Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

Isaiah 63: 7-9

Hebrews 2:10-18

Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have learned some things in our neighborhood.

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

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

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

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

I have learned some things about communication.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have learned some things in self-care.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have learned some things about our country.

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

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

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

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

I have learned some practical things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday
December 22

Angel Voice

By Marsh Chapel

Isaiah 7: 10-16

Romans 1:1-7

Matthew 1:18-25

Frontispiece

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

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

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

Matthew

What of Matthew?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meaning

And what of meaning in Matthew?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To save a globe from the sin of climate exhaust

To save a world from the sin of nuclear holocaust

To save a nation from the sin of pride

To save a generation from the sin of greed

To save a church from the sin of self-congratulation

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

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

To save his people from their sin

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

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

Coda

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

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

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

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

Sunday
December 15

The Adventure of Advent

By Marsh Chapel

Isaiah 35:1-10

James 5:7-10

Matthew 11:2-11

Frontispiece

The adventure of Advent is part memory and part hope.

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

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

Adventure in Memory (Matthew)

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

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

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

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

To heal the broken

To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner

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

Adventure in Hope (Isaiah)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Reality: God is reality.

On Safety: God provides minimum protection and maximum support.

On Adversity: We learn most from adversity.

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

On Guilt: Guilt is the last stronghold of pride.

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

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

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

On Love: The religious norm is love

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pray for people by name. This is good.

Exercise each day. This is good.

Read the Scripture in the morning. This is good.

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

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

Visit people in their homes. This is good.

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

Coda

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday
December 8

Lessons & Carols

By Marsh Chapel

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

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

Sunday
December 1

Healing in Sacrament

By Marsh Chapel

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