Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

Isaiah 2:1-5

Romans 13:11-14

Matthew 24:36-44

The gist of today’s gospel is clear enough. We cannot see or know the future. We ought to live on tip toe, on the qui vive. Health there is, to be sure, and succor in a full acceptance and recognition of such a humble epistemology and such a rigorous ethic. Let us admit to the bone our cloud of unknowing about the days and hours to come. Let us live every day and every hour of every day as if it were our last. Song and sacrament, sermon and Eucharist, they will guide us along this very path this very morning.

What is less clear is the meaning of the coming of the Son of Man. What is the nature of this coming? Who is the person so named? What difference, existential difference, everlasting difference does any of this make? What did Jesus actually say here? On what score did the primitive Christian community remember and rehearse his teaching? Did Matthew have a dog in this fight? How has the church, age to age, interpreted the passage? We shall pose these four questions to verses 36 to 44 in the 24^th chapter of the Gospel bearing the name of Matthew.

First, Jesus. Jesus may have used this phrase, though many have judged that it is a later church appellation. It may have been both. This phrase, coming out Daniel chapter 7 (did Jesus hear this read and hold it in memory?) and the stock Jewish apocalyptic of Jesus’ day, was as much a part of his environment as the sandals on his feet, the donkey which he rode, the Aramaic which he spoke, the Palestinian countryside which he loved, and the end of time which he expected, in the contemporary generation. Did he understand himself to be that figure? We cannot see and we cannot say, though most think it unlikely. It is Mark and the author Enoch who have given us the ‘Son of Man’ in its full sense, and it is Matthew alone among the Gospel writers who uses the ‘coming’ in a technical sense (so Perrin, IBDS 834). The soprano voice of Jesus is far lighter in the gospel choruses than we would think or like.

Second, Church. Mark, Luke and Matthew carry forward these standard, end of the world predictions. Our lectionary clips out the mistaken acclamation of 24: 34, but we should hear it: Truly I tell you this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Like the waiting figures in the Glass Menagerie, the earlier church has hung onto these blown glass elements while awaiting a never returning person, like that telephone operator, ‘who had fallen in love with long distances’. They preserve the menagerie in fine glass of hopes deferred that maketh the heart sick. That generation and seventy others have passed away before any of this has taken place. We do not expect, literally expect, immediately expect, these portents any longer. Nor should we. They are part of the apocalyptic language and imagery which was the mother of the New Testament and all Christian theology since, a beloved mother long dead. The Son of Man was the favorite hope child of that mother. A long low alto aria this.

Third, Matthew. To his credit and to our benefit Matthew makes his editorial moves, to accommodate what he has taken from Mark 13. The point of apocalyptic eschatology is ethical persuasion, here and in the sibling synoptic passages. Watch. Be ready. Live with your teeth set. Let the servants, the leaders of Matthew’s day, be found faithful. After 37 excoriating verses directed against the Pharisees (say, religious leaders in general) in chapter 23, white washed tombs which outwardly appear beautiful but within full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness—the hard truth about religion at our worst, and after 43 further verses in chapter 24 of standard end time language, Matthew pulls up. He delivers his sermon. You must be ready. The figure of the future is coming at an hour you do not expect. Hail the Matthew tenor.

Fourth, Tradition. Immediately the church scrambled to reinvent and reinterpret. Basso profundo. One example, found early in the passage, will suffice. Of that day no one knows, not even the Son. Except that some texts take out ‘even the Son’, in deference to Jesus’ later and higher Person. It is, finally, and except for occasional oddball readings, like the Montanists in the second century and the fundamentalists in the twenty first, the church’s view that apocalyptic language and imagery convey the future as unknowable and the present as unrepeatable, the future as unknowable and the present as unrepeatable.

In sum. As soon as we reach out to grasp the future it has slipped past us, already flying down the road to the rear, into the past. The present itself is no better, because its portions of past and future are tangled permanently together. We do have the past, neither dead nor past, or do we? Memory and memoir spill into each other with the greatest of ease. One searcher admitted that music, performed, was his closest approximation of God, the presence of God, the proof of God. One trusted Christian—it may have been you—sensed grace and grace in the grace of the Eucharist, unlike any other. We shall taste in a moment and see. The moment is a veritable mystery. Music is a veritable mystery. My body and My blood, these are veritable mysteries, so named mystery, sacramentum, to this day. How shall we respond?

Sleepers awake! There is not an infinite amount of unforeseen future in which to come awake and to become alive! There does come a time when it is too late, allowing the valence of ‘it’ to be as broad as the ocean and as wide as life. You do not have forever to invest yourself in deep rivers of Holy Scripture, whatever they may be for you. It takes time to allow the Holy to make you whole. Begin. You do not have forever to seek in the back roads of some tradition, whatever it may be for you, the corresponding hearts and minds which and who will give you back your own-most self. It takes time to uncover others who have had the same quirky interests and fears you do. Begin. As our brother in Christ, Mr. Ed McLure put it, he who passed from life to eternal life this week (his calling hours are tomorrow evening in Brookline): Politically correct without spiritual respect—is suspect. Begin. You do not have forever to sift and think through what you think about what lasts and matters and counts and works. Honestly, who could complain about young people seeking careers, jobs, employment, work? Do so. But work alone will not make you human, nor allow you to become a real human being. Life is about vocation and avocation, not merely about employment and unemployment. You are being sold a bill of goods, here. Be watchful. It takes time to self- interpret that deceptively crushing verse, ‘let your light so shine before others’. Begin. You do not have forever to experience Presence. It is presence, spirit, good for which we long, for which, nay for Whom, we are made. It takes time to find authentic habits of being—what makes the heart to sing, the soul to pray, the spirit to preach. Your heart, not someone else’s, your soul, not someone else’s your spirit, not someone else’s. Begin.

You must be ready. For the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

As our near neighbor, Jonathan Edwards, put it in his sermon of a mere 300 years ago:

If you would be in the way to the world of love, see that you live a life of love — of love to God, and love to men. All of us hope to have part in the world of love hereafter, and therefore we should cherish the spirit of love, and live a life of holy love here on earth. This is the way to be like the inhabitants of heaven, who are now confirmed in love forever. Only in this way can you be like them in excellence and loveliness, and like them, too, in happiness, and rest, and joy. By living in love in this world you may be like them, too, in sweet and holy peace, and thus have, on earth, the foretastes of heavenly pleasures and delights. Thus, also, you may have a sense of the glory of heavenly things, as of God, and Christ, and holiness; and your heart be disposed and opened by holy love to God, and by the spirit of peace and love to men, to a sense of the excellence and sweetness of all that is to be found in heaven. Thus shall the windows of heaven be as it were opened, so that its glorious light shall shine in upon your soul. Thus you may have the evidence of your fitness for that blessed world, and that you are actually on the way to its possession. And being thus made meet, through grace, for the inheritance of the saints in light, when a few more days shall have passed away, you shall be with them in their blessedness forever. Happy, thrice happy those, who shall thus be found faithful to the end, and then shall be welcomed to the joy of their Lord! There “they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and lead them to living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

Begin. You do not have forever to experience Presence. It is presence, spirit, good for which we long, for which, nay for Whom, we are made. It takes time to find authentic habits of being—what makes the heart to sing, the soul to pray, the spirit to preach. Your heart, not someone else’s, your soul, not someone else’s your spirit, not someone else’s. Begin.

You must be ready. For the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 12.1.2019 at 11:00 am

Sunday
November 24

God Forgive Them

By Marsh Chapel

Jeremiah 23:1-6

Colossians 1:11-20

Luke 23:33-43

“We seek to truly see each other as beloved children of God. Our calling is to empower our neighbors and ourselves to love hopeful lives and gratefully offer our own gifts for the glory of God. We are called to share our authentic selves with our neighbors in right relationship”…. – The Rev. Joseph Wallace-Williams

Who is Your Jesus?

Today is the last Sunday of Pentecost. Also known as Christ the King Sunday. I invite you to reflect on who has your Jesus been for the past church year. My Jesus is always changing. My Jesus is not the same Jesus of my childhood or even a few years ago. Life experiences, pray and the study of scripture feed my “Jesus Roots” and deepen them.

The Jesus of my youth – church school Jesus
The Jesus of my teens – questioning Jesus in the world
The Jesus of my 20’s – Jesus who?
The Jesus of my 30’s – globalized Jesus, forgiving Jesus, sustaining Jesus, life-changing Jesus
The Jesus of my 40’s – womanist Jesus, radical Jesus

What has been your personal journey with Jesus?

Except for my 20’s my Jesus has always been in tandem with other people’s Jesus’

Christ the King Sunday is a relatively new development. It does not bear the history of many long held church traditions such as All Saints and All Souls. I once heard by one of my clergy colleagues that he glosses over this Sunday because it’s too Catholic. I remember in seminary when during our weekly Eucharist one of my classmates shoved the bulletin back in my hand stating that “she refused to participate in a liturgy with patriarchal language. Looking back I think she missed the point.

This Feast Sunday was brought into the church’s liturgical year by Pope Pius XI in 1925 to advance the message of God in Christ over and against the political questions regarding papal territories, and in response to growing secularism, nationalism and anti-clericalism. Addressed to the hierarchy of the church the document warns that “as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations”.

While we may find the Popes words archaic our take away is “Do we belong to Christ or do we belong to the world” Pope Pius was moving into a world that was about to usher in the rule of Hitler and Mussolini so his statements were bold a provocative but those words and statements are very relevant for our life in the world today.

As we lead up to an election year candidates for all office tout that God is on their side and all we have to do is support their coronation by casting our vote.

The royal crowns rattle in the church’s cupboard every election year. What’s the reason for this fascination? Perhaps it’s based on a lust for raw political power. Perhaps the unreserved endorsement of candidates who support “faith-based initiatives” stems from the anxiety that pervades our time and culture.

However we are mostly uncomfortable with the notion of Kingship. The notion of a King reflects on principles that America was not built upon. The notion of King also means big shoes to fill. My dear friend Carl (name changed) belongs to a family long held to be as quoted in the press “America’s royalty”. I once asked Carl what is what like to be part of that family dynasty. He laughed and said for the most part people leave him alone, except for his public display of drunkenness over two decades ago and his admitted botched and ill-fated attempt at a career change. He said since I look like my mother’s side of the family I am unrecognizable in public. I am able to be left alone to do the work of trying to leave the world a better place than I sound it. “I have my faith and my family, my humility and my gratitude and it has taken me a lot of years, and a lot of life experiences to work that out”

Our readings on this Christ the King Sunday, challenge us to examine our priorities and to see who- or what – holds our allegiance. As I see it there are two ways of looking at this Kingship. The King of our outward being and appearances and the King of our inwards hearts.

If we belong to the Christ King of the world our outward being is the one who nods and pays lip service to issues of injustice, oppression of the other in any form. You know the people who are on committees or involved in activities that make them feel better, but not willing to do the deep internal radical welcoming work that will bring systemic change.

But the Christ King that occupies a place in our hearts in about servant leadership. It doesn’t matter if their name is on the committee. There work is one on one getting to know the other better. Being an ally, and all that involves for deep systemic and personal change. Because when you are an ally, when you support when you feel, when you are able to get out of the way of your ego. Then the deep work of empathy, change, restorative justice can take place. If we belong to the Christ King of our hearts we forgive.

Forgiveness is one of the hardest things that we can do. As my friend Donnie was famous for saying “God forgives you immediately, but it takes me a while”. In her reflection piece for Parabola Magazine entitled “Forgiving: The Art of Mercy” the author and speaker Mirabai Starr begins with a litany of “I’m sorry’s “I’m so sorry that I broke your heart that I was too demanding of your approval. I’m sorry I was so quiet. I’m sorry I interpreted your rejection as rejection, rather than as the cry for love that it really was”. She then moves in to her forgiving: I forgive you. I forgive you for talking about me behind my back. I forgive you for not seeing me. I forgive you for being blind to your own shadow, for your participation in institutionalized racism, misogyny, heteronormativity. I forgive you for the slave trade, for sex trafficking, for treating garbage collectors like garbage. I forgive you for putting profits ahead of people, technology ahead of clean air and water, head ahead of heart.

Forgiving you was the best thing I ever did. Forgiving you set the bird of my heart winging through the universe.

So here we are in the last week of the Christian year where we are about to enter into the midst of the turkey coma, and a secular world that tells us that we really need this that and the other to make us feel better, can we make room for the sole source of divine power and reign, Jesus Christ? So once again in the midst of this “Who is your Jesus?”

Centuries before Jesus, the prophet Jeremiah address the issue of kingly power as he strongly denounced the leaders of Judah for abusing their authority. Jeremiah looks toward the future where the followers will be brought back into the fold. A place where they will be guided and protected by a loving God.

The reading from Colossians was written in response to a dispute within the community. The question that they raised was “what exactly was accomplished by Jesus”?

So if we use these lens’ to look at this last Sunday before Advent this Christ the King Sunday reminds us of our Jesus we are reminded of the ultimate price Jesus paid for US.

In today’s Gospel we are told that two criminals were crucified with Jesus. The first man mocks Jesus saying if you are the Messiah then save yourself. He was interested in his own well-being, and reflected the attitude of those who followed Jesus for what they hoped to gain.

The second man had a very different attitude. What has been described as being the gospel within the gospel. The man recognized his own sin and the innocence of Jesus … we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. He then turned to Jesus with a profession of FAITH as he asked that Jesus remember him in his Kingdom.

Jesus answered with an assurance of forgiveness and eternal life. “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise. Here salvation was extended first of all to a repentant criminal, who would now share eternal life with the Lord.

Where are we are in our lives in terms of our capacity for forgiveness? An article from The New Yorker titled The Afghan Way of Death: Upended Peace Talks. Civilian casualities keep climbing. Afghans are suffering more than ever, dated October 28^th tells many stories of a suffering people but the one story that stood out for me was the story of Jamila Afghani, a promoter of gender equality. She tells the story of seven-year old Ahmad and eight year old Shadh Agha who were born in a rural part of Ghazni Province. Their father Noor Agha was a farmer. After the night raids intensified in his village, he decided to move the family to the city. This required abandoning his land and his livelihood, which plunged them into poverty. The father arranged for his sister to be married to obtain a bride price. Ahmad and Shah Agha made the wedding invitations and accompanied Noor Agha when he delivered their work to the groom’s family who lived in another neighborhood. According to Afghani, police officers in the area, identifying a strange vehicle, opened fire without warning. Noor Agha was killed and Ahmed sustained a glancing wound on his face. When Noor Agha’s father heard the news, he had a heart attack and died. The money from the marriage was spent on funerals and medical bills, Afghani said. Ahmed and Shah Agha moved in with their grandmother and Afghani paid to send then to a private school – which had just been bombed and the boys had been wounded by shrapnel. Afghani was in tears when she finished telling the story “Why are you killing us?” She wailed at a conference she was attending. One of the other participants told of his being tortured and said to the gathered group, “I am willing to forgive you for what you have done to me and the rest of society. But that forgiveness must have meaning. The meaning lies in your heart not in the world. Are we not called to love and to love abundantly.

We mark the end of the church year today as next week we begin the season of Advent. A season to once again look and reflect on who is your Jesus. A season of God’s love for us. A season that is marked by an expected anticipation. We will be reminded of the anticipation and fear of a teenage unwed mother to be. We will be reminded of the light of Christ birth that will shine upon all of us without exception. We will take these shorter winter days to be in reflection, contemplation and exploration of the one who loves us beyond all measure. The one who forgave and was gracious even in death.

After service today we will be making Advent Wreaths. I started making Advent wreaths with the youth when I was serving at Christ Episcopal Church Needham. It was a time of wonderful organized chaos. But it is also a time of narrowing down and focusing in. I invite you to take the coming week to prepare for Advent much like we would prepare for Lent. Find time for quiet reflection and contemplation. If you have an Advent wreath put it out early or reflect on the wreath you made. Water it with intention and prayer.

We are all invited to the throne room where Christ is exalted and worshiped. We have come full circle in our church year and are at the end of this journey and ready to move on the next. Who is the Jesus that you take with you into the next year? Jesus the living God, the living King is found right here and right now in the midst of us, in the midst of our secular and over commercialized world, in the midst of canned Christmas music at every store that you will enter over the holidays.

This is all good news that we celebrate here today. Jesus is King throughout the year, throughout all time and in every place. There is an expression about turning your will and life over to the care of God it ends with the statement “There is a God and I’m not it”

We don’t need to seek another king.
We now longer have to judge one another
We don’t have to control what other people think and feel or force then to fit our expectations

What happens is that in this control filled society:

we find power,

we find the reign of God when we let go,

when we realize that the reign of God is here and now, here in our hearts, here in our community both physically at Marsh and elsewhere one is connected to us!

It’s a liberating idea.

Who is your Jesus?

Amen

-The Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman, Associate Chaplain for Episcopal Students

posted in The Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman, Chaplain for Episcopal Ministry on 11.24.2019 at 11:00 am

Sunday
November 17

The View from the Sycamore Tree

By Marsh Chapel

Isaiah 65:17-25

Luke 19:1-10

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

Doubting Zacchaeus

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

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

One Sunday, years ago, I drove late to church. I used to run early Sunday and finish memorizing the sermon along the way, as I did on that Lord’s Day. I just forgot the time. We raced to church, and in so doing I cut a corner, literally, and so popped a car tire. I was not happy to hear my son say, “haste makes waste”. You know, though, both rear tires were thin. I had replaced the front two months earlier, and forgot about the rear ones. I have to admit, it was good that I had reason to replace them, before I had a blowout, on the highway. Sometimes it happens that a bad thing prevents a really terrible thing from happening.

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

So, in Jericho, as Jesus found the little man up in the tree, his fellows grumbled (vs. 8). Why would he take time with such a greedy, selfish person who makes his living off the sweat of others’ brows? That hurts, to see divine attention given to those who have harmed you. Why would he have a meal with someone who takes no thought for the hurt of God’s people? This is bad! And it is. We miss the power of the parable if we do not see this. This is Jesus taking up with those who have wished the church ill, who have used the church for their own very well intended but nonetheless self-centered reasons. This is Jesus consorting with sinners. But sometimes a bad thing in the little brings a good thing in the large. Zacchaeus changes, and in so doing provides great wealth for others’ benefit.

Come down from this one tree, doubting Zacchaeus. I know that bad things happen to good people, and as a pastor hardly anything troubles me more. Sometimes, though, sometimes—not always, just sometimes--a bad thing early averts a really bad thing late. I have seen it, and you have too. It is enough to give someone up the doubting tree a reason to come down at least a branch. Think of it as existential vaccination.

It is the labor of faith to trust that where sin abounds, grace over-abounds. Even in this autumn of anxiety and depression. But one of the redeeming possibilities in this season of cultural demise is the chance that as a result, enough of us, now, will become enough committed to the realization of a just, participatory and sustainable world, that these darker days will move us toward a fuller light. Sometimes a bad thing in one part of history protects us from a worse thing in another part.

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

The divine delight comes still from saving the lost, including the forgotten, seeking the outcast, retrieving the wayward sons and daughters of Abraham. God wants your health, your salvation. God wants your healthy prudence. Your salvation “has personal, domestic, social, and economic consequences” (Craddock). Jesus Christ saves us from doubt. Those who have seen this fall the magnificent musical, ‘Come From Away’, and its evocation of 9/11, with its recollection of St. Francis, ‘make me an instrument of thy peace’, and its recitation of Philippians 4:6, ‘Have no anxiety about anything,’ may just have caught a glimpse, heard a hint of the divine delight in saving the lost.

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

Idolatrous Zacchaeus

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

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

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

So yes, we harbor a common dream, a dream for instance that women—our grandmothers, mothers, sisters, daughters, granddaughters, all—granted suffrage a mere 100 years ago, will be spared any and all forms of harassment and abuse, verbal or physical, on college campuses, in homes and families, in offices and bars, in life and work, and long having suffered and now having suffrage, will in our time rise up to be honored, revered, and compensated, without reserve, but with justice and mercy.

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

Wealthy Zacchaeus

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

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

It is a western, white, male, educated, wealthy, healthy, heterosexual, middle class, two handed world. I need to be reminded of that. Come down Zacchaeus, and feel the pain of others. Come down and remember: soon we will all be dead. Maybe we could find ways to use whatever power we have now to honor God, love our neighbor, reflect our mortality, and affirm the powerless. Come down Zacchaeus, come down!

We will need to remember our forebears. Harriet Tubman lived her later life in Auburn, NY, dying in 1913, just 15 years before my mother was born a few miles away. But as you remember she spent her earlier life freeing her people from slavery, 13 perilous journeys back south. One wrote this week, Tubman’s story is an example of courage combined with practicality…She marched at night, communed with God, drugged crying babies and even held a gun to the heads of those who grew weary or turned back. (New York Review 12/12). Those who have seen the most recent film ‘Harriet’ have seen again that remarkable combination of courage and practicality.

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

Religious Zacchaeus

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

Like Zacchaeus in the tree, religion can dwell above Jesus, high and aloof. Is it good to be above Jesus?

It was the German monk Martin Luther who, in 1517, went alone and nailed his 95 theses to the door in Wittenberg, and thereby splintered inherited religion to bits. The words of this same Luther were read, as interpretation of Romans 8, on the rainy night in London, 1738, along Aldersgate Street, as John Wesley’s heart, at long last, was strangely warmed, and he came down from the tree of religion, to sit at table with the Faith of Christ. On a November Sunday in 2019, hic et nunc, both are recalled, in invitation to loving relationship with God and neighbor. We pointedly remember that we are saved by faith, by faith alone, by grace we are saved by faith, and not by any or all the works of the law. You know, in college, just a steady participation in a loving group, like the one Dr. Herbert Jones has led here for many years, can make all the difference.

Come down Zacchaeus! Come down from the doubting tree, the tree of idolatry, the wealth tree, the tree of religion. Come down and receive the Gospel: Jesus invites us into loving relationship with himself, and thereby into loving relationship with our neighbors.

Are we lovers anymore?

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 11.17.2019 at 11:00 am

Sunday
November 10

The Bach Experience

By Marsh Chapel

2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17

Luke 20:27-38

The text of this sermon will be added as soon as possible.

posted in Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, The Bach Experience, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 11.10.2019 at 11:00 am

Sunday
November 3

Healing in Sacrament

By Marsh Chapel

Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18

Ephesians 1:11-23

Luke 6:20-31

The text of this sermon is unavailable.

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 11.3.2019 at 1:42 pm

Click Here to hear the full service

Sunday
October 27

Luke on Health and Humility

By Marsh Chapel

Joel 2:23-32

Luke 18:9-14

Click Here to hear just the sermon

Merciful Delay?

What drove Luke, alone, to remember or construct these marvelous parables, Luke 9-19? Only Luke has them, and how we would miss them without his composition! What molded them near the year 85ad? The lengthening years, without ultimate victory, since the cross? The long decades of living without Jesus? The uncertainties of institution and culture and citizenship and multiple responsibilities? The daily stresses of managing a budget? It is the primitive church that can give an example to an America waiting to meet disease with patient justice, to meet anxiety with hope. They waited for Jesus to return. And he delayed. And he delays, still. And there is rampant, hateful hurt, across God's green earth.

Though with a scornful wonder we see her sore oppressed
By schism rent asunder by heresy distressed
Yet saints their watch are keeping their cry goes up 'how long'?
And soon the night of weeping will be the morn of song.

Luke’s parables confront disease with health and anxiety with humility. At Marsh Chapel, we try to do some of the same. On a day in which we receive new Chapel members, a word then about Marsh.

Marsh Membership?

What is participation in ministry about here?

As a University Chapel and Deanship, Marsh Chapel has some significant structural differences from a local church, some of which are outlined in the document, ‘Forms of Ministry in our Midst’. While there are many ways of entering ministry at Marsh, the Chapel otherwise operates, administratively, as any other deanship on campus, reporting to the President, and funded in large measure by the Provost.

Marsh Chapel is a discreet Christian community of faith, and, if I may, in my pastoral experience, including nine other pulpits, a real gem. Theologically and spiritually, we are broad church; liturgically and musically, we are high church; communally and relationally, we are deep church, in the sense of encouraging vital fellowship and friendship. The simplest way to describe all this is to walk through the sanctuary, and notice the stained glass, of the church through the ages, and of the church in the Methodist tradition.

We are not a Methodist congregation, but our history and lineage, from 1839 to the present, are out of that Religious, Christian, Protestant, English tradition, which emerged under the leadership of John Wesley through the course of the 18^th century. Mr. Wesley stands above our portico at the front door. Our hymnal is the Methodist hymnal, though we are not confined to it, and generally operate out of a dual adherence, both to Methodism and to the ‘ecumenical consensus’ (a simple way to see this is to note that we have, distinctively, both wine and grape juice available at communion). Our dean is usually a Methodist minister (and, oddly, 4 of 6 have been named Robert!). We are thus ‘possibilists’ in the Wesleyan sense of an openness to the future in faith, and an interdenominational, international, and even interfaith congregation (both present on Sundays and especially listening via radio, we have for example a number of Jewish participants). Jesus is our beacon not our boundary. You will see that the sanctuary has no permanent cross, but does have a star of David—both fairly substantive ecumenical moves in 1949.

When people join Marsh Chapel, as will happen again in today, we use a part of the ritual for new members in the hymnal. When children are baptized, as will happen again on November 3, at 2pm, we use the order for the Sacrament in the same hymnal. Our members come from a very wide range of religious backgrounds, and in many cases, of no particular religious background. We do not use a single creed (though we are inclined, now and then, to recite one or another in the course of a sermon now and then). We simply ask people, in brief, whether they want Marsh Chapel to be and to be known as their spiritual home. There are of course some down sides to such breadth, but this has been our heritage since Daniel Marsh finished the chapel, and the Trustees named it for him, long ago. Marsh’s book, The Charm of the Chapel, we have here, and one of our staff could get you a copy, should you want one.

To answer in more detail your fine question about doctrine, I will need to give a few points of reference. As with coming to know Martin Luther, the first step would be to read through the sermons (now found easily on our website, from 2003 on). As with coming to know John Calvin, the second step would be to read through the books, here the decanal books. Mine our found in the narthex. Those of my predecessors are also readily available: the two most voluminous collections being those of Dean Neville, 2003-2006 (present almost every week in chapel, and my only living predecessor) and of Dean Howard Thurman, 1953-1965. I recommend from Dean Neville God the Creator, and from Dean Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited. Dean Robert Hamill (1965—1973: he died just weeks after his Christmas sermon of 1972) wrote two short books of sermons, but is best captured in his column for Motive magazine in the 1960’s. Dean Franklin Little (1952-3) brought the academic study of the Holocaust to America, and his book, The Crucifixion of the Jews, is stellar, and still in print. Dean Robert Thornburg (1978-2001) published very little, though his denominational leadership was significant. As with coming to know John Wesley, the third step would be to look at what the chapel actually does, week by week (found in the term book, on the website, and in the bulletin—including the weekly Dean’s Choice). You will find, I think, in broad terms, in the sermons and books and works, that we are a theologically liberal church with a spiritually liberal pulpit, again broadly construed, and in congruence with the history of Boston University, and, indeed, of Boston itself. In sum, with Mr. Wesley, we would affirm ‘that which has been believed always and everywhere by everyone’ (the ecumenical consensus, where there is such); and we would affirm, ‘if thine heart be as mine, then give me thine hand’; and we would affirm, ‘in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity’.

Spiritual Not Religious?

But what if I am more spiritual than religious? What is they healthy humble balance of these two terms?

Well, the distinction, spiritual vs. religious, would not have been intelligible to St. Luke, whose gospel we have been reading these past several months. Whether or not the distinction—spiritual\religious—is one you understand or affirm, it is in its framing at least a modern lens, and to foist it upon the New Testament would be fair in no direction.

Luke is a teacher, like Matthew, whose own gospel is a didactic one. Matthew is organized around five narratives and lectures. Including a long lecture from a mountain. Affirming the jot and tittle of the law. Honoring disciples and discipline. Matthew sees the world and its human inhabitants, to the moment of its audibility for you and me, as a school room filled with students. He is a teacher, and he wants us to learn, as does Luke.

In principle, then, as all learners both larger and smaller and older and younger, we are in conversation with our evangelist. Preaching is interpretation, interpretation of Holy Scriptures, holy out of use and history and function and love and inspiration, whose opening to the ear is meant to teach, as well as to delight and finally to persuade. Learn something from every sermon. Teach something in every sermon. Teach and learn in every sermon. What would Luke and Matthew help us to learn about this current, modern, popular distinction: ‘I am spiritual but not religious’?

It happens that at the heart of the New Testament, there is, one could say, a parallel problem, a similar distinction, at work, being worked, being worked out. That is the problem of Christianity emerging from Judaism. For the readers of Paul. For the students of Luke. For the listeners to Marsh Chapel in the past decade. For these and others, this is not a new story. One of the two great and deep mysteries of the 27 New Testament books is this one. How did a religious and spiritual movement begun in Palestine, led by a Jew and other Jews, born out of the history and theology and society of Judaism, and relying on the whole of the Hebrew Scripture, become, in less than 100 years, entirely Greek?

The New Testament witnesses, it should be strongly asserted, had as a group no disinclination to follow spiritual truth over against the dictates of religious tradition. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, after all. The tearing of Christianity away from Judaism was in part a spiritual revolt against a religious authority. The Lordship of Jesus, the way of faith, the announcement of the resurrection, the advances into the highways and byways, the preaching of the gospel, especially to the gentiles, left religion, of one form, in the dust. One is commanded in fact to ‘shake the dust from one’s feet’.

On the other hand, and perhaps more powerfully, the New Testament writers have every disinclination to celebrate an individualized spiritual perspective, ‘Sheilaism’, ‘bowling alone’, or the new atheism which often dresses in the simple garb of introversion and social, conversational, and relational isolation. The 27 books of the NT, if nothing else, revolve around a steady development of a new community, a beloved community, a community of faith working through love, and are themselves children of and witness to the emergence of that set of communities, the church. Even the Gospel of John, the most spiritual and least institutional of the documents, nonetheless, from its radical angle, forcefully acclaims the experience of love in faith, the love of ‘one another’. The dismantling of one religious structure requires the responsibility to replace it with an improved model (Methodists take note). In this sense, the New Testament would be the polar opposite and spiritual contestant of spirituality today.

Biblical Theology?

And how, kind sir, in your own life and work does this paean to health and humility matter?

Well, remember our ride up the Matterhorn a few weeks ago?

The ride is short but terrifying. At the top, mid-July, thick snow, hard ice, brisk wind and a coldness of cold await you. As does the mesmerizing thrall of the mountain. The Matterhorn. Step gingerly out of the old open rail car. Get your footing, your mountain sea legs. Raise your gaze. Raise your gaze. Raise your gaze. There. A new way of seeing, and so of thinking, and so, then of being. Health and sanity may impel or compel you to higher ground.

My sixteenth book will be published this fall, a collection devoted in part to the New Testament, in part to preaching, and in part to ministry—Bible, Church, World as we in the halcyon younger days of the World Council of Churches intoned. None of the sixteen is a best seller, none a game changer, none found in every home. All but two are still in print, and several in both print and cyber forms. They are the work of Zermatt. Fine. The view from Zermatt is fine. You can share it in physical comfort and communal fellowship. The Matterhorn! Just before you. But. But. But.

As an acrophobe the rail car ride up is not appealing. But it is time for me to move on up, to take higher ground, to climb on to Gornergrat. Ice. Snow. Cold. Wind. That means the prospect of one more, a very different book, for a very different look. A different look takes a different book. It will be, here, for me, the work of the next decade, in pulpit and study. As you cannot get to Gornergrat but through Zermatt, this project depends in full on all that came before: books on the New Testament (John), on preaching (Interpretation), and on ministry (prayer and practice). The next climb is up on to craggy cliff village—ice, snow, cold, wind—of an overture to A Liberal Biblical Theology. Here is a marriage of Rudolph Bultmann and N.T. Wright., a partnership of Paul Tillich and (the early) Karl Barth, an aspirational possibilist (that is Methodist) correlation of history and theology, Bible and Church, accessible to the average reader. Our climate, nation, and denomination, all in peril, hang in the balance.

⁹He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ¹⁰“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹²I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ ¹³But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 10.27.2019 at 11:00 am

Sunday
October 20

Not to Lose Heart

By Marsh Chapel

Jeremiah 31:27-34

Luke 18:1-8

Parable of Persistence

Hear ye hear: the honorable Unjust Judge is presiding this morning in our homiletical courtroom. Before him, a persistent woman, who employs time and voice. (You have time and you have voice.) Like Christ himself, she implores the implacable world to grant justice. Like Christ himself, she comes on a donkey of tongue and patience. Like Christ himself, she continues to plead, to intercede. Like Christ himself, she importunes the enduring ‘gone-wrong-ness’ of this world. Like Christ himself she prays without ceasing. Like Christ himself she persists. She is an example to us of how we should use whatever time we have and whatever breath remains--to pray. It is prayer that is the most realistic and wisest repose for we the anxious of this anxious autumn. By prayer we mean formal prayer, yes. But by prayer we mean the persistent daily leaning toward justice, the steady continuous pressure in history from the voice of the voiceless and the time of the time bound. And the daily practice of attention, alertness, being alive, being around. Prayer public, prayer private.

Ours is a long wait. And that is just the point: we feel the length of the wait.

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

He told them a parable about how they ought to pray always and not to. lose heart.

Heart and Service

Sometimes prayer is public, even institutional.

On this Family and Friends weekend, we can remember the persistent prayerful work of Boston University, across nearly 200 years.

Boston University is an institution with a long history of outreach and engagement, said recently our President Robert A. Brown.

Boston University lives in the heart of the city, in the service of the city, said President Lemuel Merlin, 1923.

One deeply embedded value and strength of Boston University, today, and found in every school and college is this long (1839) history (Methodism) of outreach (heart) and service (in the world, for the world).

The three medical campus schools lead the way with care for the urban poor (MED), with daily recognition that public health means social justice (SPH), and with the most global dental student body of any school or college at every commencement (GSDM).

All fourteen schools on the Charles River campus show the shadows and lingering long-term influence of heart and service.

Reflect on the current emphasis in QUESTROM upon ethical business and business ethics.

Remember the BU educational 25-year commitment to the Chelsea city schools, and the to year work in urban literacy Initiative on Literacy Development, our outreach to Boston Public Schools so strongly enhanced by the Wheelock merger.

Rejoice at the concept of ‘citizen artist’, the ‘social artist’, affirmed at the College of Fine Arts, the best of theater and music and visual art, brought to the street level (along with the Arts Initiative).

Reflect on the curricular and co-curricular engagement in the School of Theology, the ongoing voice of ‘The School of the Prophets’.

Remember the Social Work engagement with neighboring hospitals and schools, in internships and partnerships.

Rejoice at the ongoing vitality within Metropolitan College of a now veteran program in prison education.

Reflect on the School of Engineering support for Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

Remember our School of Hospitality emphasis on servant leadership.

Rejoice at the communal nature of education in the College of General Studies, modeling dimensions of shared learning and living with great effect.

Reflect on the College of Arts and Sciences, and its PARDEE School, committed to world peace.

Remember the School of Law and its honored graduates who have defended the legal system of this country, ‘a country of laws and not of men’.

Rejoice at the varied commitments through The College of Communications to the development of an educated populace, on which the rest of democracy depends.

Reflect on Sargent’s lectureships on physical and occupational therapy, open to the public, and applicable to the work of many other schools and colleges as well.

To these vital forms of ‘outreach and engagement’ in schools and colleges, add the Howard Thurman Center, the ROTC program, the Hubert Humphrey Scholars program, the Community Service Center, the Office of Religious Life, the Elie Wiesel Center, the Sustainability Center, The BU Initiative on Cities, and others, all of which to some measure reach out beyond the University to serve and help the larger community, across the region and around the globe. Boston University exemplifies a culture of ‘outreach and engagement’, working in the world for the world.

Public prayer. As in the life of Elijah Cummings, now of blessed memory, a life reminding us that Elijah is coming, and a voice teaching us that ‘diversity is our promise, not our problem’.

Your alma mater, at her best, institutionalizes prayerful persistence.

He told them a parable about how they ought always to pray and not lose heart.

Sometimes prayer is public.

Enjoy Your Wife

And sometimes prayer is private.

Sometimes, that is, prayer is personal, meant to wake us up to what lasts, matters, counts and is real.

Speaking personally, one summer holiday joy comes from sitting alone, anonymous, a regular citizen of the planet, enjoying a pub lunch.

In Bermuda, one favorite such hide out, for the hours Jan is shopping in Hamilton, is ‘The Hog Penny’. Its name fits British Bermuda, as does its dark wood interior’; as does its English, English not haute cuisine, meals, shepherds’ pie and chips; as does its broadcast of cricket on the ‘tellie’; and does its public house, pub mood. Since our honeymoon we have gone to Hamilton, Bermuda, she to shop, and I to blend into the British Bermuda woodwork, and be alone.

She and I no longer need to identify our individual itineraries. Marriage works sometimes that way. She knows where to find me, as she did, mid-shopping expedition, this August. A surprise hug from behind came as no surprise to me; a big kiss or three, some reports from the field of shopping battle, happy and tearful memories of the same place, the same dark wood interior, every five years or so to August, 2019. Downing a glass of ice water, she is off again on the hunt, leaving me to read. Other years the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or both, in print, but now, sadly no longer available, in print, on the Island. A hug, a kiss, a reminder to show up on time for the ferry back to the hotel, and we are separate, again. As one day, a long stretch of decades ago, before marriage. As one day, again, someday, when we cross the river.

I notice one other customer, alone at the dark farther end of the Hog Penny oak bar. Six empty chairs separate us. He slowly rises, and begins slowly to approach. One chair at a time he slides his full glass gently, carefully, toward me, then rounds the chair at hand, and then pushes his glass another chair length, and again the glass, round the chair, catch your breath, start again.

He is wearing a yellow golf shirt, tan pants, loafers, eyeglasses without frames, and is, say, 15 years my senior, my father’s age when he died, balding, thin, and short. I have learned over the years to watch for clues, signs that such an one, approaching, in such a setting, may want to sell me insurance (it happens), or invite me to church come Sunday (also), or need a loan (at least once). I enjoy meeting new people, but this is vacation, a few precious summer hours in the beauty of Bermuda. So, I am leery.

Here he comes, slide the glass, round the chair, slide the glass, round the chair, take a breath. No signs of trouble do I see. But still I am on the alert. A temporary lay person is a full-time pastor who has seen this movie before.

He leaves one empty chair between us.

‘Where are you from?’, he asks.

‘Boston’.

‘How did you get here?’

‘We flew direct from Logan’. A little silence, of which there will be more than a little more.

‘How about you’, I volley back.

‘By boat, from New York City’.

‘Do you live there?’, I venture, trusting the moment a little more.

‘Nearby. Long Island.’

‘Oh, I know Long Island’, I rejoin. ‘I will be there near Bayshore, Point O Woods its called, later in August.’

Then there is a long pause, as there were many in the conversation. He seems not to know how, exactly, to proceed. At these pauses, I jump in to prompt a couple of time, but then leave him to his silence. I notice he is making steady progress through his drink, which gladdens me to see, somehow, and it clearly does him, too. Silence. He is from a generation, one might say, in which is expected, a common courtesy, to offer a bit of conversation, gentle, genial conversation, to a stranger who is alone. Of course, as with so much else of human being and meaning, the smart phone and internet have eclipsed this human practice. Or killed it off, outright.

The silence is sounding more fully resonant now.

He perks up. ‘That was your wife?’, he asks. ‘I mean’, he corrects himself, ‘She is your wife?’

‘Yes’.

‘She is so pretty, so happy’, he says smiling.

‘Yes’, I say. ‘Well’, I add, ‘especially on vacation, and especially out shopping’.

He ponders this a bit, then asks, ‘Have you been here before?’

‘Yes’, I say, ‘about a half-dozen times. It is one of the world’s most beautiful place, in nature and in culture.’

‘Yes’ he says, drawing a deep breath leading to another long pause.

His eyes dim, then brighten, then dim, like the sun ducking in out behind a cloud bank. Silence. More uncomfortable with the silence than he is, I interject again: ‘Did you sail to Bermuda with friends or with family?’

‘No’, he says. ‘I am here on my own’.

Now, somehow, I have the sense to the let the silence be long, be quiet. Lonely.

Then he looks up and addresses me: ‘My wife and I have come here over the years. She would shop and I would come here and have lunch, or not.’

She would shop. I hear it.

I clumsily and with a sense of foreboding repeat, ‘She would shop?’

‘Yes’, he adds. ‘She and I planned this trip a few months ago. She was really looking forward to it.

‘Oh, I…’ then I stop mid-sentence.

‘She died in April’. Silence.

‘I am so very sorry for your loss’, is what I come up with to say.

‘Thank you. I was going to cancel, but decided to come alone, to come by myself, alone.

‘I am so truly sorry for your loss’, I clumsily repeat. I am having a hard time seeing him, for some reason—maybe the humidity has clouded my eyes. I wipe my eyes a bit.

‘Thank you. I appreciate that. She loved this place. Bermuda and its beauty she so loved. We both did. Together.’

‘I am glad you came. I am glad for your memories. I know how meaningful it must be for you to be here.’

‘Thank you’, he responds. ‘I guess I am glad. The memories are good. But painful too.’

Here more pause. A light silence. A good silence wherein what is said and what is heard can sink down in and settle in. Be heard. Like a sermon, a conversation is not about getting something said, but it is about getting something heard.

He made strong headway with his drink, and I look at my watch to see that the spousal warning to get to the ferry on time was a typically wise one. I have an assignment to be in line for a seat on the ferry looming.

I paid the bill. I checked to make sure I had my glasses, my wallet, my book, and, yes, my phone. I stood next to him. His eyes were lighter and just a little moister.

‘I am sorry for your loss’.

‘Thank you.’

I turn to go, and he catches my arm for a moment. What he says next he does not say pendanticly, or religiously, or emotionally, or emphatically. He just says it. In a quiet voice. In a good voice. In a kind voice. And he said it twice, in a prayerful tone:

‘Enjoy your wife.’

‘Enjoy your wife’.

Sometimes, prayer is personal, meant to wake us up to what lasts, matters, counts and is real.

Prayer public, prayer private.

And he told them a parable about how they ought always to pray and not lose heart.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 10.20.2019 at 11:00 am

Sunday
October 13

Spring Tonic

By Marsh Chapel

2 Kings 5:1-15c

2 Timothy 2:8-15

Luke 17:11-19

Every Spring, when I was a child, right through high school, our mother would dose my brother and me with our “Spring tonic” of cod liver oil. It came in a tube, colored a sort of sickly green-blue-gray, and on the tube was a line-drawing of a fish, balanced on its tail, with a distressed look on its face – no doubt because of the spigot drawn protruding from its belly, dripping oil. The fish’s distress was nothing to ours. Our mother squeezed out two healthy dollops of oil, mixed each with water, and we drank our glasses down. The taste was vile, and it lasted a long time, even after teeth brushing. My brother and I never did know just why we were subjected to this challenge to our comfort and filial obedience – our Spring tonic was good for us, it was what we did, and that was that.

It turns out that cod liver oil is actually good for human beings, Rich in vitamins A and D, it may also help with inflammation and other health issues, and back in the day it was given all over the country to help prevent rickets, a softening and weakening of children’s bones that often led to deformity and ongoing issues. So, even though it was a challenge in the short run, my brother and I did reap benefits from our Spring tonic. And, I and my brother still did not give cod liver oil to our children.

The word that informs our preaching here at Marsh Chapel this semester is “health”. Perhaps not coincidentally, our own Dr. Sandro Galea, Dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, has recently published a book, entitled Well: What We Need To Talk About When We Talk About Health. His own experience as a physician is as one who has practiced medicine internationally and with various populations. As an epidemiologist – one who studies how diseases spread – he has researched and taught at the University of Michigan and Columbia University, before he came here to Boston University as the youngest dean of a school of public health in the country at the time of his appointment. In addition to this experience, his book is also informed by two facts. One is that the biggest concern of the American electorate in the 2020 presidential election is access to healthcare: insurance, doctors, medicine, and surgery. The other fact is that Americans spend more on healthcare than any other nation, and we experience increasingly lower outcomes in relation to costs than any other peer nation, and in some areas, than many other nations period. Galea’s book Well is a foundational text, full of interesting stories, great quotes, fascinating history, and thought-provoking science presented in layperson’s terms. In it he writes about health from a public perspective, a consideration of health as a public good in which the health of the individual is recognized as dependent on the health of the whole. Galea argues that our current cultural focus is on individual decision-making and healthcare – the doctors, medicine, and surgery that come into play when a person is already sick and that is overwhelmingly concentrated toward the end of a person’s life. He posits that we have neglected or ignored the public, community infrastructure that promotes health itself throughout human life. So we deprive ourselves and others of the increased opportunities and possibilities for a richer life for everybody that come with public health goods,

The titles of the chapters in Well provide a broad outline for the components of the infrastructure that Galea promotes for our consideration of health as a public good. I am going to read them now, all twenty of them, and invite you to note any of them for your later consideration that surprise you as being part of health, for either its support or its detriment, for both personal and communal health. The Past. Money. Power. Politics. Place. People. Love and Hate. Compassion. Knowledge. Humility. Freedom. Choice. Luck. The Many. The Few. The Public Good. Fairness and Justice. Pain and Pleasure. Death. Values.

Interestingly enough, with some allowance for differences in context, our Hebrew Bible lesson this morning illustrates some of the complexities involved when we consider some of these chapter titles as naming the elements of an infrastructure that shapes health.

Naaman is a great man, commander of the king of Aram’s army in what is present-day Syria. The king of Aram holds Naaman in high favor for his successful military victories, given to Aram over Israel by, oddly enough, the God of Israel. But in spite of his military might, Naaman suffers from leprosy. This may or may not have been Hansen’s disease, what we think of as leprosy, but could have been one of the other noxious skin conditions of the time. These may not have caused Naaman to be shunned, but they were almost certainly disfiguring and inconvenient if not painful. A young Israelite girl, taken prisoner in a raid by Aram against Israel, was made to serve Naaman’s wife. She tells her mistress about the Israelite prophet residing in Samaria, which was a region in central Israel now part of the West Bank. This prophet, she says, can cure Naaman’s leprosy. His wife tells Naaman. Naaman tells his king, and his king sends a letter to his vassal, the king of Israel, to smooth Naaman’s journey. Naaman is a very wealthy man, and expects his wealth to smooth his way and pay for his cure, and he packs accordingly. At the time, one silver talent weighed seventy-five pounds and was worth $6,000 in today’s money. Naaman takes ten of them, six thousand shekels of gold that were worth even more, and ten sets of garments worth a significant amount on their own. His entourage consists of servants, horses, and chariots, consistent with his high status. He sets out for the king of Israel. Meanwhile, as if he does not have enough trouble being a vassal to an overlord, the king of Israel takes the letter from the king of Aram as a demand for an impossibility and as a thinly-veiled attempt to renew the conflict between Aram and Israel. Elisha, the man of God, the successor to the great prophet Elijah, the prophet with the cure for leprosy, steps in. He calms the king of Israel and tells him to send Naaman to him, Elisha, not with Naaman’s cure as the first priority, but so that he, Naaman, will know that there is a prophet, Elisha, in Israel.

When Naaman finally reaches Elisha, he feels insulted, becomes enraged, and leaves. He is going back to Aram! Then his servants step in. They calm him down, and persuade him to wash in the Jordan. Naaman washes seven times in the Jordan, and is cured of his leprosy. He returns to Elisha, and in front of all his company, acknowledges the God of the prophet, the God of Israel, as the only God in all the earth.

A number of the pieces of Galea’s infrastructure are at play in this story. The past has set the stage: Naaman’s high status and wealth, his marriage and servants have already been achieved, and he has developed leprosy. The conflict between Aram and Israel has brought him the young Israelite girl as a servant. Politics certainly plays a part, in the interwoven relationships that involve and surround Naaman. Power and money are there, in Naaman’s sense of entitlement to certain treatment and in his assumption that money will secure his cure. Without the knowledge of the prophet given to Naaman by his wife’s servant girl and his wife, Naaman would have had no idea that a cure might be possible. Naaman has the freedom to make two important choices: he goes to Elisha, and he allows himself to be persuaded to wash in the Jordan. But he did not choose to have leprosy, and his cure is brought into possibility mostly by the choices of other people. Naaman does not come to his health alone. And if any of the pieces of this infrastructure had been different – if Naaman had had no knowledge, no support, no choice because of no power or wealth or freedom or the support of those around him for whatever reason – Naaman’s health would be compromised to the extent that he would still have leprosy, and his life would as well have less opportunity and possibility to that extent.

A number of the pieces of Galea’s infrastructure are at play in our Gospel account as well. By this time in history, the leprosy in this story is likely enough to be Hansen’s disease, as lepers in Jesus’ time were shunned by all, including their families, friends, and the religious community. They suffered a living social and cultural death-in-life as well as the looming death from the disease. There was also in that time a general public consensus that if one suffered the misfortune of illness or disability one must have done something wrong, and probably something sinful.

In this context, ten lepers come to Jesus and beg for his help. He tells them to go and show themselves to the priests, who are the arbiters of social and ritual cleanliness in their power. As they go, they are healed of their leprosy. And, as Jesus points out to his disciples, only one of them comes back to praise God, and that one was not just a foreigner but a Samaritan.

The past is at play in this story: the lepers are already sick, the prejudice against persons who are ill and Samaritans is well-established. Compassion also enters the picture: in Luke Jesus has already extended his healing beyond Israelites to heal the servant of a Roman centurion and a man from the country of the Gerasenes, and he extends healing to the Samaritan leper as well. While the lepers did not have the choice to become sick, had limited freedom and probably had little money or power, they choose to follow Jesus’ direction. People also are a consideration: while shunned by the rest of society, the lepers had created their own sort of community, even including a Samaritan. Knowledge plays a part as well: the lepers recognize Jesus, and know him as a person who can help them, even heal them. And again, if any of these pieces of health infrastructure had been missing – no knowledge, no support to bring the lepers to this point, no compassion from Jesus but blame for the lepers’ poor choices or morality, the lepers’ health would be compromised to the extent that they would still have leprosy, and their life would as well have less opportunity and possibility to that extent.

Fast forward to our own time and place. The elements of Galea’s health infrastructure that are present in our morning’s biblical texts are still with us. And, the knowledge we have gained about the causes of and challenges to health has exponentially increased. And now the realities and complexities of a globalized world have expanded the infrastructure elements present in the biblical stories and have brought in all the others elements as well – all twenty of them.. So now all these health infrastructure elements are at play, and their import for health for good or ill have increased the challenges to a staggering degree, not just for individuals but for the collective human race, and for the whole of the planet as well. In particular, while people in biblical times may be excused for blaming people with health issues for poor choices or moral laxity, our knowledge no longer allows us to blame or admire individuals or groups for individual poor or good health. Too many choices were already made for them in the past or in the present, sometimes without their knowledge or consent – just ask the people of Flint, Michigan. These choices include: to whom they were born, where they lived as children, the wealth or poverty of their families, the kinds and quality of foods that were available to them growing up, the level of pollution in their homes/communities/environment, the political decisions made on their behalf whether these decisions were in their best interests or not, with all of these elements of health infrastructure having irreversible effects for good or ill on their health. Likewise, in a globalized world, the health of the individual is dependent on the health of all other people and the health of the planet. Germs, viruses, plagues, and epidemics know no boundaries and are no respecter of persons. The global climate change that threatens the health of everyone’s earth, air, and water, if left unchecked, threaten public ill health, and thus individual ill health, on a scale previously unimaginable. There is still room for individual choice when it comes to personal health. And, in the present day, this is increasingly limited by the choices of others and by the collective choices we make as communities, nations, and the human race.

Here I would like to lift up in particular two of Galea’s elements of public health for further consideration. One is compassion, which Galea defines as “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it … something that links our engagement with the infrastructure that shapes our health to the values that shape our conscience.” He quotes Martin Luther King, Jr.’s statement that “Compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring.” It is this kind of compassion to which Jesus inspires us: in his call for non-judgment, in his call to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, in his call to resist injustice and evil.

The second element for consideration is values. Galea notes that we invest our energies and resources in healthcare, and ignore improvements to the infrastructure that will promote our health throughout our lives. This means that we have not embraced health as a value worth pursuit and protection, nor do we address the forces that actually produce health. He raises the question, what does it mean to value health, not just as an individual issue, but as a collective, public value. Because if the public debate continues to focus solely on healthcare, on individual choice, doctors, medicine, and surgery, our health as a public and as individuals will continue to worsen, and we will continue the pattern that has made our health worse than that of all our peer countries. To embrace health as a collective value in fact means that we embrace compassion, compassion that reveals how the suffering of individuals connects with the infrastructure that produces or denies health.

I would like also to include an infrastructure element that Galea does not include, because he was not writing this sermon. That element is faith – faith in opportunity, faith in possibility, faith in human courage and compassion, faith in God. The challenges to our personal and collective health can seem daunting, not least because in this our time and place our responses to meet these challenges, especially as Christians, look to be counter-cultural and against great odds. But, we do not respond alone. In the Lowell Lecture given by Gary Dorrien that Dr. Jessica Chicka mentioned last week, he also said that he was glad to be living in a time of mass movements and demonstrations once again, where hundreds of thousands of people are beginning to organize, plan, protest, and advocate once again, not just for themselves as individuals, but for the public good, even to a global scale. So we will have plenty of company against the odds. We may even create a new culture of health for all people and for the planet..

To do this, as our biblical stories this morning remind us, we can consult with the prophet and be told what to do. We can ask Jesus for mercy, and he will tell us what to do. And, both of them will tell us the same thing as to what to do first. They will tell us, “Go”. And we will find, as did Naaman and the Samaritan leper, that our faith is in our going, and, it is when we go that we are healed. AMEN.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation on 10.13.2019 at 11:00 am

Sunday
October 6

Living Faith

By Marsh Chapel

2 Timothy 1:1-14

Luke 17:5-10

Faith and Fear

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” They do so emphatically. Enthusiastically. Or perhaps fearfully. At the very least, we know the translators ended this statement with an exclamation point: “Increase our faith!”

In order to understand why the apostles would make such a demand, it’s important to understand the context of this scripture passage. The lectionary lets us down a bit because it starts this scene in media res, in the middle of the action. Jesus has already begun addressing the apostles when this week’s reading from Luke starts. Immediately before their request for more faith, Jesus tells the disciples that they must not become stumbling blocks for others and forgive those who sin against them if they are repentant, even if those people repeatedly sin against them. The disciples draw a logical conclusion: if they are to be so forgiving, so full of love, then they must also have more faith. They turn to Jesus and say, “Increase our faith!”

The disciples want to do better. They want to be Jesus’ followers in the best way possible. To them, if only they could increase their faith, they would be able to follow Jesus’ commands. They could heal more people. They could evangelize more effectively. They could care more, love more, and forgive more. They don’t think that their faith is adequate to meet such demands. Whomever can forgive and forgive and forgive again must be someone who is brimming with faith.

But Jesus points out to the apostles that it isn’t a specific amount of faith that makes faithful actions possible. Faith the size of a mustard seed - a very tiny amount of faith - has the ability to do miraculous things. It can uproot a mulberry tree and plant it in the ocean. Mulberry trees infamously have very intricate and complex root systems, making them difficult to move. Also Jesus says that the bush will be planted in the sea. Not thrown into the sea, but planted, where one would assume, it would continue to grow. So, not only would a mustard-seed sized faith allow for the movement of something that seems immoveable, but also its flourishing in a new place. This mustard seed-sized faith is very powerful.

We all have moments when we think our faith can’t be enough. Moments when we are faced with a task, an interaction, some “thing” that we don’t think we can do. Trust me, after years of slogging through academic work for a PhD, there were plenty of moments when I threw up my hands and said “I can’t do it!” We tell ourselves and others that if only we had more time, more experience, more confidence, we could do what is asked of us. Maybe we find ourselves in a place of fear about what is to come or what we don’t know. We think ourselves incapable of finding the wherewithal to face an uncertain future or outcome. Doubt and fear are the opposite of faith. Fear prevents us from moving forward. Fear tells us that we’re not good enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re incapable.

The point that Jesus makes is that it is not the size of one’s faith that matters but how and whether it is used properly. One’s faith is not a private matter. Faith in God is the foundation for all of our interactions in the world. Faith is relational. Faith is a commitment. Faith requires trust and love. Faith that only resides within a person as a private means of belief in God, but that does not spur them to action, is like having no faith at all. Martin Luther reminds us that while we are justified by faith alone, sola fide, faith is never alone in practice. It must be accompanied by works of love. We must have an active, living faith if we are to follow Jesus. The task of the disciples and for all of us is to allow our faith to overcome our fears in doing what we need to do in the world.
Sometimes, also, it’s that our faith requires us to do things that we don’t want to do. We resist those things that feel too difficult. We fail to speak up in unjust situations. We avoid interaction with those with whom we disagree. We refuse to forgive because we don’t think the other party is worthy of forgiveness. We live in a time when divisions run deep and instead of listening and trying to understand one another, we rush to judge or dismiss on the basis of who we perceive people to be. Our tendencies toward self-preservation and egoism prevent us from experiencing the empathy needed to genuinely share our faith with others.

Jesus cautions against doing works in anticipation of reward with his set of sentences in this reading, however. The actions we do through faith are what is expected of us. We should not anticipate special rewards for doing what we are called to be and do in the world. Jesus’ imagery is jolting for us who live in a context which still suffers the consequences of a history of slavery. To us, one person being enslaved to another is abhorrent. In Jesus’ context, this was not the case. The point that Jesus makes in this description of the slave and master relationship is that we should not expect special rewards or treatments for the things that we are expected to do. The language may be difficult for us to hear, especially depicted in the slave/master relationship, but it is important to recognize that the things we do in faith are things that we ought to do. We may not be uprooting mulberry trees with our commands, but our faith guides every interaction we have on a daily basis.

World Communion Sunday and Our Faith

Today we celebrate World Communion Sunday. In this yearly liturgical tradition we recall how we are all joined together in the Body of Christ no matter our denominations, our backgrounds and cultures, our places of origin. We join together in sharing Holy communion. The act of communion, of eating and drinking, reminds us of our relationships with the Holy Trinity and the world around us.

This week, preeminent Christian Social Ethicist, theologian, and church historian, Dr. Gary Dorrien gave the Lowell lecture at BU’s school of theology. Dorrien described how the field of Social Ethics within the Christian tradition did not exist prior to the late 19th, early 20th century. Social ethicists asserted that Christians must consider the social structures that create sin in the world and look for communal solutions to such problems. The Industrial Revolution created new challenges including addressing factory workers’ wellbeing and safety, child labor, and urban poverty. The realities of Jim Crow laws, segregation, and forced migration to reservations created an unjust society in which those who were perceived as an “other” conflicted with the Christian vision of a world filled with justice and righteousness.

Focusing on the Black and White Social Gospel movements of the early 20th century, Dorrien also made mention of the growth of the ecumenical movement during this time period. Organizations such as the World Council of Churches and the Federal Council of Churches, which would later become the National Council of Churches, formed to provide unified statements aimed at shifting corrupt practices by corporations and building social welfare for all people. One thing that Dorrien pointed out in his presentation is that instead of representatives from different denominations coming together to discuss theological ideas, such as the nature of God or the meaning behind the sacraments, they instead focused on how the Christian faith could actively address problems within societies. The living faith of Christians brought them together to see past theological differences in the interest of assisting those in need. Joining together to create statements and movements for better pay, better working conditions, immigration reform, and racial justice was a unifying force that then lead to deeper understanding between denominations. The result is that many of our Mainline Protestant Denominations in the US now share full communion with one another, allowing for leadership, worship, and cooperation across theological differences.

World Communion Sunday also developed out of the burgeoning ecumenical movements of the 20th century. Today, our relationships with the global community take a much different form than they did in 1933 when the first World Communion Sunday was held. We are more connected to our global neighbors. It is easier now to learn about and observe how people around the world live, work, and experience the world. And yet, we still encounter some of the same challenges that the world experienced in 1933. Political rhetoric that alienates us from one another, the rise of nationalism throughout the world, and corruption and monopolization within corporations seem all too familiar for those of us familiar with world history. Add on to those issues deteriorating ecosystems, massive global economic inequality, and increasing tensions between nations and it might feel like our faith can do very little to address all of the challenges of the present moment.

On a day like today, however, it is important for us to take a moment to reflect on what our faith requires of us. In the reading from Second Timothy, we hear the letter writer, identified as Paul, encouraging Timothy to stay committed to his faith despite the challenges he might face. The faith Timothy shares with his mother and grandmother is “not a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” We must also heed these words. While the global challenges we face today may seem insurmountable, our faith lived out through our actions of love grounded in Christ can lead us to create change and understanding in our world.

I have hope despite the fact that there are so many challenges facing us today. Maybe it’s because I get to encounter future leaders from all over the world on a regular basis. The next generation who is entering into their young adulthood now see the mistakes of the past and feel energized to address those problems. If you need proof of this, look no further than Nobel Peace prize winner, Malala, who fights for equal access to education regardless of gender, or climate activist Greta Thunberg, who addressed the United Nations in an impassioned speech two weeks ago; Dreamer activists who continue to fight for immigration reform; or the students of Parkland, FL who organized the March for our Lives gun reform activism that increased voter registration and turnout for the last election. It’s important that many of these voices are from people under the age of 25. Their voices carry hopes for the future of our country and the world in which there is more justice and less violence, more care and less destruction, more acceptance and less ignorance. This week, Marsh Chapel will host a conversation regarding LGBTQ affirmation in the Korean church entitled “God Loves Me. Period. A talk on Queerness, Koreaness, and Church.” This is just one example in our midst of the next generation of the church seeking to affirm the dignity and wellbeing of all people. Moving forward, the church must also become more receptive to differences, finding opportunities to engage people of different faiths to create a just and sustainable world.

United Methodist Elder, artist, and author Jan Richardson offers a reflection for World Communion Sunday that reminds us of the gifts of coming together in community. On her website, The Painted Prayerbook, her poem “And the Table Will Be Wide” accompanies her artwork entitled “The Best Supper.” A play on words of the Last Supper, the image is of a circular table from above with people from all nationalities (and one cat!) sharing a meal together. In the center of the table are loaves of bread, representing different types found around the world. Some of the people depicted hold glasses of wine high, others embrace their neighbors. Listen now to Richardson’s words in “And the Table Will be Wide”:

And the table

will be wide.

And the welcome

will be wide.

And the arms

will open wide

to gather us in.

And our hearts

will open wide

to receive.

And we will come

as children who trust

there is enough.

And we will come

unhindered and free.

And our aching

will be met

with bread.

And our sorrow

will be met

with wine.

And we will open our hands

to the feast

without shame.

And we will turn

toward each other

without fear.

And we will give up

our appetite

for despair.

And we will taste

and know

of delight.

And we will become bread

for a hungering world.

And we will become drink

for those who thirst.

And the blessed

will become the blessing.

And everywhere

will be the feast.[1]

At God’s Holy table we all are welcome, no matter where we come from. At God’s Holy table, there is enough to feed our spiritual needs. At God’s Holy table, we are able to free ourselves from those things that cause fear and trust in the power of the Divine that permeates all. At God’s Holy table we are reminded of the promises of Jesus and our commitments to enact our faith in the world. At God’s Holy table our mustard seed faith germinates. Amen.

-Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain for International Students

[1] AND THE TABLE WILL BE WIDE, Jan Richardson, https://paintedprayerbook.com/2012/09/30/and-the-table-will-be-wide/.

posted in The Rev. Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain for International Students on 10.6.2019 at 11:00 am

Sunday
September 29

The Bach Experience

By Marsh Chapel

Jeremiah 32:1-3, 6-15

Luke 16:19-31

Exegesis

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

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

In this season of cultural demise and decay across our country, we benefit from the harsh challenge of Luke, and we benefit from the hopeful promise in Jeremiah. You see there is more Luke in Jeremiah than at first you think, and there is more Jeremiah in Luke than at first you think.

Sin is not doing concrete deeds of generous kindness. Sin is the not doing concrete deeds of generous kindness. Of all the Gospels, St. Luke most emphasizes this: in the sermon on the plain; in the wording of the Lord’s prayer; in the parables of Sower, Samaritan, Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, Lost Son, Dishonest Steward, Guests to the Wedding Banquet, the 10 healed Lepers; in the communal interest extended to Samaritans (those of different ethnic and religious background), to women (those whom tradition has marginalized), to the poor (those left forgotten in transaction and acquisition, to the lepers (those ritually and culturally excluded). To read Luke is to be given eyes to see by contrast abroad in America today an emerging culture of denigration–denigration of immigrants, Muslims, and Mexicans–and to weep. It is not enough, though it is true enough, to blame this almost exclusively on one particular candidate and one particular party. (repeat). No, the mirror is held up for us all, for all of us in some measure have contributed to a culture that is uncultured, a rhetoric that is rancorous, a politics that is impolitic, an increasingly uncivil civil society, a rejection of hard-won experience and preparation in favor of careless entertainment and tomfoolery, a preference for cruelty over beauty, and a robust willingness to throw away hundreds of years of painstakingly crafted institutional commitments and social norms. You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Will Lincoln’s proverb hold in our time? You may well hope so, though you may well doubt so. I doubt it. Finally, as Jeremiah looks upon Zedekiah, we confess, we get the leaders we deserve.

More personally, in the Methodist tradition which built Boston University, other than worship and the study of Scripture, the most cherished practice of faith is tithing: annually giving away 10% of what you earn. The reason for the centrality of tithing—today, sadly, honored largely in the breach, even in Methodism, now, to our shame—is set for us in today’s harsh parable of Lazarus and Dives, the harrowing horror of what it means to forget the needs of the poor. Such forgetfulness is a persistent threat in the heart of all human life, but is especially challenging for those who have much, and so are sheltered, routinely, from the anxiety of poverty, the hurt of exclusion, the pain of hunger, and the despair of lack and loss. Sin is the unwillingness on a weekly basis to practice generous kindness, to tithe. Luke reminds us so.

And Jeremiah? Now that his beloved country is in ruins (are we beginning across our own cultural landscape to catch a glimpse of his woe?), Jeremiah does something great. Remember: the city is burned, the temple is wrecked, the population is slaughtered or in chains, and the nation is destroyed, soon to spend two generations in Babylon, by the rivers of Babylon, where to sit down and weep, as tormentors mock, ‘sing to us one of the songs of Zion’. But Jeremiah buys a plot of land. One day, a long time from now, he muses and prays, there will be some manner of restoration: ‘I cannot see it. I cannot hear it. I cannot prove it. Sometimes I cannot believe it. But, hoping against hope, I will buy some land, and someday, somebody, somehow will use it’. This is faith: to plant trees under which you will not sleep, to build churches in which you will not worship, to create schools in which you will not study, to teach students whose futures you will not know—and to buy land which you will not till. But someone will. Or at least, that is your hope. That is why, as darkness is falling across a confused, frightened, and benighted land, you have done some things this year. You offered a morning prayer. Good for you. You sent a check to support some leader or candidate. Good for you. You went and volunteered to make contacts and calls. Good for you. You spoke up and spoke out, regardless of the fan mail, family disdain, and other costs. You did something. Will it make a difference? It may not. But it does make a difference, for you, if for no one else. Go and buy your little plot of land.

Explanation

For more than a decade, Music at Marsh Chapel has cultivated our own little plot of land – the rich and fertile soil of the vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach. The endeavor around the recreation of this extraordinary repertoire by our players and singers is its own form activism, faith, tithe, and over time and shared commitment, Jeremiah might even behold restoration.

This year’s cantata series explores four works Bach composed for New Year’s Day. At the highest altitude, these are joyful and celebratory cantatas — at least in the outer movements. To be sure, the inner movements can be counted on to remind us of our sin at some point. Today’s cantata – No. 41 ‘Jesu, nun sei gepreiset’ or Jesus, now be praised, numbers among the great Chorale Cantatas from Bach’s second annual cycle of cantatas in Leipzig. In these remarkable works, the great hymns of the faith – Chorales – are the Alpha and Omega. Today’s cantata sets the outer verses of Johann Herman’s 1593 text exactly in the opening and closing movements, while paraphrasing the inner verse of the chorale in the arias and recitatives within the cantata.

The passing of the old year and the welcoming of the New Year takes on various dimensions for each of us, and for Bach and his congregation, they were reminded that as the Old Year is analogous to the Old Testament, the New Year reveals the hope of resurrection from the New Testament — Law and Grace. And perhaps a more obvious temporal analogy, our mortal life on earth is the old year that passes, and the New Year represents our hopes for the life eternal. For this reason, the central text offers a prayer for mercy and salvation upon the believer’s death. Finally, the bass soloist reminds us that this mortal life is constantly thwarted and threatened by Satan’s works, potentially jeopardizing our hope for life in eternity, the New Year of our soul.

Musically, this cantata is extraordinarily rich in invention and detail from the first measure to the last. For the central aria, our principal cellist Guy Fishman plays a five-stringed cello called a Cello Piccolo with music that seems to depict our earthly toil in sincere and honest strains of remarkable difficulty. And the joyful soprano aria heard immediately following the opening choral movement features dance rhythms and a choir of merry oboes.

However, nothing can sufficiently prepare the listener for the glorious opening movement. The chorale is faithfully rendered in long tones in the soprano part with truly astonishing invention all around. Here Bach gives us bold concertante writing in the latest style (think New Year) with the final two lines set in the old contrapuntal or fugal style, before recasting those lines to the new music. Truly a dialectic of old and new styles transformed by their relation to one another.

As academic communities at schools and colleges throughout the country commence a new year this month, they too engage in this dialectic of the hope of new beginnings forged in the knowledge and wisdom of those who have gone before. And of those who have gone before, few surpass Bach’s capacity to reveal new heights and hopes for our daily strivings and our future together.

Application

You may want and need to shift your perspective, to alter your angle of vision, to see things from even higher ground. Some measure of health or salvation, or mental sanitation may require it.

The Matterhorn is the most beautiful mountain on our planet. Today, the beautiful, tomorrow, the true, the next day, the good. An excellent view of the majestic Alpine peak may be found in Zermatt. If and as memory serves, you can drive to Zermatt—rent an old deux chaveaux—a pristine Alpine village, snow laden in the summer, its shops and hostels wind swept and well kept. The view from Zermatt is fine. You can share it in physical comfort and communal fellowship. The Matterhorn! Just before you.

There is, though, a better view, for which though you will need to shift your perspective, to alter your angel of vision, to change your location, in order to see things from even higher ground. High up to the southeast, in the craggy mountain cliffs, there is, farther up, the small hamlet of Gornergrat. To get up there, if memory serves, you must take an open air, chair by chair, chain rail car, ascending at 45 degrees, up and up, and on up, nearer to the summit, and far closer to your ideal, aspirational vies of beauty. Or truth. Or goodness. Acrophobics need not apply.

-Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music

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

posted in Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, The Bach Experience, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 09.29.2019 at 11:00 am