Sunday
November 14
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
By Marsh Chapel
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A written text of this sermon is currently unavailable.
-The Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman, Chaplain for Episcopal Ministry
Sunday
November 7
For All the Saints
By Marsh Chapel
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All Saints Sunday
After more than a year and a half of disembodied worship, worshipping in diaspora, we have now had this autumn twelve Sundays of personal, embodied assembly, and gathering, in worship. We have also by grace and the work of WBUR and many others continued to broadcast our service around the globe, come 11am on Sunday. For the sustained efforts of those at every turn who make this service possible and available, we are endlessly grateful. Today we turn our minds and hearts to those who have died in these twenty months, near and far, more than 750,000 across the country, and, especially, to their loved ones, perhaps including you, who bear the losses to this day. If you have lost someone in this COVID time, our sermon and litany today here are meant especially for you.
One of the great challenges and difficulties of the last two years is found here. Across the country and indeed around the world, we have not been able fully to gather, to assemble, to worship in person, at the hour of death. We have lost loved ones without the ability or capacity to face the losses in full in the full company of the church, the church militant, even as we give over our loved ones to God and to the church triumphant. We should be frank, candid with one another, and with ourselves, that this particular labor of love is an unfinished labor, just now. An unfinished labor of love, to which we attend in part today. Faith comes in small steps, for most of us. One of those steps, one to take again today, is to learn the rhythms of grief.
And it is work, good and honest work. Mourning is work. Grieving is work. It takes time, energy, attention, focus, investment, prayer and love. Conclusively, to mourn means for you to need to do something in mourning. Faith is found in such a step. Jesus looks upon the single widow, offering her simple gift, and smiles, and commends to us her step, one step in faith.
As a daughter, you may have buried my mother. As a sister, you may have remembered and eulogized your siblings’ mother. As a pastor, you may have given over parishioners, sisters and brothers in Christ, one by one. In a university community, you may have faced and mourned the losses of students, faculty, staff, alumni, relatives and others of the University community. As an itinerant Methodist preacher, you may have had to sing alone ‘Blessed be the Tie that binds’, rather than, by custom, gathering around the casket of a fellow preacher, to sing the hymn with others in ministry. As an American, you may have wept at the stories of those taken, young and old, rich and poor, black and white, conservative and liberal. And, as a child of God, you may have lamented without ever fully grasping the depth or breadth of such lament, the deaths of others, other children of the living God.
Wherever you are, whoever you are, in your time of loss, in your twenty months or more of mourning, this morning as we face our mourning, we feel for you, we are sorry for your bereavement, we reach out with invisible hands to hold you in an invisible embrace, and listen with invisible ears as you utter your prayers of lament. Whatever else may be, at least hear this, you are not alone, you are not alone, you are not alone. Together we take a step, in grief. For all the saints we give thanks.
We call you forward to remember. We recall, here in Marsh Chapel, five of our own Marsh Chapel saints, among the dozens lost, as witnesses, as a few and particular examples, exemplars of faith, as was the widow in the dominical teaching.
We remember C Faith Richardson. She died in March of 2020. On December 11th of 2019 she turned 104. She had led a 600 person Sunday School at Erwin Methodist Church in Syracuse, in the early 1960’s while her husband Neil taught Hebrew Scripture at the University there, before they moved here to Boston. We went to serve that very Syracuse church in 1984, and twenty years later that giant Sunday school still cast its warm shadow. One who had been a ten year old back then remembered, ‘I just don’t know how to put it. There was, there was, so much love there.’ We asked Faith in December 2019 how it felt to be 104. She answered, with her playful wit, ‘about the same as it felt to be 103’. For all the saints we give thanks. Let us remember C. Faith Richardson. (BELL)
We remember Dr. Gaylen Kelly. Gaylen was an honored, revered professor in the School of Education. He and his beloved wife were married for 66 years, starting with their wedding on a bitterly cold Christmas Eve in New Sweden, Maine. We remember his easy manner, his inclination to laughter, and his love of students. Especially his love of students. He supervised 200—200!—dissertations in the School of Education. Gaylen died in early February 2021, at home, and surrounded by the love of his children and family. For all the saints we give thanks. Let us remember Dr. Gaylen Kelly. (BELL)
We too remember his beloved bride Glenice Kelly. Who could forget her warm Sunday morning smile, her happy, glad hearted greeting in the covenant of faith, her exuberant hug, and her enjoyment of conversation? Married to Gaylen in the northern snows 66 years earlier, they died within hours of each other early February 2021. As a pioneer in health and sex education, she paved the way, in days we can imagine when the trail had to be cut, to be hewn out, for such important teaching. Her indomitable spirit was more than a match for the calling. You can see her in the third pew, pulpit side, there is Glenice, smiling and laughing and hugging and listening following worship. For all the saints, we give thanks. Let us remember Glenice Kelly. (BELL)
We remember Harvey Greenburg, a blind man who road to worship on the T by taking the subway to the BU central stop in front of Marsh Chapel. A graduate of Perkins School, he repaired Steinway pianos. Each winter, he brought piano accompaniment to a Sunday afternoon hymn singing party, graciously hosted by dear friends in Lynn MA. Every so often the sacred melodies of Charles Wesley would receive a little rock and role riff, as Harvey extemporized. who graciously accompanied our mid-winter afternoon hymn singing on the piano, with an occasional rock and role riff. His love of music abides, here and now. For all the saints we give thanks. Let us remember Harvey Greenburg. (BELL)
We remember Ed Mann, and his faith, his love of worship at Marsh Chapel, and his ready response to all manner of statement: I understand. I understand. I understand. And you knew and felt he did. A Math professor with a strong personal and family connection to Eastern Nazarene college, Ed came to worship early and engaged in intercessory prayer, with help toward the end from his loving children. He came to us many years ago, and brought the stories of his own ministry in mission in Romania. Ed lived his faith, and his faith was lived for others, a man for others. He lived as he was raised. Wrote Jonathan Edwards: “It is no small matter whether one habit or the other is inculcated in us from early childhood; on the contrary, it makes a considerable difference, or, rather, all the difference.” For all the saints we give thanks. Let us remember Ed Mann. (BELL)
Let us sing the song of these saints of God. And let us act as well. In grieving let us reach out by visit or voice to another who knows grief. In remembering let us write out for another generation some central memories of our lost loved ones. In accepting, let us take the silent time of silence we need, in prayer, let us carry out the quiet. In affirmation, let us invite another to the faith of Christ through fellowship with His people, attendance in worship at his church, and the commitments of tithing and service that are His salt and light.
As we come to the Lord’s table, our Marsh Chapel Membership secretary Ms. Sandra Cole has graciously agreed to lead us in our Litany of Remembrance.
Litany in Remembrance of Lives Lost in COVID (Led by Ms. Sandra Cole, Marsh Chapel Membership Secretary)
Leader(L): Gracious God in whom we are all interrelated, interdependent and one in humanity
People(P): Thou whose grace embraces all, and in whom violence to our brothers and sisters is violence unto each of us
L: We grieve for, remember and honor those whose lives were lost last year in COVID
P: Especially we pray for the poor, for first responders, for the public health community here and across the country, and around the globe
L: In these troubling and tumultuous times when injustice and prejudice breed inhumanity to one another
P: In this time of challenge and struggle, of tumult and loss
L: May we find our way, Your Way, amid conflict, unrest and violence
P: Teach us your ways, God of refuge and strength, the ways of love and peace
L: Make us tender hearted and loving toward one another as your mercy rests upon those whose lives have been deeply altered by death or loss
P: Though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea, You are our God of refuge and strength, a present help in time of trouble
L: Gracious God, remind us that we are interrelated, interdependent and one in humanity so violence to our brothers and sisters is violence unto each of us.
P: May we find our way, Your way, in this world of conflict, unrest and violence. Teach us Your ways, oh God of refuge and strength, the ways of love and peace.
L: Make us tender hearted and loving toward one another as your mercy rest upon those whose lives have been deeply altered by death or loss.
P: You are our God of refuge and strength a present help in time of trouble."
L: In these troubling and tumultuous times when inhumanity towards another brings tumult and destruction to our living,
P: Grant us thy peace. Grant us thy peace. Grant us thy peace.
L: We gather today in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection, to give thanks to God, to receive the comfort of the Holy Spirit,
and to proclaim the good news of eternal life in Jesus Christ.
P: For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. In his baptism these were clothed with Christ; in the day of Christ’s coming, he shall be clothed in glory.
L: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
P: Therefor we will not fear.
L: Our help is in the name of the Lord.
P: The maker of heaven and earth.
L: Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord.
P: Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
L: Let us pray together:
O God, who gave us birth,
You are ever more ready to hear than we are to pray.
You know our needs before we ask,
and our ignorance in asking.
Show us now your grace,
that as we face the mystery of death
we may see the light of eternity.
Speak to us once more your solemn message of life and of death. Help us to live as those who are prepared to die.
And when our days here are ended,
enable us to die as those who go forth to live,
so that living or dying,
our life may be in Jesus Christ our risen Lord.
Amen.
(BELL 5x)
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
Sunday
October 31
The Bach Experience
By Marsh Chapel
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The Rev. Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain:
Good morning! Can I say what an absolute thrill it is to get to share God’s word with you today? I’m always excited to preach when the Dean offers, but to get to share those duties with my friend and colleague, Scott, discussing Luther and Bach on Reformation Sunday which also happens to be Reformation Day? It’s like the Lutheran Superbowl! I even wore my team’s colors – Red - (and insignia – the Luther Rose that appears right here on the bottom of my stole)! While I know today is another holiday observed in the US, *ahem* Halloween, October 31st will always be Reformation Day for me, first and foremost.
All kidding aside, Reformation Day is a significant marker of changes within the church and a reorientation to the personal, unmediated relationship people have with God. It is where many of our familiar forms of Protestantism find their roots, in one way or another, emphasizing the role of justification by faith and God’s unconditional gift of grace. Many of us are familiar with the general story of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the doors of the Schloßkirche, or Castle Church, in Wittenberg. What began as a conflict with the Church over the use of indulgences to assist people in attaining absolution, not only for themselves but for those who had died, resulted in centuries-long changes and divisions within Christianity that continue to this day. It also began a major shift in theology, emphasizing the ever-present role of God as our foundation as mediated through the Means of Grace, which for Luther are the scripture and the sacraments. The abuses of the Church were causing people to falsely put their hope in what they had to “do” to achieve salvation, straying them from the true guidepost for a life of faith, the Gospel. As we heard Dean Hill say in his sermon last week, Luther risked fracturing the Church apart for the sake of the Gospel.
One of Luther’s driving factors in challenging the church was that people’s souls were on the line. In convincing people that they had to buy indulgences to ensure salvation, the church was misdirecting and misinforming people about how salvation is attained, notably through faith, Sola Fide. Luther’s focus was not to separate the Church into factions, which is what ultimately happened, but to reform the church to a radical return to the Gospel as the guiding principle, Sola Scriptura, by scripture alone. Luther’s theological perspective removed power from human institutions, which are inherently corrupt because they are made by corrupted beings (we are all sinners), and instead emphasized that God is the only true source of power, love, and grace. God’s effort is what saves us, not our own. It is difficult to hear this in a culture that puts so much emphasis on achieving whatever you want in life if you just work hard enough. The Lutheran message of salvation Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, (scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone) squarely places responsibility for our salvation in the hands of God.
In today’s Gospel, we hear a familiar phrase, “You will know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free.” Despite the fact that this line of scripture does not occur in our regular readings, we have heard it, or forms of it, echoed in our society. Hearing this quote out of context may cause us to question “what is the truth?” as some sort of abstract concept, or what are we being made free from? However, in context, Jesus all but tells the disciples and us what the Truth is. In the first half of this sentence Jesus states, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples” then follows it with “you will know the Truth and the Truth will make you free.” Continuing in Jesus’ or God’s word makes one a disciple of God. The Greek word used here is “μενω” meno, which is more than just continuing to follow in Jesus’s teachings. Instead μενω indicates “abiding” in the word – accepting and remaining in relationship with Jesus who is the word. The question here is not “What is the truth?” but rather “Who is the Truth?” Abiding in God’s Word enters us into a transformative relationship with the Divine in which we come to know the Truth by having our lives completely reoriented through the radical love we encounter in Jesus’ death and resurrection. We are made free through our faith, which comes in abiding in God’s word. In Luther’s language, we are justified in by our faith in Jesus Christ, made free from our sin through God’s gift of grace.
When we are set free from sin through God’s grace, we are set free to love and serve one another. One of the most common critiques of Lutheran theology is that it de-emphasizes the role that works play in the life of the Christian. Yes, Lutheran theology does say that faith and not works is what justifies us to God, but the freedom that comes from our faith and trust in God and God’s promises enables us to share love with and be in service to others. Good works flow out of a life grounded in faith. The relationship we have in trusting in the triune God transforms how we think and act in all ways in the world. The problem with how many of us conceptualize our approach to a life of faith is that we think “God wants me to do that” as the driving factor for the decisions we make. It may very well be that God does want us to do the things we are intending, but we must be aware that we can’t do it alone. It is faith in God that supports us along the way.
Psalm 46 speaks to God’s constant support of God’s people throughout the ages. God is not only our support, but our refuge and our strength. When we fear, when we face uncertainty, God’s presence provides the security to help us continue on our way. In the Psalm, the whole world is in tumult. Natural disasters, political upheavals, and even the notion of change itself are realities that the human community has come to face time and time again, including in this passage. I’m sure many of us can relate to this feeling of chaos. It appears as if almost everything is in upheaval and the world does not feel as ordered or certain as it may have in the past. God is still with us through these times of trial, however. God remains steadfast when everything else is in a state of flux.
Many of us are experiencing fear and trepidation about what the future will hold for our communities, our country, and the world. Turning on the news, looking at the internet, or even hearing the weather report at this point can induce a sense of panic. So much has changed for us in the past year, some definitely for the better, but much that has caused us to feel alienated from the world that we once knew. We do not know what to do in facing such huge societal and global problems such as a continuing pandemic, political division, racism, bigotry, economic upheaval, and increasingly destructive natural disasters due to climate change. These issues are so large and have created so much harm that we are overwhelmed. We come together today as a community of faith to hear the good news of Jesus Christ and lay down these burdens for a while, finding sources of hope and bolstering our faith.
God’s advice to us in these times, according to the Psalmist, is to “Be still and know that I am God.” Be still. Be silent. Have faith. These are things you need to be a follower of God. You may remember Dean Hill’s call for us to seek out the quiet in order to feed our faith in last week’s sermon. “‘Carry out the quiet’ says Dean Hill. You do not need endless cable TV to have a happy life. The same for email, zoom, texting, techne, all. Carry out the quiet. For a good life you do and will need quiet.” When we share in this stillness, this time of reflection with the Divine, we can discover the ways we abide with Jesus. We can hear the still small voice within us, helping us to see the world in a new way. Silence sustains us for action.
Psalm 46 was also the inspiration for Martin Luther’s hymn, A Mighty Fortress, which most will probably identify as “the” Lutheran Hymn. I believe our Music Director might have some more to tell us about “A Mighty Fortress” and how another famous composer, J.S. Bach, interpreted Luther’s original hymn and theology for BWV 80. Scott?
Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music:
(Text forthcoming)
The Rev. Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain:
Thank you, Scott. This Reformation Day, we are reminded of all the ways the Church has faced challenges in the past and have the opportunity to envision what hope we can bring to the Church of the future. In coming together today and each Sunday as a community of faith to share in God’s word, including the musical offerings we are about to hear, we are emboldened in our assuredness of our salvation through Jesus Christ. May God guide us in the spirit of this ongoing reformation, awakening, affirming, and strengthening our faith. God is our foundation, and we are constantly renewed and reformed by abiding in God’s Word. We are set free from the bondages of sin by the Truth established for us in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s one true Word. Amen.
-The Rev. Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain and Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music
Sunday
October 24
Your Faith Has Made You…Better
By Marsh Chapel
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Son of David
Our faith can make us better if and as post-Covid we carry out the quiet.
Much of the Bible is about failure, difficulty and defeat.
Many of its stories, letters and teachings record ways people have lived with difficulty, defeat and failure. This makes the Bible a challenge for us to understand. For we as a people have run and swatted and laughed our way past learning the language of failure. We don’t admit to it. We won’t accept it. We do not countenance it. Even when sometimes we clearly lose, we have a hard time admitting it. And this goes well beyond sports and politics. We forget Abraham Lincoln who in loss could say, ‘it hurts too much to laugh, but I am too old to cry. So, sermons, this one and others, which are fumbling footnotes to Holy Scripture, hit us from the side if they hit us at all.
But by grace, it is the resurrected Christ who addresses us in the preaching of the church, in the announcement of the gospel. The passages of the Gospel allow us safe passage into the Gospel because Jesus is present to us. Bultmann: “In all the sayings of Jesus which were reported, He speaks who is recognized in faith and worship as Messiah and Lord, and who, as the proclamation makes known his works and hands on his sayings, is actually present for the church.” (HST, 348).
This morning our blind beggar, ‘Bar Timeaus’, Tim’s son, shouts out an unexpected nametag for Jesus. ‘Son of David’. To call Jesus such is to remember…failure…to remember…difficulty…to remember warnings unheeded from long ago…to remember David. For to remember David you have to remember Saul and to remember Saul you have to remember Samuel, and so on…
Bartimaeus calls Jesus by the name of David—David the personification of millennial portent, of national pride…and of Psalm 51 failure. Son of David! He throws off his garment—maybe a sign of baptism—and comes naked to see if there is another chance for him. Here is another in Mark’s ‘book of secret epiphanies’ (Dibelius\Bultmann). His ‘faith has made him well’, a saying and a truth most precious to Martin Luther, whose Reformation we honor next Sunday, Luther who fearlessly, willfully and willingly forever splintered the unity of the church into pieces, fragments, for the sake of…the Gospel, for the sake of…betting better: faith is God’s work in us, that changes us and gives new birth from God. (John 1:13). It kills the Old Adam and makes us completely different people. It changes our hearts, our spirits, our thoughts and all our powers. It brings the Holy Spirit with it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. (M Luther, introduction to Romans).
Our Gospel of Mark seldom uses the title, ‘Son of David’, in order that Jesus not be mistaken for the hoped-for national Messiah, the hoped-for political conqueror, the hoped for restorer of Israel. Mark’s Jesus is known by faith, in and through failure, difficulty and defeat. And sure enough—are you ready for faith?—here it is, good news, for us this morning, your faith has made you well. The gift of our faith can make you, well…at least a little better than you might been otherwise. This is the discipline of faith, discipleship made real in earnest living, in daily discipline. You can hear the beautiful Head of the Charles regatta behind us today, but the beauty of it comes from discipline, rowing crew workouts at 5:30am on the Charles, rain or shine. This too is BU parents’ weekend. This parents’ weekend we can honor both our biological and our spiritual parents, both our physical and our personal mothers and fathers, who have taught us the disciplines of faith. Of blessed memory Barbara Steen, our dear friend, in her late eighties was still making a daily list of five people to telephone. Of blessed memory Joe Yeakel who said of ministry, the one on one things matter most.
What Have You Learned?
Discipline is itself a reminder that life is unspeakably precious. We learn this again in peril. A dream hurts and astonishes us, waking us in a sweat, as we or someone we love or something we truly dream, dies. A novel or film grip us, with a reminder that life is fragile, sacred, brief, uncanny, unfathomable, in a word, precious. A verse of Scripture, not say that one interpreted in the sermon, but a bystander reading, a lectionary reminder, a fellow traveler in worship, Job say rather than Mark, rises up and holds us by the throat. All flesh is grass, it withers and fades…All flesh is grass, it withers and fades…All flesh is grass, it withers and fades… An accident, a car ahead hits a deer on the shoulder of the road, and we are again jolted. We have this treasure in earthen vessels…We have this treasure in earthen vessels…We have this treasure in earthen vessels…Life is unspeakably precious.
This fall, in the close to post pandemic pileup, meetings now held, weddings rescheduled for the fourth time, a conversation about conflict postponed until face can meet face and eye can meet eye, and I can meet Thou, this fall with that vast underground of unearthed anxiety depression worry concern exhaustion dismay fury incomprehension, all of which stand us up to be reminded: life is precious. We are given, you are given, I am given, one day at a time, one year at a time, one season at a time, with no particular guarantees, none really, of what may not or may in fact follow.
Yet, in this precious life, also we realize, we can do this…we can do this…we can do this…It may be difficutlt, even close to awful, but we can do it. Teaching by zoom. Learning by zoom. Sort of teaching, sort of learning, by zoom. Not really teaching and not really learning by zoom. You have survived and lived to tell the tale. Listen to the most honest least jaded voices, elementary age students, in this case our grand children. “My teacher piled up things in a folder and expected we would find them…I could not understand what the teacher was saying and I could not figure out how to ask what it meant…Sitting looking at that screen was just awful…it was really very stressful…My music teacher would not let us sing, saying ‘I’m not getting’ the ‘rona just so you can sing…Covid. No fellowship before, during or after class. No learning from or with peers. No seminar surprises, awakenings, unexpected and unplanned encounters. Zoom kept students occupied, teachers working, and schools above water. But at what lasting, further and future cost? We learned that we can do things we detest, when we have to do things we detest.
And, sad to say, we have been again reminded that when the going gets toughest those on the margins have it toughest. Under tents along the railroad track. In encampments in one Bowery or another. In poor homes, without more than water and some corn flakes to eat. And bad water and leaded pipes to boot. In tiny conditions not fit for human living, but still a roof and a sink and a sagging sofa. Panhandling for change at a highway exit, after a lifetime of employment. In a wheel- chair in front of a thriving Dunkin’ Donuts. Spending a first night with little children in a shelter for battered women. Battered women. Battered.
Or look in another direction. Look at real estate prices. Look at the stock market. Look at automobile values. Look at vacation home values. Look at the gains, the profits, the advance in abundance and the abundance of advance, for some. But these advances were based on and protected and built on: 12 hour nursing shifts, burials without family and without full protection, ventilators ventilating the soon to be dead, police and fire fighters whose duties never decrease and never cease, on call for ever physicians teachers counselors clergy technicians home-health-aides salvation army food providers plumbers electricians chefs fast food workers uber-drivers janitors sewage system workers bus drivers pea pod deliverers. And we complain that minimum wage as risen to the astronomical height of $15 an hour? Really?
Also, we learned silence. ‘Fear not the fallow’ said Dean Thurman. ‘Carry out the quiet’ says Dean Hill. You do not need endless cable TV to have a happy life. The same for email, zoom, texting, techne, all. Carry out the quiet. For a good life you do and will need quiet. Pandemic for all its needless, heedless and grotesque trauma afforded, for those who would receive it, a modicum and measure of quiet. Soon we will be dead. Why live as if you were temporarily immortal? You and I are not immortal, not even temporarily. More than a fat bank account, and more than a new motorboat, and more than a raise or promotion or election or victory you need…quiet. Carry out the quiet, from the pandemic. Our faith can make us better if and as, post-Covid, we carry out the quiet.
You need an hour a day. 8am. You need a day a week. Sunday. You need a week a quarter. Thanksgiving. You need a quarter a year, summer. Carry out the quiet. For a year and half, after writing and recording the sermon, there was a new hour listening to the finished recording and then another new hour listening to the broadcast, come Sunday, two new and fresh hours of golden quiet. We became radio listeners ourselves, alongside our faithful radio congregation. Two new hours. Golden quiet. Golden quiet. Quiet makes you think. All these years, did you really need to be running to another (fruitless) meeting, stopping for another (mundane) consultation, attending another (marginal) event, traveling to another (desultory) location, attending yet another (obligatory) denominational session, serving up yet another (underappreciated) lunch or dinner or social or gathering? Carry out the quiet. Especially if you are an extrovert, or even an extreme extrovert, carry out the blessed quiet from COVID, carry out the quiet. It is the basinet of faith, and your faith can make you, if not well, at least, well…better. By the time we became truly comfortable with Covid quiet, loneliness, and stillness, it had ended. But it carried a lasting and an authentic question of faith, within the divine gift of faith, a kind of healing unto spiritual sight, a kind of healing unto spiritual sight. Can you carry out of pandemic a purposeful respect for quiet? Can I? Especially now. For the preacher, like the artist, and for the life of faith for all in all, ‘in times of crisis and great injustice some inner distance from the maelstrom is required’ (repeat) (Mark Lilla).
Shimmering Beauty
Your faith makes you…better. And we are better when we carry out the quiet, day by day.
For some of the summer, we rely on NPR radio alone, its classical music and occasional weather and news, as our only technological engagement with the wider world. At first, the abstinence from all other is jarring. But then. Alone in the earlier mornings, when the fitful restlessness of work life gradually abates, as it can over time if we give it time, as Anne Murrow Lindbergh reminded us, sometimes there is quiet, and in the quiet, sometimes, there is a momentous moment.
The announcer said something about Debussy, whom you may remember from required (back in the days of required courses) college introduction to music. We sat on a carpet and listened and were tested later on baroque, classical, romantic, impressionist and contemporary music. Debussy. 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 one could remember hearing before. The host named the piece as an Arabesque, perhaps the second such from Debussy, though we may have mistaken that. The lake breeze lifted the notes, and there was throughout the room for a few fine minutes a shimmering beauty.
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. Even in church. Even in the course of head of the Charles parents’ weekend sermon meant to remind you that your faith has made, can make you…better.
In this music, it seemed to this untrained ear, there rose and fell a kind of oriental melody, a lightness, a veiled impression. And it seemed that the better person to listen was the non-musician, the kind of person listening in that moment, who has no musical education, other than that incurred through a short course, spouse, family, and various church musicians.
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. The voice remains with us.
And Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you? And the blind man said to him, ‘Master let me receive my sight’. And Jesus said to him, ‘Go your way; your faith has made you well’.
May faith make us well…or at least a little better.
Our faith can make us better if and as post-Covid we carry out the quiet.
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
Sunday
October 17
Servant Leader
By Marsh Chapel
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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 this year allows more outdoor conversation. 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 service. He like many at this good University has given simple, authentic service, servant leadership, 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 let 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 earliest 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 a sense of divine nearness. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of heaven has come near to you. When that sentence makes a home in a heart, or in the heart of a community, a different kind of life ensues.
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 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 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 my teacher of blessed memory Fr. Raymond Brown was used to say. Not lightening but enlightening and enlightened day by day. Sermon by sermon we could say. One step at a time. The Gospels tell us so, whatever the Epistles may opine. 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, Servant Leader?
One step in faith comes in service. The considered use of influence, of leadership, in service. The Gospel today tells us that authentic authority, real responsibility are a matter of the heart. 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?
It is intriguing that the Gospel lessons about living, in Mark, are set in the humble reaches of the lake country of Galilee. Writing in Rome in trouble in 70AD, there must have been some comfort, some folkloric encouragement for the persecuted urban Christians in these polished memories of Jesus teaching along the shores of Galilee. There is beauty along the lake. There is calm along the lake. There is peace along the lake. There is serenity along the lake. Along the lake there is space and time to sift, reminisce, remember, sort. The still waters still restore the soul to stillness. The regatta, later this month, outside our Chapel, at the head of the Charles, in its pristine beauty and vigorous discipline, will bring a kind of peace, too.
Yet, though our lesson is ostensibly set in the country, up in the north country lake region, make no mistake: these few phrases are crafted in urban Christianity.
Our Gospel lesson today is a place where the priority, of Mark, is clear. Mark is the earliest gospel. Notice how his successors cringe at his composition. Most tellingly, Matthew removes the selfish request from the lips of the disciples, and has their mother ask! But then Matthew still has Jesus respond to the disciples!
Luke simply erases the passage, and so ‘spares the twelve’. They too knew the embarrassment of some ranges of inherited Scripture, as we do too when troubling passages arise: what is your sense of the most offensive? John, the Jews? Psalms, and the revenge therein? Genesis, rape and violence? The full story of David (not a children’s story)? The household codes in Colossians, and the NT assumption of slavery and of patriarchy? it is a long list. These readings come around and we mutter, ‘Is this really necessary?’ In that spirit, Luke simply erased the today’s passage, 15 years later.
For Mark is determined to show that the disciples, as do many in his own church, intentionally miss the point. The point? There is no real greatness, there is no real leadership, there is no service worthy of the name, without humility, none without some anxiety, some suffering, none without pain, none without public rebuke, none without 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 suffering, felt pain, had rebuke, summoned patience, found empathy—for all the cost, take heart. You have taken a step, one step, a step in faith. Good.
Here also in Mark 10 we have a strange reference to ‘glory’. The intonation of glory is a clue that we are reading from years after Golgotha. The stark reference to the cup of sorrow bears a memory of Golgotha. The knowing, and the counter knowing of the question about baptism, and its portents reveals the hurt of Golgotha. The shadow of grief that darkens this discourse is the shadow of the Cross of Christ. And the final phrase is unmistakable in its reference: to give his life as a ransom for many. And this, this cost, this cost of discipleship is ever a steep hill to climb, a hard lesson to learn or teach.
“The basic inability of the disciples to grasp or accept Jesus’ concept of messiahship or its corollary, suffering discipleship, becomes reflected more and more in their total relationship to Jesus. The conflict over the correct interpretation of messiahship widens into a general conflict and misunderstanding in almost every area of their relationship” (Weeden).
Yet there is a true kind of encouragement here, for us, as we take one step in faith. Our Gospel records 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. But that one step 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, that makes God smile. 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 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. A step toward servant leadership is a step, one step, in faith.
Think of the Shaker community. 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 church.
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.
Mark 10:35 is one of the spots in the earliest 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 to make things go right in shared, communal, institutional life. And so do we. They resisted triangles, they reached for I and Thou relationships. And so do we.
As this passage shows, from the outset it has been terribly difficult for the Christian church to maintain its own authentic form of authority, over against the lesser models abroad in every age. Notice and emphasize in your hearing the little phrase, slave of all, or servant of the whole. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” said Paul.
In a time like ours, the very real fears of pollution, pandemic, politics, 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, 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 service, and of the minister as the servant of the servants of God. 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—phs, phs--making it clear again. A 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.
My friend had a revelation about service and power and authority and leadership. 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 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 service to the servants of God. Steady, sincere, even suffering service. Think of someone who helped you once when you needed help.
Every one of us has some influence, some leadership. If you have a pen, a telephone, a computer, email, a tongue, a household, a family, a job, a community, a church—then you have some authority. 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 the authority you have? Just how will you use the authority you have?
Our gospel today suggests a response. A simple passion for the common good of the servants of God is at the heart of servant leadership.
Here is leadership: simple, authentic service. Here is leadership: simple, authentic service. Here is leadership: simple authentic service.
For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.
Faith comes one step at a time. This week: can you take a step in faith toward simple, authentic service, akin to that of the Lord Christ, the Servant Leader?
Faith comes one step at a time. This week: can you take a step in faith toward simple, authentic service, akin to that of the Lord Christ, the Servant Leader?
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
Sunday
October 10
Jesus’ Second Favorite Topic, Paul’s Favorite Verb
By Marsh Chapel
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Jesus is setting out on a journey to Judea when he is interrupted by a stranger. A man runs up to him, kneels at his feet, calls him “Good Teacher”, and asks him a question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds: ”Why do you call me good? Only God is good, and you already know the Commandments.” The man says, “I’ve been fulfilling these commandments for years.” Then Jesus tells him to do one more thing, the one thing he hasn’t done: he is to sell what he owns and give the money to the poor. And when he’s done that, he can come and follow Jesus as a disciple. The man, who is shocked and grieved by this answer because he has many possessions, leaves without further ado. Then Jesus turns to the disciples, and tells them that it is very hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God, so hard that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. The disciples are perplexed, and disbelieving: “Then who can be saved?” they ask. Jesus tells them that for mortals it is impossible to save a rich person, but not for God. For God, all things are possible.
Money is Jesus’ second-favorite topic in the Gospels. He talks about it more than any other subject except for the subject of prayer. This story of a rich man and Jesus at first glance seems to have a fairly straightforward point: If you want to get into the Kingdom of God, if you want to follow Jesus, you have to give your possessions away to the poor. But there are aspects of this story that are not straightforward, that reveal Jesus and those who come to him in new ways, ways that are very Markan in their upset of the prevailing social and religious norms.
First, we have noted before that in Mark, it is strangers, often desperate strangers, who recognize Jesus for who he is, who he is for them. The man in this story is devout, following the commandments of his faith for years. Yet something is missing. He lives a good life, he is a good person, and yet whatever he means by “eternal life” eludes him. He wants it so much, he must know what he must do. And when he sees Jesus in the street, he runs to him and falls at his feet and recognizes him as “Good Teacher”. Then he asks Jesus to teach him how to inherit – an interesting word – how to inherit that which eludes him.
Jesus responds by telling him he knows what to do, and the man responds that he has been doing all that for years, with the clear implication that he still does not feel that he has inherited eternal life.
And here is where things take a turn. Jesus looks at this man and loves him. It is Jesus who recognizes something about the man that he, Jesus, wants to encourage. So, like a good teacher, he tells the man what he needs. Eternal life is not inherited, like money or possessions from a family member. If fact, money and possessions might get in the way. In order to experience eternal life, this man will need to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor, so that he will be able to receive a different, heavenly treasure. And when he has done that, Jesus says, he can come and follow Jesus as a disciple. The man is shocked. What kind of answer is this? It is not an easy thing even to consider, even to discuss. He goes away grieving at the choice the Good Teacher has given him: his possessions, or eternal life.
Jesus then turns to the disciples and lays it out for them: it is very difficult for rich people to enter the Kingdom of God, to experience eternal life. The disciples are at first perplexed. They don’t even understand what Jesus is saying. Then they are astounded – how can riches and all that comes with them be a problem? If riches are a problem, who can be saved? Jesus tells them they are right to ask that. With mortals it is impossible for riches to be an unalloyed good – as Amos reminds us in our text this morning. Only with God can riches be just a good, a way to the Kingdom.
Now Paul is not rich, even though he is a citizen of Rome as well as of Israel. Instead, he has been raising money for the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, and also is starting a journey from Corinth to Jerusalem to deliver that money. After that he plans to go to Rome to invite the church there to sponsor his mission to Spain. So before he leaves Corinth he writes the letter to the church at Rome to introduce himself and his work. The letter centers on the fact that salvation and justification – or being in right relationship to God – both come through faith, faith in Christ. He urges the Romans to hold fast to faith in Christ, and not to the works of the law, and he makes the point that the freedom that Christ gives does not absolve believers from responsibility to others and does not absolve them from God’s law and God’s will. Paul also writes that the journey from Jerusalem will be dangerous, as he is once more in trouble with the religious authorities of both church and temple. So he doesn’t really know wen he will arrive.
And indeed it is a dangerous and time-consuming journey: Paul is arrested in Jerusalem, and is taken in charge by the Romans. He then undergoes trial by the Jewish religious authorities, took a journey to defend himself before the Roman governor, spent two years under the equivalent of house arrest, undergoes a trial and defense before the new Roman governor, and finally he appeals to the Emperor for a hearing, as was his right as a Roman citizen. Then, before he was taken to the Emperor, he had to defend himself before King Agrippa, and only after that was he taken to the ship to begin the journey to the Emporer.
On that journey, there was a terrific storm, the ship was wrecked, and Paul spent three more months in Malta. After another week or so Paul arrived in Rome, in the chains of a prisoner and in Roman military custody, but allowed to preach and teach without restraint for two years, and finally to meet the church to which he introduced himself in his letter.
Now even before he wrote to the church at Rome from Corinth, Paul’s life was one of adventure, conflict, and danger. So it is perhaps not a surprise that Paul’s favorite verb is “endure”. “Endure” derives from the Latin in durare, which means “to harden”, and “endure” itself means “to remain firm under suffering or misfortune without yielding”, “to regard with acceptance or tolerance”, “to continue in the same state”, “to keep doing something difficult, unpleasant, or painful for a long time”.
We can relate. We have endured a great deal over the last year and a half, and counting. Maybe not trials and shipwrecks, but certainly a degree of what felt like imprisonment and isolation for a very long time. It almost made it worse to know that this was world-wide, that the pandemic made it so that there was no escape, no place other we could go. We have also endured political upheavals, the fires and floods of global climate change, the present traumatic revelations of ongoing violent injustices to people already historically repressed for generations. Not to mention the deaths of loved ones, friends, and colleagues, economic instability, and inequality of access to economic and medical relief. And there is no end to any of this in sight, as these circumstances have not changed, and don’t look to change any time soon. It seems our endurance will have to continue for a while. It is a hard state of being, to continue to endure.
The reason Paul can encourage us to endure so often is that he does not see it as an isolated action. Its result, endurance, is produced by something, and itself produces something else, and that something else produces something else, and so on. Endurance is part of a process in the life of faith, which reveals God at work in us in love, toward peace and grace and glory. This process begins with suffering.
Suffering here is not something to be avoided – in fact, for many reasons even in the life of faith, it is unavoidable. Paul even says that we can boast in our sufferings, knowing that it is in them that God works with us in the process of reconciliation with God, and so with the process of reconciliation with ourselves and with our neighbor. Even if we are not at the point of boasting about our sufferings, as one of my mentors used to say, we should not waste them. We can learn from them, explore them, find out what we want instead, let them produce the endurance that will keep us going over the long haul.
In faith, that endurance produces character – the particular combination of qualities in a person that makes them different from others. And it is that kind of character – produced through endurance out of suffering – it is that kind of character in a person or group of people that produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into us by the Holy Spirit. And God’s love for us is proven in the fact that Christ died for us even when we were still caught up in sin, died for us even when we were still God’s enemies. And, now that we are reconciled to God, God’s love is proven through Christ’s life, which teaches us how to live through our sufferings to hope.
Which brings us back to our story of Jesus and the man with enough money to have many possessions. One of the real challenges, even sufferings, of the last eighteen months or so has been to come to grips with the fact that money, or the lack of it, so definitively determined people’s experiences of this time. To have money, or not, determined the kind of experiences that people had and so the kind of endurance that people had to develop. Money, or not, even determined the number of choices that people had so as to retain some semblance of control over their lives. Money, or not, even determined the ability that people had to live rather than die.
Now these disparate experiences of money and the power it can grant have been around for a long time. Some of these tensions between different experiences around money and power from long ago remain with us this weekend. Traditionally this weekend has been a time to honor and celebrate Christopher Columbus as an explorer/adventurer, and by extension to honor and celebrate explorers/adventurers in general. These were people who had the money and power to travel here, to new places unknown to them, money and power to insert themselves into these new places and their new experiences, and money and power to insert themselves into the lives of other people to whom they were strange and who were strange to them. These explorer/adventurers certainly had much to endure: ocean voyages in wooden sailing ships about the size of this chancel were long, messy, dirty, prone to disease, plagued by storms and heat, and often boring when they were not full of peril. We remember their courage to face their unknown in the face of hardship and danger. And, there was the adventure, the new and different, the opportunity for gain of all kinds, and welcome when they returned home from what was to them a voyage of discovery in large measure a choice of a voyage of discovery to them. The endurance required of the explorers/adventurers was of the kind limited to the conditions and length of the expedition.
Increasingly many people now acknowledge that the people and places the explorer/adventurers encountered were not “discovered” at all. They were already here: the people were indigenous to the places, were deeply settled in the places and had been for a while, and had highly developed customs and cultures and systems and networks and spiritual awareness. As a result of this contemporary acknowledgement of these realities, many people feel it is appropriate to honor and celebrate these indigenous peoples, whose endurance developed to be very different from that of the explorer/adventurers, due to the many negative results of their encounters with the explorers/adventurers, and whose endurance has had to last so much longer through so many more generations, and counting, of settler colonialism. 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 celebration.
Now for us all, on top of the experiences of the last eighteen months, while it has been going on for a while, the recent Pandora revelations have underscored the fact that, world-wide, access to money – and thus access to power – is becoming more and more limited for more and more people, while more and more money – and thus power – is being hoarded by fewer and fewer people. In our story today, the man with many possessions is shocked and grieving when he realizes that he has to make a choice – his possessions are getting in the way, and he cannot have both them and the eternal life he also wants so much. We too are shocked and grieving, and there is anger and resentment too, as we are astounded at the increasing number and sweep of the choices we will have to make, at the hard allocation decisions around our possessions of resources, money, and time we will have to make if we are to live physically on earth as well as eternally in heaven, at the increasingly limited time in which we have to make decisions before important options are by definition off the table. It is easy to feel overwhelmed, easy to feel as if it is impossible to do anything. A good end to all this is not yet clear.
We do not know what the man with many possessions decided. Nor do we know if Paul ever had the chance to appeal to the Emperor. And, their stories are still stories of hope. Jesus loved the man with many possessions, and taught him what he needed to do to attain what he wanted so much. Then Jesus invited him to companions and provision and more things to learn and do with Jesus and companions, and a life of faith and yes, eternal life, after he had done that one last necessary thing. And while the man went away shocked and grieving, he did not dismiss out of hand the idea of selling his possessions for the poor and following Jesus. He may have started on the way to changing his mind about what was really important, and about what he thought he knew about the world. He now might see new possibilities for himself and others, and act on them.
As for Paul, he had not only endured and survived, but had come to see the life of faith in Jesus as a process, which reveals the love of God for us in all our circumstances, from suffering through to the hope that does not disappoint.
We can take these stories to our hope too. This last Friday on the PBS Newshour there was an interview with the great African-American dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones about his latest work, “Deep Blue Sea”. At the end of the interview he noted that “Art … might not take away all of people's pain, but it might do something else, which is just as good: give people a context in which they can endure.” Art does indeed do that, and, even more for us as believers, it is faith that gives us the unifying context for all the others in which we can endure. Faith in Jesus, who loves us and recognizes what is important in us and will encourage us. Faith in Jesus whose life embodies the Gospel and who through his life teaches us what is necessary for a life that is both earthly and eternal. Faith in the love of God for us even when we sin or are confused, the love that supports us in our suffering, endurance, character building, and hope – all the circumstances of our lives. Faith that God’s love, poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, will also lead us to make good decisions, even about money and power, so that we can endure to meet our challenges even in our time, with grace and flourishing. So may we hold fast to our faith, and so keep faith with God, ourselves, our neighbors, and all of creation. For with God, all things are possible.
Amen.
-The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation
Sunday
October 3
Boston University Baccalaureate for the Class of 2020
By Marsh Chapel
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This year’s Baccalaureate speaker is Yolanda Kakabadse, former president of the World Wildlife Fund International (WWF).
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Sunday
September 26
The Bach Experience
By Marsh Chapel
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The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel:
Time and space are not quite as absolute in determination of our being as sometimes we think. It helps to have a bifocal, stere-optic vision, a two-level drama, of sorts.
That is the nature of the New Testament, shot through from Matthew to Revelation with apocalyptic language and imagery. Our Holy Scripture, both Holy and Scripture, is both heaven and earth. It is both sacred and secular, at the same time, both divine and human. Its Word walks with human feet and sings with divine voice. Its word faces earth: 670,000 souls gone on to the church triumphant, in one country alone. Its word sings with a divine voice: each one of these is a child of the living God.
The apocalyptic warnings of Mark 9 are not to be taken literally. We know this. We know about hyperbole. Let us pause one good moment to recognize that, and why, and so, we do not understand the Bible as utterly inerrant. The Bible is inspired and so inspires us, and is our first point of reflection, prototypical but not archetypical—first but not exclusive in the church’s long history of the search for truth. These verses, harsh and judgmental, need careful interpretation. So, Matthew cuts half of them, in his use of Mark 20 years afterward. So Luke cuts all of them in his use of Mark 20 years later. Even Mark himself shifts the weight from fear to hope, even in this passage, as he wrestles to interpret what he has inherited, from whatever source: be salt, have peace among yourselves, who is not against us is for us.
So, it is particularly appropriate this special Sunday that we hear a cantata, a beautiful gem of sacred music.
In our time, to express a faith amenable to culture and a culture amenable to faith, to unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety, we have Bach’s music in this beautiful 16 minute poem. For all our fears, of heaven and of earth, it does ring out a note of hope, does it not?
Dr. Jarrett, for what shall we listen today, we who remember St. Augustine’s proverb, ‘Hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage’?
Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music:
The Feast of St Michael, celebrated each year in late September, with its fantastic images of Michael the Archangel slaying Lucifer, the Old Dragon, surely must have come as welcome reprieve from more didactic lessons on the weight of sin that marked the liturgical calendar in late summer. Bach’s musical essays written for Michaelmas prove daring innovation, bravura, and an astonishing capacity for both imagery and imagination. After a year of testing out the capabilities of the very fine Leipzig musicians, including chief of the local Stadtpfeifer Gottfried Reiche, Bach boldly deploys all his singers and players with confidence and ease.
The whole of Cantata 130 is framed around Paul Eber’s Chorale “Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir”, known to the English speaking world as the Doxology: Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Consistent with other cantatas from the second Leipzig cycle, the chorale tune is heard in long tones in the soprano part throughout the first movement. Despite the familiarity and prominent position of this famous tune, Bach’s newly composed music played by the instruments from the beginning both colludes and collides with the Chorale in one of the thrilling, majestic, and playful openings of all the cantatas.
The inner movements remind us that though Lucifer was defeated by Michael and cast down from Heaven, he still burns with deceit and torment for God’s little ones here on Earth. The tail of the serpent ensnares us at any time without notice or warning. Only the eternal presence of God’s angels all around us assures both protection but also victory. We are reminded that it was Michael who was with Daniel and who ushered Elijah to the throne of grace on a fiery chariot. And that, just like them, when we journey to heaven, Michael, the standard bearer, will safely guide us.
Both arias are bold departures with regard to instrumentation and style for the Leipzig Thomascantor. I challenge you to find other examples of trumpets and timpani deployed as the obbligato instrument for a bass aria. Bach and Reiche must have had a wonderful regard for one another. Professor Terry Everson plays the heroic parts today over and around Craig Juricka’s baritone. Whether the tail of the Serpent or the brandished saber of Michael, this marks one of the most difficult and exciting uses of these instruments.
The tenor aria sung today by Ethan DePuy features the Flauto traverso, also new to Bach in Leipzig. Cast in a pastoral gavotte in the new style, we are assured that Michael will be with us to the end.
The stere-optic vision heard in today’s cantata is indeed a multi-valenced thing.
The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel:
Those who have paused, here, or now, to worship with us at Marsh Chapel in the last decade, are aware that we lift the Gospel, come Cantata Sundays, in word and music, together, juntos, in harmony.
Bach brings us the reach of beauty around the globe, a global sphere of orientation. Bach brings us a stretch toward the universal, the reach up and out to what fully lasts, truly matters, and really counts. Bach brings us an artistic angle of vision, rooted in Scripture and in an earlier Lutheran garden, nonetheless known by heart and in the heart, far and near, with those, today you and me, who will pause for the offering of the gift of faith. Bach brings us beauty, a paean for sure to the true and the good, but no avoidance of the beautiful. In our time, this hour, especially this week, we can truly appreciate, benefit from such a global orientation, a high universal reach, a feeling in faith, and the bathing of such beauty.
Given the maelstrom of this moment in our current climate, our current politics, our current globe, our current culture, the wind blasts of charge and counter charge, the examples of courage and also the instances of failures in courage, near and far, we, come Sunday, maybe especially this Sunday, look for the God who is a rock in a weary land. Said Dr. Emilie Townes, ‘we want to cultivate a vibrant community of hope… we hope to beget an ever more piercing faithfulness’. An ever more piercing faithfulness. Yes.
Today we receive the gift in memory of the faith of the church, and we give ear to the beauty of our first Bach Cantata of the year. We are truly ‘blessed’. All the senses—sight, sound, scent, touch, taste—are enlivened today.
This is truly good news, especially for those who may be in mortal need of a living reminder, as the Scripture says, that we are ‘children of God’. For we can sometimes acutely need such a reminder of belonging, meaning and empowerment. Even at eventide. Even at night. We are acquainted with the night. You are acquainted with the night. As our New England poet memorably put it:
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain — and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
So, it is particularly appropriate this special Sunday that we hear a cantata, a beautiful gem of sacred music. It is angelic music, written to harmonize with the music of the spheres, and to recall the angels of Scripture, the revelations of Scripture, the heavenly messages and messengers of Scripture, a worthy work to honor St Michael and all the angel chorus.
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel and Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music
Sunday
September 19
The Lord of the Harvest
By Marsh Chapel
Click here to hear the full service
Click here to hear just the sermon
The authority of Jesus’ ministry is today transferred to disciples and apostles, ancient and modern.
We meet Jesus this morning on the hinges of the first Gospel, as the flow of the Gospel swings 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 bright autumn morning on which, for once, for the first time, or for once in a long time, we may be seized by a sense of divine nearness. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. The harvest is plentiful. The kingdom of heaven has come near to you. When that sentence makes a home in a heart, or in the heart of a community, a different kind of life ensues. It opens for you the question of vocation, of calling, of your truest self, of your ownmost self.
Faith may come like a blinding light on the Road to Damascus. It may. But most of the time it comes, rather, one stumble, one step, one stop at a time. One step. 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 like Paul are blinded by a moment on the road to Damascus. Most of us are seized in faith, brought to healing, in a gradual way, over time, as my teacher of blessed memory Fr. Raymond Brown was used to say. Not in lightening but enlightening and enlightened day by day. Sermon by sermon we could say, Sunday by Sunday. One step at a time. The Gospels tell us so, whatever the Epistles may opine. Daily Questions of Faith, like… Is there a dark side to Forgiveness?... Is Education about the old or the new?... Do I hold onto things too long?... Do I practice Misplaced Paternalism?... When the time comes: How do we approach death?...Have we faced the inadequacy of a life without faith?...
This year, 2021-22, sermon by sermon, Sunday by Sunday, we will look for a single small step, one question of faith at at time.
A preparatory step is to read the Bible, to open the Scripture. We do so four times in the Sunday hour of worship, whatever the sermon may portend. Or pretend. Including this morning. And so we hear the Gospel: Vocation…leads to an experience of God. The kingdom of heaven is at hand…when your passion meets another’s need. The harvest is plentiful like an orchard full of ripe apples.
Capture in the mind’s eye for a moment the sweep of the gospel in this part of Matthew. First. Jesus has been out and about, teaching and preaching and healing. His compassion abounds. The endless range of needs about him he unblinkingly faces. Second. Jesus calls and sends the disciples, and empowers them, and by extension he empowers us. The gospel will have been read thus, as it is thus read by us. He instructs and directs them in their work, where to go, what to do, how to be. Learning, virtue, and piety together. Start at home, heal the sick, travel light. Third. Jesus expects and forecasts for them a less than utter victory in their work. They are to know how to shake dust from their feet. Fourth. Jesus warns that there will be a price to pay. The discipline that is the hallmark of the disciple here is named. Shall we not remember the rigors of Jesus’ ministry? Shall we ignore the call and power offered here? Shall we forget the directions given? Shall we expect to turn a deaf ear to the caution about consequences? We pray not. The main sweep of the gospel today is clear as a bell. Jesus gives power to his disciples. Hold that thought for a moment.
The devil is in the details. The Gospel in Matthew 9 sends us into a sort of foreign territory, one, that is, in which and for which we shall need some translation. The biblical language is not always our language. For instance. We have other words, whether only modern or both modern and more accurate, to describe unclean spirits. We recognize that the list of disciples differs from other lists. We do not regularly meet leprosy. We carry no gold in our belts, nor silver, nor even copper. We are not pilgrim peregrinators who arrive in town and camp on a doorstep. We sense that the hard distinctions we make between disciples and apostles were not made by Matthew. We do not readily conjure up the vision of Sodom and Gomorrah. We sense that the time of Matthew and perhaps persecutions feared or present under Domitian, 90ce, may have colored all or a part of this passage.
A confusion, a lack of translation here will allow us to avoid the clear call of Christ upon our consciences in the main flow of the gospel. For the main point is crystal clear. To follow Jesus means to take up where he and his earliest companions left off, and to span the globe, and to care for the globe and its environment, and to share the spiritual care of its inhabitants with the world’s many other religious traditions.
The verses and the chapter and the gospel carry a claim. Do you love Jesus? Then you must do something for him, said Albert Schweitzer.
Jesus has taught, preached and healed. This ministry he has bequeathed to you and me, his disciples, his apostles. We have been seized by the confession of the Church; we are Christians. Now his ministry, this ministry, is ours. Which part of this ministry, today, draws you, and in which way?
Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. I might argue that healing the sick has a medical degree of meaning, that raising the dead is about pastoral ministry in the Northeast where the church awaits resurrection, that cleansing lepers is about including those on the outside of the social fence, that casting out demons is reminding people not to fear, not to fear, not to fear, even, in the face of much trouble, including the twenty year shadow of 9/11. You could, rightly, challenge or augment the interpretation.
But personally, just where does your passion meet the world’s need? What are you ready to risk doing, to plan for the worst, hope for the best, then do your most, and leave all the rest?What are you going to give yourself to, to offer your ability, affability, and availability?
Who calls you, who called you, to your own real life, your vocation? Who gave you your sense of direction, vocation in life? Our colleague Robert Pinsky revitalized poetry by asking communities to gather and read their favorites. We at Marsh are trying to revitalize vocation in part by asking people to gather and remember their mentors. What about you? The world opens a bit when someone is called or reminded of a call to…preaching, teaching, healing.
Vocation…leads to an experience of God. The kingdom of heaven is at hand…when your passion meets another’s need.
Today one step. Our step in questions of faith today, on reading the Holy Bible, is to discern our calling, vocation, that which makes not just a living but a life. Others from history may help us, two in particular today, Martin Luther and John Wesley.
On May 24 of 1738, Mr. John Wesley, an Oxford Don and Anglican Priest, found himself in a Sunday evening service of worship on Aldersgate Street in London. This was a rainy Sunday evening, and the weather of the moment it would seem matched Wesley’s despond. Yet on the conclusion of the service, somehow, Mr. Wesley walked into the London fog singing in the rain. His heart, he wrote later, had been ‘strangely warmed’. In full he thought and felt and ‘feltthought’ that the passion, the gift of Christ, was for him, for him--John Wesley. The moment became a touchstone in his life, and consequently, both for bane and blessing, in the movement that became the church that became the denomination that became whatever it is now to become which he and his dear brother Charles did beget. Yet not often has Methodism looked back a little bit more carefully at the first part of his story of that fateful, eventful evening. The service on Aldersgate Street started with Martin Luther, and with his commentary, summary, introduction to the Epistle to the Romans. Here to hear is a part of that introduction, on the matter of faith:
“Faith is a living, daring confidence in the grace of God, of such assurance that it would risk a thousand deaths. This confidence and knowledge of divine grace makes a person happy, bold, and full of gladness in his relation to God and all creatures. The Holy Ghost is doing this in the believer... Accordingly, it is impossible to separate works from faith, just as impossible as it is to separate the power to burn and shine from fire…Pray God that He may create faith in you…”
In a more personal vein, many of us have been shaped by the outworking of Luther’s thought and church, especially through the influence of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Our first year of seminary on the corner of Broadway and (now) Reinhold Niebuhr place was sustained by shared evening meals, one clumsy amateur cook at a time, to share expenses in the main, and to share insights and friendship, as well. This was on the second floor of then Hastings Hall at Union Theological Seminary, NYC. Somehow, Eberhard Bethge was invited and chose to come to join us for our evening meal, a most humble affair in every direction. He was a most gregarious, joyful fellow, who knew Bonhoeffer better perhaps than almost anyone. He matched, in part, the person of faith that Luther described in the Introduction to Romans---a daring confidence in the grace of God, happy bold and full of gladness. Last week, a friend who is in retirement from work as a cardiologist, who serves on our Marsh Chapel board, and in a new mode of vocation, is studying Bonhoeffer, in depth in and in breadth, sent photos from the 1930’s at Union of Bonhoeffer. In those years Bonhoeffer wrote: Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. (Cost of Discipleship)…. In Christ we are invited to participate in the reality of God and the reality of the world at the same time, the one not without the other. The reality of God is disclosed only as it places me completely into the reality of the world. (Ethics)
We have much for which to be thankful, given to our denomination and many others through Martin Luther, including the witness and martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Sometimes a direct encounter with a different religious tradition than our own, a different denominational tradition, a strangely and daringly distinct perspective, can bring our own vocational perspective into focus.
That is our ancient and future hope, in Scripture and in faith. John Dewey spoke of a common faith. Howard Thurman preached about a common ground. Over fifteen years, in and from this Marsh Chapel pulpit, we have offered a common hope.
This is the hope of peace. We long for the far side of trouble, for a global community of steady interaction, an international fellowship of accommodation, a world together dedicated to softening the inevitable collisions of life. This is the hope of peace.
Without putting too fine a point upon it, this hope, the vision of the far side of trouble, is the hallmark of the space in which we stand, and the place before which we stand. If nowhere else, here on this plaza, and here before this nave, we may lift our prayer of hope. There is a story here, of peace. You now, students and others, are become in presence and hearing, stewards, stewards of this story, this common hope.
For we at Marsh Chapel are like everyone else, only more so, as the saying goes—a wide and diverse community, committed to a handshake and a song, and that shared ‘creed’ of ‘that which has been believed, always, everywhere, and by everyone (so, John Wesley), a common hope of peace, a unity shall we say that protects and promotes diversity.
Mahatmas Ghandi, walking and singing ‘Lead Kindly Light’, embodied this common hope. Ghandi wrote: “I am part and parcel of the whole, and cannot find God apart from the rest of humanity”. A common hope of peace. Ghandi inspired and taught the earlier Dean of Marsh Chapel, Howard Thurman.
Howard Thurman, hands raised in silence, later wrote: “The events of my days strike a full balance of what seems both good and bad. Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at had the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.” A common hope of peace.
Thurman taught King, whose stentorian voice fills our memory and whose sculpture adorns our village green. King wrote: “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality”. A common hope of peace. Martin Luther King inspired a whole generation of ministers, including the current Dean of this Chapel.
He (Robert Allan Hill) wrote: “We are all more human and more alike than we regularly affirm, all of us on this great globe. We all survive the birth canal, and so have a native survivors’ guilt. All eight billion. We all need daily two things, bread and a name. (One does not live by bread alone). All eight billion. We all grow to a point of separation, a leaving home, a second identity. All eight billion. We all love our families, love our children, love our homes, love our grandchildren. All eight billion. We all age, and after fifity, its maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. All eight billion. We all shuffle off this mortal coil en route to that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns. All eight billion.”
Today, in memory and honor, with Luther, Wesley, Ghandi, Dewey, Thurman and King, we lift our hope for a day to live on the far side of trouble. We remember our ancient and future hope, a hope of peace. Here is a discreet question of faith. One step, a small step. Does or will your calling evoke a hope of peace in others? or will your sense of vocation evoke a hope of peace in others?
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
Sunday
September 12
Finding Divine Sustenance
By Marsh Chapel
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Click here to hear just the sermon
Good morning! Can I just say how amazing it is to be here, in front of people, delivering a sermon today? This year has been so difficult, and even though we managed ways to stay connected through the radio and zoom, distanced outdoor in-person services in the freezing cold, and email, nothing compares to the strength and support of physically being together. In the three weeks that we have been back indoors, in person here at Marsh Chapel I have been so happy to see your faces, although masked, and to hear your wonderful voices. Don’t get me wrong, recording your sermon ahead of time has its advantages, like starting over if you mess up at the beginning, but nothing compares to being here, with you, in community praising God. It’s such a blessing on what is a very important day for me – more on that later!
A few years ago, actually, I think it may have been a decade or more at this point, the candy bar, Snickers, had a commercial campaign that featured Betty White. You may remember this. She was depicted playing a game of touch football with much younger men and ends up getting tackled into a giant mud puddle. When she gets grief from the other players for not playing to her potential, she lashes out at them. And then another woman presumably the partner of the person Betty White is supposed to be depicting, hands her a candy bar and says, “Eat a Snickers.” Betty White then transforms into a younger man who says he’s now feeling much better and goes off to play more football. The tagline was “You’re not you when you’re hungry.” Maybe some of us have experienced being so hungry that we end up in a bad mood, sometimes lashing out at others. Your hunger becomes so great that even the smallest inconvenience becomes insurmountable. I’m sure some of us are familiar with the term “hangry” – a portmanteau of the words hungry and angry. As a person who struggles with low blood sugar at times, I certainly know that I have embodied this “hangry” position and I am certainly not myself when I do.
Earlier this year, there was a meme going around in my clergy friend circle discussing the passage from 1 Kings today. The meme is actually a tweet from Joy Clarkson, a PhD candidate in theology at St. Andrews University and host of the Podcast, “Speaking with Joy”( @joynessthebrave). It stated:
“Remember that one time in the Bible when Elijah was like “God, I’m so mad! I want to die!” So God said, “Here’s some food. Why don’t you have a nap?” So Elijah slept and ate, and decided things weren’t so bad. Never underestimate the power of a snack and a nap.”
Of course, this is an oversimplification of the story, but we get the point, right? Elijah’s story is relatable because we know that feeling. Getting “hangry” or overwhelmed, or even just not acting like ourselves when things are not going the way we planned. We get moody. We argue with others. We hyperbolize and say, “I could just die!” The bottom line is, we just want whatever it is to be over. We’ve all had times when things seem so impossible around us that we want to just throw up our hands at God and say “WHY? WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?” Some of those times may have even come up in the past year, or even the past weeks with the surge of the Delta variant, returning to school or work, and witnessing national and global news that leaves us at a loss for words. Our conversations with God often come in these moments of exasperation as we grasp for clarity. My friends who shared the meme about Elijah’s breakdown were those who had endured a year of upended plans with their religious communities and faced continued situations of injustice throughout the world. They too were and continue to be frustrated in what they can and cannot do for others to serve them in a way that is does not completely deplete them of their own energy supply. Many of them were reaching a point of burnout.
A snack and a nap certainly are not going to fix all of the world’s problems, but when we have our basic needs met, it is easier to cope with extenuating circumstances. We cannot serve others or ourselves if we are running low on energy. Taking care of our needs can also help us focus on who and what supports us. For my clergy friends, remembering that it is okay and even encouraged by God to take care of themselves to better serve others was much needed. A silly internet meme resulted in a moment of reflection on God’s presence and guidance in maintaining one’s ability to continue the difficult work of seeking out justice in the world. In times of stress, remembering to drink, eat, and sometimes even just breathe can help us find grounding.
Elijah separates himself from his community to express his frustration and ultimately finds that God continues to support him by providing him with his essential needs so that he can reset and return to his community. He can then go on to continue his important work as a prophet in challenging the actions of King Ahab and the cruelty shown to the people of Israel. God’s constant presence through the care shown to Elijah when he is at his lowest point enables Elijah to remember that God continues to support him, even in his darkest moments. Elijah has physical hunger, yes, but he also has a spiritual hunger that needs to be fulfilled.
The theme of the sustaining presence of God in the world is carried through in today’s Gospel message. Jesus proclaims to the people, including the religious authorities, that HE is the bread of life and that whoever comes to him will never be hungry. Some may read this as a message meant to exclude, a condemnation of those who are not a part of Jesus’ movement. But, as one commentator put it, this is not a message of condemnation but of commendation. It is an invitation to people to come, taste and see that the Lord is good! Jesus creates a continuum between his Jewish heritage and the new message of what God offers to humanity. The Israelites relied on manna from heaven while they wandered the desert with Moses for 40 years, further establishing their trust in God. This new form of manna from heaven through the bread of life expands God’s covenant with humanity in establishing eternal life. It provides spiritual nourishment to all who come to receive it.
In our Christian context, we immediately connect Jesus’ claim of being the bread of life for those who hunger and the living waters for those who thirst with our sacraments. Holy Communion allows us to eat and drink as Christ has instructed us, in his remembrance. Sharing together as a community in partaking in the bread and wine physically binds us to the reality of Christ’s love. As a central part of worship, the Lord’s Supper presents an opportunity for us as the congregation to share in the intimate act of eating and drinking together. Temporally and spatially, this act also connects us with the centuries of Christians throughout the world who have shared in this sacrament. Creating community around the table is meaningful because it recognizes the need to be spiritually and physically sustained in order to serve God.
One thing that I appreciate most about the Lutheran understanding of the Lord’s Supper is the acknowledgement of the mystery that surrounds it. We take Jesus at his word when he states that the bread and the wine are his body and blood. Our faith is bolstered by the fact that we continue to receive this mystery. Even if we believe we are unworthy to accept God’s grace, it is still given to us through the promise found in Holy Communion. Our consciences are eased by the reality that there is nothing we need to do to earn this means of grace from God, but that it is given to us freely.
Here at Marsh Chapel, last week we had our first experience with Holy Communion together in the same space after 18 months of depravation. Communion did not happen in our traditional way of intinction. We used pre-packaged communion kits rather than receiving the bread and wine from one another. While we may have fumbled to get the plastic wrappers off of our wafers or carefully pulled back the foil on top of our cup of grape juice so not to spill it on our clothes, we still heard the words of institution spoken and received the mystery of the sacrament together. It was still a special moment filled with God’s stated presence here with us, joining us together. Eating and drinking has been something many of us have missed in these days of isolation and social distancing. Avoiding having a meal around others has been essential to maintaining our physical health in the past year, but finding a way to still partake in this sacrament in a COVID-safe way has brought back spiritual nourishment for us.
Holy Communion has played a pivotal role in my own sense of vocation and call. Growing up as a pastor’s kid, I only infrequently encountered other ministers in my youth. My primary clergy person was also my dad. I witnessed my father celebrating communion almost every week in the churches he served. However, when you’re a PK, your connection with the church can be somewhat challenging. If your pastor is your parent, it’s hard to not see their vocation as just a “job” or really understand what it is that they do. For some PKs, it causes them to develop some uneasiness around considering ministry as a potential vocation. That’s why, when I went off to theology school after college I made it very clear that I was NOT going to be pastor. I figured my studies of religion and theology were enough to feed my spirituality. I had stopped regularly attending church in college and didn’t feel any sort of drive to return even when surrounded by those who were seeking out ministry as their vocation.
In 2011, things changed. My mother was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that originates in the bone marrow and affects the white blood cells. Fortunately, she was diagnosed early and had access to cutting-edge care at the University of Pennsylvania hospital, which has oncologists who specialize in this type of cancer. The prospect of a loved one, or even yourself, going through cancer treatment is terrifying, however. Watching at a distance as she went through chemo, losing weight and eventually her hair, it was hard to not question: “Why? Why was this happening?” Like Elijah yelling at God in his frustration, there were many times when I found myself angry with God. My family trusted the doctors, who were sure that at the very least her disease would be manageable in the future, but nonetheless it was scary in the moment.
I finally got to visit my mom after she had her largest dose of chemo and her own treated stem cells transplanted into her body, resulting in a 17 day long stay at the hospital, from which she had just been released. My parent’s minister, the minister of the church to which my family belonged while my dad served as an interim minister for many years, came to the house to give her communion. I had never experienced communion at home before (which seems like a silly thing to say in today’s context, when some of us have now taken part in communion services over Zoom). For me, communion was always a full church experience – I connected it with being in front of the altar and surrounded by others. Sure, I knew that my dad would go out and give communion to those who were too sick or homebound, but I never experienced it first-hand, let alone from another minister. My mom, dad, and I sat in their living room as Pastor Sharkey unpacked his communion kit and asked my mom about how she was doing, comforting her in the challenges she now faced in her recovery. He went on to offer us each communion, stating the words of institution and placing the wafers in our hands followed by small cups of wine.
Although I had heard “The body of Christ, given for you,” “The blood of Christ, shed for you” many, many times before, in that specific moment I felt a connection so much deeper than anything I had ever experienced. I felt spiritually fed. I felt supported by God. I knew that God was there to help us get through this moment. It wasn’t that my experiences in the church prior to this were not spiritual or meaningful, but it helped me to see and understand ministry in a different light. I knew that ministry involved the care of others in the most difficult of times, but I don’t think I ever truly understood what it meant to those who were hurting until I experienced it myself. As someone who has innately sought to help others in whatever jobs I take on (perhaps because of my upbringing) I began to see ministry as truly viable option for my future. When the opportunity to serve as the Lutheran Campus Minister here at BU arose after this experience, I jumped at the chance to enter into the beginning steps of a long process of discernment to pursue becoming a minister of Word and Sacrament.
Throughout my journey of candidacy, I have continued to encounter moments of God’s sustaining presence, keeping me spiritually fed. Getting to know the ins and outs of Chaplaincy from my colleagues, learning about the experiences of my students, and providing care for others has helped me grow into my vocation. The road has not always been easy, it has certainly been long, and there were times when I had those moments with God questioning why I had to go through what I was going through. I found a community of people who support and care for me, cheering me on as I hit each milestone and encouraging me when things didn’t go as planned. Through it all, I felt God’s presence with me in this community. And now, this afternoon, for the first time ever, I will preside at the table for Holy Communion at my ordination service. I can’t put into words what that moment will mean for me. While, again, it won’t necessarily be the experience I thought I would have because of COVID, being able to help direct the congregation that will gather in this sanctuary to the mystery of God’s grace brings my heart joy. Perhaps someone will also find comfort or strength in the words of institution, being spiritually fed through the bread of life and the living waters.
God stands with us in our hardest moments. When we yell out in our frustration hoping for something better, God hears us. God’s constant presence reminds us that we are not alone. We gather together in community with one another to find the strength to continue through whatever challenges we might face. Christ invites us to partake in the bread of life to have our hunger and thirst perpetually satisfied. We are physically and spiritually fed through Holy Communion, hearing the Word proclaimed and receiving the body and blood of Christ given for each one of us. We are divinely sustained as a community. As the Psalmist states “Taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are they who take refuge in God!” Amen.
-Rev. Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain for International Students
