Sunday
June 2
For Us
By Marsh Chapel
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Sunday
May 26
Metaphorical Understanding
By Marsh Chapel
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Good morning, Marsh Chapel! I hope you have been enjoying our beautiful warm weather this holiday weekend. I personally spent several hours yesterday sitting on the BU beach behind the chapel enjoying the beauty of late spring while working on this sermon. I’d like to thank Dean Hill for inviting me to preach today, even if it is t\Trinity Sunday, notoriously one of the most difficult topics to preach about. But, I’m up to the challenge if you all are!
We’re entering into a new season here at BU – the class of 2024 has graduated, the campus is slightly less bustling than it was a few weeks ago, and we all have a little more breathing room as the slower pace of the summer creeps in. We find time to catch up on our reading and to do some professional development, preparing for the next year. We also have a little more breathing room outside of work for those things that bring us joy and help us learn a new skill or develop a new interest. In my spare time, I have been working on my own self-improvement. Almost three years ago, I jumped back into re-learning German. Now, I had studied German in middle and high school, even into college with the thought that I might be a German major. There’s something I love about the orderliness of the language. It’s almost like an equation to put together a sentence. My drive to get back into learning German, apart from the academic needs I have, was mostly based in relationship. My best friend moved to Germany about eight years ago and she had never studied German. So, as she was learning a new language, I too found myself yearning to go back and relearn what I had forgotten.
I chose to go the path of Duolingo. For those of you unfamiliar, Duolingo is an app that basically gamifies language learning. You earn points for each lesson you complete. You compete with strangers in “leagues” to have the most points at the end of each week. You try to keep up your daily practice streak, earning badges and accolades along the way. If you’re lucky enough, a kind friend will add you to their family plan so you have access to Super Duolingo, which allows you to make as many mistakes as you want and to not have to watch ads. Does anyone here use Duolingo? Ok, well, not to brag or anything, but I’m on a 1064 day learning streak with 44 weeks in the Diamond League. I know that sounds like nonsense if you don’t have the app, but trust me, it’s very impressive.
One beautiful thing about the German language (and yes, I know that it’s often made fun of for sounding harsh and brutal) is how words are formed. You see, one could make the case that Germans are very literal people. When they need to make a new word for something, often times they will take already existing words that sort of explain the meaning of the word and smoosh them together to form a new word. So, for example, Waldsterben, literally forest death, is a term used for tree decline in the 1970’s. Another example, Kümmerspeck, literally, “worry bacon,” means the fat one gains from stress eating. Of course, there are also other words that we know in English that can only be said in German – Shadenfreude, literally “damage or harm joy”, the joy one experiences at the misfortune of another. Or Zeitgeist, literally “spirit time”, meaning the feeling of a particular moment in time. I’m sure there are other examples you can think of in other languages as well, but as I’ve primarily studied German, these are the ones I can point to. It’s how German ends up with compound words over 50 letters long (the longest is 79 letters – I’m not going to try to pronounce it for you, but it is related to how a law should regulate the transfer of monitoring tasks of beef labeling and cattle identification.
The reason that I bring up the linguistic stylings of German words is because it shows how two different, separate words can point to a third meaning while still giving a hint of what the original words stood for. As a learner, it certainly makes it easier to remember what more complex words mean when the root words point to that meaning by their own meanings. The new word both is and is not what the two (or more) root words mean. We don’t exactly have the same usage in English – we’re more likely to come up with a new word rather than sticking two words that describe the thing together and saying that’s the word for it. The funny thing about language is the nuance it carries with it. Native speakers get that nuance. We understand the idioms of our language pretty clearly most of the time and expect that others will also understand those phrases. Working with international students, however, I’ve found that it’s important to evaluate our own language use. Even if you think you’re speaking in a way that’s clear, idioms seem to sneak in unknowingly, leaving those who are not native speakers confused. For example, saying that you’re “pulling someone’s leg” may seem obvious to those who have grown up speaking English, but if you think about what that phrase means literally and what it means figuratively, it’s hard to explain how you mean that you’re only joking, not literally pulling someone’s leg. Language can also serve as a barrier to understanding, especially when that language is used metaphorically.
Throughout the Bible, metaphor is used frequently to explain the attributes of God. God is a rock. God is a mountain. God is a Fortress. God is Love. Jesus is the Word made Flesh. Jesus’ body is the bread and wine. The Holy Spirit is the breath of life. Most notably for this day is our conception of God as Father, Jesus as Son, and the Holy Spirit to compose the triune God. While these separate pieces may function in different ways, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, for example, in our theological understanding, they are all one. It’s the “great mystery” of Christianity. We understand that these three attributes of God are all God equally, but it’s hard to fully comprehend how 1 + 1 +1 = 1. Language limits our ability to talk about God because God is beyond our conceptually abilities to describe completely. God is defined, in a way, by our relationship with God, which defies complete linguistic capabilities. The 20th Century French philosopher, Simone Weil, states succinctly how challenging it is to know God in our limited capacity as humans:
“There is a God. There is no God. Where is the problem? I am quite sure that there is a God in the sense that I am sure my love is no illusion. I am quite sure there is no God in the sense that I am sure there is nothing which resembles what I can conceive of when I say that word.”1
Weil’s assertion is that human being’s ability to properly conceptualize what God is is impossible because of the limitations of language and our own human thought processes. There is not absolute certainty in her thoughts about God because she is aware of these limitations. God is so completely other than us that we do not have the adequate language to speak about God’s nature except in slivers of what we can compare it to.
That’s where metaphor helps us. Just like the construction of German complex nouns, metaphors are ways of describing something by pointing to what it both “is and is not.” A metaphor creates relational tension between the word being used and the actual thing it is describing. So yes, God is Love, God is the source of love, but God is not just love. God is a rock, in that God is a solid foundation, but God is not literally a rock. Theologian Sallie McFague makes the argument in her book Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language that we need to recognize that “metaphor is the way we think, and it is the way the parables – a central form of expression in the New Testament – work.”2 Metaphor isn’t just some literary device used for poetry and artistic thinking, but is the basis for how we think about the world – we naturally relate things to others by their similarities. It’s how we know an apple is red, a stop sign is red, BU’s color is red. The definition of “red” is based on comparison. We build models, whether we know it or not, that aid us in understanding the world. It is also the way that we connect with the Divine. McFague’s central argument in her book by recognizing this use of metaphor in all of our language and particularly in the language of scripture, Christians should develop a series of flexible models of God that allow all people to conceive of the Divine in multiple ways. By doing so, theology is not limited to one dominant viewpoint that can become either idolatrous or irrelevant to the experiences and contexts of Christian worshippers. For example, while the traditional trinitarian model of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit may be comforting and relevant for some, we must recognize how it also alienates and has been weaponized to oppress marginalized peoples.
The Gospel of John is rife with metaphorical language. The Gospel of John is often credited with being the most poetic of the gospels, using literary devices to allow for the mystery of God to be maintained while telling a narrative story about the life of Jesus. In fact, right at the beginning of the Gospel, we find metaphor “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). And then later in verse 10, John tells us that the Word (Jesus) came into the world, but the world did not know him. The tension of being recognized in the world, but not fully understood makes Jesus into a living metaphor in the Gospel of John. The entire presence of God is shrouded in this mystery as the book progresses. We see some of that mystery in the scripture selected for today.
In today’s Gospel, Nicodemus, a leader in the Jewish community, comes to Jesus and states, “we know that you are a teacher and that you come from God.” Nicodemus thinks he understands Jesus’ place in society because of the things he has witnessed about him – he teaches, and the things he appears to know and do only could come from a divine source. He and the other Pharasees think they know who Jesus is, but Jesus points out that what they think they know is not truly them understanding what his role is, nor how it relates to God and the Holy Spirit. When Jesus speaks of spiritual birth, being born from heaven, Nicodemus is confused – how could someone who is grown be born…again? Jesus’ meanings, like so many times in the Gospels, seems obscured, leaving those he talks to confused or bewildered by his statements. The poetic language Jesus uses to explain himself, God, and the Holy Spirit, the three in one form of God, is meant to provide a framework for those he encounters, but also to reminds them of the divine mystery.
So, we are not alone in our confusion about the Trinity, or how to properly conceive of God. Nicodemus doesn’t understand who or what Jesus is doing or how this relates to the bigger picture of God’s presence in the world. Of course, as we look upon this writing, we know how Jesus’ ministry will progress and how his death and resurrection will demonstrate his role as savior. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t still allowed to feel challenged by God’s nature. It’s here that we need to establish the difference between knowing and understanding something. Knowing usually means having an awareness of something, whereas understanding is a higher level operation of thinking that allows for interpretation, processing, and then application of that awareness. Nicodemus knows that Jesus is a teacher, he is aware of the things Jesus has done to earn that label, but Nicodemus does not understand that while Jesus is a teacher, a teacher in this situation is so much more than explaining facts. Jesus’ ministry brings people into the kingdom of God (another metaphorical idea) and allows them to be spiritually reborn. Jesus’ metaphorical language is bound by human understanding, but pushes Nicodemus and us to think of God as much more than what we can conceive.
Theologians continue this work grounded in the parabolic and metaphorical nature of the scriptures. I mentioned earlier that Sallie McFague’s metaphorical theology aims at creating a framework for thinking about God that allows for multiple models. Each of these models is grounded in a particular starting point, a root metaphor. For the apostle Paul (and Martin Luther) it’s justification through grace by faith. For Augustine it’s radical dependence on God alone. For Paul Tillich, it’s the ultimate concern hidden in the pentultimate concern.3 Out of these root metaphors, then systems of metaphor develop that point back to that root metaphor. So if the primary thinking about God is as a liberator, the metaphorical language used to describe God, such as justice and righteousness will be used more heavily to support that position. There can be multiple ways of thinking about how we relate to God and what that relationship means in our daily lives. What McFague is addressing through this approach to theology is that the metaphors used for God do not become idolatrous or irrelevant to the point that it becomes easy to feel disconnected from the divine. Language is always shifting and is context dependent. Our experiences of the divine should shape the language we use to describe God, rather than being stuck in one mode of understanding. Yes, we rely on tradition as it connects us with the historical church and ways of worship throughout the ages, but we can also use our new experiences and understandings of the world to help us better understand our relationship with the divine through our language. Our models for God help us expand our relationship with God by mirroring God’s expansive presence in our lives.
Take, for example, these series of describing the Trinity from the communion liturgy from my own Lutheran tradition for today:
Holy God, Holy One, Holy Three,
Our Life, our Mercy, our Might,
Our Table, our Food, our Server,
Our Rainbow, our Ark, our dove.
Our sovereign, our water, our wine,
Our light, our treasure, our tree,
Our way, our truth, our life.4
The Trinity is all of these things, and yet at the same time none of these things. Metaphor points us in the direction of God’s qualities, but faith helps us to better understand what those qualities mean for us in our lives. The unfamiliar becomes more familiar as we strive to use the limitations of language to articulate the feelings we have in our relationship with God. Despite our inabilities to fully understand God, we can take comfort in God’s unwavering grace and love. The scripture tells us of this love: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.“ (John 3:16-17) Let us celebrate our relationship of love with God, who is and is not all that we can say. Amen.
Sunday
May 19
2024 Baccalaureate Service
By Marsh Chapel
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The text of Dr. Walter Fluker's address is not available at this time.
-Dr. Walter Earl Fluker is the Distinguished Professor of the Howard Thurman Center at Hartford International University, Professor Emeritus for Ethical Leadership at Boston University, and President/CEO of Walter Earl Fluker & Associates, Inc.
Sunday
May 12
This I Believe- Class of 2024
By Marsh Chapel
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2024 This I Believe Speakers include:
Samantha Nelson, BS COM ‘24
Shea Thompson, MTS STH ‘24
Guinevere Keith, BA/MA CAS/GRS ‘24
Dr. David Prabhu, MBA Questrom ‘24
Emma French, BS COM ‘24
Sunday
May 5
Love One Another
By Marsh Chapel
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Sunday
April 28
The Bach Experience- April 2024
By Marsh Chapel
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The Bach Experience- April 28th, 2024
Cantata: O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe, BWV 34
Dean Hill:
Through this Easter season, Easter tide, you have perhaps noticed, noted, or winced to hear the letter of John, 1 John, amending, redacting, muting and amplifying the gospel of John. You are keen listeners, practiced and adroit, so you will have wondered a bit about this. Why does 1 John nip at the heels of John?
The two ‘books’, John and 1 John, were written by different authors, in different decades, in different circumstances, with different motives. The Gospel acclaims Spirit. The Letter adds in work, ethics, morals, community, tradition, leadership and judgment from on high, rather than judgment by belief and by believer. We may just have, it is important to say, the Gospel as part of the New Testament, with all its radicality, due to its brother named letter, vouching as it were for the sanity of the Gospel. The letter, like James Morrison Witherbee George Dupree, takes good care of its Gospel mother, the very cat’s mother, you see.
The Gospel in chapter 20 revealed the Spirit, elsewhere called Paraclete or Advocate, come upon us, received and with it received the forgiveness of sins. But at the heels, nipping, comes along 1 John in chapter 2, which names the Paraclete or Advocate not as Spirit but as Jesus Christ—the righteous—whose commandments all we are to keep, on pain of disobedience become lying, and truth taken flight. Both read on the same Sunday, within minutes of each other, even as they face each other, in loving disagreement.
The next Sunday, the letter in Chapter 3, on the qui vive and on the attack, spells out again in no uncertain terms that the righteous do the right, handsome is as handsome does. Both read on the same Sunday, within minutes of each other, even as they face each other in loving disagreement, maybe even at daggers drawn.
A week later, the Gospel in chapter 10 acclaimed the pastoral image of the Good Shepherd, whose one glorification on the cross is meant to obliterate the need of any other such, even as the Letter, worried, worried out in later chapter 3, a long and sorry recollection of Cain—Abel’s one-time brother—and the demands of love from one who laid down his life, and with whom and for whom we are then meant to do something of the same. ‘Let us not love in word and speech but in deed and in truth’, says 1 John 3, when the whole of the Gospel says simply ‘love’, says that words outlast deeds, and that speech, that of the glorious Risen, ever routs works. Both read on the same Sunday, within minutes of each other, even as they face each other in loving disagreement, a family row.
And now today, when and where our one Great Gospel, the Spiritual Gospel, counsels ‘abide’ and ‘remain’ in chapter 15, just here the letter of 1 John in chapter 4, fearing antinomial abandon, appends to his own most beautiful love poem, the charge again of lying, of lack of love of brother, of schism that surely created this letter, 1 John, as the spiritualists and the traditionalists, the Gnostics and the ethicists, parted company, one toward the free land of Montanus and Marcion, the other toward Rome and the emerging church, victorious, against which the Gospel was born, bred, written and preached. Both read on the same Sunday, within minutes of each other, even as they face off.
Of course, both are right. Or we would not still need or read them, let alone together. But you are right, too, to feel some neck pain, some whiplash, as Gospel soars and Letter deflates. It is as if the Song of Solomon were being sung by Obadiah.
Still. We are meant to live in Easter, not in Lent. All the disciplines of Lent, the forty and days the ten worship services of Holy Week, and the four of Triduum, and all, they are preparation for the real. The real is joy, the real is love, the real is Easter. Here our outstanding, Pentecostal cantata, inspires, guides and shapes us.
Dr Jarrett, tell us what to listen for and how, now in Easter, with our Sunday Cantata.
Dr. Jarrett:
Today’s Cantata was written for Pentecost, the Christian Holiday that celebrates the Coming of the Holy Spirit and is observed on the 50th Day of Easter, hence Pentecost. In the New Testament, we find record of the first Pentecost in Acts 2. The Holy Spirit arrives by the wind appearing as cloven tongues of fire. And despite the many and varied languages spoken by the early followers of Jesus assembled in Jerusalem, the expression or accent of the Holy Spirit was understood by each hearer according to his own tongue. The Tower of Babel rebuilt. The new Church, the new Body of Christ, of the risen Lord, was to be for all. In John 14, Jesus explains our family tree, so to speak, first by explaining that he himself is of the Father, and that though he will soon return to the Father, another Comforter, also of the Father, will be sent to indwell in hearts of all those who keep the commandment, the Word, and love one another. A radical new intimacy with the Father, through Christ Jesus, will connect the new Church, like vines and branches, as a Body of and in Christ. The Gospel reading for Pentecost that Bach was working with was John 14: 23-31, which culminates in two sayings of Jesus: “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make. Our abode with him. (Verse 23) and”Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you” (verse 27).
Setting side the brilliant opening movement of today’s cantata, the other four movement are structured around these two sayings of Jesus: Recit No 2 around the idea of Indwelling, with the only aria of the cantata a pastoral rumination of how glorious this will be – Eden restored in each of us. The second recit, No. 4, broadens the indwelling to the new church, with the sign of Peace. The whole of the new church interrupts the baritone’s recitative to take up the new greeting shared by all who choose Love: Peace be with you.
Music of the high Baroque is much like a Swiss clock – there is extraordinary beauty in the clock itself – face and casing – but admiration becomes awe when the extraordinary number of component and moving parts are found to create such clarity and beauty. As an aural guide for Cantata 34, listen for how Bach sets the word Ewiges – or eternal, and at the same time the flickering, darting line sing for the word Feuer – or fire. Notice how Bach sets the word for ‘ignite’ – entzünde – you can almost feel the music spark each time the choir sings it. The trumpet signals the arrival of Christ, as bride-groom, of this most royal of weddings.
The central movement of the cantata, focuses on the rapture of the individual whose body becomes Christ’s Holy Temple. There is a perfection and naturalness of beauty here – directly from the sublimity of Eden’s garden.
The cantata ends in thanks and praise, but not without significant emphasis on Christ’s pronouncement, ‘Peace upon Israel.’
Today we observe two masters whose musical settings give voice to Christ’s wedding invitation. An invitation to all, without amendment or exclusion.
We prepare ourselves for cantata and covenant, in wonder and vulnerability and self-awareness…
Dean Hill:
There may well come a discreet time, for you, as a person of faith, to say something or do something, a time when some somewhat risky and uncomfortable mode of social involvement, or existential engagement, will beckon you.
After 40 years not just 40 days, such has come I believe to my beloved Methodist church, now in General Conference in Charlotte. There is a great whoosh of new life, coming into a church formerly fraught with conflict, and a great excitement of love to love and include ALL. It is the first such quadrennial gathering I have not attended with one exception since 1992. And the most successful. Maybe you just need the right people in the room and outside the room! Maybe it was my fault!
With this cantata, Methodism, at its best, built into the walls of Marsh Chapel, is love divine all loves excelling. Memorize the lines from 1 John 4: 7-12 today.
We once went to preach in a little church high in the Adirondacks, Mountainview UMC. It was one of the churches in the string served by a lone itinerant preacher. Listen to the names. Chasm Falls. Owls Head. Wolf Pond. Mountainview. My, my… (Owls Head, the ice box of the north, is where the New York Times for decades found the coldest temperature on record each winter). Reality squared, just in the names. A story, an old Methodist story, a Pentecostal cantata story, from the 1930’s comes, if memory serves, from Mountainview, a little town at the end of the rail line, where the locomotive turned around to head back downhill. Some farmers, a teacher or three, the druggist, some retirees, a small but loving congregation. They had been saving for ten years to build a new church building to replace their old one, and were just about able to break ground. But after Easter, as annually they did, they had a missionary come, this time from China. He was a gentle spirit, in the manner of Pearl Buck and others. He simply but directly told the Mountainview folk what he had seen in China of sheer poverty, of abject need, of kindness in the face of suffering, of living on nothing, and, too, of the difference faith can make. Over three days, with meals, and sugar on snow for dessert with the last marks of winter, with three days of conversation, something happened. After the missionary went to bed, the folks sat in the twilight, in silence. You don’t have to say much in a small town anyway because everyone knows what everyone thinks already. Finally, a farmer with gnarled hands, who would be milking at 4 in the morning, leaned in and said, Well. I sure would love a new church. We have waited a long time. But…but…this fellow and his people need that money a whole lot more than we do. Let’s draw out the building money and give him a check before the train leaves tomorrow. We can make do with this place another decade.
Let us live in Easter, let us love one another!
The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music
Sunday
April 21
What is there to care for?
By Marsh Chapel
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Sunday
April 14
It’s Still Easter
By Marsh Chapel
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Sunday
April 7
Communion Meditation for April 2024
By Marsh Chapel
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Sunday
March 31
Resurrection Family
By Marsh Chapel
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On Easter we receive and are received by a new resurrection family, the family of Jesus, crucified and risen.
Ponder this resurrection family, reaching from Mary to you, from Mary’s heart in the garden, to yours in the pew.
Your resurrection family is a heart-to-heart hearth, an I and Thou fellowship. We know Jesus now through his cousins become ours by faith. Resurrection is, if nothing else, relational, personal, familiar.
Mary in the garden, John 20, shows us so. You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart. Known by name. Through historical mist, through mysterious tradition, through numinous utterance, through biblical legend, through the possibility of impossibility, through the impenetrable imponderable, given to the least, Mary. Mary: wayward, female, alone, poor, powerless… loving…Mary Magdalene, come to the garden alone.
From Mary to the 12, from the 12 to the 500, from the 500 to the least of the apostles, from Paul to Rome and the church and the gentiles and me and you and even all the mere Methodists fleeing from the wrath to come.
From Mary to Marilynne Robinson, to Raymond Brown, to Ernest Fremont Tittle, to your mother, to Nancy Marsh Hartmann, to Marcel Proust to Charles Webb to you. My spiritual nourishment comes from reading, from faithful stories of struggle from our laity, and from worship, all of it, every smidgin of it---organ, hymn, choir, anthem, reading, sermon, prayer, sacrament all. It’s all I need. It’s all we need,
Charles Webb, who reshaped and reframed our second hymn, was the longtime organist at the Bloomington Indiana First UMC, and Professor at the School of Music at IU. An editor of our hymnal, he worked to improve the musical harmonies, and the musical cadences of the revival tradition hymns, a fairly large piece of work as the frequency of his name in the hymnal attests. I met him, once, when preaching in Bloomington. In his nineties now, he enjoys visits from his former pastor and our dear friend, and sometime summer preacher, Dr. Philip Amerson. We mortals face loss, misfortune, disaster, death. But we also see the glow that comes, say, in the nineties, when one’s hour in the sun is coming to an end. We also hear the power of the spoken word, in conversation, in State of the Union, in Sunday sermon. And we also recall William James, My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
On Easter we receive and are received by a new resurrection family, the family of Jesus, crucified and risen.
Hear Marilynne Robinson, our guest at BU last year, and perhaps again next year: One Easter I went with my grandfather to a small Presbyterian church in northern Idaho where I heard a sermon on the discrepancies in the gospel accounts of the resurrection…I was a young child… yet I remember that sermon…I can imagine myself that primal Easter, restive at my grandfather’s elbow, pushing my nickels and dimes of collection money into the tips of my gloves…memorably forbidden to remove my hat…It seems to me I felt God as a presence before I had a name for him…I was aware to the point of alarm of a vast energy of intention all around me…and I thought everyone else must also be aware of it…Only in church did I hear experience like mine acknowledged, in all those strange narratives, read and expounded… What should we call the presiding intelligence that orchestrates the decision to speak as a moment requires? What governs the inflections that make any utterance unmistakably the words of one speaker in this whole language-saturated world? 120 (Our) theology is compelled and enthralled by an overwhelming awareness of the grandeur of God …heaven’s essence…is that it is inconceivable in the world’s terms, another order of experience…Amen (the preacher) said, having blessed my life with a lovely thing to ponder… (Death of Adam 221-229)
On Easter we receive and are received by a new resurrection family, the family of Jesus, crucified and risen.
I washed up on the shores of Union Theological Seminary in 1976, clumsily paying the cabbie double what I owed for the short ride from Grand Central to Grant’s Tomb, and, in retrospect, largely clueless about what was around me and before me. I had been raised in a Methodist parsonage, attended MYF Sunday by Sunday, worked three summers running a waterfront at a Methodist Camp (no drownings of record), and been graduated from Ohio Wesleyan, a small Methodist college for small Methodists. Yet I knew very little about the Bible. In short order the strange world of the Bible, and its mystery, its complexity, its strange, strange, strangeness captivated me, mesmerized and embraced me.
My advisor, a rumpled world famous Roman Catholic Biblical Theologian, from whom we have heard this Lent, invited me to meet with him, and proceeded over three years to guide, teach, and encourage me, far beyond any evidence I could give at the time of the value of his investment in time, forgiveness and attention. He daily wore a worn black suit and clerical collar. On our first meeting, at the end he said, ‘Mr. Hill, Dr Cyril Richardson is teaching this fall a course on the Early Christian Writers. He is excellent. Normally his course is reserved for second year students. But if you can somehow get a seat in the course, take it. I just don’t know how long we will have him here at Union. He spent last year at home in England.’ Brown was so right. It was an outstanding course, taught with high excellence, under the booming British stentorian voice of the world’s preeminent Patristics scholar. ‘Today we shall consider St. Athanasius, who makes Paul Tillich look like a pup, a rain-soaked puppy’. He had a love-hate relationship with my beloved Tillich. The course had 12 lectures. Richardson gave 10. Between 10 and 12, he died. At his funeral, a memorial Richardson himself had composed for a friend was read: Richardson said most of us do not fear death, but fear the death of our loved ones and death of our dreams. What a priceless resurrection gift, fifty years ago, to study under him, thanks to a member of the resurrection family, to my advisor, Raymond Brown.
Brown was glad enough to see my enthrallment with the Bible. But a year or so later, he looked through the piles of courses taken, and in plan, mostly Bible. He said, ‘Mr. Hill. You are going into pastoral ministry, are you not?’ ‘Well, yes’, I said, ‘I mean I think so I hope so, if they will have me’. ‘Well’ Brown said, ‘I am glad for all these Biblical courses you are taking, including those with me, but don’t you think you might want to take a course in Psychology and Religion? You are going to be a pastor, are you not? Ann Ulanov teaches some good courses in this area.’ So, well, I did. And it was hard, hard for me, psychology and religion. Not the content, but the, the, well, the depth. It was bracing. And good and right. What a priceless resurrection gift, fifty years ago, to study under her, thanks to my advisor, Raymond Brown.
At noon or so, I would cross Broadway to Teachers’ College (think John Dewey), to swim in their reasonably adequate pool. Coming out I often crossed paths with Dr. Brown, who celebrated the noon mass at Corpus Christi church on 121st street. You remember that Thomas Merton a generation earlier had an apocalyptic conversion experience it that same little church. There was Fr. Brown at 1pm, in the same rumpled black suit and collar, carrying a brief case back across the street to his seminary office. He taught on the west side of Broadway, and he preached on the east side of Broadway. Week by week. As a Methodist I should have known, but didn’t at that time, the incarnation Brown gave to Mr. Wesley’s beautiful hymn, the music under the words, and the words under the words, of our Boston University motto about learning, virtue and piety: Unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety, learning and holiness combine, truth and love (for all to see). What a priceless resurrection gift, fifty years ago, to study under my advisor, Raymond Brown.
On Easter we receive and are received by a new resurrection family, the family of Jesus, crucified and risen.
I have never seen or met Jesus. I never heard him speak, nor embraced or was embraced by him in person. I know him through the resurrection family. I know his resurrection through the family cluster and family systems of those who did know him, unto and through the cross and resurrection. Mary is preeminent.
In the same vein, I never did meet Ernest Fremont Tittle. I never heard him preach, nor in his lifetime ever attended his Evanston First UMC, the largest in our denomination at the time of his death in 1960. I read about him, but never greeted him. But I know him, keenly through the company of his lineage, his part of the resurrection family. I preached once in his venerable pulpit in 2010…including to the Garrett class of 1950, whom I embarrassingly and mistakenly, though not without some reason, greeted as the class of 1850!
Like my namesake Allan Knight Chalmers, and unlike me, Tittle was an outspoken pacifist through the whole second world war, from the highest of pulpits inthe mid-west. Fearless. For three decades he preached to Chicago, to the country and to the world. On Sunday evenings he gathered a steady fellowship of graduate students for dinner, to talk about faith and life, death and resurrection. I never saw him, never shook his hand, never viewed his youth or age. I was not present at his death. But his life was and is alive to me. Alive through the family of the resurrection, through those who as young adults worshipped with him and dined with him and prayed with him. They had everything in common. They were distinctively vital, active, liberal Christian Methodists. I give you Dr. Robert V. Smith, chaplain at Colgate, a Garrett graduate, and protégé of Tittle, whose example from Hamilton NY kept alive for me and many others the importance of university preaching, campus ministry, and theological education. His growling voice enunciated resurrection in the spirit of Tittle. For he had enjoyed Sunday dinners with Tittle. Smith worshipped here at Marsh Chapel some years ago. I give you Professor Roland Wolseley, Professor of African American Journalism at Syracuse University, a beloved faithful liberal pacifist, lay leader and parishioner in our Syracuse NY Erwin UMC. His editorial ear and kindness evoked kindness in the spirit of Tittle. He had Sunday dinners with Tittle. I give you Ruth Lippitt, the leading heart and mind in our Rochester Asbury First UMC, who stood up and stood out and stood for faith and hope and love. She and her husband David met at Sunday dinner with Tittle, and her unwavering courage evoked resurrection in the shadow of Tittle. I give you Dr. Christopher Evans, of Boston University, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Tittle, during his work at Garrett, and whose steady example in learning, virtue and piety reclaim by familial resurrection the daily example of Tittle. Hamilton, Syracuse, Rochester, Boston. These did not know each other, never met, but with so many others share a common familial resemblance, a family resurrection.
On Easter we receive and are received by a new resurrection family, the family of Jesus, crucified and risen! Sursum Corda! Lift up your hearts!
If we believe that life has meaning and purpose
And we do
If we believe that the Giver of Life loves us
And we do
If we believe that divine love lasts
And we do
If we believe that justice, mercy, and humility endure
And we do
If we believe that God so loved the world to give God’s only Son
And we do
If we believe that Jesus is the transcript in time of God in eternity
And we do
If we believe that all God’s children are precious in God’s sight
And we do
If we believe grace and forgiveness are the heart of the universe
And we do
If we believe that God has loved us personally
And we do
If we believe in God
And we do
Then we shall trust God over the valley of the shadow of death
And we do
Then we shall trust that love is stronger than death
And we do
Then we shall trust the mysterious promise of resurrection
And we do
Then we shall trust the faith of Christ, relying on faith alone
And we do
Then we shall trust the enduring worth of personality
And we do
Then we shall trust that just deeds, merciful words are never in vain
And we do
Then we shall trust the Giver of Life to give eternal life
And we do
Then we shall trust the source of love to love eternally
And we do
Then we shall trust that we shall rest protected in God’s embrace
And we do
Then we shall trust in God
And we do.
The Lord is Risen! He is Risen indeed!
