Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

1 Corinthians 2:1-12

Matthew 5:13-20

The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill

In the reading and hearing of the day’s Scripture we are given a word of encouragement and a look to the future.

We can appreciate both the word and the look, surrounded as we are every day with the unexpected consequences of sin, the unexpected news of illness and death, and the unexpected threats that come from feelings of loss and meaninglessness.

Together we are followers of Jesus. We may follow from a long way off, but we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Together we work to develop disciples, in the heart of the city and in the service of the city. And being a disciple is a matter of the heart. Coming to Jesus may not be a matter of a moment or a day. It may not be caused by lightening or earthquake. It may not be from a command that is as plain as the nose on your face. But it is always a matter of the heart.

Now St Matthew has imagined for his church and for the church of all time a great scene. Followed by many, both disciples and future disciples, Jesus ascends a mountain. Like John Brown ensconced in the Adirondacks, like Moses up on Mt. Nebo, like the Jewish heroes at Masada, Jesus takes to the high peak, and as is the custom, he sits to teach. His words are as fresh and pure this morning as they have been for nearly 2000 years.

He offers us a word of encouragement and a look to the future.

You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.

The most striking feature of this utterance is that it is spoken to and for a community. The you is plural—you all. Or as it is said of the plural of you all in the south—all you all. This is a word for the church, the body of Christ. For you—for all you all. You can be salt—but not on your own. You can be light—but not by yourself. You can be a disciple of Christ—but not free-lance. There are no free-lance Christians. Jesus encourages the community of disciples. And his images that follow are common: a city, a house, all people. That which banishes the darkness of fear and loneliness is light. That which redeems the rotten blandness of selfishness is salt. Light and salt are found in community. The most striking feature of this teaching is that it is spoken to and for–a community.

The second most striking feature of this utterance is its breadth and depth. You—all you all—are salt and light of—what? Your mind? One family? A school or church or two? No. You are the salt of the EARTH and the light of the WORLD. Let your light shine before ALL HUMANS! A community that is salt and light is deep and wide. Our church is at the heart of Boston and heard around the world. After all, this is a mountain top word. It is meant for the whole community. This is a word of encouragement and a look to the future, for a church at the heart of the community. When we plan and dream at Marsh we try to think world-wide and a half century deep.

One of the winds beneath our wings comes from our music ministry. Yes, at Christmas and Easter, on Communion Sundays, for special University services like Matriculation and Baccalaureate and Martin Luther King Sunday, but also, and notably so for us, on our twice a term Bach Sundays. The word and music of these days keep us moving forward together, salt and light.

Dr. Jarrett, what should we listen for in our cantata this Lord’s day?

Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett

Well, just as you’ve predicted for us Dean Hill, today’s cantata as with our scripture lessons offers a word of encouragement and a look to the future. As we have in past surveys, we are studying and performing the works Bach wrote for a specific occasion – liturgical or temporal. This year surveys four cantatas Bach wrote for New Year’s Day. Cantata 16 – Herr Gott, dich loben wir, follows a now familiar path in both libretto and design. Bach’s librettist features from the outset an excerpt of the famous Te Deum hymn, known to have been sung at the start of the new year. In the opening movement, you’ll hear four lines from the Te Deum set like a chorale tune in long notes in the soprano part. The lower three parts have a much more active part that proceeds without instrumental breaks or interludes. All the vocal parts are doubled by a member of the orchestra, except the first violins have an entirely independent part adding a fifth voice to the otherwise four part texture.

The opening of the cantatas is of interest to me: it’s as if Bach begins in the third or fourth measure of the piece In material we would characterize as episodic. It’s as if a melody has already been played and we enter immediately into motivic development. Or, were it not for the episodic material, we might expect this to be a delicate aria accompanied by continue only.

Similarly the opening movement comes to a close somewhat suddenly without closing ritornello and on a half-cadence –a sense of a grand pause. A secco recitative ensues sung by the Bass, drawing us from the ancient hymn, sung throughout the centuries, to the present moment with none other than a word of encouragement and a look to the future: “What have you not done, O god, since time began for our Salvation? And how much does thy breast still perceive of thy love and faith? And should we not sing in fervent love? Therefore, a new song sing out!”

The old modal hymn that ambled along in the first movement, erupts into a joyful chorus in C major with full chorus in full acclamation: “God’s goodness and faith is renewed each morning.” A word of encouragement, a look to the future.

With the conclusion of this extended, tri-partite opening, we take inward turn. The alto steps forward to offer a prayer for God’s blessing in the new year, as he enjoins us to place our trust and faith in Christ Jesus. This is the first mention of Jesus in the cantata, and it parallels and invites the inward turn toward soul-searching and personal reflection. In such proximity to Jesus’s name day and presentation in the temple, the theological image of Jesus living in the hearts of all believers is close at hand: “Beloved Jesus, thou alone shall be my Soul’s wealth. We shall, therefore, before other riches enthrone Thee in our faithful Heart.”

Though this shift inward toward Jesus might seem late in the canata – the next to last movement – at seven minutes, this rumination balances the opening movements taken together. The aria itself is score for tenor, continuo, and either violetta or oboe da caccia. Though the music is written in 3-4 time, Bach confuses the meter and placement of the downbeat often enough, that the longer line. The Cantata concludes with a four part chorale setting Bach had used two days before to conclude Cantata 28.

So how do we account for this? Here we skate toward the thinner ice of speculation and conjecture,

The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill

But worship alone, even when shot through with glorious music as today, is not enough, alone, for salt and light. For love there need to be places to love one another. Every Sunday morning here we host ten or so smaller groups. Here is a morning study group. Here is a circle of student interns. Here is the Marsh choir. Here is the Thurman choir. Here is Take Note—take note! Here is the intercessory prayer assembly, quiet before worship. Here is a children’s room. Here is a luncheon or coffee following worship. Here is a Bible Study following worship. Here is a mission group, Abolitionist Chapel. Here is a group heading out to visit shut-ins and nursing home. For salt not to lose its savor, and for light not to grow dim, there need to be places and spaces for nourishment.

This takes commitment. It takes investment. You cannot have that kind of fellowship or friendship in a six-week seminar. It takes a lifetime of prayer and study and searching the Scriptures.

Now I know we have many of our own questions about the Bible, and they are good ones. Did David write the Psalms? Was Jesus born in December? Does Paul condemn slavery in Philemon? And so on. Good for us.

But today somewhat beside the point.

Growth in Christ comes not from our questions about the Bible, but from the Bible’s questions about us.

*Have you reckoned with the shortness of life? Psalm 90

*Have you lead a life worthy of God? Ephesians 4

*Have you earnestly sought the higher gifts? 1 Cor 12

*Have you reckoned with the real force of evil and

the strength of the final enemy? 1 Cor 15

*Do you tithe? Do you share your faith? Mal 2

*How does your generation’s character compare to others? Matt 28

In antiquity it was Diognetus who loved the passage about salt and light. Around 130 ad he wrote of the people of salt and light. He is speaking of you, you all, all you all:

They display to us their wonderful and paradoxical way of life.

They dwell in their own countries, but merely as sojourners.

Every foreign land is to them their native country.

And yet their land of birth is a land of strangers.

They marry and beget children, but they do not destroy their offspring.

They have a common table, but not a common bed.

They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh.

They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven

When reviled, they bless.

When insulted, they show honor.

When punished, they rejoice.

What the soul is to the body, they are to the world.

What salt is to earth and light is to world are you to this county, this region. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.

Sursum corda! Lift up your hearts!

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

–Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music

posted in Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, The Bach Experience, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 02.9.2020 at 11:00 am

Sunday
February 2

Two Turtledoves

By Marsh Chapel

Malachi 3:1-4

Hebrews 2:14-18

Luke 2:22-40

Prelude: Pauline 13

February 2, 2020. Candlemas. Ground Hog Day. A religious feast. A secular holiday. The consolation of Israel. The redemption of Jerusalem. For once, we turn our meditation, at communion, both outward and inward, both toward the shadow’s length on to spring, and to the liturgy’s turn from Christmas, and the blessing of the candles of 2020. Sometimes it is not the great mysteries, but the small ones—a candle, a shadow—that touch us and heal us. The little things. Like two turtle doves, a candle on Candlemas, a shadow on Ground Hog Day. Light a candle. Watch the shadow.

One: Candlemas

‘525,600 minutes’…Midway into the old musical, RENT, the story a young woman appears at the door of her neighbor. Both are poor, lost, penniless and lonely. Like all of us, we long to connect with others, with our own truest selves, and with God. She knocks on the door, looking for a match with which to light her candle, for just a little warmth, just a little light. Unamuno on warmth: not the night that kills but the frost. And she sings, “Will somebody light my candle?” “Will somebody light my candle?” There is struggle in the air, and romance too. And what is wrong with that? Here is a young man wondering about profession, marriage, meaning. “Will somebody light my candle?” Here is young mother, raising children alone. “Will somebody light my candle?” Here is a man, or woman, alone now for the first time, this winter. “Will somebody light my candle?” Here is a grandfather listening for news of his grandson in military service, far away. “Will somebody light my candle?” Here is a preacher wondering how on earth to preach the gospel with Australia burning, China coughing, Washington exploding, Methodism imploding, “Will somebody light my candle?” Here you are, on the brink of faith, just about ready to accept your own acceptance, to connect with your own connectedness, to survive your own survival, to live in the peace of God. “Will Somebody light your candle?” Our friend Dr. Reid Cooper of Brown said last Sunday, ‘faith is the positive response to the question, ‘does life have meaning?’’ True enough, at least to start.

Watch our Sacristan, Come Sunday, just before the service, while some have gathered for quiet intercessory prayer, quietly lighting our candles, here on the altar.

The Scripture for Candlemas illumines us:

*The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple

*Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested

*Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the King of Glory may come in

*Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him; to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. Jesus is our childhood’s pattern. Day by day like us he grew.

Simeon and Anna are older people, who have some insight, even prophetic insight, into what is to come. Luke has apparently confused the rites of presentation and purification. Consolation; the fulfillment of Jewish messianic hopes. The consolation is the redemption of Israel, different phrases meaning the same thing. A light for revelation to the unreligious, and for glory to the religious. The old prophet sees, as promised, and Messiah has come “for all peoples”.

The feast of the Presentation, or Candlemas, is the conclusion of Christmas, and affords the blessing of candles, and the blessing of throats. One of the oldest feasts of the church, dating to the early fourth century, it conjured sermons by Methodius of Patara (died 312), Cyril of Jerusalem (died 360), Gregory the Theologian (died 389), Amphilochius of Iconium (died 394), Gregory of Nyssa (died 400), and John Chrysostom (died 407). So the church’s liturgy joins with Scripture in teaching and testimony:

*Dear people of God, forty days ago we celebrated the joyful feast of the incarnation of Jesus. Today we recall the day on which he was presented in the temple, fulfilling the law of Moses. Led by the Spirit, Simeon and Anna came to the temple, recognized the child as the Christ, and proclaimed him with joy. United by the same Spirit, we now enter the house of God, where we shall recognize Christ in the breaking of bread.

*O eternal God, who have created all things; on this day you fulfilled the petitions of the just Simeon: we humbly ask you to bless and sanctify these candles for our use. Graciously hear our prayers and be merciful to us, whom you have redeemed by your Son, who is the light of the world, and who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

*O God most powerful and most kind…for Whose sake the glorious Martyr and Bishop, St. Blaise, joyfully gained the palm of martyrdom…Thou Who didst give to him, amongst other gifts, the prerogative of curing by Thy power every ailment of men’s throats…

At our prayer station following communion, we can at least recognize the need for health particularly at this time around the globe.

Come Candlemas, light a candle. It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. This is not Confucius, Shakespeare, Proverbs or Ben Franklin. It is a line from a sermon, 1907.

“The earliest appearance located by QI occurred in a 1907 collection titled “The Supreme Conquest and Other Sermons Preached in America” by William L. Watkinson. A sermon titled “The Invincible Strategy” downplayed the value of verbal attacks on undesirable behaviors and championed the importance of performing good works. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI: ‘But denunciatory rhetoric is so much easier and cheaper than good works, and proves a popular temptation. Yet is it far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness.’” (Internet: QI)

Light a candle.

Aeschylus: In our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our despair and against our will, comes wisdom, through the awful grace of God.

Two: Ground Hog Day

I have this response to those of you who will not abate the ongoing contention related to my claim that Ground Hog Day is the best of all holidays:

In the ministry you offer to God and neighbor all weekends, most evenings and most holidays, and then work 9-5, Monday to Friday. All this takes a chunk out of the year. Holidays, in particular, carry, shall we say, some stress. Christmas, for an example. There are expectations. Special services. People. Doings.

Behold the blessing of February 2! An utterly ordinary day, and a holiday to boot! No expectations. No special services. No people. No Doings. Just the blessing of a single, average, wintry, bereft of expectation day. Ground Hog Day. It doesn’t get better than Ground Hog Day. A quiet, ordinary, no frills day.

But…What is ordinary about any day, anyway?

Every one of them is a gem.

Monday’s child is fair of face

Tuesday’s child is full of grace

Wednesday’s child is full of woe

Thursday’s child has far to go

Friday’s child is loving and giving

Saturday’s child works hard for a living

But the child that is born on the Sabbath Day

Is happy, witty, bright and gay!

Every day is a chance to do a good turn. Do one daily. BE: Trustworthy Loyal Helpful Friendly Courteous Kind Obedient Cheerful Thrifty Brave Clean Reverent.

We have reminders, don’t we, of ordinary daily wisdom, quotidian quips

Some are cultural:

A stitch in time saves nine…An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure…Look before you leap…eternity in a grain of sand, heaven in a wild flower

Some are familial:

(To complaining): You would complain if you were to be hung with a new rope…(To time waste): Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time. And it annoys the pig…(Too constant questions):Are you a journalist or are you writing a book?...(To inquisitive children): Where were you before you were born? Down in Canada boiling soap.

Some are national:

Give me your tired, your poor Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free The wretched refuse of your teeming shore Send these, the tempest tossed, to me I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

In truth, there are no ordinary days, no insignificant holidays.

Emily Webb stands as our fiercest sentinel to the landscape of this, truth, the Gospel on Ground Hog Day, out of the imagination of Thornton Wilder, brother to the great New Testament scholar, Amos Wilder, both New Englanders.

You will remember that she and George were graduated from High School in Grover’s Corners. On the basis of a frank talking to over a soda, in which Emily criticizes George for being less than fully humble, George decides not to leave home, not to go to college, but to start working an uncle’s farm right away, and to marry Emily, the girl next door. You remember their wedding. “A man looks pretty small at a wedding, all those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure the knot is tied in a mighty public way.” You remember that Emily, after just a few years of profoundly happy marriage and life, tragically dies in childbirth. You remember that George finds no way to manage the extreme grief of his loss. Simple Yankee English. Simple reckoning about love, life, death and meaning.

Maybe you also remember, in the playwright’s imagination, Emily from the communion of saints looking out on her young husband and wanting to go back. Others warn her away from the plan: “All I can say Emily, is, don’t…it isn’t wise…(If you must do it) Choose an unimportant day. Choose the least important day of your life. It will be important enough.”

She chooses February 11, 1899, her 12^th birthday. She arrives at dawn. She sees Main Street, the drugstore, the livery stable, and breathes the brightness of a crisp winter morning. Simple. She looks into her own house. Her mother is making breakfast, her father returning from a speech given at Hamilton College. Neighbors pass in the snow. Simple. She sees how young and pretty her mother looks—can’t quite believe it. It is 10 below zero. There is fussing to find a blue hair ribbon: “it’s on the dresser—if it were a snake it would bite you”. Simple. Papa enters to give a hug and a kiss and a birthday gift. And others from mother and the boy next door. Simple. “Just for a moment now we’re all together. Mama, just for a moment now we’re all together. Just for a moment we’re happy. Let’s look at one another.”

Simple. This is the gospel of Ground Hog Day, the best holiday of the year, the holiday of the extraordinary ordinary, of the uncommonly common, of the sunlit winter, of the eternal now. Simple. Grover’s Corners. “Papa. Mama. Clocks ticking. Sunflowers. Food. Coffee. New ironed dresses. Hot baths. Sleeping. Waking up. Earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you.”

Watch the shadow.

In truth, there are no ordinary days, no insignificant holidays.

Said BU Philosopher Erazim Kohak: “A life wholly absorbed in need and its satisfaction, be it on the level of conspicuous consumption or of marginal survival, falls short of realizing the innermost human possibility of cherishing beauty, knowing truth, doing the good, worshiping the holy”.

Postlude: Beatitudes

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 02.2.2020 at 11:00 am

Sunday
January 26

Vocation

By Marsh Chapel

Isaiah 9:1-4

Matthew 4:12-23

Today we see Jesus walking the shore of his beloved Sea of Galilee. He sets out at dawn, as the fishermen begin, casting and mending. This stylized memory from the mind of Matthew kindles our own memory and hope, too.

That first light of the day, daybreak, carries a power unlike any other hour’s hue. The excitement of beginning. The promise of another start. The crisp, cold opening of the year in January. Like the skier, mits and poles at the ready, we adjust our goggles, and we lean, and…

Here is Jesus, midway from Christmas to Easter, from manger to cross, from nativity to passion. Along the shoreline he strides, one foot in sea and one on shore.

He meets two brothers at first light, and they meet him, God’s First Light, the light that shines in the darkness. Notice how Simon, called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, are sketched. There is little to nothing of history here, but what there is says so much! There is no parental shadow lying on their fishing nets. One hears no maternal imperative, no paternal dictate. These boys are on their own. They have left home already, maybe leaving the city to the south to find a meager middle-class existence farther north, with their own means of production. They are small business men, boat owners, fishermen. Neither the amhaaretz nor the gentry, they. Not poor, not rich. Working folks. Young, young men. Simon already has a nick-name. A sign of joviality, of conviviality, of gregarious playful fun. Peter, the Rock. Is this for his steady faithfulness or his failure to float? On this rock…Sinks like a Rock…You sense that these brothers play in the surf a little, kick up the sand a little, flirt with the Palestinianas, take time to take life as it comes. Brown are their forearms, and burnished their brows. They love the lake and life, and have made already their entrance into adult life. For they have left home. One envies their youth and freedom. They have taken to the little inland sea, and with joy they meet each dawn, like this one, at first light, as they see Light.

You can feel the sand under their feet as they take a moment to play and laugh. You can feel the chill of the water as they swim, while breakfast cooks over the fire. You can feel their feeling of vitality and joy as they greet another day at first light.

I wonder whether we allow ourselves to drift a little too far from that sense of vocation, that first light feeling. Those nearly pure dawn moments of almost rapturous illumination. Those moments of connection.

The day your BU acceptance letter came.

The afternoon of BU Commencement, four fast years later, 25,000 in attendance.

The evening you came out to your parents.

Your first child, tiny, red, crinkled, fists waving, crying and then asleep, literally in your hand.

Your daughter, or son, taking the vows of confirmed faith, in the church’s chancel. Yes, there was some part child and another part adult in what was said. But they were there, in tie and dress. They were there, in public and in church. They murmured, and they murmured piously. And how did that feel Dad?

Your day of matrimony. Down the aisle they come, or you come, father and daughter. Do you? Do you? I do. They do. And what was once a simpler world, now has further complexity and creative power. A new creation.

Your retirement party.

There must have been some moment, sometime, when you felt an intimacy with the universe, a closeness, a sense of purpose. That too is a kind of daybreak, dawn, first light. That is an inkling of vocation.

A simple trust, like theirs who heard beside the Syrian sea.

Our denomination once had a thriving ministry in China. When we forced out of China in the 1940’s, something vital left our church. But you can still feel the first light of mission in the halls and rooms at Scarritt in Nashville. Oriental ornaments, paintings, sculpture, gifts, symbols of connection and love. We grew up with the family of Tracy Jones, who himself had been raised as missionary child in China. As had Huston Smith. Our first parsonage, in Ithaca, had once housed Pearl Buck while she and her husband were back on furlough, from China. Have we begun with the Spirit to end with the flesh? Have we forgotten the love we had at first? Have we stayed close enough to that dawn light, and those first light experiences, to stay fresh? Have we an inkling of vocation?

Our malaise, our ennui, should we have such, our “acedia”—spiritual sloth or indifference, literally, our “not-caring”—so often is due to our turning away from the dawn, daybreak, that elemental experience of love that energizes everything else.

Peter and Andrew, of course, are casting, casting nets. They have no furrowed brows, no endless worries, no pessimism, no angst. They probably have left unattended some holes in their nets, these two happy brothers. They are willing to accept that their casting will be imperfect, as all evangelism is imperfect. But that imperfection will not keep them from enjoying the labor of casting. To miss the dawn, the first light, is to miss the fun of faith!

Invite that neighbor, the one across the street whose porch light is always on, to come along to worship with you. Do you enjoy, benefit from, appreciate worship here, come Sunday? Then, of course, you will want to share that enjoyment, benefit and appreciation, by inviting someone to come too. Here at dawn…those first stirrings, first longings, first intimations of something new and good….

Meanwhile, back on the beach, Jesus heads south, cove by cove, with Andrew and Peter frolicking in tow. They had already left home. They are ready to take a flier on some new trek, not fully sure how it will work out. It is a miracle that they are remembered, perhaps with a little hagiography, as having responded “immediately”. Still, every little scrap of memory of these two brothers tends in the same direction—full of vim, vigor, vitality and pepperino. Yes, they will follow!

But down the shoreline a little, there rests another boat. A different story, a different set of brothers altogether. James and John. Known as the sons of Zebedee. Simon has already earned his own name and nick-name. But these two are known by their father’s name. They haven’t left home. They have not yet acquired that second identity. When you won’t leave, won’t move, you won’t find, you won’t grow: you’ll miss vocation. Here they are, as usual at dawn, stuck in the back of the boat. All these years they have watched the Peter and Andrew show. All these years they have envied the fun and frolic down the beach. The late night parties. The bonfires. The singing. The swimming. And here they sit strapped to the old boat of old Zebedee. They are covered with the ancient equivalents of chap stick and Coppertone. And they are trapped. Under the glaring gaze of Zebedee, whose thunderous voice has so filled their home that their own voices have not even emerged. Every day, in the back of the boat. And what are they doing? Why you could have guessed it, even if the text had not made it plain. Are they casting? No. Are they fishing? No. Are they sailing? No. They are mending. Mending. Knit one, pearl two… Their dad has got them into that conservation, protection, preservation mode. Mending. At dawn! Of course nets need mending, but the nets and the mending are meant in a greater service! The fun is in the fishing! The joy is in the casting. The happiness is in the evangelism. And there they sit, sober Calvinist souls, mending. Deedle deedle dumpling, my son John…

Today we are mid-way between Christmas and Easter. This passage has a little passion (the Baptist) and a little nativity (Nazareth). The two stories of Jesus, of his birth and of his death, are meant to complement and interpret each other. As our colleague Milton Jordan put it this week: Matthew attempts to soften this story of Jesus' flight from the threat of arrest. He and other disciples of the Baptizer flee from Herod Antipas' region to a border town where escape to another country is not as difficult. We have, too often overlooked - if not intentionally obscured - the harsh political realities of Jesus' flight to the border.

Here is a pronouncement of a broad peace, on earth. On earth. With Gandhi along the Ganges. Beside Tutu on the southern cape. Along the path of the Dalai Lama in farthest Tibet. In Tegucigalpa with our missionary friends Mark and Lynn Baker. This is no predestinarian quietism, which has taken over parts of non-Catholic American Christianity, from its seedbeds in the Orthodox Presbyterian and Anabaptist communions: cold, careful, efficient, first mile, changeless, fearsome, depressed grace. No, this is Christmas: warm, open, effective, second mile, free, growing, angry, and hopeful! Augustine: Hope has two beautiful daughters: anger and courage.

The early church told two stories about Jesus. The first about his death. The second about his life. The first, about the cross, is the oldest and most fundamental. The second, about the manger, is the key to the meaning of the first, the eyeglasses which open full sight, the code to decipher the first. Without Christmas you can’t see Easter right. Jesus died on a cross for our sin according to the Scripture. That is the first story. But who was Jesus? What life did his death complete? How does his word heal our hurt? And how does all this accord with Scripture? One leads to the other.

This second, second level story begins at Christmas, and continues in Epiphany, and is told among us to interpret the first. Christmas\Epiphany is meant to make sure that the divine love is not left only to the cross, or only to heaven. Epiphany is meant to open out a whole range of Jesus, as brother, teacher, healer, young man, all. Christmas is meant to provide the mid-course correction that might be needed if all we had was Holy Week. And the Christmas\Epiphany images are the worker bees in this theological hive. Easter may announce the power of peace, but Christmas names the place of peace. Jesus died the way he did because he lived the way he did. Jesus lived the way he did, and so died the way he did. That is, it is not only the Passion of Christ, but the Peace of Christ, too, which Christians like you affirm. What lovely news for us at the start of a new decade. The passion too of Christ. Theologically, globally, politically, militarily, ecclesiastically —we have seen passion this year. Now comes dawn, the light, Epiphany, Christmas\Epiphany again to announce that there is more to Jesus than the passion. There is the matter of peace as well.

The real miracles of this account lie in the second invitation to the second set of brothers. It is a miracle that Jesus stopped and invited them, so somber are they. I wonder if he took in the timbre of Zebedee’s voice, and saw them quaking in the back of the boat. Perhaps his heart went out to James and John. So, he stops, and he asks.

That is the great thing about an invitation. All you can do is ask. Do ask. Ye have not because ye ask not. And for the first time in their lives, James and John are invited to live. Too many people live half asleep. Too often we don’t live life, life lives us. Like these two knitting in the back of the boat. Half asleep. Then dawn comes, and day breaks, and that first light shines! And a voice like no other, so equanimous and so serene, casts its spell upon them. Maybe upon you, this morning. Watch. It is a first light moment. First one, then the other, stands and moves. Under the shadow of that paternal presence, under the sound of that maternal imperative of home. They rise. And they move toward First Light. They are about to grow up. AND THEY LEAVE HOME! Wonderful! And what do they leave behind? You would have known even if the Scripture had not laid it right out. They leave behind the boat…and their father. We best honor the adults in our lives when we become adults ourselves. (repeat)

Will this world grow up? Will we find a way to live together, all seven point five billion of us, and to drink from the same cup? This text, strangely like John, claims for Jesus that Jesus is light. Not color, now. Light. Color is great, and good. But we all want finally to be able to drink from the same water fountain, we want our children in one school, we want to sit at one table, we want to drink from one goblet. It is light that we will need into the 21^st century. We finally all drink from the same cup.

I am told of a man who stopped in his new neighborhood to buy lemonade from a freckle faced 7 year old girl and a mahogany skinned 6 year old boy. He paid his dime and drank his beverage and stayed to talk. After a while the girl asked if there was anything else he wanted. No, he said, why?

Well sir, we are running a business here, and we have had a busy morning, and we hope for a busy afternoon, but that cup you are holding is the only one we have, so if you don’t mind, we’d like it back.

We all finally drink from the same cup. We forget it at our worldly peril. If we walk in the light as He is in the light we have fellowship with one another. We have more in common, as climate change, nuclear danger, governmental malfunction, denominational turmoil, and personal angst remind us, all around the globe, than we do in difference. Give us light. Give us light. Dear God, give us light.

Have you faith? You are going to need some this coming year, 2020.

At first light, at dawn, we may with happiness remember this. The protagonist of M Robinson’s Gilead, an old pastor in the Iowa town of this name, spends Sunday mornings, at dawn, praying alone in his church. He loves the morning hour. He waits with baited breath for the church to begin to fill up, to fill in. He basks in the first light of day.

He knows, you do too, that we are going to need some faith this year. Others will, too. How will they find faith in Christ without a church family to love them, without a church home to nurture them: without you taking a moment to say, ‘I will be at Marsh Chapel on Sunday at 11am—why not meet me there?’

That is the dawn, Peter and Andrew, real joy of faith: sharing it. Would you like to have some fun this week? Look around for dawn breaking, and kick up some sand.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 01.26.2020 at 11:00 am

Sunday
January 19

A Natural Grace

By Marsh Chapel

Isaiah 49:1–7

1 Corinthians 1:1–9

John 1:29–42

‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove’

Scripture

O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me!
²Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up;
    thou discernest my thoughts from afar.
³Thou searchest out my path and my lying down,
    and art acquainted with all my ways.
⁴Even before a word is on my tongue,
    lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.
⁵Thou dost beset me behind and before,
    and layest thy hand upon me.
⁶Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is high, I cannot attain it.

⁷Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?
    Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
⁸If I ascend to heaven, thou art there!
    If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!
⁹If I take the wings of the morning
    and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
¹⁰even there thy hand shall lead me,
    and thy right hand shall hold me.
¹¹If I say, “Let only darkness cover me,
    and the light about me be night,”
¹²even the darkness is not dark to thee,
    the night is bright as the day;
    for darkness is as light with thee.

Spirit in Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience.

In this, the 139^th Psalm, a very favorite of Dean Howard Thurman’s, you hear two, or perhaps the two, central features of his teaching on Spirit, nature and grace. And they come together so smoothly, so seamlessly, that you might just speak of them together, as a natural grace. Today as we welcome our beloved and esteemed guests, today as we recognize and honor Martin Luther King Jr., today as we step even further to recognize the shaping mentorship and influence on King of Thurman, and today as we recognize and celebrate the inaugural of Boston University’s fine new Howard Thurman Center, we might just do so with…Spirit.

Scripture dazzles us, if we are alive to it. Notice here that Jesus needs no introduction to Peter: he knows his name already, without being told, like he knows yours. Notice here the closeness of the Gospel writer to the Baptists—not American or Southern or Old Regular Baptists--but those who were disciples of John the Baptist, but came over to follow Jesus. Was the Gospel writer a Baptist before he became a Christian? Notice what does not happen. In every other Gospel, Jesus is baptized by John, but not here. Notice the dog that does not bark. No. Jesus steps away, dry as a bone. Spirit ever trumps sacrament, and gospel ever trumps church in John. Jesus is not baptized in John (the Gospel) by John (the Baptist), unlike in the other three gospels. The Baptist knows and honors Him—bears witness to him (martyr in Greek) but Jesus does not stoop, deign, or allow himself to be baptized. Here is inheritance, but inheritance with innovation at its heart. Here is religion, but religion with grace, a natural grace, at its heart.

Spirit in Scripture.

Tradition

So too, Spirit in Tradition.

And we have our traditions here, one of which is the observance of this special Sunday, in this particular space, with its particular Marsh history, across six deanships. With Franklin Littell, the first Marsh dean, 1951, and one of the founders of Holocaust studies in the USA, we share an uncompromising willingness to challenge national government and leadership, for the sake of the gospel. With Howard Thurman, 1953, our most famous dean, we share a confidence in universal truth, a search for common ground, and a delight in natural grace. With Robert Hamill, 1965, we share a fierce commitment to human, to civil rights. With Robert Thornburg, 1978, we share a nuanced appreciation for the intricacies and wanderings of Methodist church bureaucracy. With Robert Neville, and his emphasis on Go the Creator. With Robert Hill, the current dean, we share a regard for biblical theology, Paul Tillich, common hope, and hymn singing in four-part harmony. All together, our tradition is one of a common hope. We have seen hope come alive, moving from chapel to university to community: Community Service Program, LGBTQ L Douglass, ISGC, Howard Thurman Center, Global Ministry, and others.

A tradition in hope buoyed by many voices.

The voice of John Wesley. Methodists are like everyone else, only more so, the saying goes—a wide and diffuse denomination, 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).

The voice of 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”. Ghandi inspired and taught the earlier Dean of Marsh Chapel, Howard Thurman.

Today especially the voice of Howard Thurman, hands raised in silence, later wrote: “there is always lurking close at had the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.”

The voice of Martin Luther King. Thurman taught King, whose stentorian voice fills our memory and whose sculpture adorns our Plaza. King wrote: “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality”. 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 seven and a half billion. We all need daily two things, bread and a name. (One does not live by bread alone). All seven and a half billion. We all grow to a point of separation, a leaving home, a second identity. All seven and a half billion. We all love our families, love our children, love our homes, love our grandchildren. All seven and a half billion. We all age, and after fifty, its maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. All seven and a half billion. We all shuffle off this mortal coil en route to that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns. All seven and a half billion.”

Spirit in Tradition.

Reason

So too, Spirit in Reason.

Reason can have the deepest range in Spirit. Think of Robert Francis Kennedy, late a night, in the rain, at the Indianapolis airport, April 4 1968, speaking from memory and from the heart. Looking back this week, what is striking is his reliance on spirited reason. Reason in the rain.

Robert Francis Kennedy, Indianapolis, April 4 1968:

I have bad news for you…

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice…

In this difficult day…we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love…

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times…

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land…

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world…

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people…

And so also Thurman. Read or re-read this winter The Search for Common Ground, With Head and Heart, and Jesus and the Disinherited.It is the spirited reason, the life of the spiritual mind of Howard Thurman that still invigorates us:

Crown: “This is how Jesus demonstrated reverence for personality…He placed a crown over her head which for the rest of her life she would keep trying to grow tall enough to wear.” (Disinherited 106).

Harmony: As Thurman wrote in the Search for Common Ground, “The Hopi Indian myth carries still, in its thematic emphasis on “the memory of a lost harmony””. (CG, 40)

Unity: There is a unity of living structures…that includes rocks, plants, animals, and humans. Antibodies and antigens. And the arrangement of a cell in a human child (CG, 40).

Wisdom: Thurman cites Plato: ‘Until philosophers are kings…and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside…cities will never have rest from their evils’. (CG, 53)

Mind: ‘Jesus rejected hatred. It was not because he lacked the vitality or the strength. It was not because he lacked the incentive. Jesus rejected hatred because he saw that hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, death to communion with his Father. He affirmed life, and hatred was the great denial’ (JATD, 88)

Child: ‘There is something more to be said about the inner equipment growing out of the great affirmation of Jesus that a man is a child of God. (JATD, 53).

Spirit in Reason.

Experience

Spirit in Experience, and we mean here spiritual experience. Whence ideas and imagination?

We are driving along a blue highway, Route 20. Conversation pauses. The rolling hillsides, now sprouting corn, alfalfa, beans, wheat, and hay, are like their own tidal waves, their own sea scape, in green not blue.

An idea arrives, related to ‘conversation’. Two books by our MIT neighbor Sherry Turkle, Alone Together and Reclaiming Conversation, have guided some of my thought about this. We hope to meet her in person sometime. Her voice is a crucial one in this conversation about conversation, and she is only the span of the river away. A thought: why not invite her, Dr. Turkle, to come to Marsh Chapel and engage in a dialogue sermon? The conversational form of the sermon would itself accent our emphasis upon conversation, as would her voice, presence, and knowledge. The work on conversation could include a pulpit conversation with perhaps the current intellectual leader in thought about conversation. An idea, maybe a good idea, has arrived, as the green sea fields of young corn roll by. But no body has done anything about it. Yet.

Where did that idea come from? Non liquet: it is not clear. Whence such an idea? How does a new prospect—here, the possibility of a pulpit dialogue—come to life? The leisure to drive and be bathed in silence, along with the occasional personal conversation, certainly allows space and time for such a thought to land in the mind. The further distance from daily, office or campus routine and rhythm, so important to the work of sermon development and any other composition, adds a further support. Perhaps the familiarity of the route, the drive itself—a road the car could meander on its own, so regular are the trips—gave a lulling quietude that became the womb of gestation for thought. ‘My best sermon ideas come while I am shaving’ once said James Forbes. Yet the moment of insight, of new thought, the arrival of an idea comes on its own with our without a well-manicured airport, runway or landing strip. Whence an idea? What is going on when we think? Or when we think we are thinking? Or when we think about our thinking? Whence an idea?

Or whence imagination? How, of a recent evening, did a current political campaign unearth the memory of 1 Samuel 16: 1-13 (here slightly updated), in the mind of a Boston preacher?

The Lord said to them: You need another leader, and I have provided one for you. Go to Bethlehem (or was it Iowa?) and see.

So, they went together as a party. And along the way they held many and great debates. And they saw Eliab, also named Joe, but the Lord had not chosen him. And then they saw Abinadab, a good Jewish fellow also known as Bernie, but they heard the Lord had not chosen him. Then they saw Shammah, also known as Elizabeth, but their guide said the Lord had not chosen her either. And then there seven others: Klobachar, Steyer, Buttegieg, Booker, Harris, O’Rourke, and Bloomberg. But these were not what they needed either. I look not on appearance but on the heart, said the Lord. And that was the end of the list. There were no more candidates. And they sat down by the olive tree, or was it a New Hampshire maple tree, or was it a Georgia peach tree, and they sighed, and they murmured, and they groaned, and they sorrowed, and they gave in to melancholy.

But then someone said: Are they all here? Well, said someone else, I think that’s all of them. Then one said, is that right? Isn’t there anybody else. And the reply came, well, I mean, there is one other, but he is really young compared to all these, and he has been busy taking care of his family and flock. He is a good shepherd, a good governor, in that way.

And the party said, after yet another debate, Send and fetch him, for we will not sit down until he comes here, or we at least see him on TV. And so, they went and fetched him. Now he was ruddy. And he had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. And the Lord said: Arise, pick him, for this is he. His name is David, also known as Deval. So, they thanked Joe, Bernie, Elizabeth, Klobachar, Steyer, Buttegieg, Booker, Harris, O’Rourke and Bloomberg, and, in a big party meeting, they picked Deval. And the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David, also known as Deval, from that day forward.

Whence such whimsical imagination? Who knows. We know this, though, as my son the basketball coach repeats and repeats: It is not how you start that counts. It is how you finish. Life is full of surprises.

That is spirit in experience.

Spirit in Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience. All of them will take you closer to Howard Thurman, to Jesus, and to your own most self.

Close To You

You can get close to Howard Thurman through

Prayer

Song

Hymns

Spirituals

Psalms

Meditation

Candles

Study

Scripture

Gathering, Meaning, Belonging

Empowerment

Community

Preaching

Ritual

Praise

Worship

Religion

My friends, the doors of the church are open! Thurman wrote: “The ocean and the night surrounded my little life with a reassurance that could not be affronted by any human behavior. The ocean at night gave me a sense of timelessness, of existing beyond the ebb and flow of circumstance. Death would be a small thing I felt in the sweep of that natural embrace.”

‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove’

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

posted in Services Honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 01.19.2020 at 11:00 am

Sunday
January 12

Right Relationship

By Marsh Chapel

Isaiah 42:1-9

Matthew 3:13-17

Grace and peace to you from God our Creator and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Good morning! Welcome to a new year, a new decade, a time that years ago seemed so far off in the future – 2020. We’re solidly into this new year now, having finished our holiday festivities and returned to our “regular” lives of work and school (although our students still have one more week of break to enjoy). We’re back to early morning risings, rush-hour commutes, and the horizon of what this new year will have in store for us individually, in our local and national communities, and the world.

Like some of you, I was fortunate enough to spend my holiday break with my family. Christmas and New Year’s fell on Wednesdays this year, extending my time with them just a little bit longer than normal and allowing for some deep rest and relaxation. It also meant that I was treated to my mom’s cooking and baking. Baking is a big part of my family’s Christmas celebrations. My mom mixes her fruitcake batter sometime in November every year so that it can be steamed and then wrapped in sherry-soaked cheesecloth and aluminum foil, stored in the large black lobster pot in our basement until it is appropriately aged and ready to be distributed to family, friends, and neighbors at Christmastime. I know what you’re thinking – fruitcake is the ultimate Christmas-time gift punchline, but people LOVE my mom’s fruitcake. In addition to fruitcake there’s a day of baking pumpkin bread, and then, of course, baking Christmas cookies: Sugar jumbles, peanut butter Hershey’s kiss, mincemeat (my dad’s favorite), peanut butter, and the old standard, chocolate chip.

All of this baking in my youth has led to my own love of baking as an adult. But there’s something about the way my mom makes things that I still haven’t quite been able to capture. Maybe it’s because the recipes I have inherited from her aren’t actually the recipes she uses. For example, the recipe I have for pumpkin bread, which she copied from her own recipe card, is incorrect. I only found this out at Christmas this year. Number one – she doesn’t use nutmeg. Even though it’s in the recipe. Only cinnamon will do. Number two – the recipe calls for 3 cups of sugar…the recipe yields six loaves, so it’s not as sugary as you’re thinking. But my mom only uses one cup of sugar. Just one. It doesn’t say that anywhere in the recipe that I have. Granted the pumpkin bread I made still came out just fine, even with using nutmeg and the 3 cups of sugar, but it didn’t taste like I how I remembered. Those little tweaks and shifts in family recipes often yield better results, but we only find them out by either making mistakes or through direct communication from the recipe owner. There are many other recipes I could list where my mom instructs to add things like flour “until it’s enough” – actions you can only learn through practiced trial and error. The recipe is a guideline, but not the rule of how to get things just right. Sometimes, it’s through relationship with another that we really find out the “right” way to do something.

Many of us struggle with wanting to get things “right.” People seek a plan, direction, a recipe if you will for finding the best way to create the most fulfilling life, whatever that might mean for them individually. We compare ourselves to others and feel less accomplished or like we don’t know which path to take sometimes. Wouldn’t it be great to have a recipe, or a set of instructions that can help us learn what to do when aspects of our lives don’t turn out the way we expected? How can we find those necessary edits or tricks that can help us accomplish the things we need to do?

There’s a plethora of decisions and actions that may worry us today. Some of them are personal, like how to live a healthy, generous, and loving life. Many are beyond our personal control, however. We see our communities divided by ideologies and bigotry. We witness global powers threatening and, in some cases, executing attacks on other countries, leaving civilians injured or killed and provoking fear, anxiety, and hatred. Natural disasters, such as the wildfires in Australia and the compounding earthquakes in Puerto Rico, some on scales we’ve never witnessed before, destroy homes, habitats, take lives, and make recovery seem improbable. Clearly these kinds of problems have no set out guides for response – but we have ethical insights from our religious tradition that can help to guide us in times of trouble such as these. Combined with our lived experience and our relationships with others, we learn how best to live out our Christian calling in the world, sometimes making mistakes, but hopefully moving toward sharing love and establishing justice.

Prophetic language is an important part of the Judeo-Christian heritage. The prophets found in the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament as many Christians refer to it, perform a variety of functions for the Israelite community. Prophets have the power to see and name what is happening presently while at the same time bringing attention to the possibilities of what could be. They operate at multiple levels within the community: as an ethical guide, a theological interpreter, a political critic, and an advocate for social welfare. The prophetic voice changes as the community and its circumstances change. When the people or leaders are not living into the will of God, prophets bring harsh warnings of potential outcomes and remind them of the important commitment they’ve established with God through their covenantal relationship. When the community is in disarray, prophets remind the people of their ethical responsibilities to one another and to God. Prophets can also challenge the status quo to bring about necessary change in the hearts and minds of leaders and the people, sometimes challenging temporal authority in order to seek true divinely-inspired justice for the community. The prophetic voice carries the nuances of behavior that go beyond the regular teachings and beliefs found in sacred texts and practices, connecting the abstract ideals of God’s will to direct actions in particular contexts. It provides the guidance similar to notes scribbled in the margins of a long established recipe.

In today’s reading from Isaiah, we are confronted with Deutero-Isaiah transmitting the words of God to the Israelites who are living in a time of exile. Although the language used initially is the singular “he”, God is speaking to the community of Israel as a whole. They, collectively, are “the servant.” The Babylonians have just captured Judah and destroyed the temple in this context, leaving the Israelites without a home and with a feeling of hopelessness. The Israelites, reasonably, could have been so anguished and angry about their exile that they would not trust in God. They could have disbanded as a community and lost trust in one another. They could have turned on other communities and harmed them in their frustration. But instead, the voice of God through the prophet reminds them of their right relationship with God and others. What is appropriate is not to take out frustration and anger on others, but to be a light to the nations of the world, a community established in justice and righteousness. A community that leads by not harming those who are oppressed, but who strives to cease such oppression from existing. Establishing a community that does not see their defeat in Judah as an end, but as the possibility of new beginning.

In today’s Gospel reading, the concept of what is “right” or appropriate comes to us in a different way. Jesus approaches John to be baptized by him. John doesn’t understand this request. To him, Jesus has more authority. Jesus should baptize him. But Jesus knows for what has to take place in his life that he must be baptized by John, for it will “fulfill all righteousness”. It is the “right” way to do this. The right execution of being in relationship with one another for Jesus is to not assert his authority by becoming the one who baptizes, but in modeling that through baptism, God calls us in to holy relationship. John’s calling in the world is to be a baptizer. It is his vocation. For Jesus to disregard John’s calling in the world, particularly as a prophet foretelling Jesus’ own arrival, would go against God’s will. In the servant-relationship that is formed by Jesus’ presence, he reverses that structure of authority. The scene of Jesus’ baptism is an indication of what his ministry will look like. He goes to the wilderness, to the literal margins of society, and is baptized because it is the right action to take.

We also know John’s baptism of Jesus is right because the Holy Spirit appears and the voice of God states that Jesus is God’s beloved, with whom God is well pleased. Matthew echoes the introduction of of Isaiah 42, connecting the mission of the beloved servant with Jesus’ ministry in the world. John and Jesus’ relationship is one that establishes the correct order of events, but the presence of God in three forms creates yet another relationship which we echo in our own baptism. We enter into a relational community – with God of course, but also with those who follow Jesus’ teachings. Jesus is claimed by God, just as we are claimed by God through our own baptism. God chooses us to be a part of the large family found through Christ. We are all siblings together sharing in the love and care exemplified by Jesus and sustained in us through the Holy Spirit. Jesus instructs us through his ministry and teaching what God’s will is to look like in the world and through following that will, we create a more just society.

In our baptism, we take on the call to fulfill all righteousness. Part of our relationship with the Divine is to act faithfully in alignment with that which God calls us to. While divine will is not always easy to discern – we don’t have doves descending or the voice of God proclaiming us to others – we have basic tenets which we know are central to our beliefs. Jesus’ ministry and death teaches us how God’s will can be lived out. Loving our neighbor and our enemy. Seeking justice for those who are voiceless, poor, oppressed, or imprisoned. Coming together to in community to worship and share our lives with one another. Practicing forgiveness against those who have wronged us. While we may know these ideas to be central to our identity as Christians, complex social/political/ethical situations can cause us to question what exactly is the right way to go about living out our faith.

Earlier this week I was seated at table with religious professionals from around the Boston area. We all work on college or university campuses and help students navigate their spiritual journeys, asking big questions, facing the realities of today with their personal histories and identities. While the meeting convened was to discuss an inter-collegiate interfaith experience, we ended up discussing the overall climate on our campuses and the best ways in which we could support our students in. The college campus is a microcosm of the outside world. It may not necessarily reflect all of the challenges of the world completely, but in some cases it amplifies conversations that only simmer slowly underneath the cultural milieu of the rest of the country or world. In a time like ours, on the precipice of an election, my colleagues and I worried if rhetoric would become more vitriolic than it has already been and how we would weather possible challenges in our communities this year. With a rise in anti-Semitic acts, bigoted violence against people of color, assertions of political leaders as demigods, and the continued exclusion of LGBTQ people from religious leadership, students have plenty of questions about how to best navigate confrontational situations, or whether to engage in them at all.

We ended up pausing our meeting to hold a 45-minute discussion about ally-ship and what that means for us as administrators, as people of faith, as religious leaders, and as those who are in positions of power in comparison to those experiencing oppression. What does it mean to bring together people who share opposing views? When is it a healthy way of learning and listening, and when is it unhealthy and abusive? When do we encourage students to have conversation even if they don’t agree, and when is it okay for them to not participate in those conversations? How do we execute this kind of work in a way that is supportive, truthful, and generous while still challenging that which is hateful and stands in opposition to our beliefs? How can we encourage our students to take part in this work, and when is it time for us to step in? We want to seek justice for our students, but we also don’t want to interfere in conversations that might not be our places to fight.

What we discovered in our discussion was that our need to be in right relationship within these situations depended upon us identifying who we are – the many identities we hold – and knowing when our voices were needed to amplify those who are facing oppression. As one of my colleagues put it, we need to be hearing in a new way those who are hurting and focusing on how our relationships matter. It is through this self-reflection that we can see the ways in which our society may privilege certain aspects about our existence that prevents us from fulling understanding the harm experienced by others. For Christians, we can rest in the assurance that we are baptized in the name of the Triune God, that God bestows grace upon us no matter how difficult the decisions we must make and the wrong turns or stumbles we may encounter. We must claim our Christian identity in the face of evil and boldly state, “I am baptized!” as Lutheran pastor and speaker Nadia Bolz-Weber reminds us in her article, “How to Say Defiantly, ‘I am Baptized!”’.

The longer I try to participate in God's redeeming work in the world the more I am convinced despite my proclivity to cynicism that there are indeed forces that seek to defy God. And nowhere are we more prone to encroaching darkness than when we are stepping into the light. If you have ever experienced sudden discouragement in the midst of healthy decisions, or if there is a toxic thought that will always send you spiraling down, or if there is a particular temptation that is your weakness then I make the following suggestion: take a note from Martin Luther's playbook and defiantly shout back at this darkness "I am Baptized" not I was, but I am baptized. [1]

I would add that it will also benefit us to be open to listening to those harmed and naming ways that we can be in right relationship with them while also being in right relationship with God. That is what seeking justice is all about. While God gives us the ingredients necessary to live in alignment with Divine will, sometimes we need additional instructions that come from observing our context and listening to those set at the margins of society, or listening to those with no voice at all.

Our desire to live into the righteousness and justice that God sets as a standard for those called to him is echoed throughout the history of Christianity. Figuring out our ethical responsibilities is a challenge, but we are guided by those who came before us and those who are around us now. Martin Luther, in his treatise on the Two Kinds of Righteousness reminds us what our commitment to seeking justice and righteousness means for those who follow Christ in Baptism:

“For you are powerful, not that you may make the weak weaker by oppression, but that you may make them powerful by raising them up and defending them. You are wise, not in order to laugh at the foolish and thereby make them more foolish, but that you may undertake to teach them as you yourself wish to be taught. You are righteous that you may vindicate and pardon the unrighteous, not that you may only condemn, disparage, judge and punish. For this is Christ’s example for us…”[2]

Being in right relationship with one another causes us to change how we see the world. Our willingness to hear the Gospel enables us to welcome and include those who feel excluded, to console those who are suffering, and to seek justice for those who face oppression. It opens our eyes to possibility. Our ability to listen to those who suffer and pay attention to the world around us gives us indications of the best ways to apply the Gospel in the world. We see what is, but also what can be in a deeply broken world.

Amen.

-Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain for International Students

[1] Nadia Bolz-Weber, “How to Say Defiantly, ‘I am Baptized!”’, Sojourners, January 20, 2011, https://sojo.net/articles/how-say-defiantly-i-am-baptized

[2] Martin Luther, “Two Kinds of Righteousness,” in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 162.

posted in The Rev. Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain for International Students on 01.12.2020 at 11:00 am

Sunday
January 5

Word Become Flesh In A New Year

By Marsh Chapel

Jeremiah 31:7-14

John 1:1-18

Welcome to the year 2020! Today is also the last Sunday of Christmas, and so we begin this year with one of the most famous Gospel readings, all about the Word of God.

Words are tricky things. They are our major form of communication, and, they compose lies as well as truth. Their amount is increasing in our lives, and not necessarily for the good. Certainly in 2019 many of us might have joined with Eliza Doolittle of My Fair Lady fame as she exclaimed in exasperation, “Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!”

2020 looks to be more of the same, with debates replaced by conventions, an ongoing impeachment process, executive orders, church conferences, broadcast and media news, and legislative decrees. All of this is in addition to our daily life, here at BU in academic discourse, teaching, and writing, and in our ongoing conversations with family and friends. Even in our prologue to John’s Gospel, the Word is defined and explained with many words, that make up a number of metaphors, that sound a bit abstract and idealistic.

The use of many words is perhaps understandable, given John’s intended readers both Jewish and Greek. In Hebrew thought, the Logos, the Word, was God’s action in the world and God’s instruction. When in worship we say “The Word of the Lord”, and then follow with “Thanks be to God.” after the Scripture readings, it is said in part in this sense of acknowledgement and acceptance of God’s action and instruction. Here in John’s Gospel, the Logos, the Word, is the medium by which God is made known to human beings, just as human thought and plans are made known and expressed by speech. Either way, the assumption is that the Word of God is explainable, rational, and logical. An agent of creation, agent of salvation, life, light, truth, revelation of God. We’ve got it.

But then there’s that phrase. “And the Word became flesh, and lived among us …”

Flesh. Such an evocative word. Not so explainable. Not so rational. Not so logical. Flesh. Fleshy. To say that the Word became flesh is to say that God entered into human life under the ordinary conditions of humanity. Yes, the Logos could speak to us in our own language of speech and rationality. And, the message of life, light, truth, and revelation now is seen and recognized through a fleshy veil, with all the capacities, limitations, and vulnerabilities that all of flesh is heir to. The flesh adds to God’s communication with us and our communication with God and with each other, from a place too deep for words.

Because the word Logos also translates as sound, and sound, not words, is the language of the flesh. The yips, coos, cries, gasps, laughs, squeaks, hisses, groans, shouts, pants, and moans of the body in pain, grief, or joy escape us, even when we try to control them with “I’m fine.” or as we ignore them. We spend a great deal of time and effort with words, that often mislead or lie. The sounds of the flesh, so often involuntary from that place too deep for words, might equally bear information for our understanding of God, ourselves, and each other.

Theologian and disability activist Sharon V. Betcher considers the realities of embodiment in her book Spirit and the Obligation of Social Flesh: A SecularTheology for the Global City. “Social Flesh” is a term coined by social theorist Christine Beasley and political scientist Carol Bacchi. “Social Flesh” describes an ethical and political construct that emphasizes “the mutual reliance of people across the globe” on social resources, infrastructure, and space. This behavioral approach promotes the development of social virtues out of the realities of our embodied coexistence, and posits that life itself requires social, political, and economic support in order for life to continue, in order for life to be livable. Given the realities of social flesh, an emphasis on rugged individualism does not adequately recognize the fragility and precariousness of human life or, by my own extension, the fragility and precariousness of the life of the planet.

Betcher builds on the work of philosopher Judith Butler to begin to construct a practical ethic of social flesh. Butler notes that as human beings we are “of necessity exposed to [one another’s] vulnerability and singularity. The word “flesh” “names ‘a precarious … vulnerability to the other.’” Our communal situation thus consists of learning “to handle and to honor” this inescapable and necessary exposure.

Betcher builds on these ideas to begin to develop the idea of the ethics of social flesh with the religious idea of kenosis, a complex term that she here defines as radical openness to the other. She notes that her book has as a primary source “Christianity’s ancient, though not always obvious or normatively dominant, love of the flesh”, and cites Scholar of Late Antiquities Virginia Burrus in her work on 3^rd Century Christian writers to declare that flesh “became the site of a deliberately offensive, counter-cultural faith.” As Betcher expands on this, our thinking with and from flesh allows us to acknowledge and talk about what is often hidden in our social or cultural agenda but what is true of our fleshy lives: ecstasy and pleasure, certainly, and also pain, difficulty, aging, disease, error, corporeal limit, interruption, and encounter, and the epiphanies and critical insights that come with them. Social flesh recognizes that the “anxiety, fear, disgust, … and shame that haunt flesh” can be commandeered by technologies, politics, and advertisement. It equally recognizes the temptations within ourselves, to aggression towards other bodies, to isolation from other bodies, to the division of bodies into normal or superior versus unnatural or degenerate.

Betcher’s thought assumes humanity’s urbanization as the context for her work. Within the next 20 or so years, two-thirds of the world’s population of 7 billion and counting will live in cities. Demographers note that there are clear trends toward 59 cities with populations between one and five million in Africa, 65 such cities in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 253 such cities in Asia. Both those who live in cities and those who do not feel their effects: on bodies, on the land, on dreams, through depopulation with its loss of skills and capital, through the disappearance of generational belonging and through loss of contact with the natural world. Boston itself has changed from being the human-scale, walkable city to a place of high rises and privatization of public space, the disappearance of neighborhoods to corporate greed and collections of transients, the increasing density of people and their cars, increasing lack of affordability in housing, and the disappearance of practical local businesses and public services. And Boston is not alone in these developments. Social flesh and its obligations, if any are acknowledged, is a challenge across the country, as any formerly and currently livable city can attest.

So Betcher lifts up the idea of a secular theology. The term “secular” here does not mean non-religious. Instead it is based on the seculars of medieval Europe. These were uncloistered religious persons. They carried their spiritual passion and sense of love of God, self, and neighbor into their daily life in the city. “ … seculars lived in the city, on behalf of the city, but [with] alternate values and attitudes that challenged the city’s materialism and isolation.” Kind of sounds like Marsh Chapel’s mission statement, doesn’t it: “A heart for the heart of the city and a service in the service of the city.” Medieval early capitalism also caused poverty, homelessness, and displacement of the poor and vulnerable. Seculars – both women and men, gentry and common – worked for the city’s care by setting up alternative communities that over time became hospitals, schools, retreat houses, and ritual spaces. Betcher notes that spiritual practices of sowing trust amidst fear, presenting alternative forms of pleasure to those who advance the aesthetics of capitalism, and the offer of friendship and neighborliness can humanize and renew cities. Such practice starts by being vulnerable to others, by regenerating the practice of social flesh.

Betcher examines social flesh, its obligations, and the context of urbanism through the lens of disability theory. She herself experienced the amputation of her leg after a chance fall and wound led to an infection that threatened her life. For her, the literal set-aside inherent in the category “disabilities” reflects “a history of deeply embedded resentment toward the precariousness of life itself.” It protects society from the vulnerability of birth and the risk of change. It marginalizes certain bodies and excludes them from considerations of aesthetic and social value. Urbanism is currently based, in terms of the ideal populace, on a neoclassical Western norm of male physical perfection, with its assumptions of eternal youth, physical mobility in all situations, and unchanging health. It also assumes a class structure of economic elites who somehow deserve more of the amenities of the city and determine what those will be, while other people become an embarrassment or an obstacle. With its injuries and insults of geographical and architectural and thus social inaccessibility, contemporary urbanism excludes bodies that struggle to survive, seeks to control who may appear in public, and seeks to determine whose lives are expendable.

Betcher’s exploration of social flesh and its construct of our mutual reliance on social resources, and the need to develop social virtues based on the realities of human and planetary interdependence, is wide-ranging, complex, and far beyond the scope of this sermon. With her context of urbanism viewed through the lens of disability theory she does present a number of practices that encourage social flesh, based on the idea of contemporary urban Christians as modern-day seculars. I would like to lift up two of them here.

The first is an intentional acceptance and exploration of suffering: for what it reveals of God, of what it reveals about ourselves, and of what it reveals about our common human experience. Betcher explores the work of Dorothee Soelle, mystic and social activist, who wrote that even in the most comfortable life, “one must come to accept some measure of pain”, to listen to the sounds of the flesh as it were, and to learn from them as a kind of teaching. Each “act of suffering [becomes] an exercise.”, so that we work through it with perception of the sounds that come through the flesh as pain and grief, because “Nothing can be learned from suffering unless it is worked through.” Love of God, self, neighbor, and world becomes “a love that avoids placing conditions on reality”, so that the acceptance of suffering is not masochism but is part of a yes to life as a whole. For Soelle, the only way we might become “those who love the world enough to protest injustice would be by learning to suffer”, to learn the sounds of the language of the flesh and to pay attention and care to them for ourselves and for those amongst whom we live.

The second practice is that of forbearance, that Betcher defines as the acceptance of flaws, moral entanglements, frailties, and faults. Within social flesh, with its fleshy relations and affects, “Forbearance is not a refusal to [seek or] claim justice. [It is instead] restraint in the face of provocation, [restraint of] our own worst inclinations” in the face of fear, anger, disgust, or hurt. Betcher relates her own challenges to this practice as she swims in a public pool with some whose cultural training has instilled a fear that physical injury is contagious, and that leads at least one person to strike out at her as she swims by. She notes that there is not necessarily any reward for forbearance. Instead, forbearance assumes that we are always changing and are mutually interdependent with one another. Forbearance overcomes fear, anger, disgust, or hurt in favor of concern and care. This does not mean mere tolerance of everything – we cannot deny the need to move for human rights and justice. It does mean the kind of love of neighbor that does not disappear even in the middle of the defense of justice, even justice for ourselves.

This is not to say that the practice of forbearance in the context of modern urbanism does not have its challenges. Poverty, violence, the looming results of climate change, and the increasingly felt need of governments to control people threaten to tear apart intimate social relations, the ability to cooperate, and any idea of practical solidarity. But the practice of forbearance presents another reality, that social flesh can lead to a different way of life even in the challenges. Betcher quotes theologian Alyda Faber, that Love “means the desire to stay near another person in their disorientation to the world, their wretchedness, their unloveability – the symptomatic excess of always unfinished efforts at social legitimation.”

This is the way that God loves us. The Word became flesh and lived among us, in our disorientation, our wretchedness and suffering, our unloveability. God loves us by taking on the interdependence of word and flesh to communicate fully, on all of our own terms of our fleshy and soulful lives, to communicate the life, light, truth, and revelation of God’s love for us. God loves us, and wants us to love them back. It is a measure of God’s desire for relationship with us that God is willing to trust us enough to become interdependent with us in the taking on of our social flesh: with its mutuality of vulnerability and limitation, with the common sounds of the flesh in both pleasure and suffering from that place too deep for words. That is how God loves us, and proves it.

It is a new year. 2020 does promise to provide many, many words. And we do have obligations to listen to them, with a grain of salt if need be. And, we also might consider our mutual obligations to listen to the sounds that are the language of the flesh. These will be our own sounds, as we are to love ourselves and care for ourselves. They will also be the sounds of others, in places where the social flesh rejoices, and perhaps even more in the places where the social flesh suffers: the sounds of children and parents torn apart at our border; the sounds of the burning of the trees in the forests and the sounds of panic and pain from the animals and people who live there; the sounds of grief from those who have lost loved ones in our routine of mass shootings enabled by our idolatry of the gun; the sounds of pain from those denied the benefits of social flesh through constructions of economic, social, geographic, and architectural inaccessibility. Maybe then our communication with God, self, and neighbor will also be complete, as God’s communication with us is complete, word and flesh together. Maybe then our priorities will become more clear, for ourselves and all those with whom we are mutually interdependent: God, neighbor, and the planet.

The Holy Gospel, according to St. John: The Word became flesh and lived among us … . The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation on 01.5.2020 at 11:00 am

Sunday
December 29

What Did You Learn in 2019?

By Marsh Chapel

Isaiah 63: 7-9

Hebrews 2:10-18

Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

What did you learn in 2019? It is a question fit for our Gospel read this year, that of Matthew. Matthew is a teacher. His Gospel is meant to teach, to edify. The promise of God is fulfilled, he teaches, in Christ. He asks us to learn and teach the same. He guides us then to grow and learn, day by day, in Christ.

Now we come to the turn of the year. Our calendar is still rooted in Christmas, in the birth of Christ. So, today’s date, December 29, 2019. 2019 years since…the birth of Christ. Some day that way of keeping the global calendar could change, and of course there are other calendars abroad even now. But for now, the birth of Christ marks still the turn of the ages.

Our secular calendar carries this week a different turn, from the old year to the new. It is often a time for reflection and rumination on what has been, in light of what may be. In homiletical meditation, briefly, this morning, perhaps we could reflect and ruminate together on just what we have learned in 2019.

In a way, coming together in worship, Sunday by Sunday, is regularly a moment for such reflection and rumination. As the year ends, perhaps we owe ourselves a fuller and finer rumination in ordered worship.

Those who grace our presence in worship, each week, and those who listen in prayer from afar each week, make up a generous and disciplined community. In worship you began this year, last Epiphany, including a recognition of Martin Luther King Jr., one Sunday, and a Bach Cantata another (these Cantata Sundays, twice a term, have become distinctive, deepening moments for us, through the year). In worship you entered the season of Lent, listening for the Gospel in reflection on the voice of Saint John of the Cross (our thirteenth Lenten theological conversation partner, 10 Calvinists and 3 Catholics, with the next 7 also to come from the Roman tradition, including this spring St. Theresa of Avila). In worship you fully devoted yourselves to the special services of Palm Sunday and Holy Week, including 4 Easter services. In worship you recognized the spring ceremonial University moments, as you did again in the fall. In worship you received the thirteenth annual National Summer Preacher Series, on the theme of ‘Faith in Community’, as you will again this summer 2020 on the theme ‘Matthew and Methodism’. In worship, come autumn, you listened for the Gospel in Luke, on the trail health. In worship, this very month, you offered to God and neighbor 10 different services of worship, December 1 to December 29, as you balanced your earlier Lenten affirmation of the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection with a now equally full communal immersion in the story of Jesus’ birth and life. Both accounts, the death story and the life story, and their full balance together, are crucial to our walk of faith, each one needing the other, and we needing their intertwined acclamation. In worship, you came for the Eucharist on the first Sunday of each month, this rare and beautiful congregation whose body increases in girth on communion Sundays. In worship by various other special moments, you offered your prayers, presence, gifts and service to God and neighbor. Particularly we thank those who helped lead on Tuesday this week for two Christmas Eve services, while the University itself was closed, and our staff and chaplains on well-deserved holiday. And Sunday by Sunday, and season by season, in quiet, song, word, and sacrament, you have had a moment to reflect on what you have learned, in the week before, as we do this morning on the year as a whole. So, what have you learned, in faith, this year?

We do learn from our experience. Earlier this month we remembered here William Sloane Coffin, who taught us in and from experience. His and other University Pulpit voices from the just preceding generation—Coffin at Yale, Peter Gomes at Harvard, Howard Thurman here at Marsh, James Leslie at Ohio Wesleyan, Robert Smith at Colgate, John McComb at Syracuse, and several others, ought to be remembered, even as the number or University pulpits has radically dwindled, for they taught us in and from experience. Later this next month, on Martin Luther King Sunday, we will revisit the influence of Howard Thurman. One other University pulpit voice has come strongly to mind, for whatever reason, this season. His name was Ernest Gordon, Dean Ernest Gordon of Princeton University.

Our children lived for a time in New Jersey. One day with them we visited Princeton. In Princeton we passed the Princeton Chapel, for many years Dean Gordon’s chapel. Some years ago, his obituary reported simply a man given to the service of naming Christ Jesus, who saves. You can see a part of his life story in the old movie, “Bridge over the River Kwai”. A Scottish pilot, Gordon was captured in 1942 and forced into slave labor in Burma. He and others lived on a lump of rice a day. Slackers were beaten. The sick were shot. Those who tried escape were executed. “We were treated worse than animals”, he remembered.

Yet in that wartime bamboo hell, Gordon found salvation. “Faith thrives when there is no hope but God”, he later repeated in his weekly sermons. He survived, thanks to his comrades. He survived his survival, thanks to his Lord. He realized that “if he let himself be consumed by hatred, he would be squandering the life that had been given back to him.” So, he returned from combat, went to Seminary, immigrated to the USA, was ordained, preached on Long Island, went as chaplain to Princeton, opposed McCarthy, supported King, opposed Vietnam, supported Russian dissidents. In other words, he carefully read the Scripture, and tried to tell its truth about life and faith. Here is his proverb: “Faith thrives where there is no hope but God”. He taught what he had learned in experience. And once a year, in the spring, he preached a sermon about his experience in the 1940’s, about which he also wrote in a famous book. While Chapel attendance was generally good in those years, it overflowed it is said each year on that Sunday. He has been on the back of the mind this week, coming toward a New Year.

Now in the Bible, it is centrally the Book of Proverbs in which we find reflection on experience and faith. But in a way, we all end up collecting and curating our own book of proverbs. As my friend said, ‘you have to learn from other peoples’ mistakes, because we don’t have time to make enough mistakes on our own alone to learn what we need to learn—and we do learn most from mistakes, ours or others’. Share with me sometime a proverb you have gleaned this past year, out of hard experience, like Dean Ernest Gordon did from his. Send me a note, reading just, ‘I have learned this year that…’. Or whisper to me at the door, some Sunday, ‘I have learned this year that…’

This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. Many people think this well-known proverb is from Proverbs, this well-known wisdom saying is from the Bible, it is so familiar and so tidy and so, well, wise. It is not. It is from the great Bard, William Shakespeare, in the words of Polonius, nearly 500 years ago.

In these 500 years past, the notion of the self, the independent person, the soul set free, has come over time out of the reformation, the renaissance, the spirit of capitalism, the emergence of democracy, and the very project at heart and depth of modernity. We today as late or post moderns have acquired something of a distrust for such direct discourse about the self. Darwin, Freud, Marx, and others, the probing doctors of disenchantment, have properly cautioned us, have rightly chastened us to realize our fragmented fragility, our life limitation, our complication by and in society and culture, sub-conscious and family. We are always in part where we come from, in no small measure, we do see today, whether that origin is the mud deep of evolution, or the mind deep of dreams, or the class conflicts of history. Determined to be our own most selves, we are nonetheless and largely ourselves as determined by forces well beyond our poor power to add or detract. So, for all of Shakespeare’s concision and beauty of rhetoric and all, we nonetheless have our doubts.

Yet, for part of 2019 I kept a little journal, a little folder wherein to store proverbial or experiential learning. No claim for spirited inspiration in any of these is here made. I have no word of the Lord on this, as Paul would say. They are offered, by modest illustration, as of interest, and more so, as encouragement to you to pen, and share, your own, in the year to come. What will you have you learned this coming year?

I have learned some things in our neighborhood.

That Fenway Park combines nature, structure, culture, and future, and has an applicable broad health in its design. They did not destroy it to rebuild it. They prized its nature. They enhanced its structure. They honored its culture. And so, they opened its future. Those of us who go regularly are the beneficiaries. Of course, it occurs to think, renewal in churches, both physical and spiritual, might also benefit from that combination: nature, structure, culture, future.

Speaking of which, also, that Bill Buckner was right, as he said: “Everyone in life has things that don’t go according to plan.”

That there is probably some religious connection we might make, right here, with the thousands of champagne bottles and robes and poses and photographs on Marsh Plaza each May at Commencement. What are these students doing out here, anyway? It is fascinating. Maybe we should give them each a Bible?

That my Jewish colleagues, here at Hillel House, are so right to emphasize the irreplaceable value of Shem Tov. A good name.

I have learned some things about communication.

That in email communication, a desire for Clarity can be read or mis-understood as a tone of Insistence

That the Japanese language, of which I am a fledgling and stumbling learner, carries a combination of delicacy and ferocity—Mishima.

That there is power in simple, memorable slogans, like HER: health, education, retirement.

That ‘as online life expands, neighborhood life and social trust decline’ (D Brooks NYT 3/12), that increasingly our current society is designed for internet vitality.

That in planning this triad helps: first Structure, then Order, then Communications.

That some sermons move from small and narrow in congregation and faith to large and broad in experience and outlook, and that is fine, since the world is our parish and we seek a heart strangely warmed.

That come Sunday we listen for a word of faith in a pastoral voice toward a common hope.

I have learned some things in self-care.

That Doctors default to easy choices later in the day, in decision fatigue, so they learn to guard against this. (And why is it we still hold our church meetings at night? SMH. SMH. Shaking my head.

That to keep faith through change, we will need non anxious presence, and self-differentiation: thank you E Friedman.

From my worrisome dreams that humans are born to worry, but that Twain was right, ‘I have had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened’.

That as a preacher to try to read or listen to more sermons, one a day if you can, as my friend Chapin Garner advises.

That there is importance in not letting things sit, of finding quickly the startup energy to address things fast so that they don't add valueless weight and stress.

That my dear friend, of blessed memory, Wylie Robson, Kodak Senior Vice President, was right: 'The secret to aging well is to learn to manage anxiety'.

That my mother was right to avoid 'borrowing trouble'. ‘I don’t need to borrow trouble’, she would say with wisdom.

I have learned some things about our country.

That Lincoln fought not just the moral evil, but, ‘the moral, social and political evil of slavery’. NYR 5/19

That social grace, as my son in law said, includes this: The power of diversity is not about correctness but correction. Being open to all means being open to change. (S Cady.)

That in 2000 1.6M migrants were apprehended at the southern border, but in 2016 only 190,000.

That before their simultaneous death, July 4, 1825, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson shared 158 letters.

I have learned some practical things.

That when you are lost, traveling, it helps to ask for help, and it really makes a difference when people lend a hand, and guide you by the hand, lend a hand by guiding you 'by the hand'.

That it is important to seek convergent aspirations, both personal and institutional, with those close to us, and those with whom we work.

That sometimes hope is the negation of negation. Hope is present by being absent. Hope names what is absent. Where would we be without the help of things that do not yet exist? Future thought is the negation of negation. We need to take ownership, to paraphrase Marx, of ‘the means of prediction’.

That we don't all have to think in the same way to face in the same direction.

What have you learned in the neighborhood, about communication, regarding self-care, of our country, or in practice?

Share with me sometime a proverb you have gleaned this past year, out of hard experience. Send me a note, reading just, ‘I have learned this year that…’. Or whisper to me at the door, ‘I have learned this year that…’. And, a Blessed Merry Christmas, and a very Happy New Year, to you, 2020.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 12.29.2019 at 11:00 am

Sunday
December 22

Angel Voice

By Marsh Chapel

Isaiah 7: 10-16

Romans 1:1-7

Matthew 1:18-25

Frontispiece

Late one night a few years ago snow was falling lightly in the far north, along the St. Lawrence. They know snow there, on the river bank. Coming over the border from Canada, and down south from the river, one enters a barren, flat land. At 1am on this winter night, the residents of little country towns--Alexandria Bay and Clayton and LaFargeville-- are asleep. The dark moonscape surrounding the road, pock-marked with valleys and an occasional farmhouse, lies silent. Fallow northern fields, farms all dead or quiet. These fallow northern fields lie strange and difficult and stern in the moonlight. With pelting flakes covering the windshield and darkening the moon, nature makes a seamless shroud, “blacker than a hundred midnights down in a cypress swamp”.

To step aside from the world of our own doing puts us out into the dark, the scene of angels. Angels. To find ourselves outside the world of our control and comfort, puts us out into the cold moonlight, the place of the uncanny, strange and unfamiliar territory. A return to church can be such a place. A sudden diagnosis can be such a place. An unplanned revisit to an old anger can be such a place. Aging can be such a place. Unemployment can be such a place. Loss of breath can be such a place. The desire to end something before it is really ended can be such a place. Sometimes things end badly. That is why they end. Sometimes things end badly. Therein lie the condition, the cause, the symptom, the root of the ending. A shooting war, on the ground, not from the technological safety of many thousand feet, but in Syria, say, or the Ukraine, say, can be such a place.

Beyond the stream that imports information, sustenance and ‘comraderie’ into our homes and lives, there is this darkness. It is a wondrous darkness, for all its unfamiliarity away from the blue haze of the computer screen. Here the lights of the city, the comfort of urban dwellers, shroud and shadow. To step aside from the world of our own doing puts us out into the dark, the scene of angels. Angels. Here is the Good News of Advent: an Angel voice announces Jesus Christ in this darkness, the grace of Almighty God.

Matthew

What of Matthew?

Our lectionary leads us through St. Matthew this year. So, let us carefully take an attentive look at the Gospel of Jesus Christ announced in Matthew, whose birth is accounted in the first chapter, which includes the first sermon, in Matthew.

It is a good Advent exercise. In the quiet breathing space of December, may we listen again for the true, the good, the right, the lasting. Can moderation learn anything from analytical zeal? Can moderation learn anything from caution? Can Advent throw any light on Christmas?

“The birth of Jesus happened in this way…” How quick we are to speak, to stare, to decide, to judge. To know. Or think we know. One teacher said to one student: “Your abundant knowledge stands in the way of your real education”. I was glad for the advice. How firm, much too firm, is our ostensible grasp of the ineffable, the wondrous, the real. Our reverence, unlike that of the Holy Scripture, too often lacks the discomfort of travel, the fear of the unknown, the quaking before angels, the conception of, let alone by, the Holy Spirit. Kings, shepherds, Joseph and Mary. Look out a few weeks. If we are not careful, it all becomes so familiar, so cozy. And the newer habits of casual worship, near and far, do not help.

No. By angel voice, the Scripture tells another story. Unlike the series of familiar events which make up our habituated rehearsal of the season, the Bible tells a strange story, a difficult story, even a stern story. This may help us more than all manner of cozy familiarity, if only to engage us when at last, or at first, we realize that it has never been easy to lead a Christian life. Such a life, as Ernest Tittle constantly repeated, is meant for heroes and heroines. As Thurman said: a crown to grow into. Listen to this unfamiliar account: a virgin is with child; a husband, who is no husband, resolves not to take revenge; an angel appears in a dream; the angel, in the dream, interprets the Scripture; the man obeys an angel voice; the man further accepts the angel’s name for what his wife, not yet truly a wife, conceives. A virgin birth, a resolute husband, an angel voice, a trusting woman, a name transmitted in a dream. This is strange, unfamiliar territory. We do not live in a world of virgin births, resolute husbands, angel voices, trusting dreamers, or names dropped from on high. Our world is rather, we prefer to think, the world of our own choices, our own creation.

We have left St. Luke, now, to follow the trail of Jesus’ life, death and destiny, this year, in another, different, strange Gospel, the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew relies on Mark, and then also on a teaching document called Q, along with Matthew’s own particular material, of which our reading today is an example. He has divided his Gospel into five sequential parts, a careful pedagogical rendering, befitting his traditional role as teacher, in contrast to Luke ‘the physician’, whose interest was history. We have moved from history to religion, from narrative to doctrine. Matthew is ordering the meaning of the history of the Gospel, while Luke is ordering the history of the meaning of the Gospel. You have moved from the History Department to the Religion Department. Matthew has his own perspective.

Some of that perspective involves a developing and developed Christology, an understanding of Christ. For Matthew, the birth narrative conveys the proper ordering of the meaning of the history of the Gospel. Birth narratives still matter, as if the politics of the last several years in this country were not enough alone to remind us. Who is he? Where did he come from? Who are his parents? Who are his people? Who formed him, He who now forms us? And some, or much of it, involves the law, as we shall see this year. It will be a good year to listen, through Scripture, regarding law.

You have missed having read the earlier part, the first half of Matthew 1, the generations from Adam to Christ. These are found before our reading. Fourteen by fourteen by fourteen, are the generations. From Abraham to David. From David to Babylon. From Babylon to Christ. They run from Abraham to Joseph, who was betrothed to Mary. To Joseph. To and through Joseph.

Abraham. Isaac. Jacob. Judah. Tamar. Amminadab. Boaz. Ruth. Jesse. David. Solomon. Uriah. Rehoboam. Jehoshaphat. Amos. Josiah. Jechoniah. Zerubbabel. Zadok. Eleazar. Matthan. Jacob. Joseph.

Every one of these names, earlier in Chapter 1, is worth a sermon! We could start next week…

Matthew 1 tells of the birth of Christ. Jesus Christ (though a later scribe dropped ‘Jesus’, yet most texts hold to it), to move Matthew a little more away from Luke, pushing religion away from history, you could say. The freedom we have to interpret the Gospel for ourselves begins with the Gospels, themselves. Each is different from the others. John is magnificently the most different of them all, the most sublime, the most mysterious, the most divine. Matthew tells of the birth of Christ. Then he will tell of the teaching of Christ. Then he will tell of the healing of Christ. Then he will tell of the cross of the Christ. Then cometh resurrection. In five moves, he is teaching us, Matthew, the teacher. Matthew orders the meaning of history, as Luke orders the history of meaning (repeat).

It is fitting that the first sermon, the first interpretation in the Gospel of Matthew, which we are going to follow this year, is offered by an angel. What other voice would be fit to herald such news? Yes, an angel. How strange this account appears when carefully studied! The angel interprets the prophet Isaiah. Because his sermon purports to tell us about the meaning of Advent and so, this is the magisterial claim, about the meaning of life, we shall want to bear down, quietly, and listen. Now Isaiah had said that the child should be called ‘Emmanuel’, or, “God with us”. God, present. Present. Present. Emmanuel. Come Emmanuel. How could any sermon, any interpretation, even by an angel, fathom this?

Matthew is apparently fighting on two fronts, both against the fundamental conservatives to the right, and against the spiritual radicals to the left. In Matthew, Gospel continues to trump tradition, as in Paul, but tradition itself is a bulwark to defend the Gospel, as in Timothy. Matthew is trying to guide his part of the early church, between the Scylla of the tightly tethered and the Charybdis of the tether-less. The people who raised us, in the dark, in the snows of those midnight blackened towns along the train tracks of the Lake Shore Limited, Albany to Buffalo, and on to Chicago, knew this well. That is, with Matthew, they wanted to order the meaning of the history of the gospel. They aspired to do so by opposition to indecency and indifference. They attempted to do so by attention to conscience and compassion. Matthew emphasizes the role of law, of the law, of laws. He is a legalist, whether or not he was Jewish (the general assumption, though some (I) would argue otherwise).

Meaning

And what of meaning in Matthew?

In the birth, it is the cradle we most need to notice. The wood of the cradle, by which Christ is born, is of a type with the wood of the cross, by which Christ is crucified. Born to give us second birth, the birth of spirit, soul, mind, heart, will, love, faith. Born to give us second birth. Is one birth not enough? No.

You are meant for two. You are meant to live in faith, to lead a life of loving friendship, to wake up every morning to the sunshine, the light of God. You are meant to walk in the light. Walk in the light. For this, you need to hear a word spoken from faith to faith, and to receive the second birth.

Christmas, as a cultural break, provides a seam, an opening, for grace, both apart from religion, and as a part of religion. You are given the light of God, to rest in your hearts, to illumine your hearts and minds, to give you peace and hope, all through the coming year. We will need that in 2020. We will need that courage this year.

A student who read Genesis and Matthew for the first time said, “This is so different from the way we think. No one is that awestruck by God.” And the polls confirm it. 90% of our people “believe in God”. As in 1952 so in 2020 (soon!), it is fashionable to profess this general belief. God is with us. The pantheist, the spiritualist, the nationalist, the literalist, and many a Methodist can agree. How easily is such a belief celebrated? Too easily. God is with us. In nature, in the occult, in the homeland, in the Bible, in the religious organization. God is with us. A tidy tale. God is all and everywhere, with us, Emmanuel. We find God whenever and wherever. Audubon, McClain, Jefferson, Jerome and Marsh equally serve as guides. God in trees, in dreams, in politics, writings, in religion. It is the same. God is everywhere! God is with us. His name shall be called, Emmanuel. This we find familiar and cozy.

But the angel voice says otherwise. The angel gives another name. Read, hear the account as represented by Matthew. Here is another name, not just Emmanuel, not just Advent, not just Christmas, but a name fit for the travel, darkness, and fear, of Advent. It is a name spattered with the blood of history. It is a name that fits in a manger. It is a name that cries out for response. It is a winter name, a name in the dark, a name that sends a fierce, cold wind across the unbroken heart. We feel a chill. And. It is a name that burns a bright flame for every kind of love. It warms us now. It is a name that charms fears, opens prisons, brings music of life and health and peace. The Matthean angel gives another name, particular, not universal, a name that means one thing, not everything, a hedgehog name not a fox name. A name that is above every name. Whose birth do we celebrate anyway?

“His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save his people from their sin.”

Jesus is a personal name. The angel voice of the Lord gives a sermon, interprets. The angel replaces Emmanuel, and gives the name Jesus, which means, being translated, “he will save” or “God saves”. Mary did not give birth to the object of an airy belief in the general proposition that God is with us, somehow, somewhere, anyhow, anywhere. She bore a son, Jesus, who saves from sin. This is a different, strange, stern name. It has personal, profound meaning for you and me.

It means, bluntly, that God enters your life to get you free from your besetting sin. Not in trees, dreams, votes, words, or committees, but in person. ‘He will save his people from their sin.’ You will know him—if he be known at all—as He saves you. Christ was born to save.

To save a globe from the sin of climate exhaust

To save a world from the sin of nuclear holocaust

To save a nation from the sin of pride

To save a generation from the sin of greed

To save a church from the sin of self-congratulation

To save a man from alcohol, a woman from suicide, a boy

from drugs, a girl from opioids, a family from disaster

To save his people from their sin

To save souls, to set us on the road to heaven

Angel voice: such is the name of Jesus, a name that cries out for response. A name that cries out for a people who can acknowledge and confess their sin, who learn the necessity of saying please, thank you and I’m sorry. Can we become that kind of people? A people who name God not everything but one thing, the way to freedom from bondage? Can we become that kind of people? A people who can share this: there is a transforming friendship through which all manner of entrapment dies. It is a lifelong process, and it is process of a gradually deepening friendship with Jesus Christ, in person, who saves us, his people from our sin. Can this friendship be ours? The Angel Voice commends its path to you.

Coda

He whom Isaiah called Emmanuel, the Angel further named, or renamed Jesus. Strange, difficult, stern. The wondrous news from the darkness, if you can hear and believe an angel, is not just that God is with us, but that truly God is for us (repeat). The good news is not only that God is with us, but also that God is for us.

(Matthew 1 in Greek): Τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἡ γένεσις οὕτως ἦν. μνηστευθείσης τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ Μαρίας τῷ Ἰωσήφ, πρὶν ἢ συνελθεῖν αὐτοὺς εὑρέθη ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου. Ἰωσὴφ δὲ ὁ ἀνὴρ αὐτῆς, δίκαιος ὢν καὶ μὴ θέλων αὐτὴν δειγματίσαι, ἐβουλήθη λάθρᾳ ἀπολῦσαι αὐτήν. τέξεται δὲ υἱὸν καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν· αὐτὸς γὰρ σώσει τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 12.22.2019 at 11:00 am

Sunday
December 15

The Adventure of Advent

By Marsh Chapel

Isaiah 35:1-10

James 5:7-10

Matthew 11:2-11

Frontispiece

The adventure of Advent is part memory and part hope.

A couple of weeks ago, our Christmas tree appeared, here in the NE corner of Marsh Chapel, whence the sermon this Lord’s day. It took six men and a boy to bring it in, and set it up. At about 12 feet in height, it is our largest tree in memory. Carrying caked ice, the tree tested the mettle of those carrying her. Many have commented on the tree’s stature and beauty. Some have rightly noticed the fragrance, the scent, the pine needle and pine woods perfume it has brought along, to help us, downstairs and upstairs, to welcome a new season, a familiar return of the rhythms of Advent leading to Christmas.

One or another, it may be, sitting quietly in the nave, embraced by the fragrance, aroma, scent, perfume of Advent, may have wondered, even aloud, whether the return of a season—secular, religious, cultural, familial all—might bring with it a healing balm. Our climate is in calamity. Our government is in an uproar: ¾ of Americans cannot name the three branches of government. Our denomination is in tatters. Our semester is at an and. Our work places are more human than divine. Our families are in need of prayer: 200,000 opioid related deaths since oxycontin was approved, 1995. Incidents of self-harm for young adults, ages 10-24, increased from 2007 to 2017 by 56% (during the same decade as the full expanse of social media). Our souls themselves are divided, part hope and part fear. And here stands the tree, mute, but claiming our senses, at the turn of the ages. Lovely thy branches. Can the return of a season, sensed in the senses, bring balm, bring a healing balm, bring judgment and redemption? The tall tree before us is laden with ornaments of memory and lights of hope, ornaments of memory like that in Matthew, lights of hope like that is Isaiah.

Adventure in Memory (Matthew)

You will have noticed that our Matthew reading is from chapter 11, in the middle of the gospel. Jesus has gathered the twelve disciples, on Matthew’s rendering, in the prior chapter. He has given them directions, marching orders, discipleship for disciples, and has sent them forth. Now, oddly, in chapter 11, John the Baptist, reappears, with whom the Gospel began long chapters ago. He emerges, he returns, like a familiar season, or scent. The Gospel writer wants to be sure that his hearers, his readers remember those who came before. The community will nod, and knowingly, at his mention. The cross is foreshadowed in John the Baptist, the greatest of all, says the Lord, before the turn of the ages, he whose head was severed. He came before, and preached before, and baptized before, and died before Jesus. Even Jesus, even Jesus, even Jesus had predecessors. John predeceased Jesus. A part of our judgement and of our redemption lie in seeing and hearing and sensing our forebears. Who told you, as Carlyle Marney asked, ‘who told you who you was’? Our liturgy, our ritual, make sure that we don’t get to Christmas without going through Advent, that we don’t get to the manger without the woods and its trees, that we don’t get to the warmth of cattle lowing and mother and child, without the ice water of the Jordan. The past is not dead. It is not even past. Some memories depend on diversity, some rely on unity. We need both going forward, diversity and unity.

I came in to see my Aunt Hazel one December day. I was glum. She asked if my girlfriend had given me the ‘wet mitten’. She had, but I did not know it because I did not understand the metaphor. My great Aunt, who worked her adult life as home care giver, was raised on the St. Lawrence River, whence, she often said, ‘we could look down into Canada’. She and my uncle Bob, a janitor with the electric company, childless themselves, raised my Dad while his single mom worked as a scrub nurse, day and many nights. She taught my dad to become an excellent cook, at least in the making of apple pies. Once as a boy my dad asked Aunt Hazel, repeatedly: ‘where was I before I was born?’ She reportedly replied, irritated, ‘down in Canada boiling soap’. Anyway, that afternoon at age 16 she asked about my despond with a mysterious metaphor. The image is of a winter sleigh ride. The horses pull through the snow. The young people ride in the hay in the back keeping warm. They hug, they kiss, they enjoy each other. Until or unless one gives another a shove away, using the instrument of a hand gloved in a ‘wet mitten’. It is telling image, and a memorable one, and in that far gone winter afternoon conversation happened to be entirely accurate. We had split up, my girlfriend and I, at least for 48 hours or so. We had fallen out of love, at least for a couple of days. But life went on. Memory, diverse and utterly personal, of some similar seasons from the past can guide us now. Life will go on.

On a Wednesday in December 2007, I walked late to the University Christmas party here at Boston University. I entered the packed hall to various greetings and smiles. Greetings a tad to various and more than the usual smiles. Had I seen the ten sleds decorated for competition? No, I had not. More greetings, more smiles, a few little moments of happy laughter. I began to feel followed. In fact, I was. My friend drew me through the crowd. Then, with a woosh of surprise, the throng parted and there before me was Marsh Chapel. I mean a four-foot sled decorated with Marsh Chapel made of marshmallows and ginger bread and licorice and chocolate. A group of administrators from the Metropolitan college had built it. They gathered in kitchens. Singing Christmas tunes they baked and cooked. They sampled the chapel as it came out of the oven. You could tell they loved doing so together. It was an emotional moment for me to see the true affection they have for their chapel, their chapel, and its architectural, symbolic, historical, physical and spiritual centrality in this college community of 40,000. They gathered. They sang. They worked. They ate. They found meaning. In baking the church, they came home to church, in their own way. You could call it a second birth, a new rebirth of basic religious rhythms. For all the sorrow, there is still, on your part, and on mine, and on others’, a listening ear, a willingness to tune in, a hard to articulate longing, a reaching toward…Another. Memory of some seasons now past can guide us now. Their gift provided a unifying memory, like that familiar refrain from Howard Thurman:

When the song of the angel is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost

To heal the broken

To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner

To rebuild the nations
To bring peace among brothers and sisters
To make music in the heart.

Adventure in Hope (Isaiah)

A return can bring healing. Just listen again to the passage from Isaiah, about fertility in the desert, written probably on the return of Israel from bondage in Babylon. Chapter 35 fits better with later parts of Isaiah. It is a hymn of hope. Some hopes depend on diversity, some rely on unity. We need both going forward, diversity and unity.

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;

³Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
⁴Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
“Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.

⁵Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;

¹⁰And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
    and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
    they shall obtain joy and gladness,
    and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Today, perhaps, we simply want to pause before the mystery, one of life’s great mysteries, the birth of any idea. Where do the aspirations of Isaiah 35 come from? The Scripture teaches us: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength—and mind. And you love your neighbor as yourself. For this to come to pass, we shall need: ‘an educated citizenry fluent in a wise and universal liberalism’ ‘This liberalism will neither play down nor fetishize identity grievances, but look instead for a common and generous language to build on who we are more broadly, and to conceive more boldly what we might be able to accomplish in concert.’ NYT 8/27/18.

Our minister at Riverside Church, some decades ago, William Sloane Coffin, of blessed memory, spoke in aphorisms and in epigrams, to evoke the triumph of the invisible, to speak resurrection. His voice is one of the diverse, personal and particular signs of hope, the hopeful lights around us. Each of us has someone different to whom we turn and return, it may be.

On Faith: faith is being grasped by the power of love.

On Reality: God is reality.

On Safety: God provides minimum protection and maximum support.

On Adversity: We learn most from adversity.

On Sin: Sin is a state of being. When the triangle of love, GOD SELF NEIGHBOR, is sundered, there is sin.

On Guilt: Guilt is the last stronghold of pride.

On Will: The rational mind is not match for the irrational will.

On Mercy: There is more mercy in God than there is sin in us.

On Justice: Pastoral concern for the rich must match prophetic concern for the poor.

On Love: The religious norm is love

On prejudice: White racism. Male chauvinism. Straight homophobia. It is what is known and unspoken that causes the most trouble.

On Truth: Faith gives the strength to confront unpleasant truth.

On Journey: Faith puts you on the road. Hope keeps you on the road. Love is the end of the road.

(He could be acerbic too: I’m not OK and you’re not OK—but that’s OK…And I wish my father in law were not some Liberace…Preachers are egotists with a theological alibi).

On Loss: When my son died, God’s heart was the first to break.

Those who have seen the recent beautiful film about Fred Rodgers will recognize his time-honored pastoral practices. His work provided a unifying hope. He preached from this pulpit, at Baccalaureate, 1992. He was a Presbyterian minister, you know, a religious man, you know, a practiced pastor, you know:

Pray for people by name. This is good.

Exercise each day. This is good.

Read the Scripture in the morning. This is good.

Play the piano, including banging bass notes, when moved. This is good.

Talk to people (at work, in transit, by phone, all). This is good.

Visit people in their homes. This is good.

In the film abroad, and in the sermon right here, Rogers asked people a question: who has taught you, believed in you, supported you, and loved you? His way of being, of teaching, of speaking to children as though they were adults, and to adults as though they were children, is a kind of unifying hope for us, which we sorely need.

Coda

Advent Adventure: Memory, Hope. One part diversity and one part unity each. An ornament or three for memory, a light or three for hope.

Good News: In the long run, those who accept him as an influence in their lives will experience that comprehensive peace which is the effect of the Christ event itself.

Take a minute, in the quiet, as the organ plays, with the tree listening and within a season of healing, to remember someone who helped bring you to who you are today.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 12.15.2019 at 11:00 am

Sunday
December 8

Lessons & Carols

By Marsh Chapel

No sermon was preached today as Marsh Chapel celebrates the annual service of Lessons & Carols. Please enjoy the beautiful service by following the link below:

posted in Lessons And Carols on 12.8.2019 at 11:00 am