Sunday
October 29

The Horizon of Love

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 22: 34-46 

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One longs for a more excellent way, as did Shakespeare 

Here you might catch a glimpse of what love can be, neighbor to neighbor, what loving kindness, chivalry, honor, care can be.  We still teach Shakespeare at Boston University: 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 

Admit impediments.  Love is not love 

Which alters when it alteration finds, 

Or bends with the remover to remove: 

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, 

That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 

It is the star to every wandering bark, 

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. 

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 

Within his bending sickle’s compass come; 

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 

But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 

If this be error, and upon me prov’d, 

I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d 

 

One longs for a more excellent way, as did Matthew. 

 St. Matthew’s fiercest passion, is patently and transparently on display this morning.  Matthew holds a very high view of the church, far higher than we expect, far higher than yours and mine, one  could add. For Matthew, the church is empowered: with the means of lasting forgiveness with a mind for sound ethics, and especially with the real presence of Christ. 

 Matthew trusts this risen Christ and this voice of the risen Christ to free him to follow his bliss, to succumb to his passion. And what is Matthew’s passion? What passion pulses through the parchment of this popular gospel? What force of energy is on the “kiviev” on the lookout, on the wing, hanging ten, parachuting in, ready to emerge here today? It is the passion of an evangelist who finds every blessed possible way to connect Jewish Jesus with a Greek world. It’s the passion of an evangelist who enlists an old missionary teaching tract (“Q”) to spread inspiration, truth, and joy. It is the passion of an evangelist who portrays your Savior among pagans, amid harlots, appended to the cross, about the resurrection work of compassion. It is the passion of an evangelist who sums up his Gospel this way: “Go make of all disciples”. Here is this autumn’s Gospel: the point of St Matthew the blessed evangelist is that he is an evangelist. The whole point of the gospel of St Matthew the evangelist is that he is an evangelist. Matthew’s passion? Seeking the lost! Expanding the communion of saints, the circle of divine love! 

One longs for a more excellent way, as does Marilynne Robinson… 

She concludes an essay this week with a rumination on children, on work, on love, on daydreams, and on the liberal and liberating purposes of education.  In the last year, our evening with Robinson in April represents our ministry to the country as a whole, while our three days at McGill as University Lecturer last October represent our ministry with the whole globe as a whole just as our Baccalaureate address here in Marsh Chapel in May represents our ministry with BU near and far, on campus and with alumni, far and near.  Our worship service is for the country, for the globe and for the university, as well as for those, you and you all, those sturdy souls who by decision, discipline and faith come here, present each Sunday in this sacred, beautiful chapel. What love you and all bring to us and others! What love you all express by prayers, presence, gifts and service. What love you all long for and lean toward and hope to know, by shadow in this lifetime and by sunshine in the next life. God love you, as you work toward the horizon of love.  

One longs for a more excellent way, as does the language and body language of every wedding… 

In mid-March of 2020 COVID hit, hard. A time of sheer mendacity, when one leader intoned, ‘it will be over by Easter’. But no. Suddenly, in all directions, all was cancelled.  All manner of gathering was cancelled.  Group, assemblies, meetings, classes, worship, funerals, and weddings and all.  We have not fully recovered from this sudden shut down, not three and half years later. We are not fully ourselves, at least not yet, not conversationally human, not humanly available, not ardently and easily committed to gathering, to assembly, to connection, to ordered public worship.  But healing is coming, and more along the way.  The Covid onset, among other things,  interrupted weddings. 

One was scheduled for early March, 2020.  But the word, the word ‘no’ came down, necessarily so.  So, a beautiful couple, very understanding and gracious, cancelled their wedding:  no service with 300 present, no reception with 300 at table, no 300 photographs in a wedding album, no guest book, no family together.  And there were to be no exceptions, and there were none, all through 2020 and 2021.  The next decanal pronouncement of marriage in the Chapel occurred on May 14, 2022, more than two years later. 

Now, of a sudden, and this is part of the recovery from Covid, our weddings, and funerals, here at Marsh Chapel, are steadily moving back to more regular levels.  We will have had six weddings this fall at Marsh since Labor Day.  For this we are thankful, thankful for the gathering, the assembly, the community, the conversation, the public worship.  Thankful for the human being, involved, the being human therein.  

It happened in 2020 that a few days later the cancelled wedding couple placed a call to the Dean of the Chapel, saying:  This is probably not possible, but could we come, just us two, and stand on the far ends of the communion rail, double masked, and ask you, double masked, standing behind the altar, to marry us?  We recognize that this probably cannot happen, but we would love to have you do so. 

Well.  The Dean of the Chapel had some moral reasoning to do.  Hm. OK.  Bride at one wall, Groom at the other, Dean at the third.  OK.  On March 17, 2020, they appeared alone, this handsome couple, fully attired, full dark tuxedo and lapel flower, full white gown with cape and and all, one under one stained glass window and one under the other.  The service was solemnized in short order and abbreviated order of worship, all three double masked.  The traditional ‘you may kiss the bride’ was not included and would have to wait until they arrived at their isolated honeymoon cabin alone in New Hampshire, the car packed with foodstuffs for the journey up, the days of honeymoon, and the journey home.  I pronounce that they are husband and wife together.  

One longs for a more excellent way, as did Martin Luther… 

In 1520, Luther published three fundamental documents in that cornucopia year, which, to some measure, encompass the broad range of Luther’s theological perspective. Together these three ‘made the breach with Rome irreparable, and established the foundations of what would eventually become a new church’ (with thanks to Dr. Lyndal Roper, now and later, 133).  To the Christian Nobility of the Church. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church.  The freedom of the Christian person.  They each and all, along with his opening hymn this morning, sing of love in the fierce presence of tragedy, armed conflict, hatred and death.  (Those hunting for a sermon on Christian, pacifism and just war both, are referred to the sermon from this pulpit February 12, of this year, “With Malice Toward None”, and including historic teachings regarding response and proportionality). 

We should remember that Luther’s reformation coincided with the emergence of the printing press. 4,000 copies of Nobility were sold as soon as they came off the press, August 1520. It was addressed in German to lay people, and argued that since the church itself had been unable to reform itself, it fell to the laity to do so. The reform promoted here is heavily weighted on financial reform. Luther charged the church with avarice, and charged the nobility with the task of addressing that avarice, something the nobles had every interest in doing.  Most striking, to our ears, is the full sympathy Luther has for love, for human love, for priests and religious who have fallen in love and fallen into another’s arms. Putting them together and forbidding sex ‘like putting straw and fire together, and forbidding them to smoke or burn’ (Roper, 150). Only the nobility, only the lay princes, said Luther, had the power to do all this, and he charged them to do it. Sola Gratia!  Sola Scriptura!  Sola Fide! 

For his trouble, Luther was excommunicated in December of 1520. 

One longs for a more excellent way, as did MLK… 

“Agape (LOVE) is more than romantic love, agape is more than friendship.  Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive, good will to all men.  It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return….   When one rises to love on this level, he loves men not because he likes them, not because their ways appeal to him, but he loves every man because God loves him.  And he rises to the point of loving the person who does an evil deed while hating the deed that the person does.  I think this is what Jesus meant when he said ‘love your enemies.’  I’m very happy that he didn’t say like your enemies, because it is pretty difficult to like some people.  Like is sentimental, and it is pretty difficult to like someone bombing your home; it is pretty difficult to like somebody threatening your children; it is difficult to like congressmen who spend all of their time trying to defeat civil rights.  But Jesus says love them, and love is greater than like.”[i]     

‘We must reconnect to King’s passionate belief that human dignity is indivisible:  it is not possible to enjoy it unless it is equally available to all’ (OToole, NYRB 11/23) 

Jesus is our beacon, not our boundary.  Love is our beacon, not our boundary. 

One longs for a more excellent way—you and II do—especially in the midst of mayhem and troubles in the middle east and in neighboring Maine, where your former chaplain Brittany Longsdorf is hard at work as the chaplain at Bates College in Lewiston… 

Let us keep our eyes on the prize, and look for that one day, in the fullness of time, when love will reign. 

One day when there will open space, luxurious freedom for all manner of difference, all kinds of kinds.  

One day, as the Old Testament says, when the lion will lie down with the lamb. 

One day, as the New Testament says, when there will be no crying anymore, nor grief anymore, nor tears, nor shall hurt any or destroy. 

One day…and why not start here, and why not begin now?…there will be a real community of gracious love. 

The darkness shall turn to the dawning and the dawning to noonday bright and Christ’s great kingdom shall come on earth, the kingdom of love and light. 

At least let it be known that here, at Marsh Chapel, with us, it has got to be love all the way, love all the way, love all the way.  As the Scripture guides, may we walk daily. toward the horizon of love, even to perfection in it.  As Mr. Wesley said, ‘if you are not going on to perfection, just what are you going on to?’ 

‘And I will show you a still more excellent way’.  A more excellent way… 

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 

And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 

If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 

It is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 

it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 

For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; 

but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. 

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. 

So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love, the horizon of love 

 

Sunday
October 22

The Promise of Hope

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 22:15–22

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What a friend we have in Paul! 

Whose mighty voice has rolled down through the ages bringing us the good news in all its stark simplicity:  Christ the Lord is Risen! 

Raised in Tarsus, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, of the Tribe of Benjamin, as to the law a Pharisee, a defender of the traditions of the elders—and so a persecutor of the church. 

Who rode to Damascus and on the way was blinded and there heard a voice saying: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” 

Who in that blinding encounter with the Risen Lord, gave himself up, pronounced a sort of death sentence over himself, and so died with Christ and walked henceforth in newness of life. 

Who believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead and so lived moment by moment thinking, “Who knows what will happen next?” 

Who cared for those first few Christians, and worried about them, and grew angry with them, for they so easily lost this vision:  that since God had raised Jesus from the dead, who knew what would happen next? 

Who challenged the Thessalonians: “This is the will of God, your sanctification”.   He taught them about death. 

Who challenged the Galatians: “Be not deceived, God is not mocked.”  He taught them about the law. 

Who challenged the Philippians: “Let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel”.  He taught them about service. 

Who challenged the Romans: “Be ye not conformed but be ye transformed by the renewal of your minds.”  He taught them about the spirit. 

Who challenged the Corinthians: “Be reconciled.  The form of this world is passing away”.  He taught them about culture. 

Who challenged Philemon: “May your goodness not be by compulsion but of your own free will”.  He taught him about power. 

Whose mighty voice speaks to us today, in these verses from 1 Thessalonians 1 (the oldest chapter in the New Testament, from 50ad) ever answering the question of what we should do by saying something, first, about what God has done.  Our faith springs not from ourselves but from God, the Giver of both life and faith. 

Paul reminds us that “the form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7).  What else can we expect from a God who raises crucified Messiahs?  Who knows what will happen next? The future is as open as we, in faith, will allow it to be. 

We may recognize in Paul a form of thought that differs utterly from our own.  If Paul did retain some of his formative religious worldview, the part he closely retained here was his inherited apocalyptic eschatology.   The resurrection must be, he reasoned, the beginning of the end.  Hence, preaches Paul, the form of this world is passing away. 

Paul’s worldview, his apocalyptic eschatology, is not our worldview.  Paul’s world, though, is very much ours too.  So, this morning, we shall need to imagine, to dream, and to interpret these verses in a new way, for a new time, as did our forebears like Martin Luther, Elie Wiesel, Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King, Jr., as have 6 Marsh Chapel Deans, as did 10 Boston University Presidents plus our current interim President, as did those of us in pulpits, not so long ago, in the winter of 1991, and in the spring of 2003. 

No, we may not share Paul’s worldview, but we share his world.  So, we may benefit from his friendship, and practice his faith.   What a friend we have in Paul!  He befriends us by bequeathing us two kinds of hope.  And hope we do need, in a time like ours, in an autumn like ours, of strife, warfare, and of fear.  Today, that is, today. 

In the Gospel of Matthew 22, Jesus meets us between Caesar and God.  He is ensnared, or nearly so, in a trap set between conservative Herodians and liberal Zealots. Between conservatives and liberals.  Hmm. In good rabbinic fashion, he responds to a question with a question.  Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, this little bitty coin, and render to God what is God’s, your very life. 

We are not alone in history to have suffered strife. As Christian people, trying by day and week to walk by faith not by sight, we know something of the difficulty here, and something more perhaps than we knew a month ago today.  Sometimes you just have to learn things the hard way.  The preacher is not free just to read the Bible and not the newspaper, nor free to preach without reference to civil society, culture, and the social conditions of life which have pervasive, profound impact and influence on the baptized and unbaptized alike. 

Let us hold and finger the coin of Caesar as we are touched by the finger of God.  Let us take stock. 

I saw this again midweek in our student union, as undergraduates undertook to underwrite ‘trick or treat for UNICEF, that creative confluence of culture and care, of politics and religion, given birth decades ago, when some of us first set out, costumed and eager, a bag for candy in hand and a box for coins in another. 

In this time of middle eastern mayhem, not unlike, by this preacher’s memory, the winter of 1991 and following, or the spring of 2003 and following, we may want to pause and take stock.  For the Matthean dilemma, liberal and conservative, and its questions, we may want to pause.  For those more on the left, a question today, and be careful how you answer, will be, first, and last, do you believe and affirm that Israel (in the Middle East, as a Jewish democracy) has and must have a right to exist.  Then follow self-defense, proportionate response, ‘meeting violence with patient justice’. For those more on the right, the question, and be careful how you answer, will be first, and last, do you believe God is Lord of all life, all human life, not narrowly divine only to one perspective, one tradition, one religion, one sacred book?  Then it follows that the killing of innocent children from one tradition will do nothing to avenge the slaughter of innocent children from another. From answers to both questions, there flow manifold consequences.  With President Biden, personally, I answer yes to both.  

Let us remember lessons from the past. In summer 2017, at the Chautauqua Institution, we had the pleasure of learning from, dining with, and speaking to Stella Rimington, the former head of British Intelligence, MI 5 (1992-1996).  She was the first woman to lead that agency.  A television drama was produced about her, starring Judi Dench.  She was bristling and candid regarding then current global perils.  She proffered no immediate or ready recommendation for resolution to then current dangers. She affirmed no optimism about the US President, at the time. Sharply, frankly, and bluntly she admitted the US and British intelligence failures that led to the tragedy of Iraq, the mistaken misinformation about weapons of mass destruction.  She worried extensively in rumination about the internet, about the technology controlling so much about us.  That is, she offered no encouragement, no bright forecast for the near-term global future.  To conclude, she said, as you would expect, ‘that nonetheless the best we can do is to ‘keep calm and carry on’. 

Let us hold and finger the coin of Caesar as we are touched by the finger of God.  Let us take stock. 

No, we may not share Paul’s worldview, but we share his world.   So, we may benefit from his friendship, and practice his faith.   What a friend we have in Paul!  He befriends us by bequeathing us two kinds of hope.  And hope we do need, in a time of terror and tragedy.  Let us survey our current tragedy, but let us also convey our lasting hope.  

Two shades of hope abide.  “Hope has two beautiful daughters: anger and courage” (Augustine).  One realized.  One unrealized.  One for today and one for tomorrow.  One from Bultmann, and one from Niebuhr. 

Here is one shade of hope… 

You can in faith ‘face the world free from the world’, with a righteous and realized indignation, tempered with full humility. Even a kind of anger, if tempered with humility. That daily form of hope is yours by decision, by choice, through a commitment to live by the faith of Christ. 

We may rely not on ourselves alone, but upon God who raises the dead. 

We may face the world, free from the world. 

We may lean into the future, free of the burden of past worry. 

We can live on tip toe. 

We can compose every day with brilliance as if it were our last, which, in a way, each one is. 

The person of faith, who overhears the distress down deep in this world, so deep that others don’t hear it, does not rely on himself to sooth it.  He knows there is one Savior and he isn’t Him. 

What a friend we have in Paul, who preaches Jesus Christ, and Him crucified! 

Why does Paul teach this way? 

Because Paul expects that “the form of this world is passing away”.   God has raised Jesus from the dead.  Who knows what will happen next? 

For Paul, this meant a daily, excited, imminent expectation of the turn of the ages, a new heaven and earth, the end of time and the beginning of a new era.  For our sake, it is a blessing that Paul’s own timeline was a little fuzzy.  Otherwise, we would not be here.  But the spiritual truth which lives in this passage, its existential reality, is the same.  Every day is our last.  Paul so reminds us, and so shakes us out of our stupor.  THIS is the day the Lord has made.  We shall rejoice and be glad in it! 

In all of life, in the fullness of faith there lies this strange, new potential.  Potential.  Potential for something new. 

We face the world, free from the world. 

When things go south, let us live not in the form of this world (in despair and doubt and dread), but in the form of the coming world (hope and freedom and a sense of God’s uncanny potential). 

Bultmann: “Only Christ can give the kerygmatic character to everything which is ‘taught’ as Christian. Therefore, Christ is correctly preached not where something is said about him, but only where he himself becomes the proclaimer.” 

The resurrection is, simply, the preaching of the gospel.  But preaching in a way that is heard. Bultmann helped us see the present hope in Paul, facing the world free from the world. 

Here is a second shade of hope… 

Niebuhr, the great liberal (still a great tradition, affirmed from this pulpit0 who helped us see the future hope in Paul.  Both shades of hope require a translation from apocalyptic expectation into insights for living today, both individual and collective, present and future, Bultmannian and Niebuhrian.  Niebuhr gradually left behind some of his younger optimism. He also gradually left behind the narrow and prideful tones of a strict socialism.  Gradually he found his way, as we will need to do again in this painful decade ahead, toward a faithful Christian realism.  He found a realistic way toward hope.  That is our work today as well.  Recalling his phrases, we too need to beware ‘the sentimental optimism about the essential goodness of men without realizing how evil good men can be’.  Learning, but critically, from Niebuhr we too need ‘a check not only on policies but on pride, to guide men in a mood of dialectical humility’.  We too need to realize that ‘all justice rests on a balance of power’. 

You can in love ‘love one another’ as Christ loves you, toward an unseen horizon, a far-off land, a land flowing with milk and honey.  You can hope against hope. 

Let those who rejoice do so as if they were not rejoicing.  Let them rejoice not in the form of this world but in the form of the world to come. 

We meet each day with courage. We touch and are touched in the presence of Divine Potential, the raw possibility of a new day. We live on tip toe.  We live each day as if it were our last, which it is.  We greet the hour and its struggle, from a certain distance, and over every loud booming statement there is a misty question mark. 

You know, it is not always clear what is bad news, or good.  What can seem cause for the greatest rejoicing also can carry hurt, and vice-versa.  God’s time is not our time.  God’s purpose is not equivalent to any one of ours.  God’s justice is not the same as our own.  God’s freedom far surpasses yours and mine.  A crushing defeat can, in God’s time, and with patience, become the source, the medium of great victory.  I think of Franklin Roosevelt.  Where would our country be today, without his life’s strange mixture of rejoicing and suffering and struggle and perseverance?  Is it not odd that the one President who appeared to be the least vigorous, was in fact the most? ‘To lead you have to love, to save you have to serve’. 

Let those who buy and sell, do so as if they had no goods.  Not in the form of this world, but in the form of the world to come.  Augustine said it so well:  we use what we should love and we love what we should use.  We use people and love things, when we are meant to love people and use things. About your car, your house, your wardrobe, your bank account, your things—ask this:  Do you own it or does it own you?  Do you own it or does it own you? 

Yes, use the things of this world and buy and sell.  Let us do so, though, not in the form of this world, but in the form of the world to come.  Not in grasping selfishness, not in anxious pursuit, not in such strangely intense attention.  Rather:  with aplomb, with a certain disregard, with an inner freedom, the freedom to saunter in spirit, to saunter, flaneur dans les rue. 

What a hopeful friend we have in Paul!   

Paul who wrote to the Thessalonians, of hope for the present and hope for the future, so long ago: 

We give thanks to God always for you all, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thess. 1: 1-10). 

Sunday
October 15

The Bach Experience, October 2023

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 22:1–10

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The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill:

We are living in and through a dark and difficult time, this fall.   Our climate shows significant signs, in our lived experience, of steady and worrisome warming.  Our nation continues in the grip of deep divisions, and, of more concern, a palpable willingness on the part of some to jettison centuries of hard-won democracy for autocracy, and its false promise of ‘escape from freedom’, as Erik Fromm called it.  Our culture languishes in the doldrums of a pervasive malaise, not unrelated to our fear of freedom, and its demands, and its rigors, and its openness to human flourishing.  The dark night of warfare has fallen and stayed grounded into Europe, for a year and a half, with the fate of our Ukrainian sisters and brothers in the balance, with no end in sight.  Now, in addition, we have the advent of a full blown catastrophic second war, perpetrated through terrorist violence, horrific and unspeakable violence, upon the people and traditions of Israel, which people and traditions our own Elie Wiesel over four decades here at Boston University did so much to illumine and honor, say: The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it is indifference.” 

How we miss his voice, his presence, his warning and his wisdom today.  Our youth and young adults, still wriggling free from years in the screen prisons of COVID, need and deserve and require expanded care and services related to personal, emotional and mental health, at a rate and with a range quite difficult for other generations fully to grasp.  The challenges of poverty, of racism, of sexism, of inequality and injustice, of health care, of educational disparity, and the ever--present clouds of greed, malevolence, mendacity and despair continue to lap at the shores of our existential beaches, without pause and with ongoing wind strokes of pain.  We are living through a dark and difficult time, this fall. 

While true for every season and age, it is acutely the case for our time that an honest, a necessarily honest admission of our condition should also and more so be soothed by, and challenged by, the promise of the gospel, and the prospect of better days to come.  It is acutely the case for our time, for this very day, this day of rest and worship, this sabbath day, that a pause, a discreet hour of ordered worship, should be observed, and honored, including today by way of word and music both, the stringent candor of word and the soothing beautiful balm of music, together.  The ordered public worship of Almighty God upon the Lord’s Day is not a matter of indifference.  It is a savingly crucial hour, that brings a ray of light into the dark, a note of promise into the silence, a reminder of joy into the pain, and a source of get up and go again power into the despond.  It is thus fitting to hear the negativity of the last third of St. Matthew, including the harsh cold parable this morning, as a partnered honest admission of our own condition, the condition our condition is in.  For Matthew cries out over the rejection of invitation, the rejection of welcome, the rejection of love.  And he will not be consoled, like Rachel weeping for her children, and like Israeli mothers today weeping for their now soldier sons, no dishonest avoidance here.  His parable matches our own angers.  When things are not right, saith the Scripture, let us be honest that things are not right.  And then let us turn and listen for the true, the good, and the beautiful.  As in our cantata this morning.  Dr Jarrett, what does this morning’s Cantata bring us? 

 

Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett's contribution to this sermon is not currently available. 

 

The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill:

Presence in an ordered service of divine worship, your presence here today for instance, is one sign of trust that in this life we are being addressed from beyond.  Your presence this morning is an indication, a witness if you will, to your intimation or confidence or something in between, that you are ‘hearing voices’, that you are called, spoken to, addressed.   

The parable of the wedding banquet, retold in Matthew from a kinder Lukan version, rests on this conviction of a divine beckoning and calling.   

I think we seldom recognize what a powerful thing an invitation can be.  Pause and recall a time or two when you were savingly invited. 

We know the power of an invitation when we hungrily receive one heartily desired.  Nothing in all the world ever happened between persons without invitations.  Every sermon is in some way an invitation to you, to take a step in faith, to take a step, one step, in faith. 

That is, you receive today, again, a personal invitation.  The invitation is meant for you, sent to you, an event for you.  You are invited to attend the wedding of heaven and earth! to lead a godly life! to lead a life worthy of God! to live in faith and by a conviction, which is a trust, faith is a personal commitment to an unverifiable truth.! If we had all proof we want we would not have all the faith we need.  Will you come to the banquet?  Will you take a step in faith? 

The voice of invitation is an enticement, a coaxing, a luring, a courting.   

President Biden this week offered such an invitation, a biblical one, tucked into perhaps the greatest speech thus far in his administration, saying: This is a moment for the United States to come together, to grieve with those who are mourning.  

You remember that our gospel writer for today,  St Matthew, the Evangelist, has a passion.  It is invitation.  The point of the Gospel of Mathew the Evangelist is that he is an evangelist.  This is his love.  His first love.  To seek the lost, to hug the lonely.  And it is a passionate love.  I can see your passions, in architecture, history, homily, mission, symbol, country, group—these inspire passion. As, especially, does music. Matthew offers the gift, divinely wrapped, of his passion:  sharing an invitation, perhaps a first encounter with Christ for those c’est vouz?, who do not know a single verse, cannot recite a single psalm, cannot describe baptism and communion, do not a favorite hymn, and have no lived experience of church committee meetings.  This is the great joy of faith, to share it.  Do so. You only have what you can give away.  

 

-Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music

Sunday
October 8

Cornerstone

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 21:33–46

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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and Redeemer… Amen.  

 In today’s Gospel reading, we pick up where we left off last week as Jesus debates the chief priests in the Temple mere days before Jesus’ eventual arrest and crucifixion. After having his authority questioned, Jesus presents three parables to the chief priests. The first one, as presented to us last week by Rev. Chicka, is a parable about obedience and disobedience as Jesus blames the chief priests for not listening to and believing the words of John the Baptist.  

 Today’s parable also takes center stage in a vineyard, and to be honest, it’s quite gruesome. A wealthy man built a vineyard, leased it to some tenants, and then went off to another country. When the harvest season came around, the man sent not just one, but two, waves of servants to collect the harvest, but both sets of servants were brutally murdered by the tenants. Finally, the man sends his son as his personal envoy, but even the son is brutally murdered.  

 For us Christians who are familiar with the narrative of Jesus’ upcoming death and resurrection and for Jesus himself, who knows what will befall on him in a few days, the symbolism is apparent – Jesus is the son sent to the tenants, i.e., the chief priests and authorities, who is about to die at their hands. After the parable, Jesus summarizes his rejection and soon-coming exaltation with a quote from Psalm 118 –  

 ‘The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;[f]
this was the Lord’s doing,
    and it is amazing in our eyes’ 

The stone that the builders rejected has become the corner stone… Now I have to admit that when I read this passage, I realized that I didn’t know what a corner stone is. Like, from context and general readings and even how it kind of sounds, I understand that the cornerstone is something important and something foundational. But what is a corner stone really? What significance, what power, does the image of a corner stone have for Jesus, for the chief priests, and by extension for us? 

For those unfamiliar with the term or its history, a corner stone is one of, if not the key, foundational stones in the construction of a building. Until the development of modern construction techniques and materials largely made this process obsolete, the corner stone was the first stone set in the building process and helped guide builders make sure the rest of the stones of the building are level and square, determining the building’s site and overall orientation. Given the corner stone’s structural importance, it’s only natural that people began putting symbolic significance onto the stone as well. Ancient civilizations would offer sacrifices, such as wine, water, or even blood on a cornerstone to ensure divine and lasting strength and fortune for the building. This tradition evolved within Christian communities as relics of saints and martyrs were placed inside the cornerstone of a church to invite a patron saint’s blessing onto the church and its community.  

This tradition of placing important artifacts inside a building’s corner stone continued into the 19th and 20th centuries. By then, the corner stone was no longer a literal foundation that physically holds up the building, but more so a symbolic or even spiritual foundation – of the ideals, hopes, and dreams that go into a building’s construction and use. Some describe the corner stone as a seed, as the bundle of instructional DNA and energy from which a building would germinate and rise.  

All this talk about corner stones is fine, but maybe it’d be more helpful to think and talk about a literal corner stone that is, oh 200 feet from where I stand. Nestled in the southwestern corner of this building’s exterior wall & hidden between various bushes and trees about 3 feet from the ground is the corner stone of Marsh Chapel. I would invite anyone who has never paid attention or seen the corner stone to take a moment on your way out this morning or during your next visit to Marsh Chapel to find the cornerstone.  

It has a fairly simple design. Carved out of the same stone as the rest of the building, the corner stone displays two pieces of information: on the left side is inscribed A.D. 1949, the year in which the corner stone was laid. To the right is the University Seal. On the outer circle of the seal is the name of the University along with the years of the university’s founding as well as the establishment of its current charter, 1839 and 1869 respectively. Meanwhile, the inner circle of the seal displays a portrait of the City of Boston and the State House dome on Beacon Hill. Connecting these two circles is a symbol of the University’s Christian heritage, the Holy Cross.  

So, you might be curious - what is inside Marsh Chapel’s cornerstone? Take a moment to consider what might be inside - what might be Marsh Chapel’s symbolic and spiritual foundation? Well, I’ve brought a sledgehammer with me today and we’re about to ---- NO - Thankfully we don’t need to tear down the walls of Marsh Chapel to find out. According to Daniel Marsh himself, BU’s 4th president and namesake to Marsh Chapel, inside the corner stone is a bronze box with several contents that are meant to represent the foundation, the then soon-to-germinate seed, of Marsh Chapel.   

Some notable contents of the box include several University documents, a book written by Daniel Marsh himself, as well as a Methodist hymnal, an Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, a copy of the Catholic text, An Imitation of Christ, and a Siddur, a Jewish Prayer book. All of these contents locates the Chapel and its mission in the context of a larger university with a larger ecumenical and interfaith spirit.  

However, the most symbolically important resident of the little bronze box according to Daniel Marsh is a copy of the King James Version Bible. Now, I can say confidently that I do not remember the last time I have read the work of someone so passionate about the Bible as Daniel Marsh (if you’re curious to see read it yourself, you can find his words in The Charm of the Chapel found on our website).  

According to Daniel Marsh, and I quote, “Literally the Bible is in the corner stone of the Chapel. Figuratively it is the corner stone of the Chapel and of the University and of any civilization worth saving.” Marsh traces the importance of the Bible for Marsh Chapel along with the Bible’s importance to the United States of America and western society as a whole. Marsh writes that, “Knowledge of the Bible is indispensable to anyone who would understand the genius of America… American democracy itself rests upon the Biblical doctrines of human worth and brotherhood… knowledge of the Bible is indispensable to an adequate comprehension of the great literature of the world…”  

Simply put (also in Daniel Marsh’s words) “the Bible energizes as well as inspires.” For Daniel Marsh, the Bible is the foundation of the morals and spirit of this country, it is the foundation of his own personal morals and spirit, and so, by being placed in the corner stone of this very building, the Bible is meant to be the foundation of the morals and spirit of this Marsh Chapel.  

For me, this all makes sense. I can see and understand from both a Christian and a more secular point of view all the different ways in which the Bible has molded our collective and individual characters & cultural understandings while also calling us to a higher power and to a higher purpose. For a building like Marsh Chapel that lies at the intersection between the secular, the sacred, and the scholarly – the Bible is a perfect symbol to place as its cornerstone.  

HOWEVER, I also think that to focus on the Bible as the corner stone of Marsh Chapel misses the entire point of the message which Jesus & the Gospel writers were trying to convey in today’s reading. While Daniel Marsh is correct in his evaluation of the Bible as a worthy symbolic corner stone for Marsh Chapel, in so doing he also risks reducing the Scriptures into a kind of philosophy textbook. Marsh writes about how placing a Bible in the corner stone would teach someone opening the time capsule 500 or even 1000 years from now all they would need to know about Marsh Chapel. Sure, they might learn something about our values and beliefs, would they really get a sense of who we are? 

The Bible is more than just a textbook. The Christian faith is more than just a set of rules and guidelines – it is not just a philosophy or a system of ideas and arguments or some spiritual vision for life that can be learned by reading. To be a Christian is to have a living, breathing relationship with Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and with God. The Bible is not just a book with interesting characters that talks about morals; it is a guide for how to honor God, honor ourselves, honor humanity, and honor the greater community of Creation in personal relationship.  

Today’s parable from Matthew highlights the centrality of a personal relationship with Christ vis a vi personal rejection. At the heart of this parable is the murder, the personal rejection, of the son of the landowner. The tenants did not seize and kill an idea, a principle, or a system of doctrine. They seized and killed the landowner’s son, a person. In the same way, Jesus, the son of God, was about to be seized and killed.  

The symbolism of the vineyard, the landowner, and the evil tenants would not have been lost to the chief priests of Jesus’ time. The image of God as landowner and Israel his vineyard stretches back to the Prophet Isaiah such as in Isaiah chapter 5 where the wicked who misuse God’s vineyard bring judgment onto the land. The chief priests would be more than familiar with the prophet’s writings and could easily make the connections between Isaiah’s words and Jesus’ parable. No wonder that when they realized Jesus was speaking about them that the chief priests wanted to arrest him – Jesus was accusing the chief priests of disobeying God and becoming the object of God’s judgment.  

What the chief priests could not see from the parable, however, was the relationship between Jesus and God. But by rejecting Christ, by wanting to arrest him, the chief priests were acting just like the tenants in the parable and just like the wicked ones referenced in Isaiah chapter 5. And by rejecting Jesus, the chief priests would ensure that the vineyard would be taken away from them and given to a people who would accept Jesus, who would accept the landowner’s son and maintain the relationship between landowner and tenant. As Jesus says in his quotation of Psalm 118 - The stone that the builders rejected has become the corner stone – the relationship that the chief priests and authorities rejected will become the foundation for a people of God who will produce the fruits of the Kingdom of God. This corner stone, this relationship with Christ, is not just some symbol of our faith but a foundational piece of it. It is the first stone placed in the building process, the one we refer back to in order to make sure the rest of the building blocks are level and secure. And try as they might, this stone cannot be broken by anyone or anything that falls onto it. Although this corner stone will be rejected by some, “it is amazing in our eyes”.  

Our other Scripture readings today work in tandem to highlight the personal relationships that are at the foundation of our faith. Our Exodus reading is of one of the most famous passages from the Bible – the 10 Commandments. On the most surface level, the 10 Commandments are a set of rules and regulations to define right behavior, to clarify the boundary for right versus wrong. Dig a little deeper though and the 10 Commandments are a guide to help the people of Israel honor God and honor one another.  

After bringing the people of Israel out of Egypt, God’s main agenda was to re-establish the covenantal relationship with the Jewish people, and the 10 Commandments are the key terms to that agreement. God could not have the Israelites worshipping idols or desecrating the Sabbath day for to do those things would get in the way of them better knowing him. Likewise, God could not condone murder or adultery or coveting for to let those flourish would destroy the very community itself.   

Meanwhile in our Epistle reading, Paul writes about how he had the utmost confidence in himself and his flesh. He was a virtuous member of the household of Israel – God’s chosen people. He was an expert of the law and zealous in his persecution of a group of people whom he believed to be outside of the righteousness of the law.  

Yet whatever gains I had, Paul writes, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For HIS sake I have suffered the loss of all things … for I want to KNOW Christ and the power of his resurrection. As he describes it himself, Paul’s sense of an earned righteousness, of an earned rightness, before the creator of heaven and earth is nothing compared to a living relationship with Jesus Christ himself. The things that used to be Paul’s corner stones – his circumcision, his obedience to & knowledge of the Torah as a Pharisee, his identity as a member of the tribe of Benjamin – all these things rooted in history that were the foundation of his self-identity are worthy of giving up in the face of a complete and intimate relationship with Jesus. And by rooting himself in the corner stone that is his relationship with Jesus, Paul is able to press on towards the heavenly call of God.  

Returning now to the corner stone of Marsh Chapel. What do I believe is the true foundation of Marsh Chapel? Well – the corner stone is all of you listening right now here in this room. It is all of you that are joining us over the phone or on the livestream or later this week in the recording of the service. It is in the members of the choir, our staff, our livestream technicians. It is in the students who are here for worship, the students who work in our office, the students who join us for community dinner or for tai chi or create space. The corner stone of Marsh Chapel is our community & our relationships with one another – it is the people who find a place to belong and to BE here in Marsh Chapel that make this space a special one.  

Without any human-to-human relationships, this building would be an empty & hollow shell. We could have the finest decorations, the finest music, & the finest preaching and reading of scripture, but without any relationships holding it all together, what would the point be for any of that? If we were to ignore all the possibilities for relationship here in Marsh Chapel, would we not run the risk of being our own version of the chief priests from this story who rejected the blind and deaf, who rejected tax collectors and the prostitutes, who rejected John the Baptist, and who rejected Jesus Christ the Messiah himself?  

At the core of these relationships, however, we also need a relationship with Christ, with the Holy Spirit, and with God. That is our faith after all – to have this intimate relationship with the Three-in-One. How do we cultivate this relationship? This is where the Bible finds its place as our cornerstone as Daniel Marsh intended. The Bible is not a textbook on morals or philosophy, but a guide to knowing God! It is a living, breathing text through which God’s very nature can speak to us. Through the Bible as well as through prayer, worship, and service in community, we learn how to form and nurture a relationship with the ultimate Creator. This relationship with God’s self, then in turn teaches us to cultivate deeper relationships with one another.  

The foundational power of relationships stretches even farther into larger university life here at BU. A particular note for our student community - I recently went to my fifth-year college reunion this past summer. Overall, I had a pretty good time - it was nice to see be back on campus, to see my classrooms, and reminisce about all the experiences I had in college. But the real reason that I went back to that reunion - and this is the same reason that most everyone I spoke to gave me when I asked why they did (or in some cases, why they didn’t) attend our reunion - was this: I was there to see people, to see and spend time with the special friends who I spent four years with in college who would also be returning to campus. I was there because of my relationships. 

What I’ve learned about college in the years since graduating is that college is not simply about your classes or grades or that fancy internship you get the summer between your junior and senior year – this time is about your relationships with your class mates, with your friends, with the faculty and staff. When I think about all the things that I enjoyed about college, my strongest memories are those that highlight the special friendships that I was able to build. Inversely, when I think about my lowest moments of college, and many of my friends have agreed with me, those memories are ones where I felt the loneliest and most isolated.  

As we collectively journey deeper into the fall semester and this fall season, it is important that we remember how foundational relationships are to all that happens here in this Chapel and here on this campus. As the nights get darker, the weather gets colder, and the exams and assignments start to multiply, it can be easy to lose sight of or forget the things that help to support us. What is your corner stone, your foundation, when times become challenging? Is it a philosophy or some vision of life? Or is your corner stone a relationship – one with a friend, a family member, with God – that can hold you no matter how difficult times might be?  

For the students as you all as you face the challenges of school work, begin your exams, and make plans for the spring and summer - For Marsh Chapel as we welcome new hires, begin new forms of ministry, and look to celebrate our 75th anniversary - For Boston University as it welcomes both an interim and permanent president along with all the challenges a change of leadership can bring – For all of us as we face the many joys and sorrows of life, separate or together – Let us return to our foundation, to our cornerstone, and move forward with faith, knowing that we are held and supported by a God who promises life and an abundant harvest.  

Amen.  

-Mr. Jonathan Byung Hoon Lee, Associate Chaplain for Student Outreach 

Sunday
October 1

What to do?

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 21:23–32

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

Good morning, Marsh Chapel! It’s a pleasure to preach on this World Communion Sunday. It’s been a very busy start to the school year around here. All of the ministry staff have been working hard to reach out to students, offer our weekly fellowship groups, and establish the kind of care and compassion that religious life offers to the BU campus. Annually, we have two events that take place around this time of year. One is apple picking, which took place yesterday. We shuttle about 40 students to Westward Orchards out in Harvard, MA for a few hours of apple picking, some shopping in the small country store, and of course, fresh apple cider donuts. I heard this year was fantastic – unfortunately I couldn’t make it because I had a little thing called a sermon I needed to finish. 

The second event is something you’ve probably heard mentioned many times if you’ve been attending worship here for a while. The event is Spiritual Paint Night. We hold at least one each semester, welcoming students from across the campus for an evening of unstructured creativity. Started by my predecessor and friend, Rev. Brittany Longsdorf, Spiritual Paint Night isn’t like one of those sip and paints or painting classes that you can do at a restaurant or a bar. There isn’t instruction on what to paint. Instead, students are given a canvas and brushes, a palette and paint. They’re told to paint what they want. They’re told to focus on the process of creation rather than the outcome. No “mine isn’t good enough” no expectation that that it has to replicate anyone else’s work. Just time to meet new people, eat some snacks, get creative, and support each other in admiring one another’s efforts. 

The unofficial patron saint of these evenings is perhaps the most well-known American artist of the 20th century. It’s estimated that he painted well over 10,000 paintings. Even though his popularity started 40 years ago, most people in the United States, including young people who weren’t born yet when he was alive, can identify him and know what he’s most famous for. His iconic permed hair and denim outfits have been parodied over the years, but not without a profound sense of respect. If you guessed that this artist who has reached sainthood in our eyes is Bob Ross, then you’d be correct. We know Bob Ross for his gentle instructions on the PBS show “The Joy of Painting” which aired from 1983-1994. Each time he’d tell his viewers, who may or may not be completing that week’s painting with him, what tools and paints they would need to have their own creation at the end of each 30 minute episode. He’d then go on to instruct, reminding viewers that the canvas was their own little world in which they got to make the decisions, he would just provide suggestions and instruction on how to make elements. Perhaps most memorable were his “happy little trees” and also his statement that “there are no mistakes, only happy accidents.” His calm demeanor and encouraging words are why, perhaps, he has become an icon of ASMR, autonomous sensory meridian response, a sensory and emotional reaction to certain stimuli. People find pleasure in the calming nature of each episode, sprinkled with his witty “Bob Ross-isms.” He even has his own Twitch channel, an interactive livestreaming service, which plays episodes of The Joy of Painting continuously all day long. 

But, did you know that before Bob Ross became America’s gentle painting instructor, he was in the Air Force for 20 years? Not only that, but that one of his main positions in that time was as a drill sergeant. You know, a drill sergeant as in the super mean authority figures within the military who routinely “break down” new recruits, forcing them to do demeaning tasks and constantly yelling? Yes, Bob Ross was one of those. Reflecting on his time in the military, he was quoted as saying: 

"I was the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work," Ross later said. "The job requires you to be a mean, tough person, and I was fed up with it. I promised myself that if I ever got away from it, it wasn't going to be that way anymore." 

Bob Ross had a change of mind and heart. It was the military which would introduce him to painting. The backdrop of Alaska, where he was posted, took center stage in many of the paintings he would later create on his TV show. The authority that the position of drill sergeant afforded him, the power he had over others, didn’t mean much to him. In fact, he knew that it wasn’t what he was truly called to being and doing. The military was an occupation, but painting became his life. While the position of drill sergeant offered him authority in a systematic way, he actually gained his authoritative position (as in someone who demonstrates authority) through his painting. That’s why he’s so well known. That’s why people flock to him and his general positive outlook. His change from ordering commands to gentle suggestions, the structured efficiency of military obedience to an opening of creativity for others doesn’t mean that he lost his power or influence, he just modified it to a way that would serve others in a more practical manner. 

Authority is a central message in today’s gospel from Matthew. The context for this reading is important in understanding why Jesus’ statements about authority are so jarring for the religious leaders to hear. Jesus has entered into Jerusalem. The people, having heard of his healings and teachings, including embracing the poor and the marginalized, are excited to welcome him. The religious leaders, however, are wary. Today’s story takes place just after Jesus has overturned the moneychangers tables in the temple, showing his disdain for how the religious leaders have allowed this space to become a center for politics and economics rather than a space for prayer and worship. Jesus continues his time in Jerusalem by teaching in the temple, much to the ire of the religious leaders. 

They question Jesus. Where does his authority to teach in the temple come from? Jesus, being Jesus, doesn’t simply answer their question. He questions them back and then proceeds to tell them the parable of the two sons. A parable about words and action. A parable about doing the will of the father and merely saying you will do the will of the father. While the religious leaders seem to understand doing the will of God is what should be favored over mere lip-service, they do not fully understand the point that Jesus is trying to make in this story. 

What is confusing for the religious leaders is that they consider themselves to be authorities because of their place within society. Their authority derives from human sources, from a title and a position. Because of this, they use their power to affect society. They have influence over the ways things are done. They serve their own self-interests, rather than those who are suffering. While they might be good teachers of religious tenets and laws, they fail to see those teachings through with action. The religious leaders may be in positions of authority within the community, but they lack authoritative action in accordance with the will of God that would confirm that authority. They may say what is right and wrong behavior, but they are not open to any ideas that would challenge their access to maintaining the power they possess. The religious leaders are hypocrites. They say one thing and do another in order to maintain power. 

Jesus is not an authority figure that the religious leaders recognize. They don’t understand why he has so much popularity among the people. They don’t understand the way he goes about teaching and healing, reaching out to the poor, sick, and marginalized. If he truly were “the one who comes in the name of the Lord” as the people claimed when he entered Jerusalem, he wouldn’t have shown up on a donkey and he certainly would not be associating himself with prostitutes and tax collectors. 

The critical piece that Jesus is trying to teach the religious leaders is not that works are more important than faith (Martin Luther would be rolling over in his grave if I said that) but that the will of God makes itself known through a steady process of revelation and transformation. In fact, Matthew uses the term metamelomai, to change one’s mind, twice in this passage, emphasizing its importance in the parable Jesus uses for instruction. Actually, this term might be more accurately translated “to change what one cares about” or “to change one’s heart.” The first son changes what he cares about and goes into the field to work. The tax collectors and prostitutes changed what they cared about and understood John’s righteousness. For God to be at work in the world, people must maintain an openness, to have their minds changed, in order to discern what life in the kingdom of God calls them to be. Jesus points out that the prostitutes and the tax collectors will enter into the kingdom of heaven sooner than the religious leaders because they have left their minds to be opened to John’s righteousness. That openness in changing one’s mind also changes how they act with others.  

Allowing oneself to be open to the will of God requires humility. It requires us to go beyond what we want, what we’re comfortable with, to accept how God can create transformational power in our lives. In our current world, many expressions of belief have become about knowing, not seeking. What I mean by that is that belief has become more about certainty than an openness to new ideas and approaches. The same could be said about the religious authorities and heads of state in Jesus’ time. They were more concerned with maintaining the status quo, in which they held the power, than being challenged into a way of life of mutual support and humility. We see Paul imploring the community in Philippi to be “of a certain mind” together, willing to give up what each of them might be entitled to in the aid of another. They are to find a cruciform way of living, connecting their patterns of thinking with their patterns of living to enable the work of God to be done in the world. 

What today’s gospel and the other readings from today point us toward is that we do not have to be perfect in knowing. Instead, we have to be open to seeking God. We should allow God’s presence in our lives transform us, instead of asserting our own way. Jesus’ authority is not human authority, which focuses on the acquisition and maintenance of raw power. Rather Jesus’ authority derives out of humility, taking those who are abandoned by society and restoring them to wholeness through his healing. Jesus’ authority demonstrates a way of life for us that is open to God’s power and truth. If we fail, if we falter, if we don’t get it right on the first try, God will not abandon us. We can explore faith with the knowledge that God will be there for us even if our attempts in understanding are flawed. As Bob Ross would say, “There are no mistakes, only happy accidents.” 

How wonderful it is, then, that we find ourselves located in a place of inquiry. A university campus is, perhaps, one of the best places for those who seek. Marsh Chapel stands as a place dedicated to the exploration of religious inquiry, not certainty. Here, we encourage you to ask questions, to be unsure, to be willing to explore. That’s honestly what I love most about my job. Working with young adults provides so many opportunities for openness, a willingness to learn and grow. We aim at providing a safe place to land, as well as a safe place to ask the existential questions – who am I? what is meaningful to me? Where and to what is God calling me? Just as Bob Ross encourages his audience to accept mistakes and be open to their own way of approaching painting, we too provide a place where people can change their minds, explore further, and be creative in their relationship with the Divine. Not because we say they must, but because we provide the support to allow such inquiry to occur.  

If we can maintain this openness, a willingness to have our mind’s changed, we may experience the radical transformation that comes in relationship with God. It requires us to get out of our comfort zones and accept that the way we’ve always done things may not always be the only or best way to do them. Authority doesn’t necessarily mean anything if it isn’t connected to action. In fact, authority is best exhibited through action rather than the external imposition of that status. As they say, “Actions speak louder than words.” Let us be active seekers of Divine transformation. 

Amen. 

-The Rev. Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain for International Students 

Sunday
September 24

Divine Generosity

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 20:1–16

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St Matthew intends to encourage and to nurture full steps in faith, within the community of faith.  Today, upon this Boston University Alumni Weekend Sunday, we remember and affirm that Marsh Chapel is one such community of faith, a precious jewel, a rare breed, a novel venture, an open window.  Your community.  Yours. 

In Matthew 20, in the vineyard, our parable represents the ‘undifferentiated rewards of the Kingdom of God’. (Bultmann) The parable affirms divine generosity, and inscrutable divine goodness and generosity.  Its point:  behold the divine generosity, do not begrudge the divine generosity.  Its point, justice and equality are not the same thing. (repeat) 

Consider this parable (found only in Matthew). All the workers are paid the same.  As in life, so here in Scripture, there is no sure, consistent equality.  To be sure, the landowner has paid what he agreed to pay.  To be sure, hour by hour, the workers have received what they agreed to receive.  To be sure, the daily needs of all for the day to come are met, from each according to his stamina and to each according to his needs.  To be sure, the added proverb, about last becoming first and first last fits the parable awkwardly if at all.    The parable acclaims God’s bounteous generosity, not God’s impartial equality.  Justice and equality are not the same thing. 

When a job truly fit and meant for you goes to another, on a shaky or unjust premise or process, you know the feeling of the early workers.  When an illness unearned and unexpected afflicts your loved one, you know the feeling of those working among the grapes and feeling the grapes of wrath.  When a day begins and ends as an existential illustration of Shakespeare’s 66th sonnet, you know the resentment addressed in the story from Matthew 20:1-16. 

Here in the vineyard, the undeniable difference between equality and justice faces us, as it did Jesus, Matthew, the Rabbis and others.  Jesus, loving the amhaaretz, the poor of the land, may have been telling the Pharisees to broaden their embrace.  Matthew, among Jews and Gentiles, Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, may have been admonishing the former to honor the latter.  The Rabbis, in the same period, used the same story, but added, by way of explication that the later workers did in two hours what took the earlier ones all day.  Very dubious that. 

Our landowner, through Matthew’s rendering, is called an ‘OIKODESPOTES’, a person of some power.  The allegory is clear.  God is obliged to…nobody.  Further, the timing of God’s grace and generosity is God’s own affair, only without prejudice either to the early or to the later.  In this way, Matthew concurs with Paul in 1 Thessalonians and elsewhere that the living will not precede the dead, in the hour of judgment. 

Our parable does not rely on the famous passage from Exodus 16, read a moment ago.  (This too is a passage we should know and know about by the way.)  Yet the acclamation of divine generosity in both is the same.  Evening comes, and morning, and in the morning there is a sweet hoar frost covering all the ground, a layer of dew under which is the ‘manna from heaven’.  ‘The bread the Lord has given you to eat”. 

Here, in the vineyard, we have again to ponder the labor at the heart of life and the labor at the heart of faith.  Faith comes by hearing, but it is an active, ‘employed’ listening that allows for that hearing.  Faith is a gift, but is a gift like any other that requires receipt, and response, and embrace, (and maybe a thank you note, too).  If faith comes by hearing it helps if you are in earshot, in worship.  Faith comes as a gift at the time of God’s choosing, but to labor and live in faith requires of us a steady, even fruitful, practice of faith.  Daily prayer or quiet.  Sunday worship or devotion.  Tithing or disciplined percentage giving. Choosing to serve or to volunteer.  This is what Paul is driving at in his letter to the Philippians:  live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel. 

I wonder about you? and me?  Has the unfailing light and love of divine generosity worked on us at all this week?  Are we better people than we were last Sunday?  Have we heeded John Calvin on this parable:  We may also gather that our whole life is useless and we are justly condemned of laziness until we frame our life to the command and calling of God.  From this it follows that they labor in vain who thoughtlessly take up this or that kind of life and do not wait for God’s calling.  Finally we may also infer from Christ’s words that only they are pleasing to God who work for the advantage of their brethren. (loc cit 266). 

Our Scripture lessons explore the rigors of community, by acclaiming the generosity of God.  And every community is a source of endless contention and intractable difference.  The very rigors of assembling a couple of hundred people on a Sunday morning for an hour of devotion itself brings rigors.  Yet, here you are, and here we are, together.  God is good. 

 We come into and to worship with a heartfelt desire to grow in faith, to walk in faith, and to grow in faith as we walk in faith.  One such step, one step in faith, is to find a congregational family to love and a congregational home to enjoy.  To some measure, each of you, each of us, has so found that here in Marsh Chapel. For others this may be a moment when one has an inkling that this is your community, your congregational home, not only to visit but also to inhabit (notice the habit in inhabit). In the great long and happy shadow of divine generosity announced in Holy Scripture today, we step forward in a growing faith, to notice around and about us the particular aspects of divine generosity afforded us in this chapel.  Here are some things you may or may not know about your community. 

 Marsh Chapel is a distinctive community, a congregation of souls, a chapel not a church, with the various differences and similarities so named, a congregation laden with hopes, tasks, plans and goals, all of which are steadily in motion. 

 We have hopes. 

  In 2025, we will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the building of Marsh Chapel (March 1950 dedication).  And we lean forward with hope. We hope then also to celebrate a full or partial completion of the endowment of the Deanship of Marsh Chapel.  We hope then also to celebrate the full physical refurbishment of the building, Marsh Chapel.  We hope then also to celebrate the many hundreds of students who have heard a calling to or entered or continued on the path of ministry with the support and guidance of Marsh Chapel 2006-2024.  We hope by then also to continue to show increase in our virtual community, audio and video both—on livestream, by telephone, by internet, on podcast, by blog, and all.  As we move forward we hope then also to continue to welcome a growing number of students each week into the worshipful ministry of Marsh Chapel each and every week of the school year.  We hope then also to encourage our congregants, students, chapter members and affiliates to volunteer weekly in a form of direct service to a neighbor in need.  These are aspects of our shared faith and hope to ‘do all the good we can’ in our brief time of stewardship, ministry and service.  All of these hopes rest on a global vision, a conviction that ‘the world is our parish’, and that we serve a University, Boston University, in the world and for the world, with a longstanding history of outreach and engagement, in the heart of the city, in the service of the city.  That is, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, our focus will become more fully global.  We shall retain our envisioned vision and mission without redaction, but the weight and sense will shift: ‘A heart in the heart of the city, a service in the service of the city’: meaning a heart in the heart of the globe, a service in the service of the globe.  

 The Scripture teaches, at the very conclusion of the gospel of Matthew, ‘as you go, make of all disciples’.   We hope to serve God and neighbor, and be of service to our University in particular, through * Sunday Worship Excellence, *All University Events Ceremonial Leadership, *Pastoral Care at Death, *Astute Oversight of University Religious Life Ministry, Program and Presence, and, perhaps the hardest, ongoing exemplary *Embodiment of the University ‘Identity’, in History and Hope.  These are our tasks, the work that your prayers, presence, gifts and service afford the University in which we dwell and for which we labor.   

 We also have plans. 

 A heart in the heart of the city, and a service in the service of the city.  Our use of President Merlin’s epigram means city as the global city, and service as worship and work.   Our foci guiding this envisioned mission are voice, vocation, and volume.  We happily take our lead from the new, refreshed Boston University Plan, especially its own five-fold foci:  academics, research, globality, diversity, community, and have our own renderings of such.  In fact, the University plan seems deeply rooted in the very heart of Marsh Chapel itself.  In weekly work, in staffing and strategy, in the warp and woof of shared ministry, we offer our gifts:  through a leading academic University pulpit; through music choral and instrumental that carries an experimental, in that way a research dimensions; through particular attention to the 26% of our student body who are international students; through decades deep and daily commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion; and finally and mainly to the ongoing sharing of the gifts of belonging and community which religious life, including the Sunday congregation, offer with warm welcome and earnest outreach.  

A couple of years ago, a friend was ordained as a Rabbi, and some of us were graciously included in the service.  Throughout the beautiful service, the power of trusted voices and people stood out.  The one ordained said, For over thirty years, I have been in a life-long love affair witb my faith, seeking a substantive connection to our tradition, and a close and meaningful relationship with God. Close, meaningful.  These are the relationships that bring out our own-most selves.  Steps in faith, nurtured by a community of faith, nurtured in this community of faith, are meant to bring out, bring forward, your best self, your true self, your own-most self.  The old story holds.  God’s divine generosity desires and affirms your life, lived as your own most self, not your almost self, as your own most self, not your almost self.  The divine question is not, ‘Why are not more like Jane or John or Mary or Mark’ but, ‘Why are you not more like you?’  There is only one you, and in community, step by step in faith, we are given time, grace and support to become ourselves, our own-most selves 

Hear the gospel. St Matthew intends to encourage and to nurture full steps in faith, within the community of faith, perhaps beginning for you this day, this morning in this community.  Today, we remember and affirm that Marsh Chapel is one such community of faith, our community of faith, and with glad hearts give ourselves over to the joyful service of living our faith, step by step, here and now. We receive the divine generosity of God, and give ourselves over to the joyful service of faith. 

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

Sunday
September 17

Conscience

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 18:21–35

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I have been one acquainted with the night. 

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. 

I have outwalked the furthest city light.  

I have looked down the saddest city lane. 

I have passed by the watchman on his beat 

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. 

(Robert Frost) 

 

‘Let everyone be convinced in (their) own mind’ 

You owe it to yourself to be honest with yourself.  Even, if you can be, apart from repression, from the mind’s way of sheltering us from lasting hurt in memory.  You owe it to yourself to be able to look in the mirror.  This is what conscience, the work of conscience, brings.  Faith is the mysterious power to withstand what we cannot understand.  Faith is the power to get up, stand up, start up, to take the promise of Sunday morning into every other day.  One of the steps of faith, on the trail of faith, is awareness of conscience, the quickening of the conscience.  Faith awakens conscience, and conscience guides faith, even when the walk is a walk in the dark.  Luther: Faith is a walk in the dark. 

We too are acquainted with the night, and walk, together, in the rain.  Hear Gospel this Lord’s Day, the good news of faith.  The path, the sawdust trail of faith involves steps toward the mirror, toward what the wonderful old prayer names as the chance to serve God ‘with a quiet mind’. 

You owe it to yourself to be honest with yourself.  Even, if you can be, apart from repression, from the mind’s way of sheltering us from lasting hurt in memory.  You owe it to yourself to be able to look in the mirror.  This is what conscience, the work of conscience, brings.  Faith is the mysterious power to withstand what we cannot understand.  Faith is the power to get up, stand up, start up, to take the promise of Sunday morning into every other day. 

 

There is such a step of faith, a growth in conscience, in the exercise of study, of sacred study, of exegesis, the careful study of Holy Scripture. The historical and critical study of Holy Writ, as practiced from this pulpit over 70 years, is a pathway to insight, interpretation, application–and sermon. 

Samuel Terrien taught many the adventure of this labor, years ago, the search for the divine, for God: an elusive but real presence…not in nature but in history, and in history through human beings…a presence that does not alter nature but changes history through the character of women and men…a walking God not a sitting God, a walking God not a sitting God…nomadic, hidden, free…known in tent not temple, by ear not eye, in name not glory, in a spiritual interiority (we might say conscience)…that translates the love of God into behavior in society…demythologizing space for the sake of time…(phrases from The Elusive Presence: The Heart of Biblical Theology.)   Samuel Terrien. 

We are left to wonder in conscience about things, to plumb the depths of Scripture. What are they?  We are on our own. There is no live interview from the heavenly conference room.  There is no point-by-point bulletin, with details promised at 11pm.  There is no footnote, or explanatory second conversation.  We are left on our own, by our Lord to wonder and study, relying on conscience. We are given a fair and good amount of freedom in doing so. 

In conscience, do you wonder about things, as darkness falls, as the rain falls? 

Through the year, from this pulpit, we have tried continuously to trace the moves Matthew makes in 85ad away from what Mark, his source, had written in 70ad.  Mostly, we want to be crystal clear about the way the announcement of the gospel changes, with the setting, changes with the occasion, changes, with the time and season and year.   

New occasions teach new duties. Time makes ancient good uncouth.  One must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth. 

“Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe…the starry heavens above and the moral law within,” wrote the German philosopher Immanuel Kant at the end of his Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and these words were inscribed on his tombstone. 

Of one conscience stirring sermon, Oliver Wendell Holmes did say, in five words, I applied it to myself. 

We are left to wonder in conscience about ‘the things that are God’s’.  What are they?   Are they wonder and conscience—the starry heavens above and the moral law within?  Wonder and conscience?  Wonder and conscience, spirit and soul? 

Our colleague offered a marvelous devotional to being our faculty meeting.  Biblical, Johannine, exegetical and resting in a single Greek verb, the devotional implored us to abide, through difference, to remain, through disagreement, to wait and watch, through difficulty.  It restored faith, it restored my faith—including my faith in the necessity, power and beauty—of devotions.  It was a devotion that restored faith in devotions.  It stirred the conscience. 

There is such a step of faith in the exercise of study. 

There is a step of faith, growth in conscience, in institutions, for the love of God and country both.  Let your conscience be your guide. 

So, today, Matthew, being Matthew. He is looking at institutional life, political and religious, governmental and ecclesiastical, all 2000 years before our own similar challenges today.  In Matthew we hear what we perhaps most need to hear in America, in October, in 2023, in the midst of political contest, even political mayhem.  Institutions matter.  Institutions matter. We are broadly or dimly aware, year by year, that institutions matter, but see so most sharply when they collapse.  The collapse of shared truth.  The loss of acute memory.  When the my US Marine friend’s slogan, ‘leadership is example, period’, is discarded and disregarded. Covid took more than a million lives, in our country alone.  But not only that.  Covid removed the benefit of the doubt for inherited structures of civil society, including gathering, assembly, community, presence, religion 

As we mortally and tragically are today.  Institutions, particularly those of civil society, really matter.  Volunteerism in a free society is not a luxury, but a necessity.  For the Christian, for the citizen in a free republic, faith involves ‘intelligent and conscientious participation in politics so that God’s will may be done as fully as possible’ (IB, loc. cit.). 

Just in time, Marilyn Robinson reminds us: This country would do itself a world of good by restoring a sense of the dignity, even the beauty, of individual ethicalism, of self-restraint, of courtesy (NYT, 10/11/20). 

One pastor delivered a powerful sermon on dreams, last week, relying on Jacob and his ladder, from centuries before. He invited the congregation to dream, to dream of new things for a bright future. The sermon cut through the wariness and distrust we have come to practice regarding religion, with the fine blade of honesty, love and truth.  It stirred the conscience. 

Midweek this week, one recalled our 2008 decision to hire a gay pastor to work directly with our BU gay community, out of our religious commitment to the full humanity of gay people.  She did so for nine years with grace and faith.  (It may be time again to refit and refill that part time position.). The memory brought encouragement. It stirred the conscience. 

There is a step of faith, in participation in institutions, for the love of God and country both. 

There is a step of faith, a growth in conscience, in respect of and for community, given through these institutions that shape community.  Community matters.  So.  Give of your life and breath. Till gardens you will never harvest.  Build schools in which you will never study.  Construct churches in which you will never worship.  And listen, listen to the voices that emerge in communal conversation, particularly those tart and salty. 

Listen to lives that speak, for so the faithful gift of community abides, and guides us. 

Over some years now, one of the treasures and delights of living in Boston is the grace, and care, with which lives are remembered in our Boston Globe.  No other paper, to our memory and experience, does so well, so consistently and so personally.  Our community is one of memory, as well as of hope. 

We lost many friends and congregants to Covid.  Those who were front line COVID workers and victims have had right, ample remembrance, here, on our behalf.  As have those once among us who now rest from their labors.  Our first loss, in March of 2020, was C F Richardson, whose husband Neil, an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, taught Hebrew Bible first at Syracuse University and then here at Boston University.  She, Faith, was for decades the secretary to the local bishop.  It was rumored he would make a decision about who to appoint to what pulpit, and then reverse the decision after talking to Faith.   She was a grand soul, a person of faith, whose conscience was her guide. 

Greeting our new class of students in the school of theology, our new faculty member concluded his welcome sermon by telling students not only to study the high ranges of theology, but also to make space for the touch, for the tactile, for the physical, for photographs, for pets, for plants.  By gracious accident, as the doors opened, his hearers were greeted by our chaplains, passing out—plants!  There was a gardened altar call, unplanned but so timely!  It stirred the conscience. 

There is a gift of faith, in respect of, and for, community. 

There is a step of faith, a growth in conscience, in the joy of discourse, of conversation.  Of all our losses in the last several years, this has been the greatest.  John Wesley even named conversation a means of grace.  All need warm, personal, true, glad hearted, genuine dialogue.  Especially, leadership needs dialogue, leaders need dialogue. 

Leadership, said my friend, ‘is disappointing people at a rate they can accept, or survive, or endure. At a rate they can handle.’ Justice is a part but not the heart of the Gospel—justice is a part but not the heart of the gospel; equality and justice are not the same thing; public safety on the streets matters to all; poor children of every hue need and deserve our care in health, in education, in protection, in nurture, and in respect. 

We will pause and ask questions like: Why is there so much distance between theology and ministry, theory and practice, when there is not such in medicine, dentistry, public health, hospitality, education, engineering, arts, social work and communications? Why? 

In September of 1995, newly installed as the senior minister of a very large church, I hurried out for a breakfast meeting to meet and get to know with our church’s investment advisor.  My earlier church had also an endowment, small and stowed away in card board boxes, or at least in impregnable savings accounts and CD’s.  Now I had some responsibility for a real, or a large, endowment, and more detailed strategies for investment. 

Over breakfast, a bright well-dressed fellow explained the current funds, their places of investment, risks and rewards.  About half way through the fine talk, I noticed that his lapel button was not buttoned.  This produced a moment of conscience.  I did not know the man, I did not want to offend him, and I did not thereby point out his sartorial error.  We parted to go on to the rest of the day.  I wondered how someone so well dressed and spoken could come out the door unbuttoned.  Who dresses you, I mused. 

But you know, life is funny, and will teach us, if we let it. 

Returning to my office, I stopped in front of a mirror there.  Here is what I saw: my own lapel button was unbuttoned.  His and mine, both.  He had gone on to his day thinking what I had before—why this otherwise well-appointed person going about with his shirt unbuttoned?  Conscience would have leaned over in both directions and righted the wrong.  The look in the mirror stirred the conscience. 

You owe it to yourself to be honest with yourself, to look in the mirror. There is a step of faith in the joy of discourse, of conversation. Our friends give us back ourselves.  And a look in the mirror can move us along. 

Study, institution, community, conversation—steps along the walk of faith that quicken the conscience, steps of faith that quicken the conscience, steps of faith that quicken the conscience.  Sursum Corda.  Hear Gospel this Lord’s Day. God walks with us, in the rain, in the dark, in sadness—at night, at night, at night.  A walking not a sitting God. God walks with us in the rain. 

‘Let everyone be convinced in (their) own mind’ 

I have been one acquainted with the night. 

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. 

I have outwalked the furthest city light. 

I have looked down the saddest city lane. 

I have passed by the watchman on his beat 

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. 

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

Sunday
September 10

Well Begun is Half Done

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 18:15–20

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Faith is the power to start over, in the midst of anxiety, and even in the throes of despair. Faith is God’s gift, and the message of the Spirit of the Christ. What the reason can never fully capture, and what the law can never fully define, faith gives: the power to struggle free of despair. Faith says: ‘Start again’… 

Faith inspires forgiveness. Of yourself.  And of others.  

The church is where the deep gladness of faith meets the world’s deep hunger for forgiveness.  Where forgiveness takes root, indwells, has a home, is known.  Where you are called to learn and speak the language of pardon, in all its glorious grammar, syntax and spelling. 

‘And throughout all eternity, I forgive you, you forgive me’ (Blake).  You are invited to growth in faith. Faith has as a first step, or at the least a very early step,  in pardon, in clemency, in forgiveness.  So today, in your first autumn steps, walk the sawdust trail of forgiveness.  ‘And throughout all eternity, I forgive you, you forgive me’. 

So the fierce prophet Ezekiel warns us and all.  Turn back.  Seek pardon, offer pardon, start with pardon.  And watch for first steps in pardon.  Your calling—is it your calling?—is pardon, clemency, forgiveness.  We begin so each Lord’s Day, every single week, with the prayer Jesus taught, ‘forgive us our sins (catholic), debts (presbyterians), trespasses (methodists), as we forgive’.  The hallmark of faith, the hallmark of the community of faith, is forgiveness. 

 You have ample space for practice.  All communities inevitably are riddled with endless contention and intractable difference.  A family, a dorm suite, a team, a business, a church, a country, a globe:  endless contention, intractable difference.  And the prophet warns, warns, that an honest, true, hard word needs sometimes to be spoken.  You need to stop that, because if you do not, the future is not good, for you, or others, or us, or all.  Ezekiel is a later prophet, on the edge of the divide between prophecy and apocalyptic, between politics and religion. ‘Turn back, turn back’. 

 If you had told me in 2015 that we as a country would spend the next nine years in verbal contest with one another, regarding three presidential elections, with no end in sight, with focus on and apotheosis even of a most disreputable cadre of personalities, cacophony of vitriol, and cascade of venom, I would not have believed it.  But I have now heard, and seen, and watch the worry birds fly morning by morning.  Things change. 

James Baldwin: ‘Nothing is fixed forever and forever, it is not fixed. The earth is always shifting and the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down the rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them, because they are the only witnesses we have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to one another, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with each other, the sea engulfs us, and the light goes out’…from Nothing Personal, 188)  

You may need to say a straight word to a roommate, teammate, suitemate or fellow inmate: ‘one of us is wrong and I think it’s you’.   Then follow with, ‘but maybe I am wrong, let’s talk’.  The moment we break faith with each other the sea engulfs us, and the light goes out. 

 The Psalms are chock full of pardon, clemency, forgiveness.  David, however many Psalms he did say, sing or write, knew the first step of faith, the first word in faith.  Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.  Create in me a clean heart O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 51: 10.  Sometimes we need to start over, begin again.  Sometimes that early step in faith invites a measure of mercy, a feeling for forgiveness. 

Annie Dillard: ‘The line of words is a hammer. You hammer against the walls of your house. You tap the walls, lightly, everywhere. After giving many years of attention to these things you know what to listen for. Some of the walls are bearing walls. They have to stay, or everything else falls down. Other walls can go with impunity; you can hear the difference. Unfortunately, it is often a bearing wall that has to go. It cannot be helped. There is only one solution, which appalls you, but there it is. Knock it down. Duck. Courage utterly opposes the bold hope that this is such fine stuff the work needs it, or the world. Courage, exhausted, stands on bare reality: this writing weakens the work. You must demolish the work. AND START OVER. You can save some sentences, like bricks. It will be a miracle if you can save some paragraphs, no matter how excellent in themselves, or hard won. You can waste a year worrying about it, or you can get it over with now. (Are you a woman or a mouse?) (The Writing Life, 73). 

Oh.  How I hate to scrap that sermon and start over.  I do.  But.  It cannot be helped. It might have been good, but it is not good enough.  Scrap it.  But it cannot be helped.  When it doubt throw it out. 

Faith means starting over, in life, in relationships, in work.  Every day. 

Which brings us to our gospel. 

 Our gospel dives deeply into the dark waters of pardon, of forgiveness, that for which we pray every Lord’s Day and every day. 

 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. 

You may be interested or saddened to know that these several Matthean verses are found summarized from in this half verse from Luke: if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him (Luke 17:3).  Brevity is the soul of wit.   And the word church is used only twice in the Gospels, both in Matthew.  This is the life of the early church on display, late in the first century.  (Jesus after all loved both Gentiles and tax collectors, with passion and abandon.) 

 The word ‘ouch’ has a place in our lexicons and in our lives. 

The teaching is to begin alone, to speak privately to your sinful, trespassing, debtor sibling.  Then the teaching is to involve two or three others in the conversation,  Then, finally, the teaching is to turn to the whole ecclesia (hear ecclesiastical), the community as a whole.  One, few, more, many.  Okay. 

But what if the gospel here, in full and in fine, is not so much about tactics, but about mindset?  What if the way to forgiveness is not so much 1,2,3 as it is something far more universal, more permanent, more personal?  What if the real marrow of Matthew here is something like—‘when you have a problem, experiment;  when you try one thing and it doesn’t work, try something else;  in something as precious and lasting as forgiveness, maybe what most counts is not 1,2,3—go alone, go with a few, go with the community—as it is try some different things, experiment, if at first don’t succeed, try again, but in a different way? 

Maybe we are meant to hear, here, a summons to varieties of religious expressions. 

Hardly anything in life calls out experiment, creativity, and soul more than does forgiveness, whether we are talking about personal life or political life. 

This calling you may be feeling toward forgiveness, clemency and pardon this morning may require some creativity, some freedom of thought, some novel approach.  And you may be just the person to conduct the experiment.  Good for you.  In fact, you may be able to expand all of our repertoires of grace. 

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).  The church affirms and protects the conscience (repeat), in a personal way. 

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

Many years ago, in late November a 26 year old woman died, a death tragic and needless.  She had come in the early snows of that November to our little church, for a few Sundays.  So the family asked us to do the funeral and burial, which we did.  But we learned later that they also had a long time earlier attended another church in a neighboring town, and a connection with the minister from that church, John, who had baptized the girl 25 years earlier, and who was, and probably felt, left out.  A week later the Episcopal priest nearby called and invited us to lunch.  ‘I just wanted to catch up with you both’.  The door opened on a priest in his clerics, a linen covered table with fine China and crystal, and a full meal.  We dined and talked.  And there was real grace.  Brushing the snow off the windshield that afternoon, I realized this older pastor was just trying to bring a little pardon, a little mercy, a little grace into a time of loss.  It didn’t build his congregation, or expand his budget, or add to his Sunday attendance.  He just had a sense, a calling to offer some mercy, in a time of hurt, over a common meal.  And 39 years 8 months later the memory is as clear as a bell. 

The pinnacle of our readings from Holy Scripture this Sunday is in Romans.  Paul, as he does in 1 Corinthians 13, so here in Romans 13, sings praise to the God of love, to love, for love, in love.  Forgiveness guides us to love.  Forgiveness is the heart of love, and love of forgiveness.  Forgiveness is the uber driver who gets us to the street of love. 

Mark Helperin: ‘I was graduated from the finest school, which is that of the love between parent and child…In this school you learn the measure not of power, but of love; not of victory, but of grace; not of triumph, but of foregiveness’ (Memoir from Antproof Case, 298)… 

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. 

The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  

Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. 

Besides this you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; 

The night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 

Let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. https://www.christianity.com/bible/rsv/romans/13-14 

But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. 

Faith is the power to start over, in the midst of anxiety, and even in the throes of despair. Faith is God’s gift, and the message of the Spirit of the Christ. What the reason can never fully capture, and what the law can never fully define, faith gives: the power to struggle free of despair. Faith says: ‘Start again’… 

Well begun.  Begin with forgiveness.  You’re half done, when so well begun. 

This in a particular, personal way may become your calling.  You may look in the mirror and see and say, ‘as hard as this is for me in general, I feel that I am called to be the salt of forgiveness and the light of pardon for those about me…Even though I am not good at it, I still feel called to it, called to grow in pardon, called to know well the grace of clemency, called to practice forgiveness.’ 

Frederick Buechner’s simple lines are oft-quoted, and should be: 

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. 

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. 

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

Sunday
September 3

Alma Mater

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 16:21–28

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Class of 2027!  Family, and friends, and siblings and parents and all!  Welcome today to Boston University, which in a few short years you will come to name, come to call Alma Mater, soul mother, your soul mother.  The place where your young self gives way to your own-most self, your first self gives way to your second self, your early self gives way to your later self, where, may it be so, you come to yourself, you find yourself, you become aware, maybe fully for the first time, thanks to your soul mother, of your very soul.  

By their fruits ye shall know them.  As our President Kenneth Freeman said not long ago, we want to cultivate a sense of gratitude, an encultured sense of thanksgiving.  We do so by giving energy and wings to a simple phrase in American English, a lovely tongue, thank you.  Say thank you in prayer, in memory, in speech, in note, in letter in cyber text.  Let’s give some energy to ‘thank you’ this year.   

As our Provost Kenneth Lutchen said not long ago, we are here to form guide and shape others, not only to be an become intelligent people, but also to become intelligent people who go forth to make the world a better place. Intelligent people who go forth to make the world a better place.  The founders of Boston University, those Methodists of 1839, would smile to hear him say that. 

Every school and college in this BU community of 42,000 souls, has a role to play, and we say our own thank you, in advance, for the freedom, the financial and temporal and special and personal freedom to study, and for the fruit such study will produce: 

For the study of education 

Whose fruit is both memory and hope 

For the study of communication 

Whose fruit is truth 

For the study of engineering and computational and digital science 

Whose fruit is expanding global connection and safety 

For the study of management, business and economics 

Whose fruit is community 

For the liberal, metropolitan and general studies of art and science 

Whose fruit is freedom 

For the study of social work 

Whose fruit is systemic compassion 

For the study of law 

Whose fruit is justice 

For the study of art—music, dance, painting, drama, all 

Whose fruit is beauty 

For the study of hospitality 

Whose fruit is conviviality 

For the study of military and physical education 

Whose fruit is security  

For the study of medicine, dentistry, public health and physical therapy 

Whose fruit is wellness 

For the study of theology, the queen of the sciences, and its practices of religion 

Whose fruit is meaning, belonging and empowerment 

In this year may the family of Boston University—students, faculty, administrators, staff, alumni, neighbors all—become, by grace, thankful, thankful thankful for the freedom of such studies, which may make us:: 

healthier, more just, more connected, fairer, truer, sturdier, freer, gentler, deeper, safer, more compassionate, and more aware 

And how? 

All the world’s a stage. 

And all the men and women merely players; 

They have their exits and their entrances; 

And one (person) in his time plays many parts 

(W Shakespeare) 

And how? 

Walk. Listen. Read. (repeat) 

Walk 

There is a great rush, a wind of life, energy, and hope with which every school year begins. May we not ever miss the privilege and joy of this Matriculation moment. Here you are, having bid farewell to mother and father, and said hello to your roommates. Your own life, your own most life, your second but truly first life now begins, or commences in another way. We should, all, remove our sandals, for this holy ground. ‘I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ In this moment of Holy Worship, Holy Scripture, Holy Communion, let us recall, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts, heaven and earth are full of God’s glory. 

Spiritual life in college, as in all life, but in a particularly particular way, causes you to walk, to walk pretty, to walk in a certain way. You will walk in a moment down Commonwealth Avenue, whose more Eastern blocks Winston Churchill called ‘the most beautiful street in America’. He was not wrong. Like the heart beating lub-dub, like spirit and flesh engaged together, like ear and eye, mind and heart, sol y sombra, one two, one foot two foot, hay foot straw foot, you are on the trail. I take my hat off to you, and bow before you, as did St Vincent De Paul before his students, with the dim awareness that in your midst is genius, somewhere someone somehow. 

Boston is the country’s best walking city, a pedestrian palace of nature and culture. You know from the SAT the French phrase, ‘flaneur dans le rue’, to saunter down the street with no especial task, just the breathing joy of breathing, and so you are a flaneur of the spirit. Walk. Walk at dawn. Walk. Walk in the mid-day. Walk. Walk in the evening. Walk in the sunshine and especially the snow. But walk. And for those otherwise abled, guide the walkers with a sense of strength in difference.  Saunter on Newbury Street, and in the Public Garden, and all the way out the Emerald Necklace. 

Come Sunday, that’s the day, walk to worship, walk to church, walk to the Chapel. It is the one walk most needed, on which all the rest in some balefully unappreciated measure does depend. The ordered public worship of Almighty God is not a matter of indifference, at least to the current Dean of Marsh Chapel. You are child of God. Walk here and hear so.  And remember what it feels like.  Every three months my friend is given an knee injection to relieve pain.  On the day of the shot, he says, ‘at least for a time, I remember what it is like to walk pain free’.  That is what walking can do, and that is what worship is for, to remind you of who and whose you are. 

Listen 

Now the spiritual life takes shape. Here you are. Come and listen. Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century set out his orders for his order, beginning with the first and most important. Listen. It is not what you see but what you hear that matters, lasts, counts, gives meaning. Faith comes by hearing not scanning. Hearing comes by the Word of God, not the words on a screen. The keyboard is not the window of the soul. What holds, molds, scolds, folds, for youngs and olds, is in the hearing. We have several regular worshippers, sight impaired, who will remind you, in their faithfulness, of the primacy of the ear. Listen. 

Listen for what is not said, for the dog that does not bark. Listen for what engages, and for what enrages, both. Listen to the sounds of silence. Listen for a word of faith offered in a pastoral voice toward the prospect of a common hope. Listen for a word of faith offered in a pastoral voice toward the prospect of a common hope. “Dad, I heard something fantastic the other day. It went like this…’ We have two ears, and one tongue. 

What Jesus said in 30ad is written down at last, and with a healthy dollop of interpretation, by Matthew in 85ad. There was a long line of listening, hearing, sharing, speaking, long before the writing.  The Scripture offers to hearing and faith the paradox of saving and losing life: you only have, only possess, only truly hold what you have the power, grace, freedom and courage to give away. If you do not have it, you cannot give it. If you give it, truly, you then show you have owned it.   These sayings were written down together in Matthew 16 because they shared a tag word—life. What can you give in exchange for your life? 

One side of the message is conservative: hold on, flee false forfeit, prize life now you have it). Whoever saves his life will lose it, and whoever loses is life will find it. The other side of the message is liberal: splash around with generosity, give with no thought of return, take up the cross, follow. The two teachings together are a paradox, an antimony, even, by some measure they are at daggers drawn. Which one for which day on which way will you say? I give you an unusual idiom, out of the freedom of American English: It’s up to you. It’s up to you.  Over time you will need them both, the more liberal and the more conservative. Over time, you will need them both. Listen. Tune your ear to God.  To learn which to choose and when demands, requires, the training of the ear 

Our dear friend, and ninth BU President, now of blessed memory, who died yesterday, Dr. Aram Chobanian, longtime Dean of our Medical School, the school now named in part for him, could listen.  He had the gift, the knack of that physician’s grace, the grace of listening, of the artful bedside manner.   

Read 

As today, so every Lord’s day, much is read, come Sunday. If you come to church here every Sunday for three years, you will hear the whole Bible, more or less, four lessons per week.  Free of charge!  You will hear.  One will read, read to you. A love of reading conjured in college—for this we pray for one and all.   Not scanning. Reading.  Not speed reading.  Reading every word.  Reading will take you out beyond and behind the twin towers of your birth. You have come of age in the shadow of the mists of COVID, class of 2027.   You were raised in part in the shadows of anxiety, depression, alienation, loneliness. Masked. You came to age under the aspect of ZOOM.  The loss was not face, the loss was voice.  The loss of voice to the omnivorous screen. But now you are at last in college, in part again to find your voice. 

Read. Thereby you escape the confines of the early 21st century. Are there no other escape routes? No. You read. While other party, you read. While others drink, you read. While others play, you read.   You will come to a great land that has been awaiting your arrival. It is the land of memory. It is the land of hope. See the meadow, bright in the morning! Memory. Hear the chorus of birdsong at dawn! Memory. Now you are ready to move into memory in reading.   Pick a favorite verse. Read it well enough to commit it to memory. One said last week, When you start to memorize you start to notice the things you notice, your own habits of attention, your habits of reading. As the congregation knows by frequent infliction, today’s epistle is one of mine. (Romans 12: 9-13). Reading will take you to a land of memory, the location of a deeper story. 

Read.  Start with Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. You dwell in the tenth floor of a building whose first three stories were constructed with stolen land and enslaved labor, free land and free labor, for the benefit of anyone who had or used money, then or now. 

Read. You have the subsidized freedom, for four years or more or less, to think. Think things through. Think from the top down and the bottom up. Go where others are trying to think, and think with them. Challenge them. Question them. Press them. See what lasts. I am not afraid of the Gospel. It is the power of salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, ‘the righteous shall live by faith’.  You remember what the bereft mother of a college age daughter said,in Charlottesville six years ago, quietly, said, gently, said truly, Think before you speak.  Think. 

Read.  Spiritual life—walk, listen, read, think—spiritual life true to your own-most self, is the only primary nourishment you will need for the next four years. Or the next forty. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? ‘We are not simply to bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke in the wheel itself’ (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) 

Our Chapel leadership, Rev. Dr. Chicka, Rev. Dr. Coleman, Dr. Jarrett, Mr. Lee, will invite you:  to Create Space on Tuesday afternoon, and to 5pm Monday Dinner, and to Eucharist and Dinner on Wednesday, and to Choir on Thursday (auditions this week).  You are not alone.  You are not alone. You are not alone. 

Amen. 

 

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

Sunday
August 27

A Moment of Inspiration

By Marsh Chapel

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Matthew 16:13–20

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Inspiration. 

A moment of inspiration. 

Peter was seized by a moment of inspiration.  

And you? 

Are we? 

Are we open to a moment of inspiration? 

Have you faith? 

Have you faith in Christ? 

Are you going on to wholeness? 

Do you desire to be made healthy in love in this life? 

Are you earnestly striving after it? 

Over the years, you, Marsh Chapel, have provided reasoned hearing for moments of inspiration, so not to be conformed, but to be transformed by the renewing of the mind, as Paul has it.  Think in four strands. 

 Some special ones have come as friends or students of ours, a strand of students from BU, as alumni if you will of Marsh Chapel have over time taken leadership in campus ministries near and far.  Your inspiration has borne fruit, with colleagues engaging campus life at Bates, at Tufts, at Bentley, at Emerson, at Middlebury, at St Paul at Syracuse, at American, at Emory, at University of Chicago, and elsewhere. 

 Your inclination to inspiration has borne fruit in voices of truth and love, here, over many years.  The historic strand of Methodism.  The gift largely of our time, though dating to Anna Howard Shaw decades ago, the strand of women in the pulpit.  International, and global strands, ecumenical and interreligious strands, all sharing an inclination to inspiration.  

 Your inspiration has also borne fruit in a fine, particular African American strand of preaching, dating to Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King (whose ‘Dream’ speech turns 60 tomorrow).  I can hear guest voices from that strand, that rich tradition, and picture them in our pulpit. I close my eyes and hear their cadences, their inflections, their pauses, their voices. Bobbie Mcclain.  Peter Paris.  Lawrence Carter.  Cornell William Brooks.  Elizabeth Siwo.  Dale Andrews. Peter Gomes.  Jonathan Walton.  Walter Fluker.  Christopher Edwards. Robert Franklin. Preeminently Robert Franklin. Ken Elmore.  And, after some serious pestering, without pause, of his gracious administrator, a wonderful gracious woman, our former Governor Deval Patrick. (She called on Friday to schedule a talk on Monday, saying…’You will be happy’.  Happy indeed!)

For this summer of 2023 the strand was from your extended family, your spiritual children, the children of Marsh Chapel who now lead and teach and preach, whether here or at Harvard or at Vanderbilt or in Rochester.  You have cast your bread upon the water, and some has come back to you, this summer.  We are still rightly judged by the kind of people we produce.  And grateful we are to Jessica Chicka,  Soren Hessler, Jen Quigley, Bill Cordts, Stephen Cady, Regina Walton, and Karen Coleman.  Marsh Chapel:  this summer our own family came home.  And they came to inspire us, and to remind us.  To remind us, to inspire us by reminding us.  Drew Faust, former Harvard President, has just done so with her autobiography, NECESSARY TROUBLE. 

Most of us most of the time need more reminder than instruction. So, as you think about discipleship and its costs, say each of these twice every morning… 
Faith is not a prize to achieve but a gift to receive. 
The gospel is not about success and failure but about death and resurrection. 
Cultural, racial and religious divisions are hard and real, today, and in first century Palestine. They must be faced and addressed. 
Sometimes the divine voice is and has to be harsh, like when a Father warns his son not to touch a hot stove. 
Food matters, really matters, and so, as in the sacrament is at the heart of our faith and faithfulness. 
Love brings happiness as those four young men from Liverpool reminded us: all you need us love. Love is the way to happiness. Nostalgia can block out curiosity. Nostalgia can eclipse curiosity. 

Love includes. Faith does not exclude. Hope includes. Love, faith and hope are like communion at Marsh Chapel. All are included. Sometimes an anthem can and will interpret the Gospel for the day, alongside the sermon.

You can see and hear these at your inclination, for your inspiration. And, now, thanks to one of our staff, whose name I cannot give you but whose initials are Chloe McLaughlin, you can listen to 799 services on podcast, starting with August 2008. You can listen for 47 days and 7 hours straight. Hm…that might be an ideal requirement for theology students…

Matthew teaches us, as does all Scripture. 

We are disciples.  The word means student.  Disciple means student.  Salve Discipuli.  Salve Magistra.   Discipleship means studentship.  The model of faithfulness recommended, particular in Matthew, and especially in Matthew 16, is the model of the student.  Perhaps if we simply said ‘studentship’ rather than ‘discipleship’, we would do better.  Perhaps we should and could see the courageous arrival of the class of 2027 as exhibit a, exemplum docet. 

Living right means learning together—in voice, in thought, in conflict, in Scripture.  Learning together. 

It is this driving preachment that causes Matthew to eviscerate Mark here.   Matthew in 85ad has taken a passage from Mark in 70ad and turned it upside down.   It is not so much the detail, by the way, of the manner in which Matthew and Luke revise Mark, chapter by chapter, which is important.  What matters is that they have the courage to do so, that they happily re-gospelled the gospel for their own day, to a fair thee well. 

No?  No?  Oh Yes. Yes, indeed.  Yes. 

(1)Mark in the passage calls Peter ‘Satan’.  Matthew calls him Rock.  (2)Mark has no mention of any church of any kind.  Matthew uses the word, the Greek word for church, ecclessia—not likely something Jesus would have said, and gives Peter keys to the kingdom.  (3)Mark has Jesus tell the disciples—the students—to keep it all secret.  Matthew rejects that secrecy, except for the title, messiah, and says, ‘preach it’.  Why?  Why does Matthew eviscerate, confound, gut, overturn his legacy, this inherited passage from Mark?  Answer:  he and his community are learning together…in a new time…in a different setting.  So they are learning, as are we. From voices.  From thoughts.  From conflicts.  And Matthew sternly tells his people:  for inspiration to take hold, take root and last, for us to become fully human we will need institutional grounding, support, protection, and sustenance:  family, neighborhood, school, church, university, country, globe.  And let me be clear about the church, Matthew’s Jesus adds, for all its troubles in every age:  the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. 

And one more thing, as we are learning together in voice, thought, conflict and scripture. Who do you say He is?  In your life. Notice the passage crashes away from the general and the philosophical—what do others say (general) about the son of man (philosophical).  Some say (general), the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the Prophets (philosophical).  Notice the move to the specific and the personal.  Who do you say I am?  Meaning for you today:  how are you going to live?  A life of studentship, or not?  Said Peter, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”  Remember this.  Peter is the one who most needed forgiveness, and full pardon he did receive.  There is forgiveness in life (repeat). And the church is the place where people like Peter, like you and me, who need forgiveness, find themselves forgiven.   That is your legacy in the liberal church. 

Matthew teaches us. 

That is, the tradition in Matthew 16, of Peter, the rock, on which the church—the commonwealth, the koinonia, the fellowship, the sharing, the community of faith, including right here and right now—is based, in Peter, on one thing.  Inspiration.  Are you open to a moment of inspiration? 

Peter was is called the rock, not for his consistency, not for his pedigree, not for his perfection, not for his physical strength, and certainly not for his swimming ability, where he is the rock as in sink like a rock.  Jesus calls him out because he is open to inspiration.  He has a moment of inspiration, and in that kind of inspired moment faith and the community of faith are born and bred.  ‘You are---the Christ’.  An indelible moment, of inspiration.  And for such inspiration, come Sunday, come any day, we need the gifts of the church:  the gift of quiet, the gift of courage, the gift of others around us to correct and challenge, and then, yes, scripture and architecture and music and liturgy and sacrament and all manner of grace, to keep us within earshot of…breath, the breath of God, spirit, inspiration.  

Our experience includes many fallow times and seasons, including these just now waning, if they are waning, from COVID.  But there are also powerful Petrine moments of inspiration.  That is the good news.  That is the gospel.  All, especially our arriving 18 year olds, need very much to hear this.  Every day invites inspiration. Remember Wilder’s Emily Webb, returning for one day to the land of the living: 

‘O Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me.  Mama 14 years have gone by.  I’m dead.  You’re a grandmother Mama.  I married George Gibbs.  Wally’s dead too.  His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway.  We felt just terrible about it–don’t you remember?  But, just for a moment now we’re all together, Mama.  Just for a moment we’re happy.  LET’S LOOK AT ONE ANOTHER’ 

‘So all that was going on and we never noticed.  Grover’s Corners.  Mama and Papa. Clock’s ticking. Sunflowers.  Food and coffee.  New ironed dresses and hot baths.  Sleeping and waking up.  Earth! You are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. 

A long time ago, by grace, a moment of inspiration arrived at the right time, and in the right way.  With one child at 18 months, and another on the way in a few more months, the draw toward doctoral studies would not abate.  We looked at the usual suspects, Boston and Harvard, Yale and Union, Drew and Duke, but for varieties of reasons nothing fit, nothing worked.  Then, one early winter snowy day, looking through the brochures of schools in the village library, a red booklet marked McGill came to hand.  And there, snow falling, of a sudden, that real kind of lived inspiration, a moment of inspiration, arrived.  The second largest French speaking city in the world, le Europe prochaine, the Europe next door, an excellent faculty, within geographic reach, at least south of the border, for our Bishop to arrange for service in churches there.  We could afford it.  We could imagine it.  We could reach it.  We could do it.  For all the challenges, it was doable.  The world is full of possibilities.  Life is full of unforeseen opportunities.  An hour of quiet, a different perspective, a little snow to still the soul and open the spirit, and, then, a moment of inspiration.  The shadow of Peter, the Rock, is not mainly in the administrative structures of the ecclesia, important as they are.  His shadow falls with delicacy and grace on you. 

Inspiration. 

A moment of inspiration. 

Peter was seized by a moment of inspiration.  

And you? 

Are we? 

Are you open to a moment of inspiration? 

Have you faith? 

Have you faith in Christ? 

Are you going on to wholeness? 

Do you expect to be made healthy in love in this life? 

Are you earnestly striving after it? 

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