Sunday
August 11
By Marsh Chapel
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– The Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman
University Chaplain for Episcopal Ministry
By Marsh Chapel
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Communion Meditation: The Food That Endures For Eternal Life
John 6: 24-35
August 4, 2024
Marsh Chapel
Robert Allan Hill
He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity—which it is.
That is religion, and the duck has it.
Donna
Coming to communion you come with a yearning to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.
Among the powers that drew us here to Boston, was the chance to labor in the shadow of Howard Thurman and to preach from the pulpit he once filled. Thurman was the Dean of Marsh Chapel, 1953-1965. This summer, read his autobiography, With Head and Heart. In the work of grieving and departing from one setting, Rochester, and entering another, Boston, I was telephoned by a friend and parishioner. She wanted to set an appointment to talk, before we left Rochester. A saintly woman, Donna Adcock, made an appointment, a good formal appointment, to see me. ‘A chat after church won’t do for this’, she averred. That Wednesday she brought in a poem which she had typed out from an original handscript. Typing is an ancient technology, no longer in use, but some years ago, even, still around. (I do not linger to define keystroke, white out, ribbon, carbon paper, or Smith Corona). ‘This poem Howard Thurman your predecessor at Marsh Chapel recited in a sermon in Kansas City, my home, in 1950’, she said. ‘I was twenty years or so old, 56 years younger than I am today when that sermon changed my life. I spent the next 50 years in ‘full time Christian service’, through the YWCA. I heard something that summer day, in Kansas City, in 1950, that changed my life. I want you to have this poem. You do not need to live in New England to love it, but it does help. The fact that I heard it through Howard Thurman’s beautiful voice adds to it for me”.
The ‘little duck’ is a poem about the freedom of a duck floating on the waves, written in 1947 by Donald Babcock. Here are verses from that poem…
There is a big heaving in the Atlantic
And he is part of it
He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic
Probably he doesn’t know how large the ocean is
And neither do you
But he realizes it
And what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it
He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity—which it is.
That is religion, and the duck has it.
He has made himself part of the boundless, by easing himself into it just where it touches him.
I like the little duck.
He doesn’t know much.
But he has religion.
You come to communion yearning to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called…
Charlie
Coming to communion you come with your lost loved ones in mind and heart. Pause and honor in memory one such. This week it came to mind again, the day one winter we bade farewell to a father in law, Charlie. When we receive the Lord’s Supper we do so with the communion of saints all around us. Like Charlie. Like your beloved in memory. Coming to communion you come with your lost loved ones in mind and heart.
Charlie was a lover.
He loved nature. Garden. Seed time. Harvest. Planting. Weeding. Watering. Like the parables of Jesus. He had a green thumb. Most plants benefitted by the touch of his hand.
He loved work. With his hands. Carpentry. He had some good company in carpentry, if I remember the Bible that they had us memorize at church camp. I think of him on summer days. 14 features of our cottage have known the touch of his hand.
He loved the poor and the other. In his study group. In work with Abraham House, Retired Teachers, and Habitat for Humanity and various churches and causes. He loved others, and I mean others. Of other religions, other places, other races, other backgrounds, other orientations. He loved. Others, and they felt the touch of his hand.
He loved his country. He was not a member of any organized political party. His patriotism, his love of country was not only liberty and justice, but liberty and justice FOR ALL. And with his own hands he lived that.
He loved his church. Its committees, its pastors, its building needs, its study groups, its quirks and oddities. Especially he loved the reading he did with others.
He loved his family, and expressed that love in rocking horses and tools given and evergreens planted and windows replaced and sincere, repeated words of love.
He touched us in the most touching of ways.
He loved God by loving the things of God, the creation of God, the tasks of God, the people of God, the church of God.
He was our ‘dad’ and we learned from him.
We all need models of personal faith, people who can show us by example the dimensions of spirituality we so desire.
We are in time when there seem to be so many things going wrong, off kilter, problems without solutions. But those who came before us had such times, maybe even worse ones, and they came through it all. At communion, in communion with them, with Charlie and the Charlies of your life, we gain some strength.
Congregation
You come to communion yearning to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called. This is especially and keenly true this morning at Marsh Chapel:
*In the observation of two Sacraments.
*In the Baptism today. Beautiful child, part of the community, connected to this University, and to the Chapel, and to the choir, and to the life and leadership of the University, and to the congregation, the congregation of Marsh Chapel.
*In community. Come Sunday. Here is where life engages life, and heart, heart. Where you can learn a name. Where you can hear a voice. Where you can make a friend. Where you can share a need. Where you can listen to another’s heart. Where you can know and be known, from Baptism, through Eucharist, all the way to that last morning, and Unction. Where one receives the food that endures for eternal life. Where one may offer another a path toward where both can find bread.
*In lighthearted joy and a touch of humor. Hear voices touch home, like Dr. Amerson’s humorous reference to his long ago parishioner, who said, ‘You know, every sermon is better than your next one.’ She meant better than your last one, but said better than your next one. We will have to check in with Dr Freud about that Freudian slip. (It reminds me of Soren Hessler on Palm Sunday). That touch of humor happens in community.
*In the walk up the sawdust trail, down the center aisle, in just a few minutes.
Charlayne
Ten years ago we hosted the memorial service for Dr. Ken Edelin, a medical doctor graduated from BU and one of early, pioneering physicians affirming women, women’s rights, women’s rights to reproductive health care, women’s rights when needed to surgical abortion. Cecile Richards, Jeh Johnson and others spoke in eulogy. Marsh Chapel was full. At one point we asked the congregation to recite together the 23 Psalm. Family and friends in the first pew did so. Colleagues and physicians across the nave did so. Leaders of national organizations near and far did so. In the balcony, twenty white coated medical students together did so. Either at that point or another in the service they stood silently together, to honor the life and faith of the deceased. That day I met a man, a friend and the personal physician of Arthur Ashe, whose life, prowess, faithfulness and service have always so inspired me. Read again this summer his autobiography, Days of Grace. “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
In the collation following the service, Charlayne Hunter Gault introduced herself. Some will remember her, as we did, from her many and fine contributions to the News Hour, with Jim Lehrer. She said, ‘I need to talk to you later about the 23 Psalm’. I was so pleased to meet her, and then so worried that I had somehow offended her, that the collation time passed anxiously. It needn’t have done. She wanted to recall a memory. A memory of her younger self. At 18. One of two African Americans first to integrate the University of Georgia. The daughter of a minister. Alone in a big place, a strange place, a new place. Walking home the third night, there were taunts and threats. The University that day had suggested she might want to go home, at least for a while. She went into her room. She closed the door. She turned out the lights. And she waited, until quiet came. And then—it was the only thing that came to her mind—the prayer of David in Psalm 23 came to her. And she spoke the psalm, alone, afraid, uncertain, at night. ‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord, forever.’
To lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, like that little duck bouncing along on the waves of the Atlantic…
He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity—which it is.
That is religion, and the duck has it.
The Lord is my shepherd…
Sunday
July 28
By Marsh Chapel
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- The Reverend Andrew Kimble
Director of Online Lifelong Learning
Associate Director of Alumni & Donor Relations Associate
Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Boston University School of Theology
Sunday
July 21
By Marsh Chapel
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-
- The Reverend Dr. Philip Amerson
President Emeritus Garrett–Evangelical Theological Seminary Evanston, Illinois
Sunday
July 14
By Marsh Chapel
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- Jonathan Byung Hoon Lee, MDiv
Associate Chaplain for Student Outreach
Sunday
July 7
By Marsh Chapel
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The text of this sermon is not available at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.
- The Rev. Dr. Jessica Chicka
University Chaplain for International Students
Sunday
June 30
By Marsh Chapel
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FOR THINE IS…THE POWER
Marsh Chapel, Boston University
June 30, 2024
The four gospels that bear witness to Jesus were clearly compiled by early Christians. We know that because, like Christians today, they disagree with each other. Some bless the poor in spirit. Others burden the faint of heart. A miracle or parable in one is not in others.
The conflicts among the four are confusing. Matthew suggests Jesus fulfills old promises. John suggests he issues new commands. Matthew pictures Jesus seated on a mountain preaching about rewards in heaven. Luke has him standing on a level place, condemning the rich on earth.[1] His seven last words on the cross are scattered across all four reports of his crucifixion.
Sometimes the gospels say Jesus is a lawgiver like Moses, a prophet like Elijah, or a powerhouse named David.
Christians have always found David appealing. He is an icon of beauty that Michelangelo found in marble and a poet of comfort in scores of psalms. Genealogies in two gospels say that Jesus descended from David. Their nativity narratives say he was born in the city of David.[2] And one account of his Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem says he was hailed as “the son of David.”[3]
Just as the gospels link Jesus to David, so do we every time we offer The Lord’s Prayer. We commonly call it “the prayer that Jesus taught us.” But what we recite,[4] often in King James’ English, is only in part a prayer that Jesus gave his disciples. Its closing words, in which we say, “Thine is the…power,” are actually from a prayer that David offered at the end of his reign.[5]
Bible scholar Amy-Jill Levine calls David a “rock star.”[6] He exuded power. He had been a celebrated warrior since he downed Goliath with a slingshot and five smooth stones.[7] He was praised with singing and dancing for killing ten times more of the enemy than his predecessor had slain.[8] He defeated external threats and crushed internal rebellions. And he put two nations, Israel and Judah, together as one kingdom, which he led to greatness for more than thirty years.
Yet he could be conniving and cruel. He allegedly assassinated two rivals to get to the throne.[9] As king, he often abused power, “taking ill advantage of his charisma,”[10] according to one critic. When he committed adultery with Bathsheba, he suppressed the truth by having her husband murdered.[11] And he avoided accountability for a mistake that killed 70,000 Israelites.[12]
We can connect Jesus and David as persons of power. But it is vital not to confuse them.
Yet, in the history of the church, we have done just that. Our crusades killed Muslims. Our theologians disparaged Jews. Our preachers justified slavery. Our errors let one man[13] consider it pro-life to enter a church and kill a health care practitioner who performed abortions. We confused power with domination. We abused power in God’s name.
Some years ago, my wife Naomi and I had an opportunity to visit churches and church leaders in Peru. We were welcomed with great hospitality that included a dinner hosted by the Methodists’ Bishop and their Lay Leader, who introduced us to the Peruvian wine called pisco. We attended a Sunday school class and worshiped at a storefront Methodist Church in Lima.
While we were in the capital, we went to the Museum of the Inquisition, where we saw artifacts and archival evidence that the church had abused power for 250 years. We saw proof that the church tortured and executed people. We saw weapons with which the church compelled confessions.
But we need not travel to a distant past or place to know how we have abused power in the name of God. Look at Christian history lately and locally. For fifty years, United Methodism abused power with laws that lasted until the General Conference repealed them last month.
We said which people could sing music in the chancel but not celebrate marriage in the sanctuary. We specified which people could place money in the plate but not preach messages in the pulpit. We defined who could play instruments in worship but never be instruments of grace in worship by presiding at Holy Communion. We decided who may be called to preach God’s word, administer God’s sacraments, and order God’s church, based on misunderstanding God’s gift of sexuality. The exclusionary laws are gone.
But history shows it may be a while before we practice fully inclusionary lives. In the middle of the 20thcentury, Methodists agreed to ordain women as full clergy members, but many congregations still resist having a woman as a pastor-in-charge. In the late 20th century, United Methodists broke the constitutional system that segregated the church by race. But we are still a racially segregated denomination when we gather Sunday mornings in separate sanctuaries. We are a living legacy of having abused power.
And that makes many of us reluctant to use Jesus’ gifts of power. The mystifying miracles in Mark’s gospel this morning have a message for us. Use the power.
There are two interlocking miracle stories in Mark. We could try to explain them. But rather than view the text as a puzzle to solve, we can read it as a story of two desperate people who desire access to Jesus, defy barriers in the way, and demand that he deliver them from despair. One is a man named Jairus, the prestigious leader of the synagogue with wealth enough to afford servants. He has a dying daughter. The other is a woman without a name or a position. She is a poor social outcast, with an ailment that classed her as unclean and that was so expensive to treat, she had exhausted all her of assets unsuccessfully seeking a cure.
His rank and status provided him access to everything. Her rank and status amounted to nothing. Both expected Jesus to use his power. Their stories in Mark are invitations to trust God’s grace and to demand its powerful touch.
They show that the power of Jesus breaches boundaries in our social structures, economic conditions, gender identities, disabling inequities, and religious laws. They show that the power of Jesus can be used for those near him and far from him. They show that power can be used to overcome private plights and public perils.
During our trip to Peru, we stayed in the city of Lima and also the Inca capital in Cuzco on our way to Machu Pichu. We visited a village in Lomas de Carabayllo, where thousands of people live with no running water. We met a woman who is custodian of a church that has no roof over the worshipers’ heads, no floor but the soil under their feet, and no water except what a truck brings once a week to fill a tank. She sprinkles the precious water on the ground to settle the dust before worshipers begin to dance, and she pours some of it into a baptismal font for believers to touch.
She asked us to visit a family with an ailing child on the hill. They showed us power, not the kind that a dominant force imposes on others but the kind that people share for the mutual benefit of each other. They asked us to pray for the girl. We were migrants in their midst. But they believed the power of God could use us.
Our faith was renewed by a family on a far hill, by a woman who waits weekly for a water truck, and by people determined to access the power of God who defeats disease, deals with death, and delivers the powerless.
Today, you and I gather in a city with privilege and power, with a recent athletic championship, with a lasting legacy in intellectual achievements, and with a history of ethnic strife and racial disharmony. Qe gather in the chapel of a university whose theological school connects to a church that has abused power. Yet it is a school that has educated people to use non-violence as power in the name of the Lord Jesus for changing the social order.
Our predecessors in faith did abuse power. But that should not make us fear to use power.
When Methodists established an institutional church in North America in the late 18th century, one of the principles to which we committed ourselves was that enslavement was evil. And one of the powers we exercised was an abolitionist discipline to overcome slavery. General Conference directed and Bishops demanded that Methodist preachers regularly deliver sermons against enslavement, that Methodists who owned slaves had to cease ownership or had to cease being Methodists, and that Methodists were to petition their governments wherever slavery was legal to change the law and to abolish it forever. We built that into our discipline across the land.
That was a faithful use of power in 1800. However, we chose to abandon it just three decades later. In 1836, the Bishops told delegates to the General Conference there was nothing Methodists could do about slavery. The conference chose to stop using power to abolish slavery. Abolitionists who held positions of leadership in the church were removed from office.
That was not an abuse of power. It was a failure to use power. We chose not to use the power of Jesus to stop treating the enslaved as perpetual property.[14]
We chose not to use power to deliver children of God from bondage.
Then, after a schism split the church and a Civil War split the nation, we chose not to stop lynching and not to stop Ku Klux Klan members from becoming United States Senators or Methodist Bishops. We had access to power. We did not use it.
When the Methodists in northern and southern churches reunited in 1939, we decided not to use power to end racial segregation. Instead, we established six segregated jurisdictions in The Methodist Church. We made a constitutional decision that we would not use power to deliver the land from white supremacy or racial animosity. Well, it is time to use power again.
It may or may not mean a miracle. But it certainly is our mission. The United Methodist Church, after an era of abusing power over sexuality in the church, must now must now begin using power publicly in other ways—in this church, in this nation, in this presidential election year.
One candidate has martialed a political party and about half of the American people to abuse power over justice systems, health care options, and education curricula. States are imposing their versions of the Bible on children in public schools.
We have to choose whether to use power to prevent what will come if libraries are told what books they can lend, if teachers are told what they can teach, or if narrowly exclusive views of Christian doctrine about the beginning of life will be the only view allowed to have a life.
There are many ways to use power. In May of 1980, when tyrants imposed martial law in South Korea, a photojournalist and devout Roman Catholic was attending Mass when he heard trouble in the streets. He saw people being tear-gassed, beaten, and shot by authorities. He took photos, put them in unmarked envelopes, smuggled them to journalists outside South Korea, and enabled the photos to be seen across the world.
Keeping his identity secret, he stayed alive and took more photos to expose the truth. That led to the end of tyranny in South Korea.
A decade later, he was finally identified when the Roman Catholic Church honored Na Kyung Taek for his courage. The UN compiled his 2,000 photos as a “Memory of the World.” Last week, Mr. Na, who is now 75, stood in front of a wall of his pictures and said, “I just did what little I could.”[15] What he did was use power faithfully. It was enough to change the world.
From now to November, The United Methodist Church and others in America will choose whether our leaders, bishops, and pastors will faithfully use power in Jesus’ name to tell the truth in an election year. The church will choose whether to overcome someone who praises public school displays of Commandments that he has repeatedly and unrepentantly broken. The church will choose whether to use power to expose the falsehoods he promotes and the fear he provokes.
We must never again abuse power.
But we do have to use it.
William B. Lawrence
[1] See the texts in Matthew 1:22, 2:17, and 5:12; John 13:34; and Luke 6:23-24.
[2] Luke 2:4
[3] Matthew 21:9
[4] M. Eugene Boring, “Matthew,” The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon, 2015) VII, p. 133
[5] I Chronicles 29:11
[6] Douglas A. Knight and Amy Jill-Levine, The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us (New York: Harper Collins, 2011), page 333.
[7] I Samuel 17:40
[8] I Samuel 18.7
[9] II Samuel 3:6-39, 4:1-12. But David may have been exonerated of these acts. See Bruce Birch, “II Samuel,” The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon, 2015) II, p. 495
[10] Knight and Levine, op. cit., page 335.
[11] II Samuel 11:1-27
[12] II Samuel 24
[13] On May 31, 2009, Scott Roeder killed Dr. George Tiller, while he was serving as an usher at church.
[14] William B. Lawrence, When the Church Woke (Eugene OR: Cascade, Wipf and Stock, 2022), pp. 47, 64-67
[15] Choe Sang-Hun, “Global Profile: Na Kyung Taek,” The New York Times, June 22, 2024, p. A4.
Sunday
June 23
By Marsh Chapel
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When I am out of funds and sorts
And life is all in snarls,
I quit New York and travel east
To Boston on the Charles.
There’s something in the Boston scene
So innocent, so tranquil,
It takes and holds my interest
The same as any bank will.
For Boston’s not a capital,
And Boston’s not a place;
Rather I think that Boston is
A sort of state of grace.
(EB White)
We need refreshment and a reminder of a state of grace, a natural grace. For the winds are blowing. The winds are blowing today. And in three words our Lord Jesus Christ, riding the waves of time and storm, guides us home. In the command to go. In the announcement of peace. In the call to faith. Go! Peace! Faith!
We return again to Mark 4, once more to the lake, in the happy phrase of E B White’s little story of that title. Once more to the lake. Again, we find ourselves out on the water with the wind blowing. Again, we find ourselves on the great lake, so like a great lake in shape, in depth, in length, here Tiberias, here the Sea of Galilee, a fresh water glory, a fresh water gem.
The Lord Jesus Christ is asleep in the stern, not stern, but in the stern, sound asleep. Around him the wind is blowing… as the winds are blowing around us today. The winds are blowing in your life and mine. A wind may be blowing through your family, a steady hard breeze of change, of illness, or of loss. A wind may be blowing through your church family, your community of faith, a steady hard breeze of change, post Covid, with aging, at a time of decline of respect for any and all religion. (And hammering commandment lists on public school walls is surely no substitute for loving, excellent Sunday school teaching). A wind may be blowing through your precious, honored institutions—government, school, University, business, all. A wind may be blowing through your denomination, a steady hard breeze of decline, of disorder, of demise. A wind may be blowing—it surely is—in and through your culture, a steady hard breeze of loss of memory, of loss of morality, of loss of honesty, of loss of character, of loss of the true and the good and the beautiful.
So, again, we find ourselves out on the water with the wind blowing. Again, we find ourselves on the great lake, so like a great lake in shape, in depth, in length, here Tiberias, here the Sea of Galilee, a fresh water glory, a fresh water gem. But when the wind blows? We need the voice of the Lord to command, to announce, to call. Once more to the lake, as E B White put it in his old story title, once more to the lake.
We, you and I, you and all, will need some faith to go on, the announcement of faith to rely on, the call to faith to count on, in 2024. Any clear look to the future, to the next sixth months say, abounds with a need for faith, a need for faith, a need for faith. So Jesus in today’s Gospel speaks to us in three words.
First, says the Lord, come eventide, ‘let us go, let us go across, let us go across to the other side’. Once more. We have been on the lake, and now are back. And the wind is blowing. Hard. You have an unforeseen illness. You have a congregation awaiting growth. You have an institution in the throws of inevitable but challenging change. You have a beloved, now freed but weakened religious denomination, facing hard financial and personnel choices. You have a country and a culture that does not seem to want to face or honor the difference between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood, between service and self-service, between greed and good, between morality and immorality, between personal conviction and criminal conviction. The wind is blowing! You did not cause it, you cannot control it, and you cannot cure it. But just here, it may be, the dominical word, read and spoken and heard today, may be your safe harbor, your port of entry, your crossing to safety on the other side. Crossing to safety…hm…Wallace Stegner’s exquisite novel of that name…Robert Frost’s poem of that theme…hm That is, the next six months are going to come and go, one way or another, like a hard lake wind. We can do our part, and row as hard as we can, and aim for a safe harbor. As we go, it will take some faith, it will take some faith.
EB White you remember wrote Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan and other children’s books. He also, along with his Cornell Professor Dr. Strunk wrote the unsurpassed book on writing, ‘Elements of Style’, including the marvelous three-word admonishment, ‘omit needless words’. Omit needless words! As true for preaching, one must confess, as writing of any sort. White also wrote about skating in Boston on the frog pond (a habit we continue on February 2 each year, and did so this winter, with the fruitful invitational support of our colleague and chaplain for student outreach Mr. Lee). With his uncle White left his shoes on a bench, for an hour of skating. He returned to find his shoes gone, and had to limp up Beacon Hill on the tips of his skates. But his uncle said, ‘whoever took them needed them a lot more than you’, and White remembered. Somehow, we have to find a way to remind ourselves and to teach another generation about generosity of spirit, and we are long way from the shoreline on that quest. Somehow, we have to find a way to remind ourselves and to teach another generation about generosity of spirit, and we are long way from the shoreline on that quest.
Second, says the Lord, and now comes the second word, the second dominical utterance: ‘peace, be still’. Jesus has been asleep in the stern, comforted by cushions—a nice touch, and a good nautical practice to have nice cushions in your boat—and he has no worries, no cares, no furrowed brow. He awakes and commands. And the wind ceases! For he says, ‘Peace. Be Still’. And all is still. Once more to the Galilean lake we come, today, to receive a gift of peace, of stillness, of inner calm, both individual and communal. Whence this story, what its origin, what its history, what its historical grounding—who can say? Not I for sure. It may have arisen amid first century persecution of the nascent church. But the main point in the Scripture is crystal clear. The Lord Jesus Christ offers, brings and confers peace. The wind is blowing! Yet, right in the heart of it, right in the teeth of the gale—a stillness, a peace, a quiet, a quiet heart. With all the storming micro bursts of this season, we may well covet such peace. ‘Breathe through the pulses of desire thy coolness and thy balm’, your Boston poet wrote. I wonder…Upon this summer Sunday, may we, for a moment, receive a gift of peace, hold onto a sense of peace, accept the blessing of peace? EB White said of his marvelous writing, ‘All I have written is a love for life’. Peace. Peace. Peace. Be Still. Be Still. Be Still.
In a way, this is what the Apostle to the Gentiles conferred upon the Corinthians, a wayward lot were they for sure. It is in and within each of our sermons in the summer series, ‘A Look to the Future’. And it has been at least in the background of the sermonic work each summer and our work for this summer: the Upper New York Conference of the United Methodist Church, May 30-31; Asbury First United Methodist Church, June 1-2; Union Chapel, NH, July 21; and sermons for Marsh Chapel on June 23, August 4, and August 25.
As Paul wrote: We are putting no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance (and he gives examples)…by purity (and he gives examples)… as having nothing, and yet possessing everything. We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections…open wide your hearts also. His letter echoes Jesus announcement of peace.
Yet it is the third moment of speech which Jesus confers in the midst of the storm which includes or builds upon the others, and carries in full the Gospel, the state of grace, for this day. The Lord calls us, calls all, to faith. Faith as contrasted with fear. Faith, daily faith, by which the buffeting winds and serious frightening storms—and they are serious and they are frightening—are faced down. We my friends are going to need some faith, hour by hour, this year. In season and out, faith. In failure as well as success, faith. In defeat, should and as defeat should come, as well and more so than in success. This is why the Corinthians passage fits so well with the Gospel. Life includes trouble, mistake and failure. In and through these, the gift of faith brings perseverance. When it gets dark enough, you can indeed see the stars.
We may today return, once more to the lake. God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. The faith of Jesus Christ and the freedom of Jesus Christ we celebrate today. Our forebears were disinclined to leave the pursuit of freedom to others. They lived with faith that the center could hold. They seized freedom in their own hands and by their own lives. They did not wait on others. They did not pause to seek a secret blessing. They did not wait until some ethereal sign emerged. They did not expect some magic insight. They preferred deliverance to diffidence. Real love means taking historical responsibility.
In earshot of our Lord’s teaching, there awaits us every Lord’s day a personal question: as a Christian person, what are you going to do to continue to expand the circle of freedom, spirit, life and love in our time? Speaking of lakes, with Hiawatha, where is your tribal council to create? With Harriet Tubman, where is your slavery to escape? With Frederick Douglass, where is your North Star to publish? With the Shakers, where is your libertinism to avoid? With all, where is your hope to share?
As one wrote long ago, along another shoreline: “This is what one thirsts for, I realize, after the smallness of the day, of work, of details, of intimacy – even of communication, one thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, pouring into one like a fresh tide…I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God.”
So too, may it be for us, here in Boston on Commonwealth Avenue, and with friends around the world…
When I am out of funds and sorts
And life is all in snarls,
I quit New York and travel east
To Boston on the Charles.
There’s something in the Boston scene
So innocent, so tranquil,
It takes and holds my interest
The same as any bank will.
For Boston’s not a capital,
And Boston’s not a place;
Rather I think that Boston is
A sort of state of grace.
Sunday
June 16
By Marsh Chapel
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The text of this sermon is not available at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.
-William Cordts, CAS’07, STH’11
Sunday Bible Study Leader, Marsh Chapel
Sunday
June 9
By Marsh Chapel
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The text of this sermon is not available at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.
-The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Yoost, Senior Director of Religious Life and Pastoral Care
Lakeside Chautauqua, Lakeside, Ohio
Marsh Chapel Sunday ServicesNovember 6, 2008