessing children and rounding up disciples.  Moreso, the cross is ‘one’s own cross’.  The writer seems to assume that all will get the reference, including you, and me, to the cross.  How all this talk about the cross when Jesus just now in Luke is teaching in parables and healing the sick, a long way from Jerusalem and ‘the cross’? 

Even more so:  How is it that all of a sudden, everyone around Jesus is expected to be a monk?  Ridding oneself of all, all, not most, not much, but all possessions?  All.  That’s at a lot, even in an era of tunics, ephods, camels, donkeys, sandals, fishing, shepherding and travel by foot.  All?  What is transpiring here? 

Nor does this seem metaphorical, in a way that some current preaching would likely choose.   Hatred—well, you know, not exactly hatred but mature self-differentiation.  Life—well, you know, not exactly life in the sense of breath and nourishment, but in the sense of deep meaning.  Cross—well, you know, not exactly crucifixion in the bloody and excruciating physical sense, but self-discipline, more in the sense of yoga.  Possessions—well, you know, not in exactly the form of car, home, bank account and pension, but in the sense of a general materiality, of not letting your possessions possess you.  No, actually Luke 14 does not seem or sound metaphorical at all, regarding hatred, life, cross, or possessions.  It sounds literal, actual, straightforward enough. 

To faithfully interpret these kinds of verses we shall need in the next generation—your generation—a full and fulsome liberal biblical theology.  Maybe one or three of you will invest in such work. 

Forgive what is only an interpretative guess, even less than that, yet after many decades of hearing these harsh words, even in Luke–the Gospel of peace, the Gospel of love, the Gospel of church, the Gospel of freedom—these are phrases that sound like the esoteric, ascetic, anti-worldliness of the emerging gnostic movement.  It is as if here, in Luke and Matthew, by way of Q, some measure of the enthusiastic pessimism, the bodily asceticism, the turning away from the world which we know in full in full Gnosticism, has grown up alongside the gospel, wheat and tares together sown.    There are strong parallels, almost identical, in the Gospel of Thomas, a gnosticizing document of about the same time as Luke. And there are strong parallels in Poimandres, a fully gnostic document of about the same time as Luke (Fitzmeier, Anchor, 1064). 

Uncompromising demands regarding self, regarding family, and regarding possessions may well be part of the life of faith, warns Luke out of the gnostic shadows of his sources.  He warns us as we come to faith.  He reminds us of the gift of faith. Like all serious engagements, this spiritual one is not be entered into lightly, but reverently, discreetly and in the fear of God.  ‘Jesus counsels his followers not to decide on discipleship without advance, mature self-probing’.   It is as if Jesus is saying, ‘come along, I want to make this for you the hardest decision of your life’. 

So.  This may mean that the struggles under this passage of Holy Scripture, our sufficient rule of faith and practice, are from 85ad, not 30ad.  That there is in the emerging church a set of conflicts that require some arithmetic, some counting and accounting.  How much home, how much away?  How much kindness, how much honesty?  How much self-affirmation and how much self-abnegation?  How much materiality and how much spirituality?  Before you set out, to go to college or to take a job or to move in together or to get married or to sell the farm or to go to war or to build a tower, well, you might want to…do the math. 

St. Luke wrestled with formational questions in the first century: For whom is the gospel? What are the definitive texts? And especially, who shall hold authority?  What, How, Where. And Who? Here Luke wrestles with these costs and their accounting.  “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” said Paul.  

Aristotle taught us to attend to the true, the good, the beautiful. In the late fourth century there emerged a good, great leader of the church, Ambrose of Milan. In just eight days he went from unbaptized layman to Bishop. His rhetorical skill, musicianship, diplomatic agility and attention to the preparations for Baptism provided the power behind his lasting influence in Northern Italy.  

The greatest teacher of the earlier church, Augustine of Hippo, came to Milan a non-Christian. From the influence of Ambrose, he left baptized and believing and worked a generation to set the foundations for the church over a thousand years to come.  

Ambrose inspired Augustine.  A quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated person, a plow horse not a show horse.  A plow horse not a show horse. A lot of progress can be made when we do not linger too long over who gets the credit.  

Some years ago, we went to a church meeting near Canada on a very cold night. It was led by our Bishop. For some reason I was not in a very happy mood, nor was I very charitable in my internal review of his remarks that evening. I do not recall his topic or theme. I remember clearly seeing him help to move hymnals, borrowed from other churches for the large crowd, so they could be returned. Snow, dark, long arms carrying a dozen hymnals into the tundra.  

Think of someone you have known who  properly counted costs, who lived with heartfelt passion for the common good, who lived in selfless ways, a ‘person for others’, to cite Bonhoeffer.   

Every one of us has some influence. If you have a pen, a smart phone, a computer, email, a tongue, a household, a family, a job, a community—then you have some influence.  

Who taught you, by precept and example, how to use it? How much of what you picked up needs keeping and how much needs to be put out on the curb?  

A simple passion for the common good of the servants of God is at the heart of faithful living.  What is new?  Here is what I need you to do for me.  What should I pray for you?  This is what we learn when we listen to our lives.   

This was the phrase Frederick Buechner, an exemplary chaplain of another era, who died last week, tried to summarize his hundreds of sermons and 95 years of life:  listen to your life.

Gerson wrote: When the late Frederick Buechner — novelist, preacher, Christian apologist — was asked to summarize the single essential insight of his prolific writing and speaking career, he would respond, “Listen to your life”.

“If indeed there is a God,” he explained, “which most of the time I believe there is, and if indeed he is concerned with the world, which the Christian faith is saying … one of the ways he speaks to us, and maybe one of the most powerful ways, is through what happens to us.”… “Pay attention to moments,” he said, when “unexpected tears come to your eyes and what may trigger them.” He was talking about those sudden upwellings of emotion we get from the sublimity of nature or art, when we see a whale breaching, or are emotionally ambushed by a line in a film or poem. We are led toward truth and beauty by a lump in the throat.  (M Gerson, WAPO, 8/22/22). 

May what Paul wrote of Philemon be said of us: When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus. 

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

posted in Matriculation, The Liberal Biblical Theology of St. Luke: Fall 2022, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 09.4.2022 at 11:00 am

No Comments »

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Luke 13:10-17

Click here to hear just the sermon

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  

Her name was Mozelle Cogman Goins.  She was born in Macon Georgia in 1902.  As was the norm in some parts of the south.  Education for African American students ended at the eighth grade so that a woman could join the domestic work force.  Not one to follow in the steps of convention Mozelle applied to the incoming class at the University of Detroit Law School entering in either 1919 or 1920. She arrived for her first day of class and came into the office to register and was met with a “deafening silence” a direct quote from her grand-daughter Pat Rencher.  Nevertheless, they allowed her to attend class.  After her first year she was told that some of her papers were not up to par.  Not to be deterred she rewrote and submitted those papers, and the Law School allowed her to advance to complete her second and third year. 

 The Detroit Free Press published the 1923 graduating class from the U of D Law School and Miss Cogman was among the graduating class.  However, the story didn’t end well.  A week after the picture was published, she was called into the office and told she never completed her assignments from her first year and therefore they would not confer her a law degree. 

She later married, owned a dress shop, worked for social service agencies and remained active in community affairs.  After a conversation with Pat this week we realized that Mrs. Coins and my grandmother Eunice Gunther Lowery were friends and very active in the Detroit African American community.  My friend Pat recalls the law books that were in her grandmother’s library and how people would stop by the house for consultation and advice. 

 Detroit attorney Leslie Graves tried in the 1980’s to petition U of D Law School to grant her law degree.  The school only gave a commendation but no degree.  Currently The Hon Kathey Gilforf is leading an effort to confer the degree for the class of 2023 which is the “Year of the Woman.  Mrs. Coins passed way in 2002 at 100 years old.  A pioneer and a trailblazer whose story deserves to be lifted up and acknowledged.  

 Cole Arthur Riley writes in her new book “This Here Flesh”. You cannot tell the story of injustice without telling the story of power. Injustice has survived by cowering behind the guises of morality and ethics. And that power, which is stolen, malformed, or inequitable will, no matter how well intentioned, always cast its weight in the wrong places. This is rarely accidental. Injustice has survived by cowering behind the guises of morality and ethics. She goes on to quote the Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin “When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his every act of protest confers dignity on him.”  

 I don’t know if the expression “we made it through” is an apt description to describe this historical event.  However, there are still people who to this day generations later who are still figuratively carrying the weight of the world, the weight of daily injustices and micro-aggressions, the weight of grieving young people, the weight of this week trying to get to your job on-time if your only options are to get to work in the Orange and Green line trains.  What I do know is that people will always come together in the face of injustice, to support each other, cook for each other, hold each other, cry with each other, hold space for each other when on some days that was all that is all we can offer.    It is love and an awareness that no one should have to shoulder anything alone that keeps them together. 

 If you’ve been here or have listened the past several Sundays, you know that our Hebrew Bible readings have been proclaiming harsh and judgmental words from the likes of Amos and Hosea, from Isaiah, and this morning from Jeremiah.  While this morning’s reading describes the call of Jeremiah to be God’s prophet (despite Jeremiah’s protests that he is too young for the job). Jeremiah himself describes that job given by God (which will unfold in the coming chapters of the book named for him) this way: “See today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and pull down, to destroy and to overthrow….” 

Please notice something else in this morning’s reading from Jeremiah, the last phrase. “…to build and to plant.” We sometimes forget that the prophets in their harsh language were calling the people of Israel back to lives faithful and responsive to the will of God. Using Jeremiah’s imagery, we must remember that “plucking up”, “pulling down” or even destroying and overthrowing in God’s Garden are actions that need to happen before new growth that Jeremiah talks about can occur. 

 I want us to try something this Sunday.  You know they say that when we are tense, we tend to hold our shoulders up near our ears.  So, try this, hold your shoulders up to your ears in a tense position.  Then try to move your head to the left, now to the right.  It’s hard right?  Now try and move your body, to the left, to the right. It’s hard.  Now let go with an exhale. 

 There is an expression “he / she/ they look like they are carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders.” What we just did was an example of that statement.   

When you are carrying the weight of the world it is hard to move. 

 We don’t know what weight the bent over woman was carrying: perhaps she was the victim of some sort of oppression, perhaps her binary pronoun did not match their non-binary authenticity, perhaps she was the victim of domestic abuse.  If it wasn’t for the fact, she was bent over she would just have been another woman going on with her day-to-day activities.   

 But Jesus noticed that she was carrying the weight of the world and had been for so long that people assumed that she had an infirmity.  But Jesus sees her suffering and he heals her on the Sabbath.  Notice here that Jesus approaches the woman.  Not the usual healing stores of the infirmed approaching Jesus for healing.  

In the second half of the Gospel the woman recedes from the narrative, and we move into Jesus’ encounter with the leader of the synagogue. It’s not the healing that concerns the leader of the synagogue, it’s that Jesus heals on the Sabbath day. 

The Sabbath was meant to be a complete day of rest as God had rested on the 7th day.  No work was to be done, no farming, no fishing, no shopping, no cooking, no healing.  The leader was caught up in the when’s and the where’s of the letter of the law by pointing out that this was not the day.  Pick another day to heal.  But Jesus saw the same law much differently.  The law did not trump God’s action when it came to God’s children especially this child of God, the daughter of Abraham.  From where Jesus stood, what better way to honor the Sabbath than by setting a captive free? 

 This is why he came after all.  Early on in Luke’s Gospel Jesus made know his work in the world as he read the words of Isiah: 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Luke 4:18-19.  

 The invitation that Jesus gave the woman who was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders is the same invitation he extends to us today. 

Jesus says: Stand up!  Breathe and let your shoulders down with whatever the weight of the world that you are bearing. 

 He invites us to stand up and be transformed, and to be released from the things that leave us bent over, feeling low and less than, to be released from whatever bondage messes with our self-worth and our self-esteem.  We are invited to come from out of the shadows and valleys, and into the light of God’s amazing and healing love. 

 So many times, we try to put our best foot forward and never let on how burdened we may really feel.  Some of us come into a place of worship with our brokenness and we feel that if we keep a smile on our faces and pretend that everything is alright no one will ever know the weight that we are facing.  Once inside places where we think we are safe we still are unable to look up and see the world around us.  We may feel alone or forgotten.  We may struggle to see and remember that God is present.  But like the woman who stood tall in the synagogue that day, we are the children of a loving and caring God.  God’s grace working among us and through us helps us to stand up straight. 

 This summer I served as a delegate for The Episcopal Churches 80th General Convention.  A triennium convention that was delayed for a year due to COVID.  A convention which historically been held over eight days was compressed into four days of legislation and as a self-described church nerd I was so to speak in my element.  There were two important and moving highlights from General Convention.  The first was the expedition of the late Right Rev. Barbara C. Harris, the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion and who served as Bishop Suffragan in the Diocese of MA. It was moved that Bishop Harris who passed in 2020 be included in the episcopal calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts.  The historical significance of this is that General Convention usually doesn’t add people until 50 years after their death. 

 The other important piece of legislation was the creation of a fact-finding commission to research the denominations’ role in the federal boarding school system that separated generations of indigenous children from their families and cultures in the 19th and 20th century.  These actions come as U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland kicks off “The Road to Healing,” a national listening tour in which the secretary will hear from survivors of boarding schools in the United States. 

Convention members heard testimonies from clergy who had officiated at funerals for children whose remains had been repatriated from the former Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.  Others spoke of pushing the city of Albuquerque to acknowledge that children had been buried beneath a public park constructed on the former site of a Presbyterian run boarding school. 

 Still others shared their experiences as survivors themselves, or descendants of survivors.  Ruth Johnson of the Navajoland Area Mission attended two boarding schools – an experience which is still hard for her to speak about.  She spoke about being ill and being beaten and she ended with “I could have easily been one of those who didn’t make it home.”  

 To quote Bishop Mark Lattime of the Diocese of Alaska, “This is important work, and it’s for all of us.” “You might think your diocese doesn’t have a history with boarding schools with Indigenous people, and – while that might be true- there isn’t a diocese in this church that doesn’t have a history with Indigenous people.” 

 I want to tell you: there is no day, week, hour or moment that the God who formed and created us does not see our plight or hear our cries.  Our God energizes us and gives us hope no matter what trail, burden, or injustice we might face.  And God gives us one another to share in that hope. 

 I would like to stand before you and preach that we are beyond being bent over carrying the weight of the world but we all are aware that recently we have witnessed firsthand the actions of the weight that is being pressed down on innocent children, the weight being pressed down on those who feel that they are not heard, the weight of families whose loved ones have died as a result of guns violence.  We are never in a position in God’s eyes to oppress another, belittle another, scare or gaslight another or to act like another is less than.  That thought that it doesn’t happen here, it won’t happen here, it doesn’t apply to me disconnects us from the love of God and from our neighbor. 

 Like so many prophets known and unknown, past and present, like Jesus himself, we have been put on this earth so that we might find a way to ease one another’s pain and release from bondage and set them free, to raise up people and children who will stand tall knowing that they are precious children of God and worthy to share in God’s love. 

 It was a Sabbath day when the bent over woman was told to stand and stand she did and she praised God. 

With God’s help, any day is a good day to help others to stand. 

Amen 

Benediction: 

God loves you. 

Beloved people of God, forth from this place and share God’s love with others. And now may God’s grace, peace, joy and love abide with you now and forever. Amen 

-The Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman, University Chaplain for Episcopal Ministries

posted in The Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman, Chaplain for Episcopal Ministry on 08.21.2022 at 11:00 am

No Comments »