Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

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Snow makes things slow

As R Warren wrote in her new poem: ‘a silhouette rimmed in snow-light’, we too follow Christ, our beacon not our boundary

Its tactile and visual embrace gives us a winter grace

With Jeremiah, come winter, we may pause to listen

Not to do, but to be

To listen for the divine in the word, as did the ancient prophet who labored until the fall of Jerusalem (snipped from our reading) and then some

I will touch your lips, saith the Lord, who called a young man, another young man, as would occur again, later, in Nazareth

We learned in a bucolic age, to spill water and freeze it, to shovel snow and clear it, to skate, backwards and forwards, to play, stick in hand, to learn, when Colgate finished its Reid Athletic Center that hockey could be played indoors too

An old flexible flier, veteran of the snow ice hillsides

Skiis, boots, goggles

An old black and white photograph of snow drifts above the telephone lines

Winter is the season of spirit, Summer the season of flesh

Those who taught us more by example than precept to be:

Trustworthy

Loyal

Helpful

Friendly

Courteous

Kind

Obedient

Cheerful

Thrifty

Brave

Clean

Reverent

At 10:30 every Sunday, here in the nave, you may join others, with Rev. Holly, in silent prayer

Listen…

David too, or the psalmist, had his memories of youth, which brought laughter and song

O LORD upon you have I leaned from my birth

When we are affronted, confronted with misery in mystery, as some today,  we too take our refuge in continuous praise, song and laughter, in WHOSE presence there is fullness of joy

A rock.  The home of wise man.  A rock.  Thou art Peter.  A rock.  A mighty refuge.

Even Ground Hog Day offers something solid, something good.

Every heart has secret sorrows

Monday’s child is fair of face

Tuesday’s child is full of grace

Wednesday’s child is full of woe

Thursday’s child has far to go

Friday’s child is loving and giving

Saturday’s child works hard for a living

But the child that is born on the Sabbath Day

Is happy, witty, bright and gay!

After church next week you may want to sing with the Thurman Choir, under the baton of SAJarrett…

Laugh and Sing…

Snow makes things slow

Paul offers his teaching to us, if we learn from him

About love

Love is God

Because I am loved, I can love

Behold the superiority, the nature, and the permanence of LOVE

The religious norm, the norm of faith is love, joy of heaven to earth come down

Trustworthy, loyal, helpful….

Learn to love

Come and join our undergraduates, confer with them and others

Learn, by day, by night, by day, to love

Learn…

Now the community of Jesus’ growing up years cannot fully accommodate his grown up voice

There is a wintery harshness in the moment he leaves

In love, directly, he says they are not special, not unique, except as is every snow flake, and they are angry, and he departs.

Every departure foreshadows the last

We are more mortal than we regularly realize

Our own departure, our ability to leave, to leave this frozen earth, this or another community, our families and family, in the bleak winter quiet, the austere winter quiet, we may passingly, suddenly recognize our omega point, dimly perceptible, afar

Jesus chooses two stories in which prophets take care of outsiders.  Blessings are to fall, not on the home town community, but on outsiders—Syrian, Syrophoenician, the ritually unclean, non-Jews

Now the community of Jesus’ growing up years cannot fully accommodate his grown up voice

There is a wintery harshness in the moment he leaves

In love, directly, he says they are not special, not unique, except as is every snow flake, and they are angry, and he departs.

Cyril Richardson had taught at Union Theological Seminary for 50 years.  His course on Patristics was famous, the finest of finely honed hour long lectures on Clement, Ireneaus, Origen, Athanasius.  He sat to teach.  He would cast about, and mention P Tillich, whom he described as if Tillich were still a promising but odd graduate student, from the continent, who would have benefitted from better early church history (‘Athansius was there before Tillich was’).  Out of order I appealed to take his course, my first term.  ‘Who knows how long he will teach?’, one said.  There is a living relationship between the 45 minute lecture and the 22 minute sermon.  If one lives, both do.  Richardson brushed aside the fads of the day—team teaching, contextual education, liberation theology, praxis—and lectured with a winter grace.  He died with one lecture only to go.  Mr Ruppe, his assistant, read the faded penciled yellow pad lecture, with tears.

I am proud to have been Richardson’s student.

At his funeral, the Episcopal priest demurred to preach, and read instead a sermon of Richardson’s own, delivered at the death of a friend.

In it the deceased, now quoted, had said, simply, what disturbs us about death is the prospect of the deaths of our loved ones, on the one hand, and the death of our dreams, on the other.  Let us face both prospects, he said.

It is a winter grace to face our fleshly limit.  To prepare, Sunday by Sunday, to prepare to leave, as one day we must, one day we shall.

There are no ordinary days, no insignificant holidays.

You will remember that she and George were graduated from High School in Grover’s Corners.  On the basis of a frank talking to over a soda, in which Emily criticizes George for being less than fully humble, George decides not to leave home, not to go to college, but to start working an uncle’s farm right away, and to marry Emily, the girl next door.  You remember their wedding.  “ A man looks pretty small at a wedding, all those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure the knot is tied in a mighty public way.”   You remember that Emily, after just a few years of profoundly happy marriage and life, tragically dies in childbirth.  You remember that George finds no way to manage the extreme grief of his loss.  Simple Yankee English.  Simple reckoning about love, life, death and meaning.

Maybe you also remember, in the playwright’s imagination, Emily from the communion of saints looking out on her young husband and wanting to go back.

Others warn her away from the plan:  “All I can say Emily, is, don’t…it isn’t wise…(If you must do it) Choose an unimportant day.  Choose the least important day of your life.  It will be important enough.”

She chooses February 11, 1899, her 12th birthday.  She arrives at dawn.  She sees Main Street, the drugstore, the livery stable, and breathes the brightness of a crisp winter morning.  Simple.  She looks into her own house.  Her mother is making breakfast, her father returning from a speech given at Hamilton College.  Neighbors pass in the snow.  Simple.  She sees how young and pretty her mother looks—can’t quite believe it.  It is 10 below zero.  There is fussing to find a blue hair ribbon—“its on the dresser—if it were a snake it would bite you”.  Simple.  Papa enters to give a hug and a kiss and a birthday gift.  And others from mother and the boy next door. Simple.  “Just for a moment now we’re all together.  Mama, just for a moment now we’re all together.  Just for a moment we’re happy.  Let’s look at one another.”

Simple.  This is the gospel of Ground Hog Day, the best holiday of the year, the holiday of the extraordinary ordinary, of the uncommonly common, of the sunlit winter, of the eternal now.  Simple.  Grover’s Corners.  Papa. Mama.  Clocks ticking.  Sunflowers.  Food. Coffee.  New ironed dresses.  Hot baths.  Sleeping.  Waking up. “Earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you.”

Reverence for Life is the beginning of wisdom, as Schweitzer said.

Jesus left Nazareth

Jeremiah left Jerusalem, David left Israel, Paul left Judaism, Jesus left Nazareth

We too shall leave

This table is opened to your comfort

As we take our leave

As we prepare to leave

To leave…

Remember your creed…

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 02.3.2013 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

Luke 4: 14-21

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Preface

Today we hear from a prophetic text, Luke 4, regarding Jesus and his home town community, and we hear it following a good week of good words about a modern prophet, a patriot preacher, Martin Luther King, our BU alumnus.  As Ernest Freemont Tittle said, ‘the preacher can find always something innocuous to talk about’, but do not time and text require some prophetic word for us, from us today?  If we are to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly, we shall then need to summon the courage to listen and speak with courage, and to do so regarding not only the endless circle of concern around us, but also the smaller circle of influence, the community in which we live.

I will bear witness.  Born a Methodist, ordained to the Methodist ministry, I will die a Methodist, a superannuated Methodist preacher. All the lastingly good things of my life have come as gifts of grace, in and through this very church.  Name in baptism. Faith in confirmation. Community in Eucharist. Deepest friendship in marriage.  Job in ordination.  Daily pardon in prayer.  Eternal hope in unction.  I am a singing Methodist and will continue to greet life with an openhanded Methodist handshake.   And my grandaughter’s  mother, grandmother, two great grandmothers, and great great grandmother  all married Methodist ministers.  I love my church and I am part of a multi generational investment in its preaching ministry!

That is, I pray to speak as one who speaks for my people, and so, I hope, has earned the right to speak to my people.  If you speak for people, then you can speak to people.  God is for us, so God’s word can speak to us.   I love the Methodist church.  Any church though is human, very human.  As Tillich wrote long ago, ‘the church is always both a representation and a distortion of the divine’.   This past year has proven that again.

Some background.  Methodism lives on four levels, or through four forms of conference.  (A conference, incidentally, is a time and place in which to confer with one another.)  Each of the four has one discreet, specific task.  Our general conference, 1000 global delegates gathered once every four years, is responsible to write and rewrite our Book of Discipline, our church law.  The jurisdictional conferences, split up regionally across the country, meet every four years to elect general superintendents, our bishops whose job is to appoint clergy.  The annual conference, a smaller gathering of representatives from hundreds of churches, in each jurisdiction, has the single job of recruiting and retaining ministers, and ordaining them every year.  Our charge conference, our local church, is in the work of making disciples, people of faith who love and give in the spirit of Jesus.   Disciple, Minister, Bishop, Discipline:  these are the products of our conferences.

A. And Are We Yet Alive?

One:  Our general conference met in Tampa, in late April.   Rather than affirming the full humanity of gay people, and granting the 10% of children who are gay all the graces I have happily received (see above), the Conference wrote a Discipline that excludes them from marriage and ordination. We have learned the horrific habits in this country, of finding ways to fractionalize the marginalized.  It has been heavy lifting over decades to affirm that all people are people, imbued with integrity by the grace of God—former slaves, women, the poor, people of color, the stranger, the otherwise abled, all.  Integers not fractions. The US constitution before amendment accounted some as 3/5 human.  No wonder that great Boston abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, called the document, ‘a compact with the devil and a covenant with hell’.   I wonder what he would say about our 2012 General Conference and Discipline?  But I must ask, in reflective discernment:  where did Tampa come from? Some of Tampa, our General Conference, came from the results of the other conferences, over many years.

Two:  Some of it came from our Jurisdictional conferences.  In July, our jurisdictional conferences met in five cities across the country to elect general superintendents.  In some cases they were chosen on the basis of proven ability, leadership experience, measures of churches grown or people rescued or dollars raised or buildings constructed, ministers from strong churches and significant pulpits, who had shown the ability to speak well to large groups and to lead complex organizations.   But in some cases   elections were based not on ability or proven strength, but on representation, to show a ‘rainbow’ of representative general superintendents, apart from preparation or capacity to do the job, and, ironically, even tragically, in consequence, whether or not their tenure will have any positive impact for underrepresented others.  The gospel is about redemption, not representation.   Now I will continue to speak for, and so to, the inclusion of all at every level of church life--that is part of the redemptive work of the Spirit in the church.  But in what other walk of life do we select significant leadership on a narrowly representative basis?  Dentists?  Pilots? Surgeons? And what good will it do to open up the church, especially for those most in need of such openness, if the church itself shrinks, ages, weakens and dies, for lack of building up?  Our jurisdiction has off loaded 60% of its membership since my confirmation at age 13 in 1968.  The chief reason for this is poor leadership, starting with the top.   It is not somehow God’s will to shrink the church we love.  That is a direct consequence of our poor leadership:  moribund preaching, mediocre pastoral care, and unimaginative congregational life.

Three: Some came up from our annual conferences.  My own annual conference, a new and unformed body across New York State, met in June.   Two overarching issues should have been engaged, because they affect dramatically the present and future quality of the clergy.   Other than my questions, posed in the few minutes still allowed at annual conference for conference, that is, for a time to confer, no one addressed them.  The first is the proposal, supported, let it be starkly recalled, by every north eastern bishop, to eliminate the security of appointment, or guaranteed appointment,  a modest form of tenure, for ordained clergy (who have 4 years of college, 3 years of seminary, 3 years of supervised work—all before ordination;  who earn a modest annual salary plus housing; who agree to move, potentially every year, at the direction or whim of the general superintendent and cabinet; who are responsible to raise apportionment dollars equivalent to 25% of their church budgets (even the Mafia is kinder in percentage pickup); and who will work, if they are to be effective, 60-80 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, for 40 years:  and we cannot even tell them that they somehow, in whatever tiny rural parish or other, will at least be able to feed, house and care for their children?)  The second is related.   Unwilling to invest in elders, the superintendents are driven to hire non-elders, people who are not trained, not educated, not ordained, not in covenant, not traveling elders.  In our yet to be fully born conference, this means that 540 of 931 pulpits are occupied, occupied by good hearted people, but people who have not studied the Bible in depth, do not know the history or teaching of the church, have had no preparation in counseling, in sacramental understanding, in worship and preaching, in administration, in pastoral care.   It is one thing to have laity Sunday once a year.  But every Sunday?  Do you go to laity Wednesday when the emergency room lets people who would like to be doctors administer drugs, set bones, and use ct scanners?  Do you go to laity Friday when people who would like to be bankers get to open and close the vault,  establish accounts, and make investments of your savings?   How about housing?  Do you sign up aspiring carpenters, who think they might have some talent in digging foundations and setting roof lines to build your house?    Is it OK with you if the principal of your daughter’s junior high school never graduated from high school himself?   Granted: education alone is not enough.  Heart and head we need together in the influential, delicate, personal, salvific work of pastoral care and preaching.   Not 540, but 40 non-elders is all we should accommodate.   Have the elders preach multiple times:  better one good sermon preached 7 times, than 7 bad ones once each.   Our annual conference provides everything but the one thing needful—a chance to confer.  Our annual conference attends to everything except its job—providing excellent clergy.

Four:  And some came too from our local charge conferences. I went for worship this summer to a beloved church.  In 1995 this was a vibrant congregation, 230 in worship in 2 services, a 7 day full building, the second strongest salary in the conference, a warm formal worship service not unlike ours here at Marsh, and, most proudly, a fine parsonage.)  What did we find that Sunday?  We found a worship service that is hardly a worship service, at least to my mind, with 60 present, and learned that the church was in the process of selling the parsonage.  They need the money and lack the vision to hold on to it.  And worship? I grieve to ask:  Is it worship when the minister roves the sanctuary (ceiling paint peeling, by the way) with a microphone, like Phil Donahue?  Is it worship when beautiful four part hymn harmonies are ditched in favor of follow the bouncing ball screen pseudo music?  Is it worship when the sermon is a potpourri of miscellania, unrelated to text, to setting, to mission, or to soul?  Is it worship without a choir, without order, without reverence, without silence, without offering, without a sense of Presence?  No, it has become a hodgepodge of vain attempts to be entertaining, which are not even entertaining.  And enchantment?  Gone.  People do not need the church to be their Rotary Club, their neighborhood cookout, or their reality TV show.  They need the word of God rightly preached, the sacraments duly administered, and service rendered to the poor.  When this happens, Sunday by Sunday, then churches grow.  You cannot preach without theology, and you cannot worship without preaching.  In short the general conference in Tampa had wellsprings, of sorts, in jurisdictional, annual and charge conferences.

B. Methodism 2013

So what are we in my beloved church to do in 2013?

After Tampa, in May, I determined to spend six months in prayer, and visitation.  By phone or in person I spoke with 31 trusted friends. I meditated on their counsel, and came to only four fairly meager conclusions. 1. We need steady ongoing conversation, conference among elders, in season and out. 2.  We need to follow the money. 3. We need to focus on pastoral care for gay people.  4. We need to focus on pastoral embrace for lay people.  Many young elders are leaving the church.  Many middle age elders want to split the church.  Many older elders are using covert, hidden means to address the situation. I will not leave, split or dissemble.  So that means finding another path.  I will have to go deeper.  Four thoughts.

One: There is something in this journey that will call me out and down further into faith.  The language of the psalms fills my heart.   I prayed and heard this:  You will have to go down deeper.

Two:  One part of the path is in regard to our ministry, the other part, regards money.  In a way, the first part is easier.  That is, most churches over time can come close to doing what we do regularly here at Marsh Chapel:  marry gay people, hire gay clergy, minister directly to the gay community, and speak frankly, as today, about the full humanity of gay sisters and brothers.  The second part is harder, about money.  We will need means to keep from sending money, by apportionment, to fund the dehumanization of gay people, whether in America or in Africa.  Fortunately, our general funds are several, not single, and local church treasurers, at the direction of the lay vote in the charge conference, can send to some and not to others.  This will take some careful planning.  My own investment will be to continue to lift my voice, to continue in eight words that form the future for my church: Gay people are people.  Lay people are people.

Three:  Gay people are people, at least 5/5 human, endowed by their creator, and ours with Life, liberty, happiness—they deserve to enjoy these too, including ordination and marriage. Jesus can teach us this if we will let him.  Remember he said to consider the lilies of the field, and how much God loves even these slight floral creatures in God’s garden.   Gay identity is creation, not fall, God’s gift, not human sin, as is straight identity.   Love the Lord your God, and your neighbor as yourself.  Try to imagine what it must be like to be a 9 year old, who knows he is in the sexual minority. Paul can teach us this if we will listen to him.  Paul?  Yes, Paul.  He places the pinnacle of the good news at Galatians 3:28:  ‘in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, no male and female’.  And no gay and straight.   The gospel is about redemption, not about tradition.  Gospel finally and ever trumps tradition.  Gay people have integrity, are beloved, by God’s grace, just as you are and just as you do. John can help us, if we will read what he says.  He says there will be another advocate, even a spirit of truth, which will lead us, lead us out into further truth, which is not in that gospel, or, even, in the Bible.  There is a self-correcting spirit of truth loose in the universe.  Truth involves continuity with past teaching and also discontinuity through new insight, by the gift of the spirit of truth.  Our failure regarding gay people is theological.  Our doctrine of creation could use a recollection of Jesus.  Our doctrine of redemption could use a re-reading of Galatians.  Our doctrine of the Spirit could use the voice of John.  Gay people are people: the Bible tells me so.  This is not only an issue of justice, nor only an issue of clerical integrity, nor only an issue of theological truth.  It is most profoundly an issue of pastoral care. The physician has responsibilities to many institutions—her practice, her board examinations, her hospital, and her community.  But in the end, all these and others are eclipsed by the care for the patient, the health of the patient.  The pastor also has many responsibilities to institutions, or conferences—charge, annual, jurisdictional, and general.  But in the end, all these are eclipsed by the requisite care for the parishioner, for the 8 and 9 year old children who are among the sexual minorities.  Gay people are people.

Four:  Lay people are people.  Beloved, it will do us no good only to open up the church.  We also have responsibility to build up the church.  The needs, longings, reports and voices of lay people count, matter, last, and have meaning.   The church exists for mission, as fire for burning.  Fishing and planting, evangelism and stewardship—these are the joy of faith.  And the fun, too.  Lay people deserve and desire enchanting worship.  We have every reason to provide vibrant, warm, ordered, traditional worship.  Sixty minutes of fire and love, every Sunday.  We will want to draw on the deep well of tradition—not traditionalism but tradition.  Listen to the lay people.  They have no need for bongo drums, shallow hymns, neglected liturgy, or bad music.  They respond to excellence. They deserve it.  Traditional worship is what we owe them.  Likewise, lay people deserve loving, intelligent, devoted, competent pastoral ministry and preaching.  We once knew that so deeply we needed no reminder.  Traveling preachers, taking grace and freedom and love from post to post—this is what we once did best.  Please:  no more lay pastors, local pastors, deacons than absolutely necessary.  Give us excellent ministers, educated and ordained, the brightest and the best!  And are some of these local pastors excellent?  Excellent!  Then educate them and ordain them.  Put up or shut up.   And lay people deserve the best that money can provide, and the best exemplary teaching about money we can provide.  If nothing else, our tradition provides stellar disciplines about giving.  Our people need to be taught, by the example of the clergy, to tithe.  Well led, they will and do well follow.  Tradition in worship, Traveling elders in the pulpit, Tithing all day long—I cannot begin to tell you how much difference these three currently neglected features of spiritual life make when they are practiced, and especially when they are practiced together!

Coda

Let us open up the Methodist church by living the gospel:  Gay people are people.  Let us build up the Methodist church by living the gospel:  Lay people are people. I plan to slog ahead.  I will find means to advocate for the disciplinary inclusion of all people, like the ministry we have here at Marsh.  I will gather a group at some point for further conference.  I will find ways to encourage the real leadership of the church to be identified and selected for leadership, just as we are doing here at Marsh.  I will find words to convey my ongoing respect for the noble calling, the challenging adventure, that is, gospel ministry, in my annual conference, in the same fashion we do here at Marsh.  And I will continue to grow the churches of the church, to live up to the Harry Denman evangelism award, and to appeal to all who have received seven helpings of faith, once in while to think of inviting a neighbor who has not had the first course of the religious meal, to come worship at Marsh.

I take heart from voices I overheard this week.

Walter Fluker:  ‘We need fresh water to swim in.’

Melvin Talbert (quoting Burke): ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing’.

Sonya Chang-Diaz:  ‘When you pray, move your feet.’

Deval Patrick:  ‘People may be of limited means, but of limitless possibilities’.

Elizabeth Warren:  ‘When (the President) makes his solemn oath, I will make my own silent one in my heart’.

Barack Obama:  ‘Freedom is not just for the lucky, nor happiness for the few…From Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall…our journey is not complete…we must act knowing that our work will be imperfect’

Rev. Luis Leon:  ‘Que Dios Os Bendiga’

So that one day, as was said of old, it may be said, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’. (Luke 4: 21)

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 01.27.2013 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

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Good morning.

Let me first begin by thanking Bob Hill for the opportunity to be with you today as your preacher.  The dean is away this week, and I pray for traveling mercies as he returns for the first Sunday of the new academic term next week.

Today, in Luke’s gospel we hear the story of Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan by his cousin John, and we are called to remember our own baptism.  Like Jesus, we are baptized by water and the Spirit.  The ordinariness of the water is an outward sign of the extraordinary inward working of God in each of our lives.  In hearing and recalling Christ’s baptism, we recall our own baptism and seek renewed relationship with God.

Students, staff, and especially faculty are well aware that this week marks the beginning of the Spring term of the academic calendar here at Boston University.  To all of you, welcome back from break and welcome back to school.  However, you may not be aware that tomorrow also marks the beginning of a new season of the church’s liturgical calendar: “ordinary time.”  Rarely do the rhythms of academic life and liturgical life align, but today we celebrate Jesus’ baptism and with it comes the end of the church’s celebration of the Christmas season.  To those still recovering from Christmas, welcome back to ordinary time.  We celebrated Jesus’ birth less than three weeks ago, and tomorrow the church returns to “ordinary time” to focus on Jesus’ life in ministry.  Reflection on Jesus’ first thirty years is condensed to just three short weeks in the church calendar.  Jesus’ birth, the visitation by the magi, and his baptism as an adult, which we celebrate today, are all part of the Christmas season.  Next week, our weekly lectionary gospel texts return to attestations of the signs and miracles of Jesus’ ministry.  Soon, we will remember Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding feast in Cana at the behest of his mother.  However, this month-long period of remembering the signs of Jesus’ ministry is just a brief interlude before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, in mid-February, or in academic lingo, mid-terms, followed by an all-too quick lead up to finals.

As we transition from the Christmas season into ordinary time, we change our vestments from the white and gold of the Christmas celebration to the more plain, green vestments.  Certainly there is nothing commonplace about the miracles recounted in the gospels, but the church recognizes that there is something especially special about the miracle of Jesus’ baptism, which we mark today.

Just as the church keeps the celebratory vestments of the Christmas season out for this Sunday which celebrates Jesus’ baptism, we are called to remember that our own baptism is significant and special.  Sometimes, however, the church does not do a good job of communicating the specialness of the sacrament, the fact that we are baptized by both water and the Spirit.

This past week my wife and I had the opportunity to vacation in Puerto Rico, and spent most of the week in Old San Juan.  The walled city is 500 years old, and has a particular affinity for the Epiphany, the visitation of the magi to the young Jesus, perhaps in part because the city was spared an English invasion on that feast day more than 200 years ago.  By January 1^st, US retailers remove their Christmas regalia and Christmas music disappears from the airwaves.  The Christmas season is over, as far as the American retailer is concerned.  But in the church calendar it is still Christmastide, and in San Juan, Christmas is still in full swing.  Christmas lights are everywhere, and the Spanish-English radio stations favored by our taxi drivers are still delivering a variety of Christmas music.  Instead of milk and cookies, children leave grass for the pack animals of the magi in hopes of receiving presents from the three kings on Epiphany.  The familiar, bearded Santa Claus who poses for pictures with children is replaced by three bearded men in royal attire.  This Christmas season fervor culminates on the Epiphany last Sunday with an island-wide party; many businesses are closed, and the Monday following is a state holiday.  Yes, it seems that another religious holiday is commercialized in Puerto Rico, but in Puerto Rico, this special emphasis on the Epiphany makes it readily apparent that we, and the church, remain in the spirit of the Christmas feast through this week.  Your tree might have dried out weeks ago and you might have put it out for pick up on December 26, but how can we as the church here in the US mark the fullness of the Christmas season and mark the transition back into ordinary time on this feast of the baptism of our Lord?

While my wife reads four languages, Spanish is not one of them.  I took a Spanish course or two, or three, in college, but together we still sometimes had a difficult time navigating a menu or navigating the city.  Nevertheless, we managed to visit each of the historic churches in the old city, all but three are Roman Catholic.  The others are Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and Methodist.  As a United Methodist clergy couple, it was delightful to see the vibrancy of the Iglesia Metodista as the cross and flame greeted us on the side of many churches as we traveled throughout mainland Puerto Rico and the island of Culebra.  In one church in the old city, whose denominational affiliation shall remain nameless, just inside the entrance was a large, stone baptismal font.  Its mouth was over a meter wide, and it was covered in centuries-old elaborate carvings.  But inside, the font was not brimming with water but contained what appeared to be a small brown doggie dish with just a bit of water.  The grandness of the font, which was designed to remind the viewer of the importance of baptism and the presence of the Spirit, was dwarfed by the lowliness and ordinariness of what it contained.  The doggie dish did not call to mind the life-changing nature of baptism.  The majesty of the font seemed to be reduced to a few ordinary drops of water in a very ordinary container.  Now, I am not trying to enter the debate about the amount of water necessary for baptism, sprinkling or full immersion, marble font or backyard swimming pool.  This is simply to say that baptism sometimes seems to be just ordinary, just another part of ordinary time, not a part of the Christmas season.

And unfortunately the importance of baptism seems to be lost in many of our churches today.  This last Sunday of the Christmas season ought be a special time to remember the sacrament, an opportunity to reaffirm the vows of our baptism or the opportunity to explore receiving the sacrament for the first time.  Baptism marks a transition in the liturgical season because it is a sacrament which equips us to live our day-to-day, “ordinary” lives as Christians.  Today, I encourage you to renew your commitment to walk with God or to think about making a new commitment to living a renewed life through Jesus.

In Jesus’ time, there were many people preaching forgiveness of sins and baptizing people, or at least using water for ritual purification purposes, which is one possible explanation of the practices of the Qumran community.  John, himself an ordinary man, baptized a great number of ordinary, observant Jews, but in Jesus’ own baptism, as our gospel author recounts, something extraordinary happened: “the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus” and Jesus was recognized as God’s Son.  Jesus’ baptism is about much more than water and welcome into a community of faith; it is about God’s promise of the divine presence in our lives through the Holy Spirit.

Now I have been to a great many baptisms in my life and I have yet to see the heavens opened and a dove descend on the individual being baptized, but we, as a Christian community, have faith that in the outward sign of baptism, namely water, we are affirming God’s love for the individual and each and every one of us, and God’s promise to be with us.  John Wesley, the 18^th century reformer of the Anglican Church, upon whose teachings the Methodist Church would later be founded, affirmed the Anglican sentiment that baptism, like communion, is “an outward sign of inward grace, and a means whereby we receive the same.”  John Wesley’s theological heritage lives on in countless churches and institutions in America and abroad, including here, Marsh Chapel and Boston University.  We believe that in every baptism, no matter how ordinary it seems, something extraordinary happens.  We may not see it, but we believe that the Holy Spirit is fully present with everyone baptized in the name of Jesus and that in baptism an individual is recognized as a beloved child of God.

In baptism, we recognize all three modes of God’s grace.  We need not see a dove descend on an infant whose head is sprinkled with water because we affirm God’s love for us and desire to be in relationship with us even before we recognize God or seek to be in relationship.  This prevenient grace is God’s presence with us, through the Holy Spirit, from our birth to our death.  Baptism itself is a means of justifying grace, a sign of new life in Christ.  It is an expression of our desire to be in relationship with God and God’s continued commitment to be in relationship with us.  Finally, baptism also invites the community of faith in which an individual is baptized to be in intentional relationship with the person as he or she is perfected in faith and perfected in love for God and one another.  Sanctifying grace is God’s transformative gift to us through which we become better people.  Baptism marks an individual’s initiation into a life-long process of sanctification, upheld by the prayers and presence of a community of believers, like this chapter community here at Marsh Chapel.   Baptism equips us for the life of faith.

The last several decades have seen a revival of the sacraments and of a sacramental life among Protestants.  Here at Marsh Chapel in recent years, especially under the leadership of Dean Hill, there has been a renewal of devotion to sacramental life as well.  Baptisms have become more regular, and for several years, communion has been offered weekly while academic classes are in session.  Among the opportunities to receive communion is a 7-minute liturgy, Common Ground Communion, on Thursday afternoons at 12:20 on Marsh Plaza, which will resume this coming Thursday.  It offers an opportunity for students to receive the sacrament and tangibly experience the presence of God and God’s grace between afternoon classes.  But the opportunity is not limited to students.  The communion table here at Marsh Chapel is open to all: students, staff, faculty, people unaffiliated with the university, straight and gay, United Methodist, Presbyterian, Christian-curious, and un-churched alike.  The opportunity to experience God’s presence and grace through the sacrament of communion is always available at Marsh Chapel.  Should you wish to receive, and there is not a communion service planned, contact a chaplain or a member of the ministry staff, and we will be more than happy to provide the opportunity to receive the sacrament.

Unlike the sacrament of communion, which the church urges us to seek regularly, if not constantly, baptism is a one-time only occurrence.  It marks, as I said, a change in our lives, a commitment to be in relationship with God and a commitment from a faith community to be in relationship with us.  It marks a turning point in our life-journey.  For many this is a conscious decision we make as youths or adults, but for many others, baptism was a commitment made by loved ones that we would be nurtured in the church and guided to accept God’s grace for ourselves.

In either case, we are asked to earnestly repent of our sins and seek God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of our neighbors.  Moreover, in baptism we commit to seek better patterns of life, that we might be closer to God and neighbor.

We seek a baptism by water which washes us clean of sins, a baptism by the Holy Spirit in which we commit ourselves to God and recognize God’s relationship with us, and a baptism by the fiery passion of God’s grace which frees us to new life through Jesus Christ.

John Wesley taught that in baptism a person was cleansed of the guilt of original sin, initiated in to the covenant with God, admitted into the church, made an heir of the divine kingdom, and spiritually born anew.  A lot is going on in the few moments of baptism.  We receive absolution from sin while also committing ourselves to new relationship with God and neighbor.  Moreover, we only need to do it once.  Certainly we need to reaffirm the relationship with God we recognize in baptism, but that relationship never leaves us.

Sometimes we don’t realize the full wonder and mystery of the sacrament.  Sometimes we need the visual cues of the church to help us identify the importance of our actions and the stories of the scripture.  Like the etched-stone, baptismal font I encountered this week in Puerto Rico, sometimes it helps us to have a visual or tactile sign of the mystery of the sacrament.  Sometimes it helps us to identify the specialness of the sacrament and to remember the moment of our baptism to touch water or remember being enveloped in water.  This week, if you are sitting in the nave of Marsh Chapel, you see a large clear bowl filled with water sitting on small wooden table at the front of the nave.  I encourage you during our prayer time following the sermon or during the offertory to come forward and touch the water and remember your baptism.  Or perhaps you are sitting on the cape, sipping your coffee.  Later this afternoon, take a stroll on the beach, and run your hands in the water.   Perhaps you are driving home from your own Sunday morning service: I encourage you to recall the wonder of water, perhaps a beautiful beach or a wondrous waterfall.  I think of La Mina waterfall near El Yunque in Puerto Rico, where my wife and I swam in the cool mountain water as the thirty-foot, strong falls washed over us or Playa Flamenco, a horse-shoe white-sands beach with warm, gentle waves.  Remember a time when you were immersed in the wonder of water and remember that you are similarly wrapped in God’s glory and clothed in the Holy Spirit.

We trust that in the Spirit, whose presence we accept in baptism, God will be our constant companion and supporter.  God does not abandon God’s covenant with us, even if we wander from it.  The Spirit remains steadfast, chasing after us as a tireless friend even when we turn away.  The church provides opportunities for us to remember our own special relationship with God.  While I was preparing this sermon this week, my wife quipped in the Dunkin Donuts-desolate land of Old San Juan, that “American runs on Dunkin, and the Church runs on dunkin munchkins.”  Now, of course her remark was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but at the heart of the mission of the church is telling the story of Christ and offering opportunity for women and men of all ages to develop deeper relationship with God.

Perhaps you wish to renew that relationship with the God today.  Perhaps you wish to think more about accepting the gift of relationship with God for the first time.  If you have not received the sacrament of baptism and feel moved to closer relationship with God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and seek to experience God’s grace through the sacrament, I encourage you to speak with me or another member of the chapel staff following the service or to call or email the chapel office this week and ask to speak with a member of the ministry staff about receiving the sacrament.

For those who have received baptism and who wish to renew their relationship with God, I invite you to renew your baptismal vows now and to come and touch the water during our prayers of the people. I invite you to recommit yourself to God and to accept the presence of the Spirit in your life anew.  If you have a United Methodist Hymnal in front of you, you may wish to turn to page 34 to read the vows of baptism.

Brothers and sisters in Christ:

Through the Sacrament of Baptism

We are initiated into Christ’s holy Church.

We are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation

And given new birth through water and the Spirit.

All this is God’s gift, offered to us without price.

Through the reaffirmation of our faith

We renew the covenant declared at our baptism,

Acknowledge what God is doing for us,

And affirm our commitment to Christ’s holy Church.

On behalf of the whole Church, I ask you:

Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness,

Reject the evil powers of this world,

And repent of your sin?

If so, please respond, “I do.”

Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you

To resist evil, injustice, and oppression

In whatever forms they present themselves?

If so, please respond, “I do.”

Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior,

Put your whole trust in his grace,

And promise to serve him as your Lord,

In union with the Church which Christ has opened

To people of all ages, nations, and races?

If so, please respond, “I do.”

According to the grace given to you,

Will you remain a faithful member of Christ’s holy Church

And serve as Christ’s representative in the world?

If so, please respond, “I will.”

We remember our baptism and are thankful.

May the Holy Spirit work within us,

That having been born through water and the Spirit,

We may live as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ

And be assured of God’s love for all people.

Amen.

~Soren Hessler, Chapel Associate for Leadership Development

posted in The Rev. Dr. Soren Hessler on 01.13.2013 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

John 13:21-26

John 19: 25b-27

John 20:1-10

John 21: 7, 20-24

You might wonder about the selection of passion, death and resurrection texts for a marriage homily. Aside from the fact that marriage is about as important as death and resurrection, I have a different point in mind for these texts, namely, what they say about the love between Jesus and the Beloved Disciple.

Most people articulate the depths of their identity in terms of stories to which they relate.  Children relate to the stories of their parents and their roles in the community.  People define themselves in terms of the stories of their friends, of their neighborhood, of their livelihood, and sometimes of their historical situation.  Christianity has long claimed that the most important story to relate to is that of Jesus.  Among the most important things about us is that we are sinners judged by him and redeemed by his love.  I remember being told as a small child that if I sat on Jesus’ lap he would love and cuddle me, along with all the other children, even if my parents were put out with me.  The stories of Jesus tell us how to relate to the strong and the weak, the wise and the innocent, the hypocrites and the desperate seekers.  John’s stories of Jesus in particular focus on how he would have us love one another and bear up under stress and betrayal.  Although the stories of Jesus say very little about sex, the Church from early on took Jesus’ story to be that of the bridegroom of the Church itself.  Christians corporately and individually are to find our deep identity by imagining ourselves to be married to Jesus, a stretched metaphor if there ever was one!

Gay men and women have been frustrated in the attempt to understand their own narrative in terms of the stories of Jesus because the Church has taught in so many times and places that same-sex desire is bad, idolatrous, unnatural, sick, or something else that deserves to be condemned as impure.  Those negative teachings about same-sex desire have now been debunked biblically, philosophically, psychologically, anthropologically, medically and in every other way except in the disgust reactions of some people who have been brought up poorly.  But it is time for people whose deepest identity includes same-sex desire to be able to find their story in the story of Jesus.  For the Church not to offer this is for it to deny the full humanity of gay men and women, and all others whom it puts off with bigotry.

So I want to speak about the part of Jesus’ story that has to do with his boyfriend, the Beloved Disciple.  Of course we know very little for sure about Jesus’ sex life, or about the sex life of most of the other characters in the New Testament, for that matter.  But I bet there is not a person here who by the age of ten had not wondered about Jesus snuggling on the dinner couch with the man called the Beloved Disciple.  When I was growing up, this was not talked about, and the Beloved Disciple was mentioned only as the traditional author of the Gospel of John because of the remark in the last of the texts I read that he wrote down a lot about Jesus. The tradition of authorship is no longer viable among scholars even though it lingers in the iconography that represents the author of John as young, beardless, and attractive, as in the Marsh Chapel statues, a resonance with the part of the story of the Beloved Disciple reclining on the breast of Jesus.

We don’t really know who the Beloved Disciple was.  Obviously not Peter because they are often depicted together.  The other major disciples such as James and John, Andrew, Philip, and Thomas are referred to in John’s gospel and likely would have been named as the Beloved Disciple if they fit because they were important in the later Church. People have speculated about Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, Lazarus, and the young man in Mark’s gospel who flees arrest naked, but we just do not know.

But we do know some things about the Beloved Disciple if not his name.  First of all, he was accepted by the inner circle of disciples as Jesus’ special friend.  They accepted his position with Jesus on the dinner couch and in fact looked to him for pillow-talk information about Jesus, as in the incident of Peter asking about the identity of the betrayer. The disciples were not homophobic.  Second, the Beloved Disciple did not compete with the others for leadership in the community, as James and John, and Jesus’ brother James, did with Peter.  Peter was the acknowledged head disciple and the Beloved Disciple showed no interest in a leadership role.  Third, the Beloved Disciple was on good terms with Peter and they did things together; this suggests to some that the Beloved was Peter’s brother Andrew, but you would think he would be so named.  Fourth, the Beloved Disciple was not a source of any special doctrine speaking for Jesus, did not ask famous leading questions like several other disciples did, and was not mentioned at great revelatory moments such as the Transfiguration (which is not recounted in John’s gospel, the only gospel that mentions the Beloved disciple), in the dialogue of the Farewell Discourse, or Thomas’ post-resurrection confession. He may have been there but was not mentioned.  It seems that the only role the Beloved Disciple played in the gospel story was to be the one Jesus loved in a special way, his boyfriend.

What do we learn from our four texts?  In the first, the identification of the betrayer, the most obvious lesson is the intimacy of the Beloved, reclining on Jesus’ chest, leaning forward to talk with Peter, then falling back on Jesus to ask him about the betrayer.  Jesus does not answer directly but says, “Watch what I do—it’s the one I feed.”  The Beloved obviously did not relay the message to Peter, or Peter would have stopped Judas from leaving.  The text has another message as well.  Judas the betrayer is within a hand’s reach of Jesus, surely at the next couch, when Jesus feeds him.  The point is that the people close to you, perhaps closest, can be betrayers.  But the Beloved is with Jesus all the way, closer than Judas, and closer than all the other disciples who will abandon Jesus when he is arrested.  The point for a marriage homily is that you two should be closer to each other than to all the others in your respective public careers with their ups and downs, successes and disappointments, colleagues and betrayers.  And you can talk with one another about all these hopes and despairs, jealousies and pettiness.  Think of yourselves as reclining on one another, leaning forward to engage the public world, and then leaning back to take stock together.

The second text is the crucifixion scene.  The Beloved Disciple is at the foot of the cross with Jesus’ mother and aunt and with Mary Magdalene.  No other male disciple is around.  Jesus sees him and, most remarkably, tells the Beloved Disciple to take Jesus’ mother as his own, and tells his mother to take his Beloved as her son; she moves in with the Beloved Disciple from that day on.  What is remarkable is that Jesus had plenty of brothers, and also sisters, and at least one aunt, who could take care of his mother, all as part of the natural extension of his family.  But he creates a new, non-kinship, family for his mother and Beloved.  It’s as if Jesus and the Beloved were married and, with Jesus’ death, the Beloved takes over the responsibility for the mother-in-law.  Jesus was the first son, and so care-taking responsibility for the parental generation falls on his spousal family; the Beloved Disciple takes up that role when Jesus gives it to him.  The first century was a long time before Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage.  But if there were an analogue for a same-sex marriage in Jesus’ time, one major test of its solidity would be acceptance of responsibility for in-laws.  The point here for a marriage homily is that you two are adopting each other’s respective families into your own new and fragile one.  The other side of this point is that the in-laws accept your family by coming into it.  The point is unremarkable for heterosexual marriages, a commonplace even though it is difficult to live up to even there; you know the jokes about in-laws. The public validity of same-sex marriages finds its strength in intergenerational acceptance and support.

The third text is about the Beloved Disciple and Peter running to the tomb after Mary Magdalene had told them it was empty.  The Beloved races ahead, doubtless frantic with worry and confusion, but he cannot bring himself to look for his lover’s bloodied body.  Take-charge Peter goes right in and says the body is not there and everything is cleaned up so the Beloved can finally go in. This gives some clue as to what the Beloved Disciple must have been feeling, watching his lover be arrested, tried, whipped, and crucified, writhing against the nails and dying finally by suffocation.  Grief, rage, hurt, panic, helplessness, helplessness, helplessness.  I pray that neither of you will ever have to watch the other suffer grievously.  But if you do, know that it’s ok to feel grief, rage, hurt, panic, helplessness, and not have to be in charge.  That’s how Jesus’ Beloved felt about him and if it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for you.  You do not have to be strong, only unfailing in the love that clings to the breast.  Another marriage homily point.

The final text is from the resurrection story of the Last Breakfast.  The Beloved Disciple is offshore with the others on the fishing boat when he recognizes Jesus as the man who had been giving them instructions about casting their net.  After fixing them breakfast, Jesus goes off with Simon Peter to reinforce his love and to give him instructions about leading Jesus’ community.  The Beloved Disciple is walking behind, just out of earshot.  The text specifically reminds us that the Beloved Disciple is the one who ate reclining on Jesus whom Peter asked about the betrayer. Peter asks Jesus, “What about him?”  Jesus answers three things.  First, that it is Jesus’ will that the Beloved remain until Jesus comes again.  Second, that this matter is no business of Peter’s.  And third that Peter should follow Jesus and attend to his own public ministry.  When this was reported later on, some people in the community thought that Jesus would guarantee that the Beloved Disciple not die until he returned, but obviously he did.  Jesus only said that it was his will that the Beloved Disciple not die, meaning presumably that he wanted to continue their special relation upon his return.  Surely that is what Jesus would be expected to hope for his Beloved, but who knows what will happen?  The point here for a marriage homily is that your marriage in the last analysis is a private matter and at some point you might have to tell others to back off.  Of course a marriage is also a public legal arrangement, witness this ceremony.  We invoke a community to support your marriage.  It extends out into a much larger set of families.  You two will function as a couple in many contexts relevant to your careers.  The line between the public and private in a marriage is ambiguous and sometimes tense to draw.  But in this final scene of Jesus’ story, when he charges Peter to invent the Church to feed all those people hungry for love and God, Jesus’ last words were to remind Peter that what Jesus and the Beloved Disciple had going between them was their own affair.  According to John’s Gospel, Jesus’ last words were about his special Beloved, whom we may call his spouse.  This is my last homiletical point about marriage.

In matters of sex, love, and marriage, let me affirm as a priest of the Church that you can find your story, the story of your heart’s desires, the story of your union together, in the story of Jesus.  All those who would deny you his story, let them be anathema!  May Jesus’ love of his Beloved be a song in your hearts all your days!  Amen

~The Rev. Dr. Robert Cummings Neville

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Neville, Dean Emeritus of Marsh Chapel on 01.7.2013 at 2:16 pm

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By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 2: 1-2

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Frontispiece

The gospel is the beauty of a bird in song.

We begin.  As J Edwards said, ‘Resolved:  to do nothing I would be afraid to do in the last hour of my life.’

I don’t believe I quite heard or overheard your seasonal resolution(s).

You still may be hunting, searching.

The gospel is the gift of the Christ child to us, God’s gift of faith, of fellowship, of freedom—beyond thought and beyond intuition and beyond demolition.  If God is for you, who is against?  The gospel also is our gift to the Christ child.  Odd, no?  The gospel heard and spoken and lived is our gift to Christ, like the story which Matthew narrates, Mt 2, is his gift to wordflesh.

Search and hunt they did, these wise men.  The very presence of the wise at the outset of the gospel is the rejection of fundamentalism near and far.  Swinging like an angel sword before the garden of Eden, here come the magi, making sure that any gospel worthy of the name fears nothing human, fears nothing known or knowable, fears nothing true.  Biblicism be gone, say the kings.  Their presence is the celebration of the liberal gospel, the gospel of liberality, your birthright, Marsh Chapel.  The gospel (not that there is any other) that honors what we know, while admitting what we do not.  The gospel that remembers our history, including its horrors.  The gospel that eschews easy measures of the divine, which by definition is un-measurable.  The gospel that has arms big enough to embrace the big bang, and evolution, and real random chance, and the unknowable God in whose love, alone, we are at all known.  To be good news, the gospel must be true, all truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  Otherwise it is not good, and not news.  Searching can exhaust the searcher, star at night, out to the east, following forever.  Truth. Science. History. Psychology.

Our five grandchildren and their overseers visited us at Christmas.  The oldest is five, leader of the pack.  I heard them playing hide and seek.  She taught them a song, a birdsong.  When they ran out of hunting energy, and were stumped, humans at the edge of knowledge, ministers at the edge of energy, she would call out, in song, ‘can you give a little tweet-tweet?’ And repeat, and repeat.  Then, from under the bed, would come the birdsong response, ‘tweet, tweet’. The gospel is not only the Christ gift.  The gospel is our gift to the Christ.

1. Gold

The gospel is our spoken gift of faith.

Every bird sings faith, over the globe, through all time.  Thurman loved penguins, odd and remote.  Listen.  Along the Charles, in the spring, make way for goslings and ducklings.   Mid-island in Bermuda, I hear the song:   Early in the summer mornings, out in the land currently under the death cloud of possible fracking, where we live, at dawn a rooster.  Two eagles—they too mate for life, as in Christian marriage—soaring, I only imagine their music.  The owl at night.  A swan song, a silver swan, who living had no note.  The gospel is a bird in song, and all nature sings.  Even if or when the preaching of the gospel by human imperfection abates, as it does threaten to do, birdsong will carry the tune.

Just as there are so many, sorry, reasons to skip church, so too there are many, sorry, reasons, in the space of 4000 earthly Sundays, to skip faith.  Faith is only real gold, real faith, when it is all you have to go on.

The first of December was covered with snow.  The next line?  Good night you moon light ladies.  Rock a by sweet baby James.  The next line?  Can you give me a little tweet tweet?

Ignatius would love the star, but Luther would mark the voice, the sound, the birdsong of searching, inquiring, wise, questing, serious, real faith: ‘Where is he, who has been born king of the Jews?’

The first to find Him are not Jews at all.  Gentiles, they.  Some of our most natural gospel hearers and speakers today are atheists.

Matthew, though usually (mis) understood otherwise, is a Gentile gospel.  The magi come first. Light centrally shines, chapter by chapter. The book is written in Greek.  Its mound sermon celebrates greek wisdom and greek discipline. The wise man built his house on rock.  A ruler’s daughter is healed.  The Sabbath is overrated.   The only sign the natives deserve is that of Jonah.  The disciples dish traditions of elders.   The greatest faith is the gentile woman willing to take the dog crumbs that the table guests despise.  The faithful followers will judge the 12 tribes.  And, by the way, make sure to render your taxes to Caesar. (J). Matthew’s endless explanation of kosher requirements is made for greek ears.  I will not even pause to recite the damnation of woe given to scribes and Pharisees.   Its concluding universalism would make Plato blush.  Matthew?  Jewish?

2. Frankincense

We begin.  As J Edwards said, ‘Resolved:  to do nothing I would be afraid to do in the last hour of my life.’

I don’t believe I quite heard or overheard your seasonal resolution(s).

There are no free-lance Christians.  If nothing else, for sure, the child the wise visit makes space in life for real fellowship.  The church is a working fellowship.

Isaiah foretold it.  Here in third Isaiah, who remembers the birdsong of second Isaiah, and carries the tune back into Jerusalem, after the return from exile, after 538, when another wise Persian, Cyrus, set the people free.  The birth of the Christ, by symbol of gold and frankincense, is connected to a universal liberation.

We are here to ring the bell, to sing the song, to sound the trumpet, to lift the voice.  You may need, this week, to see the examples in salt and light, of faithful people. Here are some in these Marsh pews.  Kind people.  Kind women.  Kind men.  Doing unto others, as they would have done to themselves.  Seeking.  Seeking lasting wisdom.

With joy.  Come on MLK Sunday, and hear our friend Dr Fluker, and on Monday and celebrate the King of Marsh Plaza.  Come February 9 (our usual Ground Hog festival, date and place moved) and ice skate on Marsh Plaza.  Come and sing hymns in the Lynn home of Alice and Yrjo—a midwinter delight!  Come for brunch and the marathon on Patriots day, to our home.

Resolve this, 2013:  I will be in church on Sunday.  Wise men still seek Him.  You find faith in fellowship, and vice versa.

St. John of the Cross: En una noche oscura…

At Marsh we minimize meetings, committees, structures, organization.  We find our fellowship, across the University, as above.  We take our education in the University.  We partner in service with our schools and colleges of the University.  We refuse to sit on a whale and fish for minnows.  Come and join us!  It is a great way to give, to live, to give and live, the gospel.

Here gay people are people.  Here lay people are people.  The eight words Methodism will need for survival:  gay people are people, lay people are people.  I refer you to the sermon coming January 27, 2013.

3. Myrrh

We begin.  As J Edwards said, ‘Resolved:  to do nothing I would be afraid to do in the last hour of my life.’

I don’t believe I quite heard or overheard your seasonal resolution(s).

Resolve, 2013:  to leave behind debt and regret.

On January 1, 1863, here in Boston, at the Boston Music Hall, F Douglass and many others sang.  The Handel and Haydn society sang.  One of their members, Harriet Beecher Stowe, sang.  Why their birdsong, good news of great joy? In the cradle of liberty?  Emancipation.  Real change is real hard, but change does come.  Lincoln said (12/62): ‘The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present’

Stowe wrote:  he is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave…

Regret is the shortest definition I know of hell.  Let your regrets be few.  Prize your time, your body, your heart.  ‘To thine own self be true’ (that’s Shakespeare by the way, not the Bible).  Let us leave behind the regret of gun violence, the regret of dehumanization of gays, the regret of environmental predation, the regret of children in poverty, the regret of unruly rouge nations, the regret of selfish living. Let your freedom be not only the freedom of the will, but the freeing of the will, to love.

Debt is the surest measure I know of hell.  Debt is an actuarial prison.  ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’ (again, Uncle Will, not the Holy Book).  An undergraduate degree is a wonderful thing, but not worth a mountain of lasting debt.  Travel light, cloak and staff.  Go where they will pay you to study, if you can. (J)

Yes, I am concerned about national debt.  I am.  A $4T budge with $3T income—this does not compute.  Even churches balance their budgets (I have 35 Decembers of fist fights, I mean finance meetings, to show).  Debt is a bad gift to grandchildren.  But I am even more concerned about your personal debt.    Lord forgive us our debts!

Get rid of your debt.  Get rid of your regret.  This year.

Find the freedom to live in love.

You are hiding out there.  I know you are.  I am hunting for you.  You are out there.  In a Beacon St. apartment. Up on the north shore.  Munching bagels on the Cape. Out in Newton, enjoying the Marsh Choir.  I have been searching for you, for six years.  Against the fierce New England wind of post Christian secularism, righteous anti religious fervor, mixtures of bad Calvinism or Catholicism, Sunday hockey, and a kind of intellectual life that is always just a bit short--of wonder, mystery, and magi wisdom.  I am hunting for you.  But I don’t find you yet. I search,but you are too well hidden.

CAN YOU GIVE YOU ME A LITTLE TWEET TWEET?

Congregation? Clergy? Choir? Radio?

CAN YOU GIVE YOU ME A LITTLE TWEET TWEET?

Coda

The father of neo Biblicism, Karl Barth, said:  ‘the gospel is the freedom of a bird in flight.’

We sing it this way, in our faith and our fellowship and our freedom:

The gospel is the beauty of a bird in song.

The gospel is the beauty of a bird in song.

The gospel is birdsong.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 01.6.2013 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

Luke 2:41-52

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Some of you know that I have practiced, for decades, the spiritual discipline of tree climbing. I have surprised neighbors all across the country as I’ve tumbled out of moving vans and immediately ascended my way to a view of the new heaven and new earth on my new street.  It’s a matter of seeking new perspective.

Well, today, December 30^th,  we’ve all  figuratively climbed up to the top of year, and we’re perched way out on the tree limb of 2012, still holding on to the days of Christmastide, remembering the events of this year…the branch sways a bit under weight of both the joys and agonies of these 12 months. From this lofty vantage we can see ahead to new branch of 2013 just over yonder.  With the dropping of a ball and raising of cheer, with the flip of a calendar page we can just about see it.   It is already, but not yet.

Or another metaphor, this one requiring not a courage of heights, but a courage of imagination-  this is a time when we are called to live on the threshold. Abiding in the liminal places, not quite in the past, not quite in the future.  Pitching tent with Emmanuel who comes to camp out with us. Pausing with our sister Mary to ponder many things in our hearts.  A time to recollect back and wonder forward.

This is a day for a gem of a story from Luke, told with dual perspectives.  This is a day where two generations meet, where youth ministers and campus chaplains engage young adults precisely in the context of their journeys, where parents and children perplex and irritate one another- can you imagine! Where professors and students sit in the Temple and wrestle with texts and traditions.

Some of us live today with Mary on the Parental threshold of holding on and letting go- today her 12 year old son Jesus stretches out beyond her protection into a world that she already knows  is piercingly beautiful but piercingly violent as well.  Mary says today, “Kids, they grow up so fast.  It seems like it was just this past Tuesday that Jesus was born!  My baby! And now he’s 12 going on 20.”

Some of us live today with Jesus on the Emerging Adulthood threshold of “hello world, ready or not here I come!”  and  “yikes, this economy, this multitude of options and yet restrictions, hello Parent’s basement, I’m baaack!”  Jesus says today, “Give me some room at the Inn to learn more and become more until I am really ready to launch.”

Let’s climb into our Lukan story and see the world from one another’s perspectives.

Let’s begin with Mary.  Revered Mother of Jesus.  And here in today’s gospel, a very real Mom, one many of us recognize in the mirror or in the family portrait.   Clueless, panicked, relieved, angry, perplexed, astonished, perseverant.  All those experiences of parenthood the owner’s manual never mentions.

In ancient Roman mythology, “Janus” is the god of beginnings and transitions, the god of gates, doors, and thresholds. Janus is depicted as a god with dual profiles, looking at once to the future and to the past. “January” was named in honor of this threshold - inhabiting Janus.  Now, I confess that I know this not because I am a classics scholar.  I know this because I am a Mom and I have a 529 college savings plan with a firm called “Janus Investments,” and this two-faced image of Janus has been stamped on my statements for the last dozen years.  I inhabit a world lately with many conversations including these particular numbers – a sort of secret code of American parenthood: 529. For many years my husband and I have clink clinked our quarters into the savings plate, fretting over its too slow expansion.

Our son Andrew is now a High School senior, living on the threshold between HS and College…. Between clicking “submit” on the Common App and the arrival of satisfactorily large and thick acceptance envelopes in the mail.  With Mary I shake my head and remember my son’s first day of Kindergarten, which seemed like last Tuesday.   On that very first day of the big yellow bus, Andrew was treated to a one on one visit from the school principal.  A kind man who very gently suggested that biting your neighbor’s forearm on the bus-ride to school was not the best start to an academic career.  This I cannot help but remember as my 17 year old stands before me and requests the car keys – himself a Latin scholar, a fine writer,  a person of sterling character, now with advanced bus-riding social skills. The forward facing Janus Mom says, “I’m so proud of you!”  The backward facing Janus Mom cannot resist to comment, “but don’t bite anybody.” Already but not yet.

Mary, today I companion with you as we parent sons so close to stepping into new worlds beyond our doors.   I like to think of Mary as the biblical Soccer Mom. Now, if this has not occurred to you, bear with me for a moment.  Her eldest child is 12, and we know from biblical text that she has at least another 6 children by the time Jesus is an adult.  Four of Jesus’ brothers are named, and references are made to his unnamed sisters.  Before I thought about this fact of Mary as parent of 7 or more children- I admit to a more serene image of Mary-  quietly pondering, piously robed in blue, sitting beside a well-behaved  baby, shining a halo or two in daily housework chores.   But now I imagine she and Joseph busy with all the demands of running a large household bursting with children’s activities and religious practices and carpentry projects.

I can understand how Jesus got lost in the caravan that day, on the annual pilgrimage to and from Jerusalem for the Passover festival. The original HOME ALONE screen play.  It was a 150 mile round trip journey– 3 days there and 3 days back- from the sleepy hill country of Nazareth to the bustling epicenter of the city of Jerusalem, bordering the Negev desert to the south.  2 places so very different from one another.  2 members of one family, having such very different experiences of the same event.

I imagine that Jesus the first born had been declaring his desire for some independence from good ole Imma and Abba for some time- so they  relented on their vigilance and said OK, son, you can travel further back in our caravan with extended family.  Mary probably couldn’t stop herself and called out parting advice, “Don’t bite anybody!”  OK- all you young adults, You totally get to roll your eyes here at your parents for all our awkward comments.

It’s really more the world’s bite that Mary is afraid of.  She knows the reality of injustice and state sanctioned violence.  She knows the powerlessness of being young, poor, female, occupied, from the no-account back country. She and Joseph and baby Jesus fled Bethlehem 12 years ago, narrowly escaping the murderous arm of Herod who commanded that all male babies under age of 2 be killed.  Her family was refugees in Egypt, relying daily on the kindness of strangers, relying daily on the magnificent promises of God.

Mary knows that in 2012 alone over 153,000 refugees fled her neighboring Syria, running from violence and terror. Mary knows that in our country there have been some 30,000 deaths in 2012 from gun violence.  Mary knows that the Slaughter of Innocents is not some ancient biblical tale, but a reality proximate to our lives.  Mary weeps for the innocents. Christmas Eve- next door to my recent home town- Webster NY -  2 first responders to a house fire,  were ambushed and killed by gunshot.  One a 19 year old, covering for older firefighters so they could be home with their families.  Mary weeps for the innocents. Sweet babes at an elementary school in Connecticut, an Oregon shopping mall, a Colorado movie theatre, an off-campus street in Allston. Off campus- our campus. These towns -our towns.  These streets - our streets. These children –our  precious family.  Let us wake up and let our collective tears become a tidal wave flow of change – in hearts and minds and legislation.

And here’s why I Iove Mary.  And here’s how she is a vessel of God’s love.  Mary lives on the threshold of the world, seeing all its pain and darkness and she chooses life.  She chooses to open the door of her heart, a familiar expression of Howard Thurman.  Thurman who prays let the door of my heart be swinging. Secured in place by the axis of identity as a beloved child of God,  yet swinging open, welcoming love, attentive to splendor, open to new insight.  Mary doesn’t hide out in Nazareth, with firmly locked doors to protect her very special child.  She lives.  She trusts.  She reflects. She acts.

Mary sees the bleakness and chooses to light a candle of blessing rather than curse the darkness.  Perhaps Mary is tempted to lock the door and live in fear- to insist that Jesus never leave the protection of Nazareth again.  But Mary does NOT place an armed guard at every threshold we hold most dear- she does not armor backpacks – instead she clothes herself in “compassion, kindness, humility, patience, and most of all love.”

When Mary and Joseph discover that Jesus is missing, they abruptly change all plans and rush back to Jerusalem to find their son.  They are panicked.  They know what can happen out there in the big world.

After 3 days of searching, they find him! In the Temple of all places!  Not in the market squandering shekels on sweet cakes.  In the temple! Sitting there with the elders deep in discussion about matters of Torah.  Holding his own.  Mary’s panic gives way to relief, gives way to anger.  She raises her voice and says “SON!  How could you do this to me?”  And Jesus answers her, “why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I must be in my Father’s house?”  Not without a little attitude.  In this moment, Mary really doesn’t understand her son.   But she pauses.  She doesn’t react, she reflects.  She’s good at pondering life’s mysteries, even when they come in the package of a misbehaving child.

Jesus leaves with his parents, and back home in Nazareth they give him some remedial lessons in the commandments.  Like, hey Jesus, remember # 5 of the top 10?  “Honor thy father and mother.”  Mary continues her stewardship of the home, observing the beauty of each Sabbath eve and day, encouraging her children in the living of the law, trusting the words of the angelic visitor so long ago “FEAR NOT.”  She does her best.  And her son grows in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

But we have climbed our tree today to gaze out in two perspectives.  Jesus also lives in the threshold of emerging adulthood today, almost there but not quite yet.  Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God, Wonderful Counselor, Light of Lights, Hope of the Ages.  Perhaps we’re better versed in the full divinity of Jesus Christ than in his full humanity. But here in today’s treasure of a story we see a young adult some of us recognize in the mirror or in the family portrait - eager, idealistic, curious, confident, hopeful, and determined.

Now, we know most definitively that Jesus is 12 here.  What the text does not say, and we can imagine, is that he is reaching the age of majority, or of recognition as an adult in his religious circle.  B’nai mitzvah- the coming of age of Jewish boys at 13 and girls at 12 is not yet an established practice in first century Judaism.  I suspect Jesus is on the threshold of what we call today becoming a bar mitzvah, a son of the commandments, one with personal accountability for observing the Law.  A bar or bat mitzvah is full of questions and obligated to study biblical passages in depth.  So, just where else would Jesus be, but at the steps of the Temple, taking the rare opportunity to dialogue with and learn from the greatest scholars of his day.  Indeed, when reproached by his mother, “how could you do this to me?,”  he is likewise astonished- do my parents understand nothing about me?  How is this not obvious?

In our era, a new term has surfaced for coming of age, called “Emerging Adulthood.”  It’s generally associated with the ages between 18-29, and is understood not as a generational characteristic particular to the Millennials, but as a new life stage.  Nearby in Worcester MA our colleagues at Clark University are spearheading this research.  Dr. Jeffrey Jenson Arnett and his grad assistant Joseph Schwab have just released their poll on American Emerging Adults, and find that these folks are overall: Thriving, Struggling, and Hopeful.   Sounds a bit like our own emerging Jesus to me.

“Life is not easy for emerging adults,” state the researchers.  We know this. Our own WBUR ran a series in December called Gen Stuck.  Ouch. I learned that 30% of young adults are boomeranging back home to the not-so-empty nest, the highest percentage since the 1950s.  Merry Christmas, young adults, here’s a present called Fiscal Cliff.  Happy New Year!

I quote from the Clark report, “Emerging adults have an unemployment  rate that is consistently double the overall rate.  Those who have a job usually make very little money for most of their twenties.  Nearly all aspire to a college degree, but fewer than 1/3 have attained one by ages 25-29. Most move away from the comfort and support of the family home to take on the formidable task of finding a place in the world.  It’s not surprising, given these circumstances, that so many of them say they often feel stressed, anxious, or depressed. “

Hold on, though, recall that 12 year old energy, confidence, and curiosity of Jesus.

“What may be more surprising is that, despite the challenges of the emerging adult life stage, most of them remain hopeful that their lives will ultimately work out well.  Nearly 90% agree that they are confident that they eventually  will get what they want out of life:  almost as many agree that “At this time of my  life, it still seems like anything is possible.”  And, despite frequent claims that they face a diminished future and will be the first generation in American history to do worse economically than their parents, more than 3/4s agree that “I believe, overall, my life will be better than my parent’s lives have been.”  End quote.

Jesus, God with skin on, knows this in-between time.  He stands in the threshold right there. And he is present in the silent waiting years.  From ages 12-30 we know nothing about Jesus’  life.  We can imagine he is home preparing, living faithfully, and getting ready to launch into public ministry – finally at the age of 30.

Young adults- if your Baby Boomer or Gen X parents get a little impatient with your travelling through this life stage, say, “hey I’m  Emerging right on target with Jesus.”

Jesus had a hunger for discovery.  So do the young adults I know and love.

3 dozen Emerging Adults- also known as “Students” gathered at Marsh Chapel  just before finals for a “Reading Retreat” – a day set apart for study and reflection.  We focused our spiritual practices on one of the masters from this holy Temple– Howard Thurman- absorbed his words and wisdom.  Each participant went around room declaring the study intent for the day- and it was fascinating to hear the variety of subjects embraced by 6 of the schools of our university.  I am making my way through a 500 page tome on international relations and the CIA,  I am immersed in my reams of Hebrew Bible class notes for final exam, I am writing a paper about cross-cultural pedagogical implication, I am simulating human voice through a prototype robot I am making, and so on and so on.  Fascinating!

They remind me each day to be a  life-long learner. To appreciate excellence all around.

For instance, our ushers, right here at Marsh Chapel are superb in hospitality.  Each Sunday they are greeting at our doors with smiles and welcoming information for first timers.  Now, I come up the stairs from the lower level  - not in our ushers’ line of duty.  So most weeks I go out the front door, so I can turn right around and come back in. And I say to the usher, I want my greeting!  I want my smile and handshake or hug.  I want to start my day by receiving the excellence of your mission.  And Charles, 7 year old Charles who is head usher of the balcony.  Cannot have a Sunday without a Charles smile and high five.

Friends, this day we look back, we look forward, and we look from many perspectives.  We go out of our way to cross thresholds into places of joy and love.  Let us go into the New Year, with hearts as swinging doors –opening to the comfort of God’s grace, moving out to the needs of the world.

Amen.

~ The Rev. Dr. Robin Olson

See: Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults, December 2012: http://www.clarku.edu/clarkpoll/

posted in Guest Preachers on 12.30.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

Luke 1: 39-45

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Preface

A long time ago, a young woman headed out, uphill, into the uplands, the highlands, the hill country.  It is striking that we see her walking alone, given her condition, given the human condition, and given the conditional blessing she carries to us and to others.  She is alone.  There are many forms of solitude, including the joy of birth and the grief of death, and the power of dreams.  You will picture her, in an awkward tunic, walking at dusk, up into the hills.  We know (remember the Good Samaritan) that those roads harbored bandits.  She goes quickly, perhaps for that reason, and with haste enters the home of the husband of a second cousin thrice removed.

Self-Mockery

One thing we learn from these two women, right away, is regard for a sense of self-mockery.  You could say self- awareness, or you could speak of the centered self, but Elizabeth and Mary, like their forebears, Sarah and Hannah, have gone further and have learned to smile at their own fragile limitation.  They model self-mockery. They can laugh at themselves. ‘Who am I that the mother of my Lord should visit me?’

It is possible that their self-abandon gives Elizabeth and Mary the ears to hear a divine promise.  One of the interruptive intentions of Sunday worship is to offer you, and you, and you all, such an awareness.  “Take yourself lightly, so that you can fly like the angels.” (W.S.Coffin).  A little spiritual distance, a little self differentiation, a little non anxious presence—these go a long way when you are hungry and thirsty for a reassurance of meaning, a reassurance in the face of our deeply violent and violating culture, a reassurance that life yet bears meaning.

The Gospel According to St. Luke reverses our expectations.  Those outside are on the inside, when the gospel comes.  The commoner has the inside track in this monarchy.  Who first hear resurrection news twenty four chapters and twenty four  weeks later, come March and Easter?  Women.  Who follow unstintingly, across Galilee and into Jerusalem?  Women.  Who, today, first hear the plan for redemption, the coming birth of the Dream Child?  Women.  (In case you miss the point, Luke brings in the shepherds Monday at 7:30pm).

How could it be?  How could these things be?  Who am I?

Over time, you begin to project less, on the world, and see more.  Projection only gets you so far.  After three or so decades of seeing what you hope to see and want to see, you begin to stop and look and listen, and lessen projection--unless you are one of these women.  Not of them the saying, ‘Too soon old too late smart”.  They get it early, earlier.  Schleiermacher would be proud.  They have that sense.  Some things only the women seem to get right.  They have that feeling.   Do you?  Do you?  However are you going to survive slaughter news without it?  John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth’s womb, at the sound of Mary’s voice, Mary the mother of Jesus.  Good Greek mythology, and helpful to a church trying to keep the Baptists in the pew, at 90ce.

Mary is blessed.  Why?  Because she has believed, had faith. In what?  Here, as in the verse identifying the singer of the psalm, there is some textual doubt.  Is it that she has faith that she has been promised to deliver a child, and now sees that she will?  Perhaps.  I judge the stronger promise to be the stronger, though.  She is blessed because she has faith that these promises WILL BE fulfilled (that is the verb, simple future, not conditional, not subjunctive).  She trusts that a day will come: WHEN THE DREAM CHILD WILL COME AND HIS REIGN WILL NEVER END.  And her faith is ours.  Her faith is the gift of the Dream Child to us at Christmas.  You have the gift of faith and love and hope that--in the teeth of slaughter--you can affirm that one day, one day, one getting up golden morning, one fine dawn day, one glistening day, the dream of the Dream Child will neither slumber nor sleep.  Do you hope for that?  Do you?  Without it, however are you going to survive slaughter news? Mary’s blessing is not the birth of a child but the birth of the Dream Child.

Vulnerability

Another more obvious thing we learn from Mary and Elizabeth and from birth in general is a respect, a healthy regard, for human vulnerability.

I learned this week that there are 120 ‘centers’ at Boston University.  Each is the dream child of some professor, who has an idea about connecting ideas and money, and marrying them up in an academic center.  I may open my own, someday, ‘The Robert Allan Hill Center for Wonder, Vulnerability and Self-Mockery’

I had my first real job, and first real boss.  I ran the water front, under the stern eye of Koert Foster, who ran the campground.  Koert never went to college, but he became President of his Rotary Club.  He never went to college, but he flew and owned a Cessna 172.  He never went to college but he talked theology nose to nose with those who did.  He never went to college, but he was a scratch golfer and a prince of peace.   Here:  when one of the 250 campers per week was injured, he would slow down, as he walked toward the broken arm.  He did not rush to calamity.  He walked, and he walked more slowly than he usually did.  ‘Take your own pulse first”, his slow, steady approach taught me.

Koert was a deer hunter, as were most of the men around whom I grew up in the uplands, hills, hill country of upstate New York.  I went my junior year to Spain—give me another such some lifetime!—to read Antonio Machado and Miguel de Unamuno,  and prepare to teach college Spanish.  One December day a tiny thin aerogram, in my mother’s hand, came to Segovia, to the Campos de Castilla.  ‘Bob, Koert died in a hunting accident.  He was shot by accident by his best friend, the town mailman, on the hairpin turn, halfway to the lake’.

I had not planned to go back to work the followings summer at the summer camp, but Koert was dead, and we all went back, and ran it.  At age 20.  Occasionally a busy Methodist minister would check in to see if things were OK.  They were.  20 years olds can do a lot.  We worked from 6am to 8pm and then, in the twilight went waterskiing up and down that long finger lake, across from the nudist colony.   I was driving the boat, and throwing the ski rope.  Peg, Koert’s widow was the spotter.  ‘God called him home’, she said.  ‘Did God call him home?’ she asked.  Coiling the rope, I shrugged, and hurling the ski rope I said I didn’t think so.  ‘If you go to seminary, figure it out’, she said.

Friends, we need to be clear about not going over the theological cliff, in horrific tragedy.  You were here last week, when we said:

As we sing carols let us soberly remember.  Faith does not exclude us from calamity, but faith prepares us to fight it.  Faith does not give us the capacity to understand, but it does give us the courage to withstand.   Faith is not an answer to every question, but it is a living daily question of ultimate concern.  Faith in God is faith in God, not in another creaturely being.  Our faith in God is cruciform, faith in the crucified God, who has chosen to make our vulnerable condition his own. I know the early church rejected patri-passionism.  But barely.  And developing the capacity to meditate on profoundly unanswerable questions is why three times a fall we go and listen to Elie Wiesel. Faith does not protect us from calamity.  Gravity, bullets, floods and earthquakes respect nothing about faith, and faith from them offers no protection.

By apocalypse, evil shows us a part of who we are.  We are revealed, this week, in Newtown, as a people, to be other people than we pretend and other people than we intend.  We pretend to protect the weak, but we do not.  We intend to protect the innocent, but we do not.  That is, our penchant for acquisition, our desire to acquire rather than to be a choir, makes some other things expendable.  As in a mirror, and not so dimly, a dark inner part of our common life is illumined.  Not just one deranged killer, but a culture of guns and a culture of violence and a culture of acquisition, and a culture of apathy, these are brought to light, in this unfathomably tragic, unspeakably awful, sinfully evil crime. We are reluctant to give up even a slim measure of our power to purchase, to acquire, in order to protect children.  Foolish we are, with a foolishness that brings tragedy.  I think of the years I spent in Canada and the months in England, and I think we have some things to learn from both sibling cultures.  Here in the USA, there is a cheapening and coarsening of life happening all around us, all the time, and we, though sometimes we find the temper to resist, are the worse for it.  A decade of warfare has numbed us, made us tolerant of violence in ways we never were before.  Take a walk with me some day on a college campus.

Over forty years, as a culture, as a people, we have more and more given ourselves over to acquisition.  We no longer preach to the choir, we preach to acquire. To acquire one turns sometimes to violence.  Our culture is drenched in violence.   We from New England need to remember the stern hope in the New England theological tradition from Edwards to Emerson.  Edwards:  “Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.”  Emerson:  “Men are ‘convertible’ and this is the work of education, to awake the slumbering soul from its habitual sleep.” Last week Night came, but unattended by repose. After a holocaust, there is no faith so whole as a broken faith.  We need models of living with a broken faith.  We need to become, one by one, and as the faith community of Marsh Chapel, a model of living with a broken faith.  How?

To begin, in faith, we leave behind who were, and take up our cross, and follow.  Our cross, in our time, as has been steadily acclaimed from this pulpit, includes the hard heavy lifting of ridding this country of gun violence and of protection that does not protect.  Granted that foolish and harmful things are done all the time, we need not participate in them.  Our cross, in our time, as has been steadily acclaimed from this pulpit, includes the hard heavy lifting of growing, improving attention to mental health.  Our cross, in our time, as has been steadily acclaimed from this pulpit, includes the hard heavy lifting of setting aside some cyber-cultural influences.  We shall not cease from mental fight, nor shall our sword sleep in our hand, til we have no guns, mental health and a clean culture, in this green and pleasant land.  You have a voice, you have a wallet, and you have a vote.  Do you know this?  Do you?  How else will we ever face slaughter news?

A digression:  careful limitation of ammunition, requiring of its purchasers what we now require of those taking an airplane ride, full and personal and complete and discomfiting inspection, may be our best strategy.  Buy your guns, if you must, but if you want ammunition for them, that is another story.  If I can be groped at Logan airport to fly to Chicago, you can be checked and monitored, bullet by bullet.  Yes, too, to : bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, tightening rules for sales at gun shows and re-examining care for the mentally ill.  It is a collective self defense, fit for the 21^st century, which we need, not an individual self defense, forged in the 18^th.

A second digression: Fundamentalist readings, harmful and foolish they are, are not limited to readings of Holy Writ.  Fundamentalist readings, equally harmful and foolish, and similar in scope and reasoning, are also given to national writ, constitution and bill of rights.   What words meant in 90ad, in Luke, require current, contemporary, living interpretation.  What words meant in 1800ad, in the bill of rights, require current, contemporary, living interpretation.  What is most novel may oddly be truest to the tradition, and what is least traditional may be truest to the meaning of the tradition.

Wonder

Our heroic women, Mary and Elizabeth, teach us something else, too.  Every day is our last, until the next, and they live so.  They sing so.  They live on tip toe and sing on pitch.  They magnify the Lord.  The world does not lack for wonders, but only for a sense of wonder.  How is it that Luke, 20 centuries ago, eclipsed the men and evoked the women?  How is it that, come Christmas, people who sleep on Sunday will come to worship? How is it that in the candle lit dark of Christmas Eve, 7:30pm, there is a dim, palpable sense of the numinous, so easily forgotten all year?  How is it that the beauty of the carols and anthems and hymns, even against the steady cold wind of the merely material, manages to get through, come December?

All this is true, because of the proper translation of Luke 1:45:  Mary had faith that God’s promise will be fulfilled.  You have that faith, have been given that faith, have been seized by the church’s confession of that faith. Down under, down deep in the American psyche, there is a surging heart felt generosity, unknown, untapped, uninvited, unbidden, unwelcomed by our ostensible leaders.  Ernest Campbell:  “To be mature is to:  build schools in which you will not study; plant trees under which you will not sit; grow churches in which you will not worship”.  Ah, to worship.  Let me end with a little jeremiad about worship, for your consideration as look to 2013.  Think of it as a recommended resolution.

If you do not have one hour, each week, in which to face your own mortality, your own fragility, your own dependence, what is any other hour worth?  Luke alone tells these stories.  Why?  He is struggling, as we are,  to build the church.  Some, inside the church, whom he wants to hold onto, are followers of the Baptist.  So Luke recalls a story that honors not only the Baptist, but also his holy birth.  Others, outside the church, whom he wants to embrace, are Greeks who like their religions sprinkled with birth legends like those of the Greco Roman Gods.  So Luke recalls a story that has an altogether Greek birth miracle, like the Virgin Birth story itself.

A culture of violence will not disappear on its own.  A community of faith will need to erase it.  That means coming to church on Sunday.  A disregard for mental health will not disappear on its own.  A community of faith will need to heal it.  That means coming to church on Sunday.  A homeland sized addiction to firearms will not disappear on its own.  A community of faith will need to bring sobriety.  That means coming to church on Sunday.  To this hard work, you will bring the spirit gift of perseverance.  My friend said:  “90% of life is showing up.  The other 10% is perseverance.”  Show up on Sunday.  Persevere on Monday.

If singing the hymns of faith is not worth doing, what is?  If preaching the gospel of kindness is not worth doing, what is?  If supporting friends in community is not worth doing, what is?  If this one lone Sunday hour is not worth your time, your attention, your commitment, your devotion, just what is your time, attention, commitment and devotion really worth?  If the love of the Dream Child is not worth dreaming about, what is?

Coda

A long time ago, a young woman headed out, uphill, into the uplands, the highlands, the hill country.  It is striking that she is alone, given her condition, given the human condition, and given the conditional blessing she carries to us and to others.  She is alone.  There are many forms of solitude, including the joy of birth and the grief of death, and the power of dreams.  You will picture her, in some awkward tunic, walking at dusk, up into the hills.  We know, remember the Good Samaritan, that those roads hid bandits.  She goes quickly, perhaps for that reason, and with haste enters the home of the husband of a second cousin thrice removed.  We will remember her, as Christmas moves to Christmastide.

When the song of the angels is stilled

And the star in the sky is gone

And the kings and princes are home

And the shepherds are back with their flocks

Then the work of Christmas begins

To find the lost

To heal the broken

To feed the hungry

To release the prisoner

To rebuild the nations

To bring peace among brothers

To make music in the heart

(Dean of Marsh Chapel, Howard Thurman)

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 12.23.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

~The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean

posted in Lessons And Carols on 12.16.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

1 Thessalonians 3:10

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To mend your faith, the apostle wrote, to mend, to mend faith…

A noun and a verb, faith and mend.

Faith is our personal reliance on God.

Faith is our willingness, both in doubt and in trust, to live each day.  You honor life by living it.  You find faith by receiving it.  Faith is the state of being grasped by the Spirit, of being grasped by the Holy Spirit in love and justice and truth.  Any real faith has got some doubt in it, to keep it honest.   Faith is the experience of being fully alive, of living with courage, of being willing to risk, to fail, and to start again. Faith is where and who you are when you are your own-most self.  Faith is freedom, real freedom.  Of course we seek the ultimate, the infinite, the divine!  Of course we do!  Whatever else is life for?  This is why I tend to think that everybody, or very nearly so, has some kind of faith.  You may not have it dressed up in fancy linguistic garments.  That’s all right.  You don’t have to be Paul Tillich to have the courage to be.  You don’t have to read his Dynamics of Faith to have faith.

And, you have grown up so you know what faith is not.  Not blind trust.  Not knowledge of all mysteries.  Not exception from the laws of nature, physics, gravity, motion.  Not obedience to authority for the sake of obedience to authority, religious or otherwise.  Not capture by false ultimacies like success or nation or even religion. Not protection from calamity. Born, we are old enough to die. Rain falls on the just and unjust.  This is what the cross is all about—the measure and correction of false faith, what faith is not.  Real religious faith is unsparingly self critical.

But your faith gives you the courage to withstand what you cannot understand.  Your faith lives in the courage to be, over against all the frightful existential anxieties of sin, of death, of meaninglessness.  On the street, right on the street, where you live. You may be at a point to hear this word, after a week of rending, of tearing, of cuts and bruises and untimely death.

Jesus has taught us that we are children of God, heirs of life eternal.  Jesus has made us children of God.  In word and sacrament, today, you are reminded and mended.  Mended.

The gospel in this word illumines and inspires.  You will have heard and read our phrase from last week’s lesson, ‘mend your faith’, before.   In a way you heard it again, moments ago, in Luke and Philippians.   The gospel, down under, down in the valley, expects a filling up to come, a kind of geological mending, mountains and hills lowered, crooked ways straightened, rough places smoothed out.  A mending of the earth, of nature, and a right beautiful reading.  The letter, composed in the slammer (add your favorite prison term—pokey, calaboose, hoosegow, grey bar hotel, municipal motel, stir, up the river, the joint), expects a freedom from behind bars, and more, a partnership of the gospel.  A mending of the yoke of bondage,  of history, wherein love abounds, and knowledge too, and discernment too, and excellence and glory! And praise!, and a right beautiful reading. You heard it here, this morning.

But you heard it last Sunday, in a sliver of a silver line.  Paul said he hoped to be with his favorite congregation, ‘to complete was is lacking in your faith’.  That at least is what you heard last week, from the NRSV.   A while back, a generation ago, from the RSV, you would have heard, ‘supply what is lacking in your faith’.  And at the building of Marsh Chapel, in the KJV, you would have heard ‘perfect what is lacking in your faith’.   Complete sounds like a final exam.  Supply sounds like an economic theory.  Perfect sounds cold to the bone.  Paul yearns to make things right, and the rendering of his yearning is carried to us in these translations.  Every person of faith, you and he and all, and certainly every minister of the gospel, at our best, yearns to complete, to supply, to perfect.  Because we are so unfinished! Because we are so famished!  Because we are so fragmented!  But there is a better way to render the original verb, better than complete or supply or perfect.  Happily, the concordance and references closely define the word, KATARTISAI, as ‘mend’.

Last Sunday before worship some of us sat quietly to read the lessons of the day.  One student quietly read 1 Thess. 3:10.  But he read—not from NRSV or RSV or KJV—but from NEB, another translation.  ‘To mend your faith”, his version read.   The slight change is a sliver of a silver lining.   Our faith needs mending.  Every one’s faith needs some stitching up, now and then.

Betrayal tears at the fabric of faith.   Faith needs mending. The former governor of California sat for years over many meals across a shared table, without mentioning that one of the caretaker’s sons was his.   After that, faith needs mending.  The former assistant to John Edwards, who testified energetically against him for his betrayal, knew early about betrayal.  His father, had been the Dean of Duke Chapel, but a sometime visitor at  a nearby Red Roof Inn, in the company of a non-spouse.  That early betrayal cut deeply into the fabric of later life.  Both his dad and his boss had been false.  Sometimes, come Sunday, faith needs mending.  A current leader learns the hard way that no email is ever private, ever.  Put anything you want in email as long as you are glad to have it on your tombstone, or on the front page of the Times.  But the public cacophony is pale, by comparison with the rending of the garment of faith for the loved ones.  Faith for sure, to be sure, will need a stitch or two.

And what about the bigger betrayals, when nature and history let us deeply down?  Some mending required.  When violence between middle eastern nations goes on endlessly, generation to generation.  Mending required.  When a good nation somehow quietly slides into  unexamined drone warfare, wherein a man in a blue shirt drives from Manlius to North Syracuse, to sit in a screen room, and push buttons, with deadly consequence, a world away.  And then to stop at Wegmans on the way home, to pick up Cheerios and an extra Christmas ornament—a quiet evening in the suburbs.  Some mending required.  Or, harder and more immediate, when the specter of untimely death descends upon a commonwealth on commonwealth avenue, and an early, unfair, unjust and tragic loss evokes a piercing question: “ Where was God?  I thought God loved us?”  Or, in the nature of things, when a formal and false accusation, untrue but lastingly cutting, maims one we love, we know about needing a needle and a thread and a stitch and a little tuck, a little mending, of our faith.

The route to Bethlehem goes through the river Jordan, the icy, cold, real, existential river Jordan.

As my student fellow student of the Bible remembered, Paul was a tentmaker.  He knew about canvass and holes and leaks and cuts and could mend as well as make.  That is what makes the NEB translation so mendingly meaningful.

Our son had a stuffed animal for many years.  The animal was a raccoon.  His name was Rooster.  Rooster raccoon.  I have no idea how such a name came to be his but his it was.  Rooster raccoon went with us on vacation.  Rooster—the raccoon I mean—went with us on boat rides, on tobogan rides, on car rides.  Rooster had his own seat in the way back of the van.  He swam at Marconi beach.  He rode over the Mercier bridge into Montreal.  He learned to swim, the hard way, by falling overboard.   He slept outside in a snow fort.   He was the first one up in the morning, and the last one to bed at night.  Sometimes the dog would take him by the collar and run around.  We sometimes asked him to say the grace at dinner.   He would offer a resonant, silent prayer.  After a few years he looked like he was about finished.  For stuffed raccoons, one human year is the same as 14.  By accident, near Christmas, one evening, rooster raccoon found himself seated a little to close to the macaroni and cheese on the stove, and up he went in smoke.  Or at least in part he went up in smoke.  He was left missing the left part of his left part.   I see the child’s hand holding up the smoldering dog eared raccoon, with no words, only tears, and an unspoken question.  ‘Can’t you do something?’  And then a quick, confident maternal murmur:  “Just let me have him.  You wait and see.  He will be good as new.  We can mend it.  We can mend it.”  And she did.  And rooster raccoon was and is the best looking stuffed raccoon, without a left side, that you could ever want.  He is the most oddly named, and now most oddly shaped, stuffed raccoon, this side of the Mississippi.

Now you will rightly say that some things cannot be mended.  At least not perfectly, not completely, not with full supply.  ‘Dean Hill, some things cannot be mended’ you will say.  And I will reply:  ‘Don’t I know it’.  The damage is done.   Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is hard to get it back in.  But the longing to mend?  That never ends.  The desire to mend?  That is everlasting.  The willingness to sew and trim and patch and weave and make it do or do without?  That urge to mend the tears in your loved ones’ faith?  That goes from heaven to earth.  And there is something in that wanting, to mend, that, like the Eucharist, brings heaven here.

Faith is our willingness, both in doubt and in trust, to live each day.  You honor life by living it.  You find faith by receiving it.  Faith is the state of being grasped by the Spirit, of being grasped by the Holy Spirit in love and justice and truth.  Any real faith has got some doubt in it, to keep it honest.   Faith is the experience of being fully alive, of living with courage, of being willing to risk, to fail, and to start again. Faith is where and who you are when you are your own-most self.  Faith is freedom, real freedom. Your faith gives you the courage to withstand what you cannot understand.  Your faith lives in the courage to be, over against all the frightful existential anxieties of sin, of death, of meaninglessness.

“We pray most earnestly night and day to be allowed to see you again and to mend your faith where it falls short” (1 Thess. 3:10)

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 12.9.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

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Dean Hill:

The sermon for today is lifted up and out of Our Bach Experience.  In worship and life at Marsh Chapel we engage all the newest forms of communication (see today our website), and we desire to do so with a cloud of witnesses, with the wisdom of the ages, with the faith once delivered to the saints, with words and songs and prayers that last, through the ages.   The high Gothic nave here is meant to affirm what lasts.  The beautiful windows here are meant to enshrine what lasts.  The historic enchanting liturgy of the service is meant to spell out what lasts.  The deliberate preparation and pacing of the sermon are meant to announce what lasts.   We have about 8000 Sundays in a lifetime, 8000 moments in word and music to experience God.  We dare not waste one or one minute of one in pandering, in entertaining, in minimizing, in doodling.  In this 59 poem of worship each week, the 16 musical moments and the 11 spoken moments are offered in the praise of God.  Remember your mortality.  Remember your fragility.  Remember your imperfection.  Remember who you are.  And so remember that you are happily a child of the living God.

John Wesley, chiseled in stone above our Marsh Chapel portico, taught Greek, evangelized Native Americans, rose daily at 4am to preach at 6am and throughout the day, changed the course of English and American history, and founded Methodism which itself gave birth to Boston University.  He claimed to be a man one book, ‘homo unius libri’.  For all this we do rightly honor him.  We cherish him.  We revere him.  But, truth to tell, it is brother Charles, the musician, the hymnist, whom we love, especially as we come toward the caroling hour.  Martin Luther, enshrined in stained glass near and far, splintered the church on the anvil of truth, recalled us to salvation by faith alone, withstood physical ailments, mental trials, political clashes, and religious hatreds.  He founded a movement that became the Lutheran church, and gave us the Protestant Principle of the necessary rigorous self criticism of all religion.  We honor him.  We cherish him.  We revere him.  But, truth to tell, it is his musical great grand child, J S Bach, whom we love, especially as we ready ourselves to hear an Advent cantata.

We need both the words and the music.  But music lasts even when words fail.  That tune you heard on the radio that took you forty years back in time.  That hymn whose melody was lifted in a high or hard moment, a wedding or funeral.  That new experience—as Bach is for many young adults and others today—that took you by the hand and led you out into the ineffable, the serene, the beautiful, the heavenly, the high and holy.  One of you may have found yourself Thursday listening during the memorial service for Dr. John Silber to the beauty of Brahms. We need both words and music, but the music sometimes finds an opening in the heart, a little crevice into which to maneuver, which would be too small and too angular for the word alone.  “I come mainly to sing the hymns”:  one of you might have said that.  I think one of you did.

Our words and music today are folded around several expectant themes.  The themes therein include expectation, prophecy, the coming reign of God, times and seasons, and the emerging recognition of Jesus as Messiah, all good Advent fare.  *Expectation puts us on his shoulder when experience lays us low.  Our undergraduates teach us this, for even when they are brought down by one or another standard young adult trial, and as hard as they fall, they just as strongly get back up, dust off, come to church, and live to write another day.  *Prophecy has kept the darker ranges of apocalyptic and Gnostic fears at bay, or at least has kept them company in the Bible.  Isaiah week by week has been singing you a song your mother taught you as well.  Where there is hope there is life.  *Jesus means more to us now then when we first believed.  In that evolution we have company in the ancient writings and the saints of the primitive church.  We are more aware as we grow, or grow older, that we are in good hands and so we can risk a bit to bear one another’s burdens. *So this season of Advent surrounds us with expectation and prophecy and trust.  In a wee moment we will hear this Advent gospel sung.

Dr. Jarrett:

Today’s cantata is indeed one of joyful expectation. One of the happiest cantatas I know, Cantata 140 depicts the Christian soul as a bride awaiting her promised Bride-groom, Christ. Drawing on imagery from the Gospel of Matthew, with text from the Song of Solomon, Bach sets the stage for a beautiful wedding feast. The three verses of Philip Nicolai’s famous chorale punctuate the cantata and establish the structure. There are three soloists: the tenor in the typical role of evangelist, the soprano as the voice of the Bride, and the baritone as the voice of the Bride-groom, Christ Jesus.

From the start the festive nature is apparent with the French overture styled rhythms in the strings echoed by the three oboes. One of the best examples of this cantata style, the chorale tune is set in the soprano part in long tones, doubled by a French horn. You won’t miss it! The chorale tune appears again the central movement, this time sung by the tenors of the choir in unison. You’ll likely recognize this material as ‘organ music’; Bach adapted this movement in 1748 for inclusion in the set of chorale preludes for the organ known as the Schübler Chorales. Nicolai’s third verse concludes the cantata in the familiar four-part setting as found in your red Methodist Hymnal, No 720.

Between these bright movements, Bach unfolds the drama of the woman awaiting her bride-groom. As it says in the Gospel of the day, ‘Watch, therefore; for ye know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of man cometh.’ The tenor evangelist calls to the daughter of Zion, “Macht euch bereit. Er kommt, er kommt! Make yourself ready, He comes! He comes!”

The first of the two love duets follows. Listen for the deeply expressive violin solo, the longing of the woman as she awaits her bridegroom -  in the background the calming voice of the baritone assuring her that he comes.

After the familiar second verse of the Nicolai chorale, the groom arrives to profess his vows. The words of Christ are accompanied by strings, an aural halo familiar from the same practice in the Matthew Passion. These words offer comfort and assurance, and at the end, even the promise of a kiss!

Perhaps the most famous of all Bach’s duets, ‘Mein Freund ist mein’ is completely delightful. With obbligato oboe, parallel thirds and sixths, the frolicsome interplay of melismas, this is one of the best love duets in the entire repertoire.

Vows exchange and love professed, we are invited to join the heavenly banquet with Nicolai’s final verse.

The longing, uncertainty and expectation are present, but this cantata’s focus is much more on the joyful moment when Christ comes to redeem the world. Watch, pray. Pray and watch. Trim your lamps. He comes, he comes!!

Dean Hill:

May the rigors of Advent continue to prod and challenge us.  May this not be an easy season.  May this season unfold with moments in which we are brought up short, put on notice, called to account, and changed.

You are a people of faith, so that you are also a people of expectation.  You do not drop your chin at the first mention of bad news.  You do not fold your tents at the first sign of giants in the land.  You stand your ground, singing the music of expectation.

You are a people of faith, so that you are also a people of Prophecy.  You do not lie down and weep, only awaiting an unknown and unseen future.  You accept the unforeseen as part of the future, and you take up arms against a sea of troubles, hoping to end them. You let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day, remembering ‘sufficient to the day is the evil thereof’.  You live your eyes, singing the music of prophecy.

You are a people of faith, so that you are also a people of Trust.  You know that for anything to get done, trust is the coin of the realm.  You have learned in your experience that the good future requires us not only to work hard but also to work together.

Bonhoeffer loved Bach too.  He wrote:

Tolstoy once said that the czar would have to forbid Beethoven to be played by good musicians, for he would excite the passions of the people too deeply and put them in danger.

Luther, by contrast, often said that next to the Word of God, music is the best thing that human beings have.  The two had different things in mind:  Tolstoy, music to honor people; Luther, music to honor God.  And regarding music, Luther knew that it has dried an infinite number of tears, made the sad happy, stilled desires, raised up the defeated, strengthened the challenged, and that it has also moved many a stubborn heart to tears and driven many a great sinner to repentance before the goodness of God.

‘O sing the Lord a new song’ (Ps 98).  The emphasis is on the word new. What is this song, if not the song that makes people new, the song that brings people out of darkness and worry and fear to new hope, new faith, new trust?  The new song is the song that God himself awakens in us anew—even if it is an ancient song—the God who, as it says in Job, ‘gives songs in the night’ (Job 35).

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

Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music

posted in Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, The Bach Experience, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 12.2.2012 at 11:00 am
Tags: Bach Experience, Robert Hill, Scott Jarrett

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