Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

Matthew 11:16-19,25-30

Upon this summer Sunday, let us meditate on discipleship, and its gifts, and its expenses…its costs. Our gospel begins with the playful imagination of children in the marketplace. St. Paul wrote in a similar way to his Corinthian congregation:

God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty

Discipleship costs more than wisdom alone. The walk of faith evokes and involves a rest for the soul, embracing imagination, the free play of insight, the province of children and saints.

What a gift are the parables of Jesus! He taught them in parables, says the Scripture, and without a parable he taught not one thing.

Jesus stands in the marketplace. He sees two warring groups of children. All community is endless contention and intractable difference. One group wants to play a game called ‘weddings’: we have our pipes, we are ready to dance, come and join us, and let us play the game of weddings. Another group wants to play a game called ‘funerals’: we have our tears, our wailing, our gathered mourning clothes and forms, come and join us and let us play the game of funerals. One game for the enjoyment of life preferred by Jesus himself, one game for the dour, self-discipline for life, preferred by John the Baptist. Come and join!

Yet neither group will give way. Groups, as Reinhold Niebuhr taught us in Moral Man and Immoral Society, have a hard time changing direction, or giving way, or forgiving, or summoning an imagination ready for discipleship. That requires a childlike heart. It requires an imagination soaked discipleship. It requires the person whom you are meant to become. And it costs.

Did you ever know and love somebody who was always a bit on edge? I mean a beautiful person with a heart of gold, who was run raw by the gone-wrongness of life? This can be a rough world for a sensitive soul. Someone who has an unquenchable passion for getting things right and for knowing when things are wrong. A little of that can go a long way. If your very hunger is for what establishes, rests, the soul, you can sometimes go hungry.

Imagine with her eyes: Every child in the community was attending a safe, well-lit, quiet school, where virtually all could read at the sixth grade level by the time they finished the sixth grade level. Every sick person in the community had ample medical care, most of it preventive, and all of it shot through with a heavenly infusion of time, talent and money. Every person of color in the community felt confident entering the public spaces—theaters, churches, stadiums, stores—in every corner of the community. Every person is seen and heard as a real human being. That is her—and perhaps your—vision.

But around us, other. Around us a frightfully warming planet. Around us the generations deep effects of poverty. Around us horrific hourly slaughter in Ukraine, without even a single honest report of total deaths 500 days later. Around us the senseless needless shootings, gun deaths, to which we become inured. Around, yes, and within us, the anxieties and distrusts of our time. Imagine with her eyes, and feel with her soul.

Today the gospel offers her, and you, a word of promise, with a note of challenge, a word of challenge with a note of promise. Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden (challenge), and I will give you rest (promise).

Here at the University, at the fountain of youth, we are blessed with intelligence, vigor, freedom, and reason.

We want to be careful, and caring, though, so we pause here. We educators sometimes tend to leave civil society to the rest of society. We have much freedom, but how we choose to use it, in relation to the rest of community and society, is another matter. We after all have that next paper to write, 50 pages of small print not including footnotes, titled with some version of the title, ‘Obscurity Squared’. To do that, one needs a capacity to spend 12 hours a day alone in a library or in front of a computer screen. To do that, to write that series of scholarly papers become books become resume become tenure become professor, can risk leaving aside, if we are not careful, or leaving to others, if we are not careful, the imaginative stewardship of forms of civil society…

Girl Scout cookies. Umpire work for the Little League. Pinewood derby leadership. A seat on the PTA. Sunday worship. Neighborhood watch. Refugee resettlement work. These we have to leave in the hands of others, or at least we think we do, those basic cultural building blocks that rest on a willingness to sit quietly in dull meetings, hoping against hope for the blessed refrain, ‘I guess we’re done for tonight’. In civil society we have the chance to influence others, to be influencers, and to be influenced among others, in lasting, personal ways. You want to speak to others, to convince others, to educate—good. But. You cannot speak to others until or unless you speak for others. To speak to requires first to speak for. Others will not hear or heed you, and should not, in your speech to them, if they do not, with utter confidence, feel, feel, that you speak for them as well. To speak for, you have to be with. At breakfast. Playing golf. In book club. In church. At the YMCA. Then, only then, will you have enough funds in the relational bank when you need to withdraw some to say something that may then be audible. If you want people to hear you, preacher, you have to go and be with people, in visitation, on their turf, in community. If you want to speak to others, educators, you will have to find a way to speak for others, not just to others. This is the whole genius of American civil society, from the time of De Tocqueville. Whether we will find, in the humiliations of an era whose leadership is shredding inherited forms of civil society on an hourly basis, the humility to go out and suffer with and for others, over the better part of the next decade, in order then to speak, is an unanswered question. To get to an answer we may just need some imagination, costly imagination, in our discipleship, and some rest along the way. Finding it, it will find us in receipt of a glorious rest for the soul, one of the real gifts of summers—the point of summer.

Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds, saith the Lord. In challenging promise, and in promissory challenge. Our Gospel lures us and lures our imagination forward, for discipleship. Have we yet learned the lesson that what one meant—by an act, a word, a statement, a vote, say—is not all that such an act means?  We have experienced this lesson this tough truth, in the last several years. The lesson, that is, that what you in your heart meant by an act, a word, a statement—a vote, is not in fact the limit of what that act, word, statement or vote means:  in fact it is a small part, the greater part of the meaning being found in the effect, the impact, the historical influence of the deed. Wisdom is vindicated, known, in her deeds. Said our onetime Boston University Dean Ray Hart, The meaning of a text is found in the future it opens, the future it imagines, the future it creates. So too, the meaning of an act, a word, a statement, a vote, say, is found in the future, bright or dark, which it creates.  What you meant is not what it means.  For that, we have to listen to those harmed, or helped, by it.  Meaning is social, not merely individual, hence our use of words, our developed language, our investment in culture, our life in community.  You may have meant it one way, but its meaning is found along another.  Such hard, tragic lessons, to have to learn and re-learn, in our time. And relearn again, in 2023 and in 2024.

Here, Jesus is our beacon not our boundary. Here Jesus is rest for the soul. Imagination is a costly dimension of discipleship that is waxing not waning, needed not superfluous, crucial not peripheral. Our lessons today, Genesis, Psalms, and Romans, presage the Gospel, and draw our imaginations to forms of authority, and our engagement with them. In Genesis, the authority in ancestry. In Psalms, the authority in government. In Romans, the authority in conscience. In all these, the writers struggle to imagine a way forward, following the promising light of the beacon across the challenge of the boundary.

Our parable brings us an invocation, a summer call to rest, rest for the soul. Pause and meditate a little this summer on your own enjoyment of play. Our esteemed Boston University colleague and beloved mentor, now of blessed memory, Peter Berger did so, in rumination about discipleship, years ago in his little book, A Rumor of Angels. He noticed moments of rest for the soul. I see some too. 1. I see grown men enthralled on a green field following a wee little white ball, which seems to have a mind of its own, for three or four hours in the hot sun. 2. I see grown women shopping together without any particular need, but immersed, self-forgetful, in the process of purchasing, God knows what. 3. I see emerging adults fixed and fixated, days on end, in a large puzzle on a long table. 4. Can you remember playing bridge in college all night long, to the detriment of your zoology grade? Peter Berger: A. In playing, one steps out of one time into another…When adults play with genuine joy, they momentarily regain the deathlessness of childhood. The experience of joyful play is not something that must be sought on some mystical margin of existence. It can readily be found in the reality of ordinary life…The religious justification of the experience can be achieved only in an act of faith…B. This faith is inductive—it does not rest on a mysterious revelation, but rather on what we experience in our common, ordinary lives…Religion is the final vindication of childhood and of joy, and of all gestures that replicate these. Last winter, one sophomore, breaking from study, said: “I played basketball today, on the intramural team—it was awesome.” Rest to, and for, the soul.

A wisdom vindicated, justified by her deeds, is a cost of discipleship. (St. Luke in his version has changed the ending to ‘justified by all her children’—maybe an even closer memory to the marrow of, the history of, the parable.). There is always a possibility of and for good. In every day, there is a possibility of and for good.

Hear again the imaginative wisdom of Boston University’s own one time personalist philosopher, Erazim Kohak, in The Embers and The Stars, with whose epigram we conclude, this summer morning, to kindle and draw on a rest for the soul:

‘Humans are not only humans, moral subjects and vital organisms. They are also Persons, capable of fusing eternity and time in the precious, anguished reality of a love that would be eternal amid the concreteness of time. A person is a being through whom eternity enters time.’ Op. cit. 208

Sursum Corda! Receive the Divine Gift of Rest for the Soul! A challenging promise, and a promissory challenge.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 07.9.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
July 2

“Welcome”

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 10:40–42

The text of this sermon is not available at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain for International Students on 07.2.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
June 25

Making Sense with Matthew

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 10:24–39

The Rev. Dr. Jennifer Quigley:

Good morning, Marsh Chapel! It is so good to be with you and back in Boston. Our deep thanks to Bob, Jess, Karen, Jonathan, Scott, Justin, Heidi, and Chloe for the invitation to preach and the hospitality here at our beloved alma mater. It’s been a few years since we’ve lived in Boston and served on the staff here, but we are still connected, even across the distance; that is what community can do.

Wooh, Soren, we just really won the lectionary lottery for this summer preaching series on Matthew and the Costs of Discipleship, huh? Swords, slavery, sin, separation from family. Soren, how do you think about how to deal with difficult biblical passages?

The Rev. Dr. Soren Hessler:

For nearly a decade, I’ve had the privilege of wrestling together with difficult sacred texts with Jewish colleagues at Hebrew College. And for the last five years, I’ve navigated difficult Christian texts as the instructor of Hebrew College’s Introduction to Christianity course. I’ve learned that we navigate difficult texts best when we do so openly and in community and in dialogue with one another.

It is out of those shared commitments that I flew into Boston last Sunday to participate this past week in a concurrent meeting of the International Council of Christians and Jews (the ICCJ) and the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations (CCJR). The ICCJ is the umbrella organization of over 30 national Jewish-Christian dialogue organizations. Founded as a reaction to the Holocaust, “the ICCJ and its member organizations world-wide over the past seven decades have been successfully engaged in the historic renewal of Jewish-Christian relations.” In recent years, the ICCJ and its members have promoted Jewish-Christian dialogue and provide models for wider interfaith relations, particularly dialogue among Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

“The Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations (CCJR) is an association of centers and institutes in the United States and Canada devoted to enhancing mutual understanding between Jews and Christians. It is dedicated to research, publication, educational programming, and interreligious dialogue that respect the religious integrity and self-understanding of the various strands of the Jewish and Christian traditions. [Its] members are committed to interreligious dialogue, the purpose of which is neither to undermine or to change the religious identity of the other, but rather seeks to be enriched by each other's religious lives and traditions.“

The gathering of approximately 150 people, from over 20 countries, was hosted by the Boston College Center for Jewish-Christian Learning and Hebrew College’s Miller Center for Interreligious Learning and Leadership. The conference theme was “Negotiating Multiple Identities: Implications for Interreligious Relations,” and, of course, our meeting coincided with the national holiday of Juneteenth.

There were plenary sessions and academic lectures, interactive workshops (which included shared text study), various opportunities for critical engagement with the arts, and excursions across the city for deeper learning. Marsh Chapel was one of several sites around the city that hosted conference participants this week.

As I mentioned, there is much in Jewish and Christian sacred texts that we choose not to read often or altogether skip over in the regular cycles of our appointed weekly readings. One workshop I attended titled, “’By the Waters of Babylon’: Intersectional Readings of a Classical Biblical Text” focused on Psalm 137 and shared several new multi-media resources on the themes of exile, homecoming, retribution, and justice from an international digital Psalms project, Book of Psalms: Calling Out of the Depths, hosted by the Miller Center at Hebrew College. Together my colleagues Dr. Andrew Davis, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Boston College, and Rabbi Or Rose, Founding Director of the Miller Center at Hebrew College, explored their shared study of the Psalms and their engagement with this Psalm and others with classrooms of Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish students in the BTI over the last several years. We read together the full text of Psalm 137 in Hebrew and in English, and after the second reading of the Psalm, a participant in the workshop, an elderly Jewish woman who has been involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue work for more than 50 years exclaimed, “I never knew the last two verses of this Psalm!” She had sung other parts of the Psalm in different Jewish liturgical contexts, but not these final two verses, which are translated in the NRSV as

Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.

These words are never set to music. The workshop participants wrestled with the value of these words. The leaders of the workshop shared various rationalizations of the text, including by Augustine, that the author of these words must not have meant them literally. Nevertheless, on their face, they are quite terrible. At best, these final verses give voice to the experience of rage in the midst of oppression. The workshop leaders attempted to contextualize the likely context of the authorship of the Psalm, but ultimately concluded that a literal enactment of the exclamation of the Psalm is inconsistent with the other values and commitments espoused by Jewish and Christian communities. In short, our sacred texts are the products of particular people and contexts. Sometimes we simply don’t understand the full context of the text, and sometimes, the texts themselves are just problematic.

I raise this because I think that today’s passage from Genesis merits at least a bit of attention today. Had it not been the chapel’s summer practice to read all four lectionary texts, I would likely have omitted the Genesis text from the liturgy today. In any event, in our Genesis text, our author recounts God as condoning Abraham’s decision to cast out his wife’s slave, Hagar, and the son she had born for Abraham. Sarah’s ownership of Hagar and Abraham’s sexual access to his wife’s slave are, perhaps, issues for another day, but we have in Genesis today, a recollection of God affirming Abraham’s decision to cast out Hagar so that her son cannot inherit from Abraham alongside Abraham’s other son, Isaac. The heroization of Abraham in the Genesis text is at one of its lowest points in today’s text. It seems that the author can find no other satisfactory reason that Abraham would agree to cast out Hagar and their son than that God reassured Abraham it was a good idea because God would bless and multiply Ishmael’s offspring and make of him a great nation?! This is not a flattering depiction of the divine, and Abraham is not winning any points in my book with his decision today.

But the rest of the pericope recollects God coming to the aid of Hagar and Ishmael when their water had run out, and Hagar was certain that her young son would perish. God’s mercy is on full display in the latter portion of the pericope, but that doesn’t make the former portion any less problematic. As a United Methodist, I read scripture through the lenses of tradition, reason, and experience. Tradition and experience tell me that the text’s characterization of the divine in the initial verses of today’s passage in Genesis is either simply wrong, incomplete, or perhaps asserted for some other narrative purpose. Plain readings of hard texts do a disservice to the complexity of the tradition and our own religious experience, which brings us to the Matthean text today.

The Rev. Dr. Jennifer Quigley:

What a difficult set of readings for these times, and what a difficult set of verses to make sense of in Matthew. Here in Matthew 10, we find ourselves in the midst of the instructions from Jesus to the disciples as He sends them out to travel from place to place, proclaiming the good news, healing, and casting out demons as they go. These logia, these sayings gathered in Matthew 10 partially echo bits of Mark and Luke, but their compilation here and their full content are unique to Matthew’s gospel. Matthew finds it useful to collect these teachings and present them without significant commentary, leaving us to make sense of them. And they make about as much sense smushed together as sayings in the Gospel of Thomas, a noncanonical gospel in which the narrative of the gospels are left out in favor of a series of sayings, such as “Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death." Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All."

The point of sayings like these in Thomas, and like our passage in Matthew today, is to get them, faith seeking understanding, the goal is the contemplation of them; they are constantly elusive, or troubling, or astonishing, but there is also something powerful about them, there is something about the eternal to them, and they invite constant return.

You might feel some of these passages in your bones in these days. I know I do. After all, this is a time of division and polarization. You might have friends or family or former classmates or colleagues you can’t talk about politics or faith with any more; or maybe you can’t as often without conversation devolving into conspiracy theory or conflict; or maybe you can’t really talk at all.

It’s also a time of disaffiliation in our own United Methodist denomination. Across the United States, and to a much more limited extent around the world, some of the most conservative churches of the denomination have left the denomination. I have heard texts like our gospel reading today used to justify these departures. I have heard interpretations of passages like Matthew 10 in these conversations along the lines of, isn’t Jesus saying, with verses about hating your family, and division, and persecution at the hands of religious authorities, speaking straight to our moment and endorsing disaffiliation? Isn’t a text like Matthew about holding fast to a pure, unadulterated, gospel that must be preserved, defended against constant attack? Isn’t this text all about leaving?

When hearing interpretations like these, and the swirling disinformation amidst disaffiliation, I am reminded of the words of the Rev. Dr. Krister Stendahl, Lutheran Bishop, Harvard Divinity School Dean, and New Testament Scholar. One of the last things he wrote was a short essay, titled “Why I Love the Bible.” I assign it every year in my introduction to the New Testament class. Stendahl says he loves the bible because “The Bible is about me, and the Bible is not about me.” Stendahl first loved the Bible because it was about him, it spoke to him, it formed his faith and the way he worshipped and prayed and the hymns he sang. It was personal. But then, Stendahl learned to love the Bible because it was NOT about him.

“This was the time when I was naïve and arrogant enough to identify with the people I read about, or whose writings I read…. It was about many other things—in the long run, much more interesting things. It was about many things in many distant lands, from many distant ages…. Now it spoke to me from a great distance, of centuries and cultures deeply different from my own. And it began to be, just by its difference, that the fascination grew, that it had a way of saying to me, there are other ways of seeing and thinking and feeling and believing than you have taken for granted. And it just added to my love—for love is not just fascination. When I short-circuited my reading in those earlier days of having it just be about me, I slowly learned that this was a greedy way to deal with the richness of the scriptures.” (Stendahl 2007, xx).

I love the Bible, and I love wrestling with difficult texts because I am honest about their distance. The Gospel of Matthew, written perhaps in 80-90 CE, emerges from real crisis. Both what becomes Judaism and what becomes Christianity emerge in the aftermath of the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. The Gospel of Matthew vividly shares collective memory about this cataclysm, and those who compiled, circulated, and told these stories about Jesus did so with real risk in mind and communal memory.

Some Christians around the world are more proximate to experiences like that today, but here in the United States, this is simply not the case, despite disinformation to the contrary. Hear it from this Christian, United Methodist Pastor, Christianity is not under attack in the United States in 2023. Living in a religiously pluralistic and democratic society with folks who disagree with you, and facing consequences for your speech in public is not religious persecution. Not getting to censor public libraries, public schools, and other public goods does not mean you are being silenced. Jesus and his disciples knew real persecution, and those who first circulated our gospel today some half century later knew what could happen from a violent empire. Why is the constant appeal of a persecution narrative so appealing, any evidence to the contrary? The story of Christianity and the cross makes meaning out of loss, finds power even in its powerlessness, and finds a way to make community even when faced with suffering. These are some great building blocks for theology that can help us find meaning, power, and community today. But the lens looks different when our backs aren’t against the wall, to paraphrase Howard Thurman. These building blocks can be built out of true, to craft a theology that thinks that losing is winning, and that being under threat means you are somehow blessed. Then there is incentive to overlook whether you might be backing some folks against a wall, or to flip the script so that you are always the persecuted, faithful remnant, constantly on defense against the world.

Because I love the Bible, and notice my distance from it, I have freedom to find proximity to it again. Matthew calls us again to contemplate these teachings.

The Rev. Dr. Soren Hessler:

Jen, I think Thurman’s own reading of the Bible, his love of it, his distance from it and others’ commentaries on it, and his ability to find proximity to it offer a glimpse of understanding the Matthean text today.

On Tuesday, I had the privilege of convening and moderating a panel discussion about the life and work of the Reverend Howard Thurman, the distinguished African American preacher, writer, educator, and pastor, who played a key role in the Civil Rights Movement and who was a groundbreaking interreligious and cross-cultural leader, a leader that the Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill is fond of describing as one hundred years ahead of his time fifty years ago. Together with three Thurman scholars, my colleagues Nick Bates, the recently appointed Director of the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground at Boston University; the Reverend Dr. Shively T. J. Smith, Assistant Professor of New Testament at Boston University’s School of Theology; and Rabbi Or Rose, we screened a recent brief documentary about Thurman and discussed Thurman’s work and legacy. On Friday, Or published an article in Patheos reflecting on the panel and the long relationship of his mentor Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi with Thurman and other Christian religious leaders.

Or writes:

“I first learned of Howard Thurman some years ago from my beloved teacher, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (d. 2014), founder of the Jewish Renewal Movement. Long before Reb Zalman (an informal title he preferred) emerged as a modern Jewish mystical sage and international religious figure, he began an idiosyncratic spiritual journey that took him from the more insular world of HaBaD-Lubavitch Hasidism into dialogue with an array of practitioners from the world’s religions.

“Among his earliest and most influential interreligious and inter-racial interlocuters was Dean Thurman, whom he first met in 1955, as a graduate student at BU’s School of Theology. By the end of that academic year, Reb Zalman lovingly referred to him as his ‘Black Rebbe’ (the customary term for a Hasidic master). In describing Thurman’s influence on him, Reb Zalman said that his BU mentor caused him to ‘redraw his reality map.’ To put it plainly, the emerging (already off-beat) Hasidic rabbi had not yet met a non-Jewish religious figure like Thurman, whose intellectual, pedagogic, and pastoral abilities he would come to admire deeply. In the ensuing years, Reb Zalman would meet several other individuals and groups, like the great Catholic monk and writer Thomas Merton (d. 1968) and his Trappist community, who would further alter his perception of non-Jews and of non-Jewish religious traditions.

“Part of what impressed Reb Zalman so much about Dean Thurman, was the fact that his love and reverence for Jesus of Nazareth led him to conclude that all human beings are children of God, and that there are many ways—all imperfect—to live meaningful and conscientious lives in relationship with the Divine.”

Ultimately, I think that is what our Matthean text is getting at today.

The Rev. Dr. Jennifer Quigley:

That deeply personal and personalist claim that we are all children of God draws my eye to two other places in our gospel today. These are also at the heart of the gospel: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

And a verse after our reading ends (sometimes the lectionary limits our imagination), Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

Soren and I recently returned from our home conference, the West Ohio Annual Conference, the messy middle of United Methodism, which has always wrestled with politics, theology, ethics, in ways that represent the multiplicity of voices that occur when community gathers together. At this last annual conference, over 200 churches completed a process to leave the denomination, bringing our total numbers over the last year to about a quarter of our collective. But we also voted, for the first time ever, and albeit aspirationally, to welcome LGBTQ+ folks into ministry in our conference; such a vote would have been unheard of even five years ago.Over our days in a convention center in Dayton, we sat at several 10 person tables, over a hundred in the cavernous room. You never knew if you’d sat next to someone about to disaffiliate or someone in conference leadership, next to someone from the Appalachian foothills or the heart of Columbus. We met folks who represent the full spectrum of United Methodism there, and our conversations help me to make sense with Matthew.

On the day of disaffiliation votes, we sat next to an elderly white man in khakis and a polo shirt. He looked deeply grieved, and his tag identified him as a local pastor. Quietly, and carefully, in the breaks between votes, he told us that he was a pastor for many years in the Wesleyan Church. He joined the United Methodist Church, he said, even though his full credentials wouldn’t transfer and he would spend a lifetime pastoring part time and for lesser pay on the side because, “I wanted to be at a bigger table.” I wanted to be at a bigger table, and that’s why, he told us, even though many friends were disaffiliating and many churches in his rural part of the state were disaffiliating, he and his small, part time congregation held fast to the United Methodist church. “I want to be at a bigger table.”

Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Even the hairs on your head are counted.

Another day, after historic votes on LGBTQ+ inclusion, we sat for the service of ordination and retirement next to an African American man and woman who were lay leaders at their historically black church in Dayton. The woman was a retired teacher, which she told us meant she had more time for work for the church and community. During the service, it is customary to stand for an ordinand or retiree whose name is called if they have influenced you. One of the longtime LGBTQ+advocates, a pastor of the conference and a partnered, now married gay man, retired this year, the same year that this vote was taken. I made eye contact across my table when we all stood for David’s retirement. “He is our brother,” she said quietly.

We don’t know who will sit with us at the Lord’s table, but when I hear the verse about families divided, I hear it alongside these teachings, “whoever welcomes you welcomes me, even the hairs on your head are counted,” and I think that following Jesus means that sometimes we might need to welcome folks that our parents might not like.We might end up at a bigger table than we expect.

I’m not really sure I can fully make sense of these verses today, Soren, but maybe I can make some sense with Matthew. Logia like these aren’t meant for single use, single meaning only talismans, no more than other biblical or extra-biblical sayings you might find meaningful. To paraphrase a parable, They are like a lost coin found again, turned over in the hand to notice a new glint, a rough edge, a smooth face, joy and delight and intense focus all at once.

Do not be afraid. Even the hairs of your head are all counted. Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me.

I want to be at a bigger table. He is my brother.

Let those who have ears to hear, listen. Amen.

-The Rev. Dr. Jennifer Quigley, Assistant Professor of New Testament Vanderbilt Divinity School

-The Rev. Dr. Soren Hessler, Director of Recruitment and Admissions Vanderbilt Divinity School

posted in Guest Preachers, The Rev. Dr. Jennifer Quigley, The Rev. Dr. Soren Hessler on 06.25.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
June 18

The Gospel of the Kingdom

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 9:35–10:8

The authority of Jesus’ ministry is today transferred to disciples, ancient and modern.

Change is afoot, as James Baldwin eloquently sang: ‘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’.

The authority of Jesus’ ministry is today transferred to disciples, ancient and modern.

Today we meet Jesus on the hinges of the first Gospel, as the flow of the Gospel swings from Lord to apostles. In the announcement of this good news is included a measure of empowerment for each one of us. This is the kind of day on which, for once, for the first time, or for once in a long time, we may be seized by a sense of divine nearness. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of heaven has come near to you. When that sentence makes a home in a heart, or in the heart of a community, a different kind of life ensues.

Capture in the mind’s eye for a moment the sweep of the gospel read earlier. First. Jesus has been about, teaching and preaching and healing. His compassion abounds. The endless range of needs about him he unblinkingly faces. Second. Jesus calls and sends the disciples, and empowers them, and by extension he empowers us. The gospel will have been read thus, as it is thus read by us. He instructs and directs them in their work, where to go, what to do, how to be. Learning, virtue, and piety

together. Start at home, heal the sick, travel light. Third. Jesus expects and forecasts for them a less than utter victory in their work. They are to know how to shake dust from their feet. Fourth. Jesus warns that there will be a price to pay. The discipline that is the hallmark of the disciple here is named. Shall we not remember Jesus ministry? Shall we ignore the call and power offered here? Shall we forget the directions given? Shall we turn a deaf ear to the caution about consequences? We pray not. The main sweep of the gospel today is clear as a bell. Jesus gives power to his disciples. To you, and to me.

And yes, there is devil in the details of the passage. The material in our reading sends us into foreign territory. We have other words, whether only modern or both modern and more accurate, to describe unclean spirits. We recognize that the list of apostles, or disciples differs from other lists. (A free for all!) We are uncomfortably aware that Jesus himself, in other Bible pages, goes both to the Gentiles and to the Samaritans, and regularly and infamously so. We do not regularly meet leprosy. We carry no gold in our belts, nor silver, nor even copper. We are not pilgrim peregrinators who arrive in town and camp on a doorstep. We sense that the hard distinctions we make between disciples and apostles were not made by Matthew. We do not readily conjure up the vision of Sodom and Gommorah. We sense that the time of Matthew and his community’s persecutions under Domitian, 90ce, may have colored all or a part of this passage.

Nor are we to think that we should buy tunics or money belts or sandals or travel through towns in Israel or prefer judgment fall on Gomorrah. A confusion here will allow us to avoid the clear call of Christ upon our consciences in the main flow of the gospel. For the main point is crystal clear. To follow Jesus means…to take up where he and his earliest companions left off.

Do you love Jesus? Then you must do something for him.

Jesus has taught, preached and healed. This ministry he has bequeathed to his disciples, his apostles. We have been seized by the confession of the Church; we are Christians. Now his ministry, this ministry, is ours. Which part of this ministry draws you?

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. It may be that healing the sick has a medical degree of meaning, that raising the dead is about pastoral ministry in the Northeast where the church awaits

resurrection, that cleansing lepers is about including those on the outside of the social fence, that casting out demons is reminding people not to fear, not to fear. Good change can come. Real change is real hard but comes when real people really work at it. You could, rightly, challenge the interpretation. But the questions stands.

Where does your passion meet the world’s need?

What are you ready to risk doing, to plan for the worst, hope for the best, then do your most, and leave all the rest?

What are you going to give yourself to, to offer your ability, affability, and availability?

Who calls you, who called you, to your own real life, your ‘ownmost’ self?

Last spring, we honored our marvelous BU Chief Health Officer, Judy Platt, a physician who test by test got us through COVID. She mentioned that a book on her family table called to her, over the years, to enter medicine. A book about Albert Schweitzer.

A child organ prodigy, a youthful New Testament scholar, a young dean in his Alsatian theological seminary, a man whose New Testament books and articles I used with profit in my own dissertation a few years ago, a person whose own story has difficulties, Schweitzer’s life changed on the reading of a Paris Mission Society Magazine, and we went into medicine.

As a scholar, he wrote, of this passage, let us mark the words: He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those (men) who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word, ‘Follow me!’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.’ (QHJ, 389).

What he wrote of Jesus became his life. He left organ and seminary, studied medicine, and practiced in Africa for 35 years, calling his philosophy, ‘a reverence for life’.

Vocation leads to God. A decision about vocation leads to nearness to the divine.

Or perhaps you remember young woman from Rockford Illinois, Jane Addams. She grew up 140 years ago, in a time and place unfriendly, even hostile, to the leadership that women might provide. But somehow she discovered her mission in life. And with determination she traveled to the windy city and set up Hull House, the most far reaching experiment in social reform that American cities had ever seen. Hull House was born out of a social vision, and nurtured through the generosity of one determined woman. Addams believed fervently that we are responsible for what happens in the world. So Hull House, a place of feminine community and exciting spiritual energy, was born. Addams organized female labor unions. She lobbied for a state office to inspect factories for safety. She built public playgrounds and staged concerts and cared for immigrants. She became politically active and gained a national following on the lecture circuit. She is perhaps the most passionate and most effective advocate for the poor that our country has ever seen.

Of her work Addams wrote, let us mark the words: “The blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation must be made universal if they are to be permanent…The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in midair, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

Christopher Lasch explained once the puzzle of Jane Addams’ fruitful generosity, let us mark the words: “Like so many reformers before her, she had discovered some part of herself which, released, freed the rest.”

Is there a part of your soul ready today to be released, that then will free the rest of you? Is there a backwoods, a quiet trail, a hidden meadow of meaning in your spirit, ready today to be the scene and site of such a release?

You may reminisce this morning, Father’s day, about one or more who raised you. And not all parents are the natural sort. Some are relational dads and moms. Our dad died on this date, June 18, 13 years ago, and his generation.

He and his companions in the ministry lived in the openness, the magnanimous freedom of grace, the freedom for which Christ sets us free, on which we are to stand fast, and not to be enslaved again. Faith is not a prize be won, but a gift to be received.

He lived convinced of the lasting worth, the ultimate value of persons and personality.

He lived and taught that love means taking responsibility.

He placed the highest premiums on marriage, family, children, and friends.

He had a rare, great capacity for friendship.

He could be restless with and critical of those perspectives which narrow the wideness of God’s mercy. And he could be restless with and critical of those practices in personal and institutional life which did not become the gospel, were not becoming to the gospel.

When we said, ‘that’s not fair’, he replied, ‘whoever told you life was fair’?

He trusted that wherever there is a way, there is Christ, wherever there is truth, there is Christ, wherever there is life, there is Christ.

He honored his own conscience and heart, and expected others to do the same. The conscience of the believer, he trusted, is inviolable.

Many of you remember today those who helped you become a person, a real human being, and even a disciple, with toughness in love and love in toughness.

And as I heard him say, circa 1990, during a ministers’ meeting in the Oneida church sanctuary, ‘because I am loved, I can love’.

Or, you may muse today, alert to costs in discipleship, about Juneteenth. Andrea Taylor Senior Diversity Officer at our beloved BU has taught us so much about the holiday, and about her generation’s marches toward freedom, encouraging us to read and learn. Say, Arthur Ashe’s brilliant memoir, Days of Grace. Say, Howard Thurman’s With Head and Heart. Say Cornellian Edward Baptist’s towering monograph, the single best available work in the area: The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. (He reminds us that we 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.) Say Charlayne Hunter-Gault, My People.

One day nine years ago, here at Marsh Chapel after a winter funeral, later at the collation following the service, Charlayne Hunter Gault introduced herself. You may remember her, as we did, from her many and fine contributions to the PBS News Hour, with Jim Lehrer. She said, ‘I need to talk to you later about the 23 Psalm’, which I had used in the service. I was so pleased to meet her, and then so worried that I had somehow offended her, or that I had misrecited the pslam, or other, that the collation time passed anxiously. It needn’t have done. She wanted to recall a memory. A memory of her younger self. A self that heard a voice saying, ‘Follow Me’. At 18. The first African American to integrate the University of Georgia, 1961. The daughter of a Baptist minister. Alone in a big place, a strange place, a new place. Walking home the third night, there were taunts and threats. The University that day had even suggested she might want to go home, at least for a while. She went into her room, alone. She closed the door. She turned out the lights. And she waited, until quiet came. And then—it was the only thing that came to her mind—the prayer of David in Psalm 23 came to her. And she spoke the psalm, alone, afraid, uncertain, at night. ‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord, forever.’ Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord, forever.’

Do you love Jesus? Then you must do something for him. Do you love Jesus? Then you will want to do something for him.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 06.18.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
June 11

St. Matthew’s ‘Workquake’

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 9:9–26

Good morning! I’m so glad to be back with you at Marsh Chapel, and to participate in this sermon series on Matthew and the Cost of Discipleship.

The writer Sue Monk Kidd reminds us of the root of the word “crisis,” in her essay “Crossing the Threshold.” She writes:

"A crisis is a holy summons to cross a threshold. It involves both a leaving behind and a stepping toward, a separation and an opportunity.

"The word crisis derives from the Greek words krisis and krino, which mean 'a separating.' The very root of the word implies that our crises are times of severing from old ways and states of being. We need to ask ourselves what it is we’re being asked to separate from. What needs to be left behind?"

~ Sue Monk Kidd, from the essay “Crossing the Threshold,” in “The Dance of the Dissident Daughter”

In our gospel reading for today, Jesus encounters three people in crisis. For two of these, the leader of the synagogue whose daughter has died, and the woman with the hemorrhage that won’t stop, these are health crises, and they are acute. Jesus is their last hope. The leader of the synagogue is in the middle of an emergency: his daughter is already dead, but he has faith that if he can just get Jesus to lay hands on her, she will live again. For the woman with the hemorrhage, we are told in the Gospel of Mark where this story also appears that she had seen many doctors, who had not been able to help her at all. For both the synagogue leader’s emergency and the woman’s debilitating chronic illness, Jesus is their last shot at healing. And he does raise the man’s daughter from the dead, and the woman’s touch of his cloak does stop her hemorrhages.

These are such dramatic and powerful stories, that it would be easy to skip over Matthew, there in his booth. Matthew doesn’t actually say anything to Jesus that is recorded here, or ask anything of him. Instead he responds, immediately and whole-heartedly, to Jesus’ invitation to follow him. And that’s how we know he is in crisis: because he just leaves his booth by the side of the road, and never goes back! He has one brief encounter with Jesus, and he leaves his old life behind, for good! There’s a lot of talk in the media these days about so-called “quiet quitting”; this is “loud quitting”!

Now we are reading the Gospel attributed to Matthew, and this is Matthew’s story. It’s just a few verses, and Matthew himself doesn’t say anything in words. But walking off the job communicates a lot. Matthew has had what the writer Bruce Feiler calls a “workquake.” Some of you may remember Bruce Feiler’s bestselling book Walking the Bible from a number of years back. He also recently wrote a book called Life in the Transitions, where he coined the word “lifequake,” to describe points of crisis where our lives seem to open up and rupture, as in an earthquake. In Feiler’s new book, The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in the Post-Career World, Feiler focuses on “workquakes,” the crises or significant turning points that people have over the course of their careers. He urges his readers to examine their own “work story,” and, for those seeking deeper meaning and purpose from their work, to ask themselves questions about their past, present, and dreams for the future that can help them to chart a new course in their careers.

Perhaps Matthew is a good patron saint for these pandemic and post-pandemic times, when four and a half million people left their jobs in 2022, following a trend of what economists call “quit rates” increasing steadily and significantly for the past several years. Feiler argues that many Americans are now rejecting the narrow definition of success that was handed down “by parents, encouraged by . . . neighbors, [and[ reinforced by . . . culture,” questioning its values and challenging its assumptions. People are looking for other measures of achievement than “more, higher, better.” And, they are resisting unjust, inequitable, and discriminatory systems and structures in the workplace that devalue and demean their contributions. We are seeing a resurgence in the labor movement, not just on the factory floor, but in corporate behemoths like Amazon and Starbucks, and also, it should be noted, among graduate students and non-tenure track professors, including at the School of Theology of this very University.

What made Matthew walk off the job in the middle of his workday? It’s clear that Jesus was not offering him a competitive salary with benefits package. Quite the opposite! What kind of internal crisis was happening in Matthew’s life, that led to this abrupt and permanent break with his profession?

Since it wasn’t about money or status, it must have been about meaning and purpose. Maybe before Jesus showed up at Matthew’s booth, he had heard about this wandering rabbi and wonder-worker who preached that his mission was to bring good news to the poor, to heal, and to set prisoners free. Had Matthew’s toll booth become a prison?

And yes, it’s likely that Matthew was not, as the NRSV translates, a tax collector, but in fact a telones in Greek, a toll collector. That helps explain why Jesus meets him on the road, and why he’s in a booth! And for those of you youngsters in the congregation, there was a time when there were real live toll collectors inside the toll booths . . . and when you paid tolls with actual coins. Does anyone else remember manually rolling down the car window, in order to toss quarters into the toll booth receptacle?? Good times.

I will not share all the scintillating details with you from the lengthy article I read on first century taxation, except to say that Matthew, as a toll collector, was probably more of a lower-level functionary collecting smaller tolls and taxes, rather than someone with more clout in the direct employ of the Roman empire.

Which begs the question: “toll collectors and sinners”??? What’s with that recurring biblical phrase? Apparently, toll collectors were notorious for being dishonest. They were the used-car salesmen of the ancient world. And while they generally not big shots, it probably didn’t help their reputation that they were functionaries in the Roman Imperial system.

Matthew then has Jesus over to his house for dinner. (This is what the gospel of Luke says, in Luke’s version of the story.) But the low esteem in which his former profession is held causes scandal, and the Pharisees ask Jesus’ other disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with toll collectors and sinners?” And Jesus answers, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. . . I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

The counter-cultural thinker Alan Watts wrote, "See, I am a philosopher and if you don't argue with me, I don't know what I think. If we argue, I say 'Thank You', because owing to the courtesy of you taking a different point of view, I understand what I mean, so I can't get rid of you." I am not a philosopher, but I am from New Jersey, and so I can relate to this. (pause) I grew up in a place where ordinary conversation can seem pretty combative to people from other parts of the country!

And I think that Jesus is in a similar environment. In my years of reading the Bible and preaching, I’ve come to see these ongoing conversations between Jesus and the Pharisees in this light. Their discussions or arguments can get heated, in the way that the discussions of philosophers or political junkies get heated. The Pharisees, Jesus and his disciples, and here the disciples of John the Baptist show up too: they are all working out what they believe in constant conversation and argument with each other. They are debating each other, criticizing each other, and ultimately challenging each other. I see them more as frenemies, than enemies, through much of Jesus’ ministry. They have a lot in common.

So Matthew’s presence as a disciple causes scandal, and then John’s disciples pop over to ask why Jesus and his disciples don’t fast in the way that they do. And Jesus gives two parabolic answers, one pretty straightforward, the other not. First, he says they do not fast because no one fasts during a wedding celebration—Jesus is the bridegroom, and when he’s gone, his disciples will fast. Jesus’ presence has ushered in a new age, and his good news to the poor, healing of the sick, and release of the prisoners is a Messianic celebration.

And then he has two more sayings: “No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”

Okay, what? [This teaching is obscure enough, that the compilers of the Revised Common Lectionary edited it out of today’s reading; but I thought it was important enough to edit back in, and so you lucky folks get extra Bible to chew on today. Marsh Chapel, now with 20% more parables!]

Jesus has been challenged as to the kind of person he allows to join his disciples, and to how they practice their faith—and he gives this as an answer. Why, and what does it mean? And, what does it mean for us?

First, let’s notice what Jesus does not say: he does not say that new clothes are better than old clothes; and that new wine is better than old wine.

So here, Jesus is not saying that his new ministry and mission is supplanting or replacing the old. In fact, these are sayings about how to preserve the old garment, and the old wine.

These are sayings about craft: about the choices that a tailor and a vinter would make. A tailor would not sew new, unshrunk cloth to old preshrunk cloth, because it would further damage the garment instead of mending it. A vinter would not put new wine, that would still be fermenting and so creating gasses and expanding, into old wineskins: because the old leather has already stretched as much as it can stretch, and the skins would burst and ruin everything.

In other words, the new materials are flexible and elastic; they can stretch. They can adapt. The old cannot effectively receive the new, because the flexibility is gone.

Jesus is talking about craft, and the tradition of craft. Tailors make new garments, and repair old ones: cloth is precious, and nothing is wasted. Vinters make new wine, and age old wine, and sell both, at different prices. And, new wine ages and becomes old wine, and the craft of winemaking continues.

These sayings are not about replacing the old with the new. They are about carrying on the tradition and the craft.

Jesus is saying, new movements cannot be contained in the systems and structures of old movements. They need their own containers. They need systems and structures that can still adapt and change and change shape as necessary. And that this is not a break with tradition, but an essential part of carrying on tradition. Jesus is saying that he is not the kind of rabbi that the Pharisees are, and he is not the kind of prophet that John is. His mission and his ministry are different. And so are his disciples. And it is best not to try to force them into containers that won’t hold them.

His disciples are people like Matthew—people who have become dissatisfied, people who are searching for relationship with God, people who have come to a crisis point in their lives where they need to make a change. Who want to find purpose and meaning in their work and in their lives—who want to be on the side of the liberators and not the oppressors. Who are no longer fine with the status quo—because of who gets left out and left behind.

And the religious communities of Jesus’ day were not able to accommodate people like Matthew. In fact, they did not want those people around at all.

We in the Church are also having a collective lifequake, a collective workquake. We are in the midst of a crisis—of decline, but also a crisis of identity, and a crisis of formation. We are in a historical moment, made more acute and urgent by the pandemic, where it is not at all clear how our faith traditions will be carried on to the next generation. Churches are struggling and closing, longtime church members are dying and not being replaced, our church buildings are often too big and too old to maintain. Most of our congregations are in survival mode, with little energy for those outside their doors.

And Jesus says to us: stop trying to sew a new patch on an old garment. Stop trying to force the new wine into old wineskins.

Our systems and structures need to change. Completely. No more retrofitting; “redevelopment” is not enough. You need new containers, for what the Holy Spirit is doing in your midst right now. We need to think differently about community, about formation and education, about worship, about mission and identity and purpose, about leadership and responsibility and governance—and about buildings.

Or, you are going to lose it all. The craft, the tradition, the gospel, will not continue in the places they have been.

This is the cost of discipleship in our own day: do we hold on to what we know, and let nostalgia continue to corrode our congregations until there’s nothing left?

Or do we follow Jesus into a new way of being church? With new disciples, who weren’t there before—but who long for good news, healing, liberation—and authentic relationship with God.

It’s our choice.

“The very root of the word implies that our crises are times of severing from old ways and states of being. We need to ask ourselves what it is we’re being asked to separate from. What needs to be left behind?"”

I’ll look forward to being back with you in August, to continue this conversation.

In God’s name, Amen.

-The Rev. Dr. Regina L. Walton, Denominational Counselor for Anglican/Episcopal Students and Lecturer, Harvard Divinity School

posted in Guest Preachers on 06.11.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
June 4

Communion Meditation- June 4, 2023

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 28:16–20

The text of this sermon is unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 06.4.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
May 28

Stories of the Spirit

By Marsh Chapel

John 20:19–23

The text of this sermon is unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience.

-The Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman, University Chaplain for Episcopal Ministries

posted in The Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman, Chaplain for Episcopal Ministry on 05.28.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
May 21

University Baccalaureate 2023

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear just the Baccalaureate Address

Graduates of the class of 2023, as we gather, we celebrate your success, we honor our esteemed, excellent University leadership, we welcome your parents and friends, and we pause, briefly with you, to ponder the meaning of it all. (Usually, I have the responsibility to speak to the Baccalaureate guest, and among other things gently but clearly remind them that they have just 15 minutes for the Baccalaureate Address. Now, the shoe is on the other foot, and I feel their pain, only 15 minutes. The wheels of justice grind slow but exceedingly fine!) So let me ask you to consider, briefly, three aspects of this high, holy moment, your graduation, all three of which are embedded in this Marsh Chapel, and embedded in the meaning of your study here. Learning. Virtue. Piety. Life-Long Learning. Social Virtue. Transformational Piety.

We have at Boston University a strange, superstitious tradition regarding the seal embedded in front of Marsh Chapel, which by legend is not to be stood upon prior to completion of courses, on pain, threat or supposition that one such misstep will block one’s progress toward graduation itself, or at least delay the degree, somehow.

For a few minutes at this Baccalaureate 2023, let me upend my own, and perhaps your own, puzzlement, even disregard, for this tradition. Just for a moment. For like a lot of strange traditions, this one about not stepping on the seal may have, oddly, a point. For the seal has upon it three exacting words, words to live by, not just for a bit of life, but for the whole of life. Potent words. Words with electricity, juice, in them. Words, three words, not to be treated lightly, tread upon, scuffed, sauntered over, mistreated, marked or mocked with disdain. Words, three words, fit to carry for the memory of Commencement, the beginning of the road away from school. Words, three words with which not just to make a living, but also to make a life. You and I do not believe in ghosts. Yet…we have our own reasons, over time, to accord some measure of respect, respectful agnosticism, but respect nonetheless to the uncanny, to the numinous, to the strange, to the elusive, even when such are produced for us out of an odd legend. For life is haunted by things we don’t see, things we don’t understand, things we cannot control. Scripture and tradition acknowledge this—from the Midas touch to Lot’s wife.

Here are three divine words, lasting truths, immutable markers of what matters, lasts and counts. In the vigor of youth, and in the tempestuous vitality of young life, somehow, it may be, our students are on to something. They are teaching us, and themselves. They are chary of, wary of, disdain for the true, the good and beautiful, in places of the heart, of the soul, of the subconscious. In good Shaker tradition, the heart follows the hand, their heart follows their feet. Put your hands to work, and your hearts to God. In three words.

The first of these is learning. That means life-long learning. As you entered the Chapel, above the portal, there is the sculpture of Mr. John Wesley, whose Methodist movement gave BU birth in 1839, and who sang, ‘unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety, learning and holiness combine, truth and love for all to see’. A kind of early One BU. He was devoted to learning, life-long learning, as have been many of our guests here, over these years. In 2018 John Lewis (of blessed memory), Anthony Fauci, Carmen Yulin Cruz Soto (mayor of San Juan) all reminded us of this, both in speech and in example. They embodied the civil rights movement, the challenges in Puerto Rico (remember the former president’s graceless remarks about Puerto Rico that year?), and the importance of science in health (though we could not yet see the pandemic coming, nor Dr. Fauci’s central leadership through it). Experience is the greatest teacher, especially when it causes us to learn through disappointment, but also when it causes us to learn through generosity.

Disappointment teaches us lessons that success cannot fathom. Faith mainly comes from trouble. Mr. Wesley and his early band of Methodists learned to ‘watch over one another in love’, because life is so shot through with disappointment. Wesley was 200 years after Shakespeare, but he would have known the aching hurts recorded in those monumental plays and poems. You read Shakespeare at some point at BU, and so recall his 66th Sonnet, awash in disappointment:

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,

As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly--doctor-like--controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

We learn through experience, including the experience of grace, the grace, say, to overcome disappointment. That is faith, whether in secular or religious attire.

Likewise, we learn too through giving. You only have what you can give away, what you have the freedom and power to give away. You only truly possess what you have the liberty to give away.

So, 200 years after Shakespeare, along came John Wesley, teaching a tithing generosity, Mr. John Wesley who greets us at the door, coming and going.

This morning we gather up in prayer the experiences of four years and lift them all in a spirit of grace and peace.

This morning we embrace the graduates of 2023, as you commence with the rest of life, and lift them all in a spirit of grace and peace.

This morning we open ourselves to the world around us, and pledge ourselves to live not only in this world but also, and more so, for this world, for this world in a spirit of grace and peace. Horace Mann: “be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

John Wesley was the founder of Methodism, the religious tradition that gave birth to Boston University in 1839. His motto: Do all the good you can. The words are simple: that is significant. The language is universal: that is significant. The tone is thankful: that is significant. The phrasing is memorable: that is significant. Words fit for use morning by morning, day by day, year by year, all in a lifetime: that too is significant.

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.

Do all the good you can.

Learning, lifelong learning.

The second of the three words embedded in the central, haunted Plaza seal, the occult and subconscious dark backdrop of life (life as Hobbes said that is solitary, nasty, brutish and short) the second of these words is virtue. That means social virtue. That means common, civic, communal virtue. Your class has known the importance of shared, national virtue, which was needed to overcome a raging pandemic which impacted every one of you, every one of us. Your class lived through the raging furies of January 6, 2021 which had the potential to impact every one of you, every one of us. Your class lived through the surges of isolation, anxiety and depression, which continue to challenge us.

Well, we have a second permanent guest in Marsh Chapel a fellow who knew much about this. He is in the back corner, on the pulpit side, up in stained glass. Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln. He is reminder that virtue is the bedrock of shared, national, social, cultural life. Real leaders have virtue. Virtue is not optional in a nation’s leadership. Shun mendacity. We may differ about the size and scope of a budget, or the most apt programs in foreign affairs. But we cannot differ about telling the truth, about personal virtue, about lies, including big lies. Personal virtue, especially in leaders, is the basis for national virtue. Class of 2023, in warning, we say: do not be fooled, here. A house divided against itself, on this, cannot stand.

Remember who you are and whose you are. Listen to the few paragraphs of Lincoln’s greatest words. Listen for the anaphora in the beginning, and the epistrophe at the end. Listen to the gravity and realism, but listen also, out of a dark corner and hour, for the hope.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Both history and mystery are at the heart of a regard for virtue, and at the heart of any real college education.

Virtue, social virtue.

The third of these three words is perhaps the strangest to our ears, but maybe the most important. It is piety. That means transformational piety. This year Jonathan Eig has published Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Perilous Power of Respectability). King lived to transform. Real piety is transformative. The piety here, the faith here, in your BU old bones, is transformational, not just personal, but transformational piety.

My dad was born in the same year as King, and was here as a student at the same time. My dad was raised by a single mom, with no dad at home. But not all of our parents are natural parents. Some are relational parents. He met a teacher, a homiletics teacher, here at BU, who became such, a relational not natural parent, and so when their first child was born, they gave him the middle name, ‘Allan’, after that teacher, Allan Knight Chalmers. He is the rascal speaking to you now. None of us got here alone. Others helped, others practiced a transformational piety. Thank one, two or three of them today, if you have a chance.

There is no greater voice, near or far, of transformational piety, than that voice celebrated in the heart of our plaza. For your meditation, here are selected epigrams from your fellow BU alumnus, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

When it gets dark enough you can see the stars.

Say that I was a drum major for justice, for peace, for righteousness.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.

I have a dream that one day my four children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

‘You’ve got to have a dream, if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?’ Have some dreams, even if, as Nina Tassler told us in 2016, you have to edit your dreams. It would be great to have some of the children of King—Rafael Warnock, Deval Patrick, Marilynne Robinson, Barack Obama--here in autumn 2025 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the dedication of Marsh Chapel. May we find the grace to seek and serve his cause of justice in the years to come.

A story, one of transformational piety, which King repeatedly told, is of Marian Anderson. She was awarded an honorary degree here at Boston University in 1960, a black opera singer, whose voice was perhaps the greatest of all in the last century. But it was her mother who made it possible: I remember when Marian was growing up, and I was working in a kitchen till my hands were all but parched, my eyebrows all but scalded. I was working there to make it possible for my daughter to get an education.

One day somebody asked Marian Anderson in later years, “Miss Anderson, what has been the happiest moment of your life? Singing in Carnegie Hall? Performing for the Kings and Queens of Europe? When Toscanini said a voice like yours come only once in a century. No…No…No...And she looked up and said (smiling) quietly, “The happiest moment in my life was the moment I could say, “Mother, you can stop working now.” Marian Anderson realized that she was where she was because somebody helped her to get there. (MLKing, “A Knock at Midnight”). And somebody helped you too.

Piety, transformative piety.

Learning. Virtue. Piety. Personal. National. Global. Lifelong. Social. Transformative. They are your words, now, now that you have crossed the seal, your words chiseled in the stone of Marsh Chapel, your words, embodied in the beauty of this chapel, with Wesley and Lincoln and King. Nod to Mr. Wesley, President Lincoln, and Dr. King, in sculpture and window and monument, as you depart. But class of 2023, carry them in memory, not for a day, but for a lifetime.

Let love be genuine

Hate what is evil

Hold fast to what is good

Love one another with mutual affection

Outdo one another in showing honor

Never lag in zeal

Be ardent in spirit

Serve the Lord

Rejoice in your hope

Be patient in tribulation

Be constant in prayer

Contribute to the needs of the saints

Practice hospitality

Class of 2023: Bon Voyage!

-The Boston University 2023 Baccalaureate speaker was The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Boston University's Marsh Chapel

posted in Baccalaureate, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 05.21.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
May 14

This I Believe 2023

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear just the meditations

John 14:15–21

Text of the reflections is unavailable at this time.

posted in The Rev. Dr. Jessica Chicka, University Chaplain for International Students, The Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman, Chaplain for Episcopal Ministry, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel, This I Believe on 05.14.2023 at 11:00 am

Sunday
May 7

Communion Meditation- May 2023

By Marsh Chapel

John 14:1-14

This morning we think of our students, as classes end and exams begin, and especially our seniors, with whom we gather up in prayer the experiences of four years and lift them all in a spirit of grace and peace.

This morning we embrace the graduates of 2023, who began in 2019, as they commence with the rest of life, and lift them all in a spirit of grace and peace.

This morning we open ourselves to the world around us, and pledge ourselves to live not only in this world but also, and more so, for this world, for this world in a spirit of grace and peace. Speaking of grace, this morning we offer you a prayer, a grace, written by John Wesley. Wesley was the founder of Methodism, the religious tradition that gave birth to Boston University in 1839.

His grace exemplifies that tradition:

The words are simple: that is significant

The language is universal: that is significant

The tone is thankful: that is significant

The phrasing is memorable: that is significant

It is a prayer fit for use morning by morning, day by day, year by year, all in a lifetime: that too is significant:

Gracious Giver of all good

Thee we thank for rest and food

Grant that all we do or say

May in thy service be, this day

Next week, our honored ‘This I Believe’ speakers will continue this tradition, in a spirit of grace and peace: Allison Brown, Madison Boboltz, Hannah Hathaway, Allison Imbacuan, Marian Karam Diaz—congratulations!

This morning we think of our congregation, our community of faith, brought together by the gospel, and its preaching, by the gospel, and its sacrament, by the gospel and its resurrection mystery.

We are children of those who shared with us the gifts of wonder, morality and generosity. In mystery.

John is a mystery. It is odd that John has no record of the Last Supper, in his account of the passion. It is odd that John demotes Peter from his regular central role. It is odd that the gospel carries no remembrance of parables. It is odd that hardly anything of the standard ministry of Jesus, usual gospel fare, appears here. It is odd that the humanity of Jesus has virtually disappeared into the bright eternal light of his form in John, “God striding upon the earth”. It is odd that the New Testament would include a Gospel so fully at odds with its three synoptic cousins. Cousins, not siblings. It is odd that John, by the main, has no use for the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist. Where would the church be without birth to cleanse and guilt to absolve? It is odd that the Gospel we read today is shaped around seven stunning miracles, and four impenetrable chapters of teaching. It is odd that a Gospel so wildly different from the rest of those in the Bible should have made the cut, and been included. If you think having Ecclesiastes—which rejects, contradicts and humiliates much of the rest of the Hebrew Scripture—included there is a strange thing, then multiply that odd presence by 20 or 50 and you have a sense of how different is John. Nor in church nor in academia have we yet begun to account for the radical freedom and difference of this nonconforming gospel. It is odd.

What remains, as we consider our church, our chapel, our community, our common table?

A testimony to the power of relationship remains. John 14 sets aside predictions, instructions, and demonstrations, found here in the other gospels. Here relationship, relationship alone, remains. The relationship of Father and Son. The relationship of departed and devoted. The relationship of doubter and disciple. The relationship of community and pastor. The relationship of faith and works. The relationship of Jesus and his own.

Things that really matter are ultimately relational, whether that relationship is with others, with self, or with God. Our friends give
us ourselves. Our instincts give us ourselves. Our sense of presence gives us ourselves. So this morning let me directly ask you to think about your close relationships, your work relationships, and your relationship to God. In these relationships you may overhear the humming, mysterious allure of service.

Your relational gits, Marsh Chapel community, and your communal duties are significant and challenging. They include needs, plans and hopes, all part of our shared communal duties:

Needs: Boston University needs from Marsh Chapel, Religious Life (5)

* Sunday Worship Excellence, *All University Events Ceremonial Leadership, *Pastoral Care at Death, *Religious Life Ministry, Program and Oversight, *University ‘Identity’, in History and Hope

Plans: Marsh Chapel and Religious Life Strategic Plan 2023 Summary (5)

The envisioned mission of Marsh Chapel is be 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. As in other iterations of our strategic plan (2006, 2009, 2012, 2017), we take our lead from the new, refreshed Boston University Plan, especially its own five-fold foci: academics, research, globality, diversity, community.

Hopes: 75th Marsh Chapel Dedication Anniversary (‘25) Goals (5, 200, 100, 1, 4)

$5M deanship endowment completed. 200. 200 students in worship. 100. 100,000 weekly contacts (building use, worship, newsletter, website, radio listenership, internet listenership, pastoral contact, other). 1. One annual BU Religious Life Day (perhaps climate related). 4. Infrastructure advances (Live Stream; Digital Ministry; Organ; Elevator etc.).

These needs, plans and hopes involve us all, including those listening from afar.

This morning with glad hearts we think of the three children to be baptized just following our service today. Please stay and join us in the chancel, after our greeting in the narthex. Bring along a hymnal. We will speak then of baptism, a sacrament…

We will remember an ancient, beautiful teaching, the Didache, which word simply means teaching, composed in the early second century, it may be, a younger cousin of the gospels of John and Matthew:

There are two ways, one of life and one of death, but a great difference between the two ways. The way of life, then, is this: First, you shall love God who made you; second, love your neighbor as yourself, and do not do to another what you would not want done to you. And of these sayings the teaching is this: Bless those who curse you, and pray for your enemies, and fast for those who persecute you. For what reward is there for loving those who love you? Do not the Gentiles do the same? But love those who hate you, and you shall not have an enemy. Abstain from fleshly and worldly lusts. If someone strikes your right cheek, turn to him the other also, and you shall be perfect. If someone impresses you for one mile, go with him two. If someone takes your cloak, give him also your coat. If someone takes from you what is yours, ask it not back, for indeed you are not able. Give to everyone who asks you, and ask it not back; for the Father wills that to all should be given of our own blessings (free gifts). Happy is he who gives according to the commandment, for he is guiltless. Woe to him who receives; for if one receives who has need, he is guiltless; but he who receives not having need shall pay the penalty, why he received and for what. And coming into confinement, he shall be examined concerning the things which he has done, and he shall not escape from there until he pays back the last penny. And also concerning this, it has been said, Let your alms sweat in your hands, until you know to whom you should give.

This morning we think of this season, Eastertide, the season of resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus is more than resuscitation. The witness of the church, of this church too, is that God has decisively acted in history by Christ to forgive sin and to vanquish death. Nor is Christ's being raised a form of healing, only, or translation, only, like the experiences of Lazarus or Elijah. No, this is the first fruit of the new creation, the beginning of the new age, whose outpost is the church. God's invasion, beachhead, incursion into history, the divine d-day is announced today

It is in this vein, 60 years after the first Easter, that our fourth Gospel writer preaches. All the aforementioned, bodily resurrection, he receives and assumes. But he has other fish to fry, morally spiritual fish to fry. For the author of John, the accounts today of absence and presence have become moral stories. Directions for some to believe and go home, for others to recognize and say something. There is a "finesse" to venerable memory that, in its delicate lightness, touches truth more truly than younger recollection. Johns shows us some of this kind of "finesse". Some historians avoid an historic, that is bodily, or mystically vocal resurrection, because they focus on causation. Resurrection is not a historical category in the general sense. Philosophers, sociologists, scientists, cannot fathom resurrection, because it challenges the basic categories of their work. Which it does. Many others, avoid resurrection for another reason, the primary reason for the rejection of the Gospel in any case. Resurrection creates responsibility. If we are all merely creatures of biology, sociology and history, conditions over which we have no control and upon which we have no influence, then we are not free and therefore we are not responsible. We are not subjects. There is a reassuring side to this thought. While we receive no praise, we also avoid any blame. Nothing much changes anyway. Our conditions cause our behavior. "I really do not want to go to church because I know at some point somebody will ask me to do something."

But conditions are not, necessarily, causes. Our sinful human condition is not necessarily a warrant for ongoing sin. Our mortal human condition is not ultimately an unalterable death knell. Easter means forgiveness and heaven!

Contrary to historical determinism, in the historic teaching of the church, on resurrection, the opposite is true. God has freely acted in raising Jesus, and has thus opened the way for response. We are free to respond. And there is the rub.

It is not, finally, we who have the power to question the resurrection. It is the resurrection that questions us.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going."

Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 05.7.2023 at 11:00 am