Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

Mark 8: 27-9:1

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A question of being:  ‘What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?’ (Mk. 8:36) We will interpret this same passage again next week, then from a more theological and now from a more ethical perspective.

In the northeast, summer is the season for being.   For us of snow and ice, of cold and wind, of dark and deep, with winter around the bend, summer is the time when we bask in the sun, and in the light and in the warmth of life.   Summer opens up chances for communion with nature, with friends, with spirit, with family, with soul.  Summer brings a moment for meditation.

On the dock, after a swim, this August, nine of us, four generations together, sat together.  The prospects for the autumn did creep our way, including some serious issues of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  There are reasons why we tend to avoid art, politics and religion, in close company and conversation.  As in most families, ours, in extension, sports a variety of viewpoints, perspectives, and philosophies.   How the following interchange arose, I am not sure.  The immediate context has disappeared from memory.   But I did find myself saying, ‘Well, if it is the Bible we are talking about, there is no more central theme in the whole Scripture than the theme of economic justice.  Biblical teaching is never very far from social justice’.

A mother in a law voice piped up:  “prove it” (or something to that effect).  Don’t you love family gatherings?

“Well”, I replied, “we could read through 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9.  There, among other things stewardship related, the Apostle prays that ‘those who have much might not have too much, and those who have little might not have too little’”.  Whew.  That got me off the cliff, but only briefly.  Two nights later, the aforementioned relative, over pizza, plunked down a paper and pen.  “2 Corinthians was good.  But I need more.  Write.”  So, over pizza, while others savored, I wrote out a midterm exam essay outline on economic and social justice in the Bible. (Parenthetical humorous (?) sidebar: One pizza guest was a Syracuse University 1940’s alumnus, who remembered that once SU teams were the Saltine Warriors, and then the Orange, and now the ‘Cuse’.  Which, as he said, ‘as an elderly alumnus, makes me an ‘ex-cuse’”.)  Other happy moments also came and went, but I could not indulge, for I had no ex-cuse:  I had an exam to write.  I finished, and handed in my blue book, as dessert was served. “Thank you”, she said.

Behind every great man is a surprised mother in law.  And behind this supremely faithful mother in law is a lastingly grateful son in law.

Some days later, summer as we said providing ampler space for actual thought, I thought that she might not be the only person, coming toward this autumn, who had such a question.  Let us assume a love of Scripture, and a deep reverence for the authority of Scripture, in some fashion.   Your preacher has asserted that there is no more pervasive, prevalent, powerful, potent and repeated biblical theme, Genesis to Revelation, than that of justice.  When we pray, when we spend, when we give, when we choose, if we are hominae unius libri, people of one book, the Bible, we should then be hearing and heeding such teaching, should we not?  But is it true?  Does the Bible enjoin human, economic justice?  Is Paul’s epigram, ‘those who have much not too much, those who have little, not too little’, typical of and central to the Bible?

Your mind might revert to newscasts and newsprint, and let us confess it, sermons too, in which people who are ostensibly very biblical argue otherwise:  the poor you have always with you, let him who will not work not eat, consider the lilies of the field, be subject to the governing authorities…and so on. If the Bible is so pronouncedly in favor of justice, economic justice, the protection of the poor the maimed the halt and the lame, why, you might question, are so many biblical people happily content with 20 million unemployed?  Why then are so many biblical people comfortable with lack of health care for poor children?  Why are so many lovers of the Bible at ease with underperforming urban education?  Why are so many who with John Wesley would like to be ‘people of one book’ (the Bible) at home with neglect of the elderly, willing to accept surging inequality of wealth and income, with 1% of the population holding 20% of the income, with defunding and defanging the inherited protections of the common good, the common wealth?   If the Bible preaches a common wealth, why is affirmation of a common wealth so uncommon among supposedly biblical people?  If this is such a biblical nation, why have we so little comprehension of the Bible? Have we grown deaf to Mark 8?

I had a dear friend, a home builder, a great person and person of faith, who had only an 8th grade education, who once took me aside and said, quietly, ‘I am glad some of these people read the Bible, but I think some of these people who read the Bible read it wrong.’  You say you respect the Bible?  I do too.  Then let us try to read it right with regard to justice.

1. Let us read together the books of the Law, with which the Bible begins.  As anyone who has attended a Seder meal will know and remember, these books are redundantly attentive to the needs of the poor.  The general theme is this:  “Remember the widow and the orphan.  Leave your fields to be gleaned by the poor.  Welcome the stranger and foreigner.  FOR YOU ONCE WERE SLAVES IN EGYPT.”

Exodus 23:9: “You shall not oppress a stranger; you know the heart of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt….For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat.”  The Hebrew Scripture, our Older Testament, was largely composed in the dark days of a later slavery, the bondage of Babylon.  In that moment of memory, the community of faith recalled keenly their earliest history of God’s love and power, the God who brought them up out of the land of slavery to the land of milk and honey.   We know what it means to be poor, to be oppressed, to be outcast, to be downtrodden.  Once we were ourselves.  THEREFORE, there will be justice in our land for the poor.  You and you all may need to search your extended family histories and memories for what happened to your people in the Great Depression.   We learned something, or were reminded of something, then, as were the Israelites dragged again in chains to Babylon.

2. Let us read together the books of the Prophets, the very heart of the Old Testament.  In all of religious literature, in all human history, there is nothing quite as sobering, as piercingly and stingingly direct, with regard to justice, as these 16 voices, four the louder and twelve the lesser.   Malachi teaches tithing.  Isaiah affirms holiness.  Hosea preaches love.  Micah shouts, ‘do justice, love mercy, walk humbly’.   Together the prophets consistently rail against human greed, human selfishness, human covetousness, human apathy.  The harvest here for our theme is so plentiful it is difficult to select an exemplar, there are so many.

Perhaps Amos will do best. In the eighth century BCE, a shepherd boy from Tekoa went down to the gates of the big city, Jerusalem, and cried out against it.  He pilloried the shallow religion of his day.  He assaulted the reliance, the naïve overreliance of his government on weapons of war, he bitterly chastised the amoral, post moral practices of human sexuality of his day.  But he saved his real anger for justice.   The Bible trumpets justice, economic justice, justice for the poor, and for all!  If all we had were the poetry of that shepherd boy from Tekoa, Amos would be sufficient:

“I will not revoke the punishment, because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes—they that trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and turn aside the way of the afflicted” (Amos 2:6-7).  “Hear this you cows of Bashan…who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to their husbands, ‘bring that we may drink’, the Lord God has sworn by his holiness that behold the days are coming upon you, when they will take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks” (Amos 4:1-3).  “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.  But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness as an ever flowing stream” (Amos 5: 21-24).   Remember Martin Luther King reciting these verses, down in the sweltering little jail house of Birmingham Alabama.

3. Let us read together the books of Wisdom.  Love is for the wise, and justice is the skeleton of love.

“When the just are in authority, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan…The just man knows the rights of the poor; a wicked man does not understand such knowledge…If a King judges the poor with equity his throne will be established forever” (Proverbs 29 passim.)

‘Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now arise’, says the Lord; “I will place him in the safety for which he longs’ (Psalm 11: 5).    “You would confound the plans of the poor, but the Lord is his refuge’ (Psalm 14:6).

In an odd way, the most sobering judgment about justice is offered by Ecclesiastes, who speaks least directly to the theme.  But his philosophy is clear.  I look at all the toil of the sons of men, and I see—vanity.  That for which you strive will not last, that for which you suffer will not endure.  “What has a man for all the toil and strain with which he toils beneath the sun?  For all his days are full of pain, and his work is a vexation; even in the night his mind does not rest’ (Ecc 2;23).  As an Indian proverb puts it:  ‘In his lifetime the goose lords it over the mushroom.   But in the end, they are both served up on the same platter’.   I have officiated at 800 funerals or memorials.  Each a reminder:  Justice lasts, not acquisition.

4. Let us read together the familiar passages of the Gospels.

4a. Matthew:  Give to him who begs from you and do not refuse him…Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you…Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes, nor thieves break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also…No one can serve two masters…You cannot serve God and mammon…Not every one who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven…Sell what you have, and give to the poor, and come and follow me…Do you begrudge my generosity?  The last shall be first, and the first last…You shall love your neighbor as yourself…Woe to you…You tithe mint and cumin and ill, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law—justice and mercy and faith…

4b.Luke: He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree, he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away…The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor…Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God…What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?…Sell your possessions and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old…When you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind…You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just…Said Zacchaeus, ‘behold Lord the half of my goods I give to the poor’…They contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty…

4c. My old superintendent, Bill Swales, stood in the basement of a little church in Ithaca, NY, as our congregation struggled with the budget.   He commended the debate by saying, “Jesus spoke more about money than about anything else”.  You think not?  Think on the parables.  Sowing and reaping.  A poor man left in a Jericho ditch.  A lost and precious coin.  A son gone to the pigs, if not the dogs.  A wiley dishonest steward.  Workers and vineyards and paystubs.  Someone whose debt is forgiven not forgiving others.  Talents used and wasted.  A rich man with many possessions.   For reasons earthly and heavenly Jesus preached against abuse of riches, against the injury of the poor, against the love of money for its own sake, against the accumulation of needless treasure.

5. Let us read together the warning of the apocalypse: And I heard a great voice from the throne saying, behold the dwelling of God is with me…he will wipe away every tear from their eyes (Rev. 21:1ff)

6. And the admonition of the epistles:  One who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen (1 John 4:9).  And, as we began, so we end, with the advice and teaching of the Apostle to the Gentiles in 2 Corinthians 8:  Hear the Gospel:  “He who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack” (2 Cor 8:15).  And an invitation:  those listening may respond (what surprises you?  What question do you raise?  What observation do you make?) to this week’s sermon or in anticipation of next week’s by email to rahill@ub.edu.

Mark Twain was a realist.  He pointed to the ‘serene confidence a Christian feels in four aces.’. He quipped, ‘nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits’.  He advised:  ‘put all your eggs in one basket—and WATCH THAT BASKET’. And: ‘a classic is a book which people praise but do not read’. But he also said: ‘it is not the things in the Bible I do not understand that bother me, it is the things I do understand that bother me’.   We understand this:  “there is no more central theme in the whole Scripture than the theme of economic justice.  Biblical teaching is never very far from social justice” (Robert Allan Hill, Bradley Brook NY, August 2012).  Let him who has not much not have too much, and him who has little not have too little.

~The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill,

Dean of Marsh Chapel

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 09.16.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

Mark 7: 24-37

Jeremiah 29: 4-14

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This morning we welcome the Rev. Ms. Jennifer Quigley to our pulpit, to participate in this dialogue sermon, which, like all sermons, is about God and about 20 minutes.  Jen earned BA at BU, and MDiv at BUSTH and received a marriage certificate from Marsh Chapel, along with her fine husband Soren. She is thus a triple terrier!  As Chapel Associate here she exemplifies one fine way to thrive here, and she exemplifies our Marsh envisioned mission, to be a heart for the heart of the city and a service in the service of the city, through the voice of the chapel, decisions about vocation here, and daily attention to fanning the flames of volume in participation, particularly come Sunday.  Welcome Jen!

1. Dean Hill

In every journey there are moments when we feel like turning back.  We are jogging, early in the day, and feet are heavy and lungs are burning:  maybe we will go back to bed.  You are part way into a history of early America, and the pages are blurring and the narrative becomes unclear:  maybe we should just go out for a while.   You have a report due tomorrow, or a presentation in business, and the needed inspiration for the moment needs inspiration, but none comes:  maybe another visit to the refrigerator or cookie jar will help.  Your business or career, your school or community, your church or your country have made some progress over some time but the way forward appears to be longer and rockier than you thought:  maybe we should just turn around.

Underneath the lassitude of such a moment there may lurk a suspicion that this current course is not part of God’s generous grace.   Were not things simpler, better, easier at home?  Are there not serious wrongs in the current environment?  Perhaps I should look at some other setting?  Early in a new job we can feel so.  During the first several weeks of college or graduate school we can be acquainted with this dour perspective.  When the hard foundation work of building—a house, a project, a campaign, a fund drive, a relationship—makes the back muscles weary, we can start to feel overwhelmed.

The people of Israel, to whom Jeremiah writes, knew this condition.  They had been sent off as vassal servants to Babylon in the sixth century bce.  Some looked with resignation at their poor condition.  Others looked with fanatical expectation to the heavens, awaiting immediate, magical relief.  They were not the first nor the last people to be found quivering between the Scylla of resignation and the Carybdis of fanaticism.  As a matter of fact, people of faith, your two main adversaries, on any given day may be the opium of resignation and the cocaine of fanaticism.

All your holy supports have been taken away.  For the Jews in Babylon that meant one set of losses.  The holy land long ago given in promise—gone.  The holy city constructed and protected by kings for generations—gone.  The holy community and its rituals, devotions, leadership, altars, days, seasons—gone.  The history and memory ever embedded in space and place—gone.  The identity there formed, there fashioned—gone.  For the Jews in Babylon, there was one sixth century bce set of losses.  For those starting a course of study that means another set of losses.  The places of earlier success in academics and athletics—gone.  The support of friends of lasting trust and several years—gone.  The mixed blessing but blessing nonetheless of family of origin, extended and nuclear—gone.  The fragile but living identity of preparatory schools and years, won with struggle and effort—gone.  And all around a sea of anonymity, unfamiliarity, ambiguity, uncertainty.   Does this evoke for you any thoughts about the beginning of a college career?

2. Rev. Jen Quigley:

The first time I went to do laundry my freshman year at BU, I was prepared. My mom had made sure I had washed clothes at home at least enough times to know how to properly sort them, measure out the detergent, choose the correct setting, shake out the wet clothes, insert a dryer sheet, and, again, choose the correct settings. I even knew to check the lint trap! Laundry seemed like a complicated but easy process; as long as you followed the correct steps, your clothes would become clean without your socks turning pink. I waited a little longer than I should have, so my hamper bag was pretty full that Sunday afternoon the week after school began. As I walked into the laundry room in the basement of 188 Bay State Road, I froze. First, these machines were front-load, not top load. How could I tell when to stop loading clothes to avoid overstuffing the washer? Worse, the settings were all different. They seemed deceptively simple…did my laundry qualify for the “normal” setting, or were they “delicate?” What makes clothes “heavy” anyway? Worse still, it took forever to find where to put the detergent. Was I just supposed to toss it in from the side, hoping it spread evenly over my clothes? After about three minutes of sheer panic, I found a little detergent drawer, and poured it in what I hoped was the correct one of three separate trays. If you have ever tried laundry at BU, you know that the detergent seems to magically disappear down that tray, and as soon as you pour it in, it looks like you haven’t put any in at all. Worried I hadn’t used enough, I put in some more, and then began to truly freak out as I saw the ominous sign above the washing machine: DO NOT USE TOO MUCH DETERGENT. Had I gone overboard and now used too much? I had heard rumors about a kid who had used too much detergent on West and flooded the entire laundry room…

But worst of all, well, I didn’t realize the worst part until I had already loaded the clothes, and committed to the use of too much detergent. I looked for the place to swipe my Terrier Card, which my parents had conveniently outfitted with enough convenience points to help get me started with some of the basics, especially laundry. This machine did not take convenience points. It wanted cold hard cash, specifically quarters. Despair set in. Where could I get quarters on a Sunday?!? I could get cash from the ATM, for sure, dipping into my very spare reserves in my college checking account, but the banks wouldn’t be open to give me change! Who would give me change? I left the laundry in the machine, leaving a note saying I would be right back, and went on an adventure. The cash was easy enough, but the convenience store in Warren told me they had a firm no change-making policy. I received rejections from several more business establishments before a student employee took pity on me, asking why I didn’t just go use the change machines in Towers? Finally armed with so many quarters I jingled as I walked, I returned to 188 Bay State Road.

There, I hesitated over one last, seemingly minor decision. Someone, who shall remain nameless due to my uncertainty over BU’s statute of limitations, had told me there was a trick to manipulate the machines, something with thread and tape on the quarter, so that you could turn 25 cents into $1.25 simply by tugging on the string and releasing the quarter a few times.

Should I try this trick? If I did, how exactly did it work? Where should I attach the string, for example? Did this trick amount to petty theft? Would the washing machine know and somehow send notification to the police? If I just paid the full amount, in cash, my spending money would dwindle to nothing in a few short weeks! What would happen if I couldn’t afford quarters anymore? Would I have to lug my laundry to Warren every week, just to use convenience points? This last, small, but not morally insignificant decision pushed me over the edge, and I found myself paralyzed by a washing machine a week into my freshman year of college. After ten minutes, a housemate brought his laundry downstairs, and gruffly asked me how long I needed. This forced a decision, and I jammed all five quarters into the machine and retreated to my room, overwhelmed by my emotions. One thought kept ringing in my ears. If I couldn’t even do laundry here, how was I supposed to make it at Boston University? For the first, and not the last time that year, I felt homesick.

It was not as though I didn’t know how to do laundry, I just didn’t know how to do it here, on these machines, in this setting. You may be and feel completely prepared to go to college, but the fact is, no matter how prepared you are or feel, it is different from home and very different from high school. Those differences can cause a paralysis of sorts, and those differences expose you to the reality of your displacement, your dislocation; those differences make you long for home. The longing for home is visceral, deep, and no matter what anyone tells you about the joys of your college years, absolutely true.

Now I know that caring for laundry may pale in comparison to the struggles of the ancient Israelites, but I can tell you for this time and place they are very real.

3. Dean Hill:

Actually the two experiences are both connected to a deep desire to live out our own truest longings.  The experience of exile and the feeling of exile are not such distant cousins.

We here at Marsh Chapel can further appreciate the added or heightened burning sensation of life as part of a largely secular culture.  As one wrote about Jeremiah’s verses:  Uprooted from all familiar circumstances by the barbaric deportation the exiles found themselves…suffering a kind of paralysis in relation to their environment….The community was thrust out into the alien situation in the world…The deported people were snatched overnight out of this cluster of protective sacral orders (von Rad, 101-102).  They are thrust into an all-pervading secularity whose rhythms, priorities, demands and rewards are alien to the perspective and the people of faith.   We can empathize, looking about us this morning, in our current location, here and now.  Sunday is not a shared day of communal rest.  The human body is not always viewed happily as the temple of the Lord.  Funds and goods are not held and had in common.  Speech is not steadily governed by the warnings within the letter of James heard last week.  The horizon of hope is more earth than heaven, the material not the spiritual, the body not the soul.   An occasional radio broadcast of historic worship, or an occasional entrance into remaining, vestigial congregations, breaks awkwardly into the reigning secularity of the dominant culture.  On a college campus (whose weekend day begins at 4pm) on a Sunday morning in the Northeast within a large city that has its share of snowfall—to resist and grow together just here, just now in faith is to run into the very teeth of a very cold secular wind.

You will have heard what Jeremiah, the prophet, said to his forlorn flock way off in Babylon in chains.  It is a truly striking word that strikes the heart.  It is a word that can kindle in you a truer longing.  Jeremiah tells the people to put their hearts and minds and souls and labor into the very secular, cold setting into which they have been thrust.  Their well being now depends upon their overseers, who do not share their faith or their values.  So:  build there.  So:  grow there.  So: plant there.  So: marry, bear children, bear grandchildren, live and die—there.   Jeremiah is reproving homesickness, that is, the homesickness that looks backward as well as forward:  he is speaking against that dissatisfaction, that age-old human will to revolt that can wear so many different garbs (von Rad, 102). Resignation and fanaticism:  Jeremiah speaks against both the doubters and the dreamers.  His word celebrates the doers.  Jeremiah leads his readers to the validity and the duration of this their present…How objective here is the summons to simple involvement in society, against a fanaticism that believes that this interim situation does not at all deserve to be taken seriously!...Jeremiah’s directions are amazing:  they contain a justification of what is secular, worldy; indeed, they propose to offer encouragement to what is worldly (101).

Your salvation evokes a capacity to receive the divine generosity, the gift of faith, and so to let go…of home.  Your salvation relies upon your hearing of another word—student, professor, retiree, laborer, all!--the promise of a truer longing, a desire to plant here, grow here, build here, covenant here, and so let go of homesickness.  Fear not the secular setting in which you find yourself. Draw by faith on the gifts of God—in Word and Sacrament—for the people of God.  Then leave behind the dreamers, and leave behind the doubters, and align yourself with the doers.  For this exile, this deportation, this time in an alien place and a foreign culture, has its limit.  It does not last forever.  It is circumscribed, bound by a foreordained limit.  For Israel, that was the fall of Babylon two generations later, 538bce.  For others, that will be the baccalaureate service of May 2016, following, after a brief interlude, on last Sunday’s matriculation service of September 2012.   In the mean time, I wonder what in particular about this place will help us all nurture a sense of truest longing.

4. Rev. Jen Quigley:

Within the rhythms and rituals of this setting, Boston University, where the work of the mind is the ordered and ordering principle of the place, there is good news; in rhythms and in rituals you find the best remedy for homesickness, because as you develop your own rhythms and rituals in this place, the unfamiliar becomes familiar, the paralysis relaxes into a stretch, and so slowly you hardly even notice the change, in this new place, with these new people, in this new way of thinking, with this new faith, you feel less homesick and more home.

If you are new to this place, or if you are sensing some new discomfort or dislocation in this fall season, the advice of our Scripture this morning is this, to plant gardens, build houses, to see your children married. The Prophet Jeremiah urges the people of Israel to get to know the Brave New World of this strange Babylon, and to not hesitate to put down roots. For our time, in our place, perhaps not exiles but feeling a little exiled nonetheless, we might try to learn how these three things are done at Boston University, and to try them ourselves: Do laundry, read, and develop relationships. Here at the Chapel and around the university, there are people eager to help you learn how each of these is done at BU.

1. Do Laundry: I was saved from bankruptcy, despair, and theft alike by the community of saints in 188-190 Bay State Road. As a community, we eventually agreed never to use that trick with the tape and string, because the tape would get stuck and the washing machine would break. Instead, an enterprising student with some electrical and computer engineering skills reprogrammed our drier to dispense 99 minutes of drying for every quarter spent. I am not endorsing what still probably amounts to petty theft, but rather saying that there are people around you who can help you find quarters, share an extra dryer sheet, tell you how to fix your blinds, and explain where to hang your towel in Warren so that you neither soak your towel nor flash your entire communal bathroom. Ask your RA, ask your roommate, ask the sophomore or junior or senior in your building. Learn the best ways to do the little, ordinary, everyday things; often they make all the difference. Our habits make for a better home.

2. Read: There are certain well-loved, well-worn works around Boston University, and reading them will help you learn some of the parlance of this place. Spend an afternoon with Jesus and the Disinherited by the Reverend Doctor Howard Thurman, former Dean of Marsh Chapel, while sitting in the Howard Thurman Center in the basement of the GSU. Read a Letter from Birmingham Jail in the MLK reading room, on the third floor of Mugar Library, surrounded by King’s letters, photographs, and schoolwork. Pick up a copy of Maya Angelou’s On the Pulse of the Morning, and, as Dean Elmore suggests at the start of every school year, rally a few others to join you at sunrise on the BU beach, where the rock, the river, and the tree meet, to take turns reading lines from the poem. Wondering what to read next? Ask your professor, your TA, a chaplain, what work inspires them, their work, and their passions?

3. Build Relationships: Relationships in college develop in those ordinary and extraordinary moments. You might meet your soul mate at orientation or your best friend in a random roommate assignment, but you won’t figure out whether you have or not until you go to the dining hall with them, talk with them about anything other than schoolwork in your common room, proofread each other’s papers, and get lost in Boston together. Your financial investment in college is significant, but your personal investment in the people you meet has just as much value.  And if in the midst of all these adventures, you have a question about your deeper longings, you can always come and see a chaplain.

Dean Hill:  So the chaplains are one of the resources available in this particular time and place.  What would happen if I went to see one of these people?

Rev. Jen Quigley:  Well, just what are chaplains anyway?

Dean Hill:  My question exactly! We could say they are people who believe in the value of helping you connect your greatest passion with the world’s greatest need.

Rev. Jen Quigley:  Precisely.

Dean Hill:  Are you one such?

Rev. Jen Quigley:  I am!  In fact my title is:  Chapel Associate for Vocational Discernment.  What about you?

Dean Hill: I am as well.  As for my titles, well, they are many, but one’s life does not consist in the abundance of positions!

Rev. Jen Quigley:  In conclusion, we hope and pray that those searching for their truest longing will find their way in the college experience.  If they need a friendly guide along the way,  we are here for fellowship, discernment, conversation—and even some expert advice about laundry!

Call to Confession:

Over the last 72 hours my prayerful mind has hovered over one meditation:  the vast goodness around us, and especially the vast goodness in this University, the vast goodness in its history, people, thought and service.  Boston University.  Since 1839 a history of learning, virtue and piety.  A long proven inclusion of women, Jews, blacks, and immigrants.  An endowment of voice soaring past color of skin to quicken content of character.  Healthy movement in thought, from Methodism to personalism to pragmatism to naturalism.  Today, this morning, many here with us:  a brilliant student body who are growing in moral discernment, resisting substance abuse, rejecting amoral sexuality, setting limits to material greed, and developing empathy for the least, the last and the lost.  The real story here is far less salacious and much more hopeful than sometimes we think, thanks to good people, good leadership, and the underlying goodness of God.  We are in good hands, and so may gladly bear one another’s burdens.  As fallible people, honest about our failures, let us offer our prayers of confession

posted in The Rev. Dr. Jennifer Quigley, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 09.9.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

James 1: 17-27

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Welcome to a new year.  There are various points at which a new year may be celebrated, according to various religious, national, familial and personal calendars.  Matriculation is the University new year festival.  Welcome back. (Yesterday on Bay State Road there was family with son and daughter, and a car with chairs and stuffed animals hanging out the windows.  On that street there were good people—police, resident advisors, custodians, administrators, chaplains, faculty, staff—around to say hello, as in the song:  ‘you say yes, I say no, you say stop and I say, you say goodbye and I say hello’ (one Dad started to sing the old Beatles tune!).

We will begin with a pastoral epistle, a little spoken letter, spoken from heart to heart, we trust.  Both of our primary readings, but particularly the passage from James, lure us in this direction.  You will think too of advice you gave, or were given, encouragement you gave, or were given, when a new day dawned, and a new horizon opened.  Your mother simply cried and asked you to call once in a while.  Your dad said to remember where you came from.  Your girlfriend said she would see you at homecoming, if you came home.  Your younger brother just smiled and waved.  All of these too were pastoral epistles, probably more significant because more personal.

When faculty enter or return to campus, they come with a sense of the new.  When administrators come or return to see the wave of others now present though months absent, they come with a sense of the new.  When business people and retirees and the many searching for work come to the chapel on labor day, in a season that really does not overly respect labor anymore, they come longing for a sense of new possibilities.  And you?  What brought you here, to sacrament and sermon?  We are so glad you have come.

On arrival, come the new year, it can seem that this is someone else’s place and somebody else’s time.  Especially in the heart of pretty fair sized city, with the noise and traffic of the urban landscape, you can get the feeling that other people know the place better and other people have a better sense of the time here.  There is a kind of comforting, though false, sensation that goes with this sensibility.  Others know better.  I am new, or new again.  This is not really my space.  I don’t even know what they mean by esplanade, by Fenway, by beach, by garden.  They must know better.  And I don’t really have any idea what is transpiring around me here.  I guess I will just sit and watch, or sit in my room, or sit by and wait.

The word from this pulpit and chancel this morning is not meant to dissuade you entirely from a bit of caution.  Caution when you cross the street.  Caution when you choose your friends and locations.  Caution when you are invited, as steadily we all are, to live in a way that is bitterly beneath who are you meant to be.  Caution when you make your plans.  Be slow to speak, slow to anger, slow to forget who you really are.   Two years ago a tiny young fresh woman from a small South Carolina town came in after a car had hit a cyclist out front.   She just sat and trembled.  She was remembering who she was.  No, we do not discountenance the importance of caution.

Yet that is not the gospel this morning, as important as it is.  Be careful.  But be caring too.  Be protective.  But be proactive too.  Be self critical.  But be self confident too.  This is your time.  This is your place.  The God of wholeness (‘the perfect law’) and the God of freedom (‘the law of liberty’) is loving you into love, gracing you into grace, and freeing you into freedom.  If you hear that, and I hope that you do, then go and do it.  Be careful.  But be caring too.  Be protective.  But be proactive too.  Be self critical.  But be self confident too.  It may seem or feel otherwise, but hear the good news:  this time is your time, not somebody else’s time.  These days and months that will fly by are not somehow primary reserved for other people, or somehow better grasped by other people.  That fellow who has been teaching thirty years, and you are just starting, is not somehow more fully drenched by this present moment.  No.  This day, autumn, year, decade—they are your time.  Carpe diem.  Sin is not taking what is offered:  that is the definition of sin, not taking what you are graciously given.  We need to work, and to respect those who offer work.  I know ours is a capitalist not a laborist system, capitalism not laborism.  But this is Labor Day weekend.  Perhaps we could remember for a moment those great voices who protected the wives and children of coal miners, of factory workers, of dock yard laborers.  Lincoln:  Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.  Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.  Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration (First Message to Congress, 12/3/61) Here is life!  Live it.  Here is learning! Love it.  Here is friendship! Embrace it.  Here is challenge!  Face it.  Here is failure!  Admit it.  Religious experience is not primarily religious, in the sense that it is not primary found in the hours of church or tutelage or liturgy or devotion.  Of course I am contractually obligated and also personally and profoundly committed to imploring you to get yourself to church on Sunday.  This you will want to do.  But religious experience comes through life, not church only, or mainly.  It comes in seizing the day, and embracing the time.   Life: L I F E.  When you come to church the next several weeks, come thankful for times when time stood still for a moment.  In an honest debate.  Reading Kant.  Pouring yourself into an experiment.  Rowing.   Seeing the sunrise across the ocean.

Nor, by the way, is this massive space, the 350 buildings of Boston University, and the 350 years of Boston, the home of the bean and the cod, somehow somebody else’s.  They are yours for the knowing.  This great city opens its heart every day to anyone with a good pair of shoes.  Your plan is to make this historic city yours.  Buy a standing room only ticket to see the remains of the Red Sox.  I mean the Red Sox season.  On the first day it snows, walk through the public garden.  Take the fast ferry to Cape Cod, once at least.  Whenever you hear music coming from a classroom, an auditorium, a concert hall or a chapel, like this one, stop and listen.  Make one of the Italian restaurants in the North End a personal favorite.  Make that two.  On Columbus weekend, walk or jog the whole of the Emerald Necklace.  Find your way once each term to the seashore.  Do not assume that others, sleeping off steady drinking, or endlessly watching as in a mirror (‘one who observes his natural face in a mirror’) some cyber image, or carelessly involved with someone else’s body, or making plans for future acquisition, or simply hiding out somewhere, do not assume that such others know this place or own this place more than you do. You will be invited to live in ways that are bitterly beneath you.  A pastoral letter:  hope to grow in the capacity for moral discernment—good and bad, right and wrong, better and worse;  avoid a staple, steady diet of addictive substances, drugs or alchohol—stay and be healthy, with some sense of balance;  intend to honor others, in this BU home of personalist philosophy that guided MLK and others, by wanting to honor others, especially in their spirit, soul, body, and person, including those most intimate encounters and involvements—honor the other in the other; step aside from the tide of greed in our era:  there is more to living than becoming the richest woman in the graveyard;  learn from others the habit of empathy—feeling another’s hurts and understanding another’s fears; find some places—nature, worship, friendship, quiet, reading, prayer—where your ownmost self can come up for air.

Life is what you DO in it.  You might keep in mind the widow and orphan, the lonely and the needy.  Life will provide you many examples.  Be no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts.  This is your space,  your place, your current and your personal  location.  Take a second seat to no one.  You can and should sit in the front of the bus.

Time. This is your time.  Space.  This is our space.  It has been my summer prayer, thinking of our faculty returning, and our administrators on the qui vive, and our staff in full throttle, and our students arriving, and our community coming home from the days of sunshine and family, it has been my prayer to send you this pastoral epistle.  Now is your time.  Here is your place.

Listen to Robert Frost’s poem about a star…

What will this year bring?  It is up to you.

Let us pray:

Gracious God, Holy and Just

Thou Silent Mystery, beckoning deep

In whom we live and move and have our being

Grant us peace, we pray

Give us grace, we pray

In the eyeblink of these four years

Give us peace to resist what we would regret

Give us grace to receive what will make us rejoice

Four years hence, diplomas in hand

May we be heavy with joy and free of regret

Help us to avoid the regret that follows abuse of ourselves,

Of our environment, of substances, and of others.

Warn us away from what, lastingly we will regret.

Fill us with a daily sense of adventure to embrace

What lastingly we will enjoy:

Friendship, discovery, reading, effort, achievement, accomplishment,

Self-giving, devotion, and love.

Grant us peace to resist what we would regret and grace to receive what

Causes us to rejoice.

Amen

~The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill,

Dean of Marsh Chapel

posted in Matriculation, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 09.2.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

John 6: 56-69

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Jan and I stood alongside our burial plots last Wednesday afternoon.  (I trust it will many decades before we need to use them!).

Our post retirement home is nestled in a long forgotten, old village cemetery in Eaton NY.  Eaton is the northern tip of Appalachia, economically and culturally and geographically and historically.  Its rural poverty has come rather lately to its 250 year history, but is as harsh and weather beaten as any such rural immiseration.  Its country culture receives some odd jostling from Colgate University and Hamilton College, both a very few miles away.  Its spot on the edge of the great cliff of the Allegheny plateau places it at 1200 feet above sea level, with lakes and great lakes 1200 feet below within a thirty minute drive.  Its history includes nearby Peterboro, a town built in the 1850’s by Gerritt Smith for freed slaves, some of whose descendants live there still; and the Oneida Community next door, whose three hundred Perfectionists lived ostensibly without sin and within complex marriage for thirty years, 1845-1875; and the shores of Gichigumi the shining big sea water, near the wigwam of Nicomis, daughter of the moon, the homeland of Hiawatha, 1200 feet down north.

Our burial neighbors will include some born before the Revolution, some several who died in the Civil War, many veterans of the wars of the 20th century, and one fellow, who was interred in 1962, but in whose youth fought with Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish American War.  One wonders about the ongoing work of mowing and trimming, and moreso about the volunteer leadership needed to keep managed a venerable, small graveyard.  Our hostess told us there had been no burials this calendar year, to date.  They bury until November 1 and then after May 1 or as soon as the ground thaws in the spring.

Jan said she liked the spot.  I volunteered that this was good since we would be there for a while.  Actually, when you amortize $400 per plot over the course of eternity, the cost is really very little.  The rent is too high across the country, but not in the Eaton Village Cemetery.  Of course I had sometimes mused about having a bit more upscale social location, going forward.  Maybe something on the East Coast—Chatham, Castine, the Cape, North Hampton—something with an ocean view, and ‘east coast standards’ of comportment and attire and presentation.  Jan reminded me that I am a Methodist preacher, a country preacher at that, and can not afford ostentation, neither fiscally nor spiritually.  Besides, she counseled, see all the beauty here…Yes, see it, and hear it…

Beauty is heard as well as seen.   We jog past this place so I know what the music of that meadow brings.  The rooster, or more than one, as dawn breaks.  The cattle, feet away, lowing, as cattle do.  The wind in the evergreens and the two Oak trees.  An occasional auto, a more occasional truck, a very much more occasional airplane.  Visitors with crosses and flags and flowers and tears.  And then the sound of nothing, of silence.  Hush, hush, somebody’s calling my name.  In the deep winter the deep silence is sonorous.  I think of the fourth months of real winter, and the covering, the bed cloth of four feet of snow, and it is well with my soul.

Let me reveal that I begin this way for a discreet homiletical purpose.  I preach as a dying man to dying men, as Luther counseled.  More so, our series of summer sermons has addressed hope in the face of death.

Apocalyptic language and imagery in the New Testament is a language of hope in the face of death.  The cosmic resurrection of Christ and the life he offers is a word of hope, spoken into the teeth of cosmic, universal, individual, personal death.  All of our sermons this summer have been very human attempts to announce this unseen hope, embedded, deeply embedded in New Testament apocalyptic language and imagery.

Sometimes, at our worst, we move through life with the supposition that death comes to others, to other people and peoples.  It something that befalls others.  This very human daily supposition is not limited to young adults, to this new wave of temporarily immortal 18 year olds soon to wash up upon the BU beach.  Nor is it limited to distracted, over technologized middle aged parents, trying to keep a household afloat amid the Great Recession of our era.  Nor is it limited to the mature, or the very mature, we who should probably know better.  Time flies?  Ah no. Time stays.  We go.

A pastoral digression. I assign you an exercise for this week or some week.  It is patented, informally, by me, but I give it freely.  It is the RAH OOPS formula for preparation for post retirement.  O: write your obituary, at least a first draft which others can redact as needed.  O: compose your funeral order of worship with hymns and texts and participants and memorials.  P: select a photograph you do not mind being used in days of grieving, in the newspaper or in the funeral home.  S: locate your last location, your place and manner of burial or cremation.  Place these materials, in the same box or safe deposit box in which you already, already, have placed your DNR, your living will, your will (you may choose to remember Marsh Chapel in your will by the way), and any other significant materials.  How your family will thank you! But, as you are mortally aware, all of this preparation, good as it is, is not good enough, not enough.

For all of this preparation lacks the main thing needed in the face of death, in the face of the power of death William Stringfellow so ardently and artfully described, and at the grave, at the end.  What matters at last at death is hope.  Hope.  The best thing about apocalyptic, about Apocalypse Then, is hope.  If someone asks you in the grocery store what you heard this summer at Marsh, or from Marsh, you could say, “They preached on the theme of Apocalypse Then, and I heard a word of hope.”

Which brings us to the conclusion, the END, if you will, of this summer’s Marsh Chapel national preacher series on the theme ‘Apocalypse Then’.  I am personally and deeply grateful to my colleagues here at the Boston University School of the Theology for their leadership and voice and presence this summer.  They gave two summer Sundays.  They gave hours of preparation.  They gave the best of their hearts and minds.  They gave a willingness to treat the hardest material with the finest of skill.  Their very presence brought us hope.  It happens that we all share an interest in New Testament Apocalyptic.  With you I thank Dr Jennifer Knust, Dr James Walters, Br. Larry Whitney and Dr. David Jacobsen for their preaching this summer.

So what have we learned?

Apocalyptic theology in the New Testament is a language of hope lifted in the face of death.  At least, this is how I would conclude and summarize our announcement of the Gospel this summer.  Apocalyptic followed the prophetic hope for justice on earth, and preceded the late platonic hope for life in heaven, building on the former and preparing the way for the latter.  We need them all, to some degree.  The prophets hoped for a righteous earth.  The Gnostics hoped for a glorious heaven.  The apocalyptic hope in the face of death is hope ‘on earth as it is in heaven’, a hope for the apocalypse of heaven on earth.  As Paul wrote, ‘Hope that is seen is not hope.  Who hopes for what he sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience’. (Rom.8)

The first Sunday, we recognized the delay of the parousia, the failure of the primitive apocalyptic hope of the earliest church, and its origins in Jewish Apocalpytic.  We saw how this material is often consolation literature, developed among those outcast, those downtrodden, those forgotten, the least and the last and the lost.  Apocalyptic gives voice to the hopes of the disinherited: “ We are not free to project our anxieties about the dilemmas of the current age—an age by the way that was supposed to have seen ‘the end of history’!—out onto a far-off falsehood, like the raptures of fancy, fiction or facsimile—in order to avoid what we of course have to do in every other sphere of life:  negotiate, compromise, discuss, trade, and muddle through.

“Most especially—places like Marsh Chapel with a rich heritage of hope must also expect of ourselves a rich offering to the future that comports with our inheritance, to whom much is given, from him much is expected—we are not free to neglect a common hope.

Here is our freedom.  Pray daily for the hope of the world.  Think creatively about the hope of the world.  Act specifically, week by week, in communion with a reliable hope.  The future is up to you.”

The second Sunday, we saw in the very word, revelation, which is rendered apocalypse, the inbreaking of God’s love in earth, as when Paul said he had received the gospel by ‘apocalpyse’, by revelation.  Apocalpytic gives voice to the hope of faith. Why…we will become a beachhead in the invasion of God’s new creation.

Here: a New Creation.

Here: a community that listens.

Here: a gathering of mutual concern.

Here: people of glad heart.

Here: people of happy passion.

Here: not I must I shall, but I may I can

Here: love divine, all loves excelling….

The third Sunday we saw again how communal and common the ancient eschatological material was in its casting and framework.  Apocalpytic gives voice to the voiceless, those left out by the reigning regime, including those left out of decent health care in our time (those unfortunate enough to live in a state other than Massachusetts!)  “Yes, there will be bad news, there is no use pretending otherwise, but do we really need to hurry it along? Why not be harbingers of hope and allies of health and people who wish well for others.”

The fourth Sunday we were treated to a careful interpretation of the beheading of John the Baptist, its apocalyptic foreground and background, its history in theology, and its comparisons to contemporary, common, family dysfunctions.  The horizon of hope remains, the hope of blueberry pies cooked and enjoyed against a better series of familial arrangements than currently we experience.

The fifth Sunday we were taught again about the profound pessimism out of which Apocalyptic comes, the despair at seeing anything finally righted or rightwised in a crooked world, and the shout of anger and courage faith kindles in such darkness.  Hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage, wrote Augustine.  Apocalyptic gives voice to the anger and courage present in those who despair, including those injured by handguns in this country, and those willing to question the pervasive dangerous presence of guns (300 million) in our land.

The sixth Sunday we were shown the emergence of Paul’s apocalyptic gospel, and the centrality of his apocalyptic hope for the rest of his work, especially that found in his magnum opus the Epistle to the Romans.  Apocalyptic gives voice in the face of death to the power of God’s overcoming grace.  Resurrection is resurrection…from the dead.

The seventh Sunday we explored the horizons of endings and beginnings, and how the apocalyptic world view both aids and distorts our contemporary vistas. Apocalyptic gives voice to thinking about the environment, about nuclear energy and weaponry, about choices and decisions in the global community.

The eighth Sunday we were reminded of the crucial influence across the New Testament of Apocalpytic, which one called the ‘mother of Christian theology’.  It’s not nice to neglect mother, we determined!  Apocalpytic gives voice to honesty about real evil, in real time, from the Holocaust to Ruwanda: “Mark’s Jesus offers the beginning of his apocalyptic gospel.  It is a song in darkness, a seed cast across a dark landscape.  Yet, amidst the darkness, Mark’s gospel speaks…a promise of dawning light.

The ninth Sunday we listened again for the gospel in the hour of Jesus’ Crucifixion:  the dark hour in which the light of God’s presence somehow continues to shine: “Mark’s gospel of an apocalyptic cross is therefore not just an orientation to a past, but a costly opening to a future, a new age, that draws us in our lives forward even in death’s deepest shadows.”

We have both the freedom and the responsibility at Marsh Chapel to ring the bells of learning and piety, of mind and heart together, in a way that will inspire and guide another generation by the best insights of the faith we share.   We have aimed high and stretched out.  One year on new dimensions in ministry, another on leadership in the Methodism, another on Darwin and faith, another on worship and preaching, another on church renewal, and now, Apocalpyse Then.    You will find these sermons published in our annual e-magazine MOTIVES, located on our website.  While there are few University pulpits remaining across the country,  your radio support, your generosity, the ongoing support of Boston University, and the hard labor of my staff and colleagues here continue to allow us to treat hard topics with tough love.

Apocalpytic is a song of hope, a hope of heaven on earth, a divine hope.  It asks of us a certain height, a certain inclination, a change.  It moves our self, our being to a new center, one in the green pasture, the great meadow of hope.

In the year of my birth, 1954, Howard Thurman, then in his first year as Marsh Dean, gave lectures at what was to become my alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan.  These later were collected in a book, THE CREATIVE ENCOUNTER.  With his minimal Christology, tangential connection to Paul, perennialist inclination against narrow religion, and distrust of large portions of the biblical tradition, Thurman would at first seem an unlikely interpreter of apocalyptic material.  Yet his typically digressive, imaginative reflections, that winter’s OWU Merrick lectures, at one point touch the marrow of our theme for this summer.  Thurman is trying to examine and explain the religious experience (notice his phrase).  I wonder you have had such?  Its measure for him is not unlike the apocalyptic hope lifted this summer:

“There is a point at which for the individual the surrender of the self in religious experience gives to the life a purpose that extends beyond one’s own private ends and personal risks…What happens then when there is a new center of focus for the life?  The answer to that, in part, is this.  At such a time as the new center becomes operative, the individual relaxes his hold upon himself as expressed in the self-regarding impulse.  A different kind of value is placed upon his physical existence.  Death no longer appears as the great fear or specter.  The power of death over the individual life is broken… The individual operates from a new center with all that is derived therefrom.  The expression is the alteration of his private life growing out of a new value content.  God has become the custodian of his conscience.  This is of great significance.  The center of loyalty allows meaning for the personality; the shift is from some primary social group loyalty…to loyalty to the command of God. (73-81, passim, THE CREATIVE ENCOUNTER).

I wonder.  Are you sensing the divine generosity inviting your one life to circle around a new center?  Prayer will guide you.  Even suffering will perhaps prod you.  A moment in worship may lift you up. A friend, a word, a kindness, a note, a sunset, a kiss, a laugh—these are intimations of religious experience that are not religious.  But real they are.  I wonder.  Is your center shifting?

I believe, in a way I cannot understand in full or articulate in full, that God’s love outlasts death, is stronger than death, and overpowers death.  But is something I do not see.  It is something I sense, though I cannot see it.

But who hopes for what he sees?  We hope for what we do not see.  And wait for it with patience!

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 08.26.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

Mark 15:33-41

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It seems all we have is a promise and open hands.  Yet I suspect Jesus would understand.  When he cries out on the cross, he laments before God his being abandoned:  “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  The words he uses are the familiar words of Psalm 22.  In that moment, we see Jesus sharing in the most radical, Godforsaken state of what it means to be a human being in the face of injustice, abandonment, and death.  Yet as Adela Yarbro Collins points out, absolute despair is a retreat in silence. Jesus shouts, yes, but he shouts to God.  Jesus cries out, yes, but he cries out to God.  Jesus speaks words of Godforsaken-ness on the cross, yes, but he speaks them to God.

In doing so, his lament itself is a form of holding on to the promise.  His complaint to God makes no sense unless he holds up the promise to God and asks:  is it still good?  Is it?  The cry, the shout, the Godforsakenness all belong there—because lament is the flipside of a life lived according to promise.

In his book Meditations of the Heart, BU’s Howard Thurman expanded this idea even further to include human encounter with death as a whole.  Thurman writes:

...the glorious thing about man’s encounter with death is that fact that what a man discovers about the meaning of life as he lives it, need not undergo any change as he meets death.  It is a final tribute to the character of an individual’s living if he can die “unshriven” but full-blown as he lived.  Such a man goes down to his grave with a shout.

At Jesus’ death, at his apocalyptic death things are revealed as they really are.  It is not about nobility or virtue.  It is about the turning of the ages, the strange mysterious place that speaks from death and yet bears witness--shouting witness--to the promise.  It is a strange, shadowy place…of God’s new creation.

~Rev. Dr. David Schasa Jacobsen

Professor of Homiletics, Boston University

posted in Guest Preachers on 08.19.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

Mark 1:1-15

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Mark’s Gospel begins with this simple superscription in chapter 1:  “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.”  The word “good news” is the same as “gospel.” It is not a literary designation, as in “the Gospel of Mark;” rather it is a word, euaggelion, which means good news.  When the person we call Mark begins writing, he intends to communicate euaggellion, the good news of Jesus Christ.

But Mark’s good news is not the kind of chirpy news you would find nestled in a Reader’s Digest. It is not that warm and fuzzy feature that the networks tuck in at the end of the nightly newscast either.  Mark’s gospel of Jesus Christ, his good news, is apocalyptic.  He offers an apocalyptic gospel.

Now to us in this great liberal chapel, such news may not sound good at all.  We late moderns may be inclined to think of apocalyptic not as good, but as primitive--perhaps some detachable feature of early Christianity that we can take or leave.  For those of us used to a Christianity that is reasonable or plausible, apocalyptic sounds more like the crazy relative we keep hidden away in the attic.  We know we are related, but he/she seems just a bit too crazy to take seriously, let alone talk about in public.  So when Mark offers the beginning of his apocalyptic gospel of Jesus, we might be inclined to demur.

However, a century of critical Biblical scholarship has been consistent on this point.  The high water mark of 19th century liberalism believed that the Kingdom of God, the gospel Jesus preached (Mark 1:15) was about the inexorable march toward progress of the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God.  But the critical work of Biblical scholars like Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer made that liberal view untenable.  These scholars reminded biblical interpreters that Jesus’ gospel was not a cover for the liberal myth of progress.  Jesus’ view of God’s kingdom and its gospel was apocalyptic—something strange to our modern ears. Decades later, the great Biblical scholar Rudolf Bultmann conceded so much.  Our scientific world had no room for miracles or three-tiered universes of heaven above, earth, and hell below.  Faithful Christians, Bultmann said, would need to learn to demythologize this unwieldy apocalyptic message of Jesus. But then Bultmann’s own student, a scholar named Ernst Kaesemann, had pushed the problem back to the center.  Kaesemann argued that the apocalyptic view was not easily dispensed with.  In fact, he called apocalyptic the mother of all Christian theology!

The mother?  Now that hits close to home!  We might be tempted to keep a friendly distance to apocalyptic thinking.  What reasonable and morally sensitive person today has need of mythological horsemen, stories of rapture and being “left behind,” or cosmic conflagration?  Granted, some apocalyptic texts are just problematic and Christians need to learn to think about them and reinterpret them.  But the core of Käsemann’s argument about apocalyptic’s motherly role is still relevant.  The gospel is about Jesus’ death and resurrection.  How can we really speak of resurrection apart from the apocalyptic worldview which gave it currency in the Jewish world in which Christianity emerged?  For those of us who listen for that gospel in a late modern context, we just cannot write off mother!

Perhaps the problem is lack of precision about what exactly makes Mark’s gospel apocalyptic.  While the spectacular visions of apocalyptic literature are hard to ignore, lately scholars have been pointing to what apocalypses do.  The word apocalypse itself does not mean “burning judgment” or “cosmic catastrophe.”  What apocalypse means in Greek is “to reveal.”  Apocalypses are about divine revelation.  A brilliant scholar of apocalyptic literature, Christopher Rowland, made just such a case a couple decades ago.  He titled his book on apocalyptic literature:  The Open Heaven. Apocalypses reveal something about God, something that gives a perspective in the midst of life in chaos.  Other scholars point out that an apocalypse is a genre of what is called revelatory literature.  In other words what makes an apocalypse apocalyptic is that it reveals.  Therefore, the purpose of apocalyptic literature is to disclose something from a transcendent perspective…and in a way that helps to make sense of some difficult anomalies of life.

In the Jewish and emerging Christian world, apocalyptic is an at least four-century long dialogue about the righteousness of God from the standpoint of some sort of problem of theodicy.  Through the centuries it asks questions like the following:  How can God be just or righteous, and these awful Gentiles have destroyed the Temple?  How can God be just or righteous, and these Greeks force us to abandon our traditional ways around Sabbath, circumcision, and obedience to the divine law?  How can God be just, when those who act in God’s name are persecuted and killed by those idolatrous Romans?  How can God be just when the righteous dead never receive any vindication in this world that is now so clearly in the grip of anti-divine forces?  These are the kinds of profound questions of theodicy and the righteousness of God that writers of apocalyptic texts ask.

So now we come back to Mark’s gospel.  Just what exactly makes Mark’s version of the good news so apocalyptic?  On a general level, we can see some of the more spectacular elements of apocalyptic throughout the Markan story.  When in Mark 1:15 Jesus comes preaching the coming Kingdom of God’s reign, he announces it as gospel/good news of God.  What he means is demonstrated in his Galilean ministry of kingdom proclamation in the following chapters.  Jesus heals the sick as a sign of the dawning kingdom.  Jesus casts out demons with apocalyptic authority.  He forgives sins, offering God’s end-time mercy even now in his Galilean ministry.  When Jesus feeds people, though they start with just few loaves and fish, there is more than enough and everyone is filled: a sign of the eschatological banquet.  Not even nature escapes his concern.  Jesus himself contends with apocalyptic forces as he walks miraculously over the waters of chaos, and rebukes and silences demonic storms with his mere word of command.

With all these elements of the Markan gospel story we can see:  this apocalyptic world is not just some neutral space of choice and human freedom.  Elements of human and natural life are vividly portrayed as in the thrall of cosmic evil:  demons, forces, principalities and powers as Paul would say.  God’s good earth has been corrupted by evil forces that require some sort of “strong man” to overcome.

Here we see the importance of Mark’s apocalyptic revelation at the beginning of his gospel.  Right here, in this fifteen-verse prologue to the Gospel of Mark, Mark includes his crucial moment of apocalyptic revelation.  In the first few verses, Mark has us focused on John the Baptist, an end-time prophet sent to prepare the way.  But even John confesses--for all the powerful signs of his ministry of repentance--that a “stronger one” is coming.  Then Jesus appears.  The text words it this way translated directly from the Greek:  “and it came to pass in those days.”  “Those days”—that is end-time talk.  When Jesus appears in vv. 9-11, he, too, is baptized by John just as all the crowds are—except when he comes up from the water.  What Jesus sees and hears in these early verses of Mark is an apocalyptic vision.  The heavens are opened, the dove descends, and then a divine voice that only he and we readers get to hear says:  “You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.”  This is an apocalyptic moment of revelation replete with open heavens, cosmic symbols, and heavenly voices.  We who hear the text are privy to Jesus’ own revelation as are no other characters in the text.  We and Jesus know that Jesus has a messianic, prophetic identity and mission.  As he sets out into this difficult apocalyptic world, he does so in light of this divine revelation, in light of this mysterious, transcendent perspective.

Please note further what the apocalyptic elements of this revelation point to.  First, the heavens are not merely opened, but ripped apart, schizomenous in Greek.  God in this apocalyptic revelation is breaking down barriers.  As Duke Biblical scholar Joel Marcus puts it, there is a “gracious gash in the universe.” God has committed Godself to entering this broken world to fulfill God’s kingdom purposes.  Second, when the dove descends, it is not just some pretty symbol.  The language of the dove goes back to God’s original purposes at creation, where the Spirit broods over the waters in anticipation of God’s creative act.  God is not yet through with this broken created order.  What of the aural disclosure of God’s relation to Jesus?  This is language of prophetic anointment and messianic kingship, language that reminds us of all the promises of God in the Hebrew Bible:  the psalms and the prophet Isaiah, too.

At the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, God reveals Godself, God’s purposes and Jesus’ otherwise secret mysterious identity.  We hearers are, right there at the beginning of Mark’s gospel, given a transcendent perspective on the sixteen-chapter apocalyptic struggle that is about to ensue.  What is the point?: in the midst of God’s good creation, which is nonetheless in the thrall of anti-divine forces, God rips open the heavens and places God’s imprimatur on Jesus in such a way that Jesus and we readers are privy to this transcendent perspective.  We now know, even in the midst of life’s most hellish conditions, that God through Jesus is committed to the fight against cosmic evil.  God is revealed as ripping open heavens to break the boundaries that give cosmic evil the upper hand.

Of course, Mark’s strange vision of Jesus’ significance may still just seem too far out.  Apart from movies, books, and a few sectarian groups, our world is not that crazy for apocalyptic.  We probably live our lives largely in the light of reason, and in relative comfort.  Mark may offer an apocalyptic gospel, but on the whole, our world, our late modern reality is not buying.  Mark may well defer to Jesus the exorcist, but when faced with struggles of mind and spirit, we late moderns are much more likely to refer to psychologists and medical professionals.  Mark’s Jesus may celebrate eschatological banquets of an apocalyptic kingdom where all are miraculously fed, but for us these matters are better left for the rational adjustment of public policy on food, agricultural production and foreign aid.  Jesus may rebuke storm demons and silence the wind, but we are far more likely to stick with the weather channel and its talk of low pressure systems and the jet stream as we deal with matters meteorological.  In the end, Bultmann was right:  our worlds are different and are not amenable to Mark’s apocalyptic gospel of Jesus.

But on a second look, even we find our reasoned worlds interrupted by intractable evil.  We experience this in multiple ways.

Personally, we experience this with the struggle with disease.  For all our progress against cancer, there still seems to be something of a strange virulence to it—the body turned against itself.  Cancer may be a describable biological process, but we nonetheless feel compelled with our language to “wage a war” against it, to fight it as if it were something more.

Socially, we bump into this with the mysteries of life together.  We experience an inability to find ways of even talking with each other about solving problems like gun violence after another massacre of innocents—situations where we cannot only not do something, but even imagine talking about doing something.  In such moments it is as if we felt we were in the grip of something that is bigger and different  than our capacity to reason and act as free persons.

At the broadest level of our shared humanity in this world, there are also those powerful experiences of corporate evil that force us to recognize the very limits of enlightened reason among free citizens to do what is necessary.  The 20th century was supposed to represent the triumph of reason, technology, and astounding feats of human accomplishment.  For all that, it was also the century of repeated, bloody wars and a holocaust.  For all the talk of “never again” in both warfare and silence about mass extermination, the incomprehensible bloody trail marches forward to Cambodia, the Balkans, and beyond.  Is it any wonder that Quebec General Romeo Dallaire, the head of the UN forces in Rwanda in the 1990’s, mysteriously titled his book about that awful event, “Shake Hands with the Devil:  the Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.”?  We sometimes experience evil in just such a way.

It is true that we may not have the same mythology.  Yet we still deal with the mystery of intractable evil, ask questions of our mysterious selves, and yes, pose questions of theodicy to a mysterious God.  Here Mark’s strange apocalyptic gospel registers:  good news for a good creation gone awry.  It is good news in the face of the struggle with intractable evil.  And the good news is this:  in the face of these intractable realities, God has not given up, but comes closer.  In Jesus’ baptism, the apocalyptic news revealed is that God is not staying behind the cosmic curtain of the heavens.  God has transgressed the very boundary between heaven and earth. In Jesus, God has been mysteriously revealed as the uncontainable other.  This God does not remain in the holy separation of eternal otherness.  Instead, in Jesus God is revealed as coming close with a divinely authorized risky love that leads all the way to the cross.  This is no triumphant fix-it God.  It is also not an aloof God of aseity and impassibility.  This is a God who apocalyptically reveals Godself precisely as the mystery for us in the face of our broken realities.

Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall captures this apocalyptic mystery in a helpful way.  Here I paraphrase him:

God’s revealing is simultaneously an unveiling and a veiling.  God conceals Godself under the opposite of what both religion and reason imagine God to be, namely the Almighty, the majestic transcendent, the absolutely other…. God’s otherness…is not to be found in God’s absolute distance from us but in God’s willed and costly proximity to us.

In her article “Preaching to Horror-Struck People,” Rebekah Eckert, saw a deep connection between Hall’s thoughts about the mysterious revelation of God’s otherness in risky proximate love, and the story of Victor Munyarugerere. Victor is described years later in a newspaper report about his actions during the Rwandan Genocide.  Amidst the bloody context of extermination in the 1990’s we hear this unexpected news story of his risky proximity:

Victor Munyarugerere, a Catholic lay counselor married to a Tutsi woman, used creative tactics to save the lives of about 270 people.  Dressed up as a priest and doling out bottles of whiskey and wine to soldiers at checkpoints, he shuttled carloads of children, women and men to safety at the Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali.  “I decided that I preferred to die saving people,” said Munyarugerere. “Tutsis and Hutus are all children of God.”

This risky proximity however is never just for times of extreme social and political duress.  It is also for personal lives lived under difficult circumstances.  Rev. Samuel Proctor, BU grad and eminent preacher and homiletician tells the story of a mother who, “working for Mrs. Cartwright from sunup to sundown every day and then coming home to cook and do laundry for her own children without a mate or the inspiration of a faithful companion.  We saw that,” Proctor said, “and we heard her singing Zion’s songs in the dark.”

This revelation of a God who in Jesus rips open heaven to come close is itself the core of Mark’s apocalyptic gospel.  Mark begins his gospel with this revelation to show God’s loving abandon for a good creation gone awry.  It is not an apocalyptic gospel of easy answers.  It is, however, a word about God’s love, a risky proximity, in the midst of the darkness.

In the early 20th century a group of artists formed a collective in a small community just north of the German city of Bremen.  The town of Worpswede was of no great repute.  It sat on the edge of a long sparsely inhabited swamp-like region known as the Teufelsmoor, the Devil’s moor.  One artist, a painter in the group, crafted a painting he called, “the Sower.”  In the picture, the sower casts his seed on the ground—it is a typical motif and theme in painting from the period.  But this artist’s sower casts his seed across the landscape he came to know in the collective:  the Devil’s moor.  As he does so, the sower casts his seed in the dark, but toward a small dawning light.

I suspect the writer of the first gospel written would have understood.  Mark’s Jesus offers the beginning of his apocalyptic gospel.  It is a song in darkness, a seed cast across a dark landscape.  Yet, amidst the darkness, Mark’s gospel speaks…a promise of dawning light.

~Rev. Dr. David Schnasa Jacobsen

Professor of Homiletics, Boston University

posted in Guest Preachers on 08.12.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

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Have you heard!?  The world is ending!!  It’s very exciting.  Fires.  Floods.  Hail.  Earthquakes.  Wars.  All manner of natural and human-made destruction.

At least, this is what most readily comes to mind when the language of apocalypse is invoked in our late modern context.  It is a bit distant from the Greek definition of something hidden being made manifest or revealed, which is far tamer.  Interestingly, in the biblical witness it is not the fires and floods and hail and earthquakes and wars that in themselves constitute the apocalypse, but rather they are signs pointing to what will immanently be revealed.  Biblical apocalyptic vision arose in continuity with the prophetic tradition of Israel.  Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Hosea, and all the rest spent half their careers warning of all of the bad things that would happen to the Israelites if they did not repent and return to right relationship with Yahweh and then they spent the rest of their careers warning that the nations of the world would come to naught if they failed to recognize Yahweh and the chosen people Israel.  There are at times glimmers of more positive prospects in the prophetic witness, of what good things will come upon turning back to Yahweh.  Apocalyptic follows in this pattern of warning of dire times ahead after which a new, just, righteous age will follow.

Occasionally, as I am returning to the chapel from hither and yon on campus, I encounter an apocalyptic preacher on the sidewalk along Commonwealth Avenue in front of Marsh Plaza.  These preachers usually have a great deal to say about how tragic, unfortunate, and painful events in our world are signs of God’s judgment upon society for all manner of evils.  They have a constitutionally protected right to freely speak their views on a public sidewalk, just as I have a constitutionally protected right to think them wrong.  I have two problems with contemporary apocalyptic preachers.  The first is that the social and cultural evils that these preachers are decrying are the very same sociocultural changes that I take to be achievements over prejudice, violence, and inhumanity.  Gay marriage and a woman’s right to control her own body often top their, and my, lists.  Apart from our contrasting ethical visions, however, my second problem with the contemporary apocalyptic preachers I encounter is that they almost never provide the second half of the apocalyptic vision.  There is much talk of judgment, damnation, and destruction, but no talk of the new order to be ushered in in place of the judged, damned, and destroyed one.  While biblical apocalyptic can be considered good news as it offers the promise of a better tomorrow in spite of the toil and tribulation of today, contemporary apocalyptic seems to offer nothing but toil and tribulation, which is nothing more than bad news.

One of the things that differentiates the apocalyptic worldview in the bible from the prophetic view is that in the prophetic view it is still possible for humans to self-correct, while in the apocalyptic view humanity has passed the tipping point.  The prophets were constantly adjuring Israel to repent and return to Yahweh.  “If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  Thanks be to God!”  It is actually not the case that apocalyptic figures and writers actually thought things were worse in their societies than prophetic figures did.  Rather, the prophetic figures felt that the leaders of their society still had enough control over the society to bring about changes that would return Israel to Yahweh.  Apocalyptic figures, by contrast, felt entirely out of control.  This largely had to do with the fact that they were living under the occupation of the Roman Empire.  Even if Israel wanted to go in a different direction and become more godly, they could not because they did not have any control over their own destinies.   Thus it is that since humans are unable to rectify the situation, only God can step in and fix things.  Only God can overturn the present order and usher in a new order of peace, prosperity, and right relationship with God.

This feeling of being out of control marks the apocalyptic view in our contemporary context as well.  Karen Armstrong, an independent scholar of religion, spoke at Ithaca College during my freshman year there in October of 2001.  She was extraordinarily helpful in interpreting the events of September 11th of that year in terms of the fundamentalist mindset that inspired and motivated that day of death and destruction.  Her book The Battle for God explores how fundamentalisms across religious traditions are responses by religious people to a loss of control brought about by the apparently secularizing forces and assumptions of modernity.  These religious people then follow their fight or flight instinct, and those who follow the fight path often understand themselves to be instruments of God in righting the world.  Certainly, there is a great deal more to religious fundamentalism that an apocalyptic worldview, and not all people with apocalyptic views are religious fundamentalists.  However, the feeling of having lost control that drives the modern rejection of modernity that is fundamentalism is the same feeling of having lost control that inspired the apocalyptic texts of the bible.

One of the challenges in responding to apocalyptic texts, apocalyptic preachers, and fundamentalists is that the view that the world has gone to hell in a hand basket and there is nothing to be done about it but wait for God to set it right can feel very foreign.  I wonder, however, if we might not be a bit too quick to abide in the feeling of otherness, perhaps as a strategy for not having to face how familiar the apocalyptic view might be.  Perhaps I am the odd ball out, and perhaps none of you have ever felt like things had gotten totally out of control.  Life in ministry, I have discovered, provides frequent exposure to the feeling and experience of things being totally out of control.  Ministry also provides ample opportunity to see how, if people would simply make this, that, or the other decision and act on it, as opposed to the one they did decide on and act upon, things would have gone so much better.  I confess, I have at times found myself daydreaming about how things might have gone had someone wiser been in charge.

Is this really so much different than the apocalyptic vision?  Not really.  After all, the apocalyptic vision is very much an imagination that things do go better when someone of infinite wisdom, namely God, is in charge.  On the other hand, my imagination of how things might have been better inspires me to decide and act more wisely.  This is to say that I learn something from watching how the decisions and actions I and others take work out, as well as from the imaginings of how things might have gone.  At the end of the day, however, my imaginings remain in the subjunctive mood of what might have been or what might yet become.  This is in stark contrast to the way in which the apocalyptic imagination of what might be inspires fundamentalist decision-making and action.  The fundamentalist is so inspired by the apocalyptic imagination that she or he attempts to impress the subjunctive mood of what might become into the indicative mood of what actually is.

The work we do together here in this space, week by week, in gathering together in worship, is very much a subjunctive imagining of what life might be like if God were in charge.  The readings, prayers, sermon, music, and sacrament of the liturgy reveal to us the ways in which we ought to live in the ideal world of God’s realm.  Live justly, walk humbly, confess your shortcomings, forgive one another, rejoice in joy, weep in lamentation, and break bread with one another.  Of course, life in the world is not nearly so ideal.  Justice is ambiguous.  Humility is mistaken for weakness.  Confession leads to judgment without forgiveness.  The joy of one is the sorrow of another.  Those we break bread with may stab us in the back.  We learn from these experiences as well as the imagination we return to, week by week, of what would be better.  Furthermore, our worship practice provides a safeguard from thinking that we should attempt to impose the subjunctive mood of worship on the indicative mood of life.  That safeguard is the strangeness of the liturgy.  The clergy wear funny robes.  The windows are made of stained glass.  The pews have no cushions.  These things, and many others, provide a sense of strangeness to remind us that, while much of what we experience here may point to a better way of being, in the end, a worship service is not life.  That better way of being exists apart from the day-to-day walk of life.  The better vision informs life, and so transforms our lives, by reminding us that life is not always and necessarily out of control.  The ongoing work of transformation by information indicates that at every moment of our lives the world is ending, and is beginning anew out of what was and what might yet be.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

~Brother Lawrence A. Whitney, LC+

posted in Br. Lawrence A. Whitney, LC† on 08.5.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

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If you’ve been following the lectionary text with care, you are aware that considerable time has been spent over the past couple of weeks thinking about the kings of Israel, the shepherds of Israel and the Davidic line. Would there be a king to follow in David’s lineage who would finally deliver Israel? Reading the text this morning the story of David and Bathsheba can have you wondering how it was that David was seen to be such an ideal king. But over time he was imagined to be that figure. In that tradition we find hopeful signs again and again in Israel’s history that such a king will arrive. You see from the text that was just read from John Chapter 6 that that hope was expressed at the feeding of the 5000. When they come to want, and want to make Jesus King. You can imagine that that hope, that aim, is very much following along with the tradition of David being the ideal king.

In this series of lessons on apocalyptic literature or the Apocalypse Den as the series is called, I’m interested in featuring the apostles Paul’s apocalyptic outlook and trying to give insight into how Paul understands David as a king within his apocalyptic frame. You may have noticed that Romans 1:1-7 was read a bit ago outside of the lectionary text for this week. I had this text in the reading because this text is the only place in the undisputed letters of Paul where Paul mentions Jesus as a son of David and emphasizes that he was in David’s lineage, according to the flesh. I want to flag two other items in the introduction to this sermon, that come from this opening text and then I want to see where this leads us in the study of Paul’s letter to the Romans. He says that this is the good news concerning Gods son, “Who was descended from David according to the flesh 4and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead” I want to flag, that this is the good news for Paul and it has to do with a kind of power Jesus had due to the resurrection.

Very often when we focus on the death of Christ we focus on the cross itself and not on the larger event of his death and resurrection. Paul places considerable weight on the resurrection and there is a good reason for that. It is hard to be able to place Jesus in a Davidic line if he simply goes to Jerusalem and dies at the hands of the Romans, it hard to imagine how that fulfills the hope of Israel; to have a short ministry and to be killed on a cross. Paul’s experience of Jesus was not as a disciple who followed in his footsteps but is one who had a vision of the risen Christ. And that vision of the risen Christ brought Paul face to face with Jesus as one whom God had raised. That allowed Paul to transfer his Davidic hopes on Jesus, from a Jesus who conquers the Romans in Israel to a Jesus who is involved in a much larger cosmic drama, in an apocalyptic frame. Another way of putting this is that the death and resurrection of Jesus are not the last act. They’re not the last act, they are part of a drama that fits in a larger apocalyptic frame.  Now I’m going to stray briefly out of the letter to the Romans to read a text from First Corinthians that lays out this larger frame real quickly and then I’ll be back in Romans to illustrate it. This text I’m about to read comes from First Corinthians 15:20 and following, “But now has Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the first fruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”

Again, often when we think of the gospel or the good news, we think of Jesus dying for the sins of the people, as an atoning sacrifice. I’m suggesting to you that Paul has a much larger drama in mind, where Christ resurrection is a resurrection with power, which is the beginning of a conquest to overcome Adams’s fall. The only other place where this Adam and Christ contrast is taken up by Paul is in the letter to the Romans. In Chapter 5 of the letter to the Romans Paul uses this Adam-Christ contrast as a means of thinking about how the death and resurrection of Christ means that the dominion of Christ has broken into the realm of Adam so that sin is able to be challenged as well as death. And as you will recall from the First Corinthians text the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Understanding this larger frame allows us to recognize why the righteousness of God, in Romans, is such a big issue for Paul. For Paul, God has great responsibility for this creation; great responsibility. And the fulfillment of this larger drama that I’ve just described is a fulfillment whose weight rests, for Paul, on God. And whether or not that is fulfilled is a judgment on God’s own righteousness. This is the theme that is strongly emphasized to the letter to the Romans but one that many modern readers have missed because we have associated the righteousness of God so closely with atonement out of the Protestant tradition and the Reformation.

Highlighting a couple of important texts out of Romans, let me draw your attention to Romans 1: 16 and 17, two verses that have been thought to be the theme of the letter to the Romans since Martin Luther’s time. Paul writes, “ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The one who is righteous shall live by faith.” You see the phrase here “in the good news, or in the gospel, the righteousness of god is reviled.” This is a text in which there is considerable amount of debate about translation. The word faith, in Greek pistis, is used here a few times. It is becoming much more common among scholars of the Apostle Paul’s letters to translate this as faithfulness rather than faith. So that that verse reads, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faithfulness, Christ faithfulness, for faithfulness, human faithfulness; “As it is written the one who is righteousness will live by faithfulness” This sense that Gods righteousness is being fulfilled in the coming of Christ with the result that humans are faithful, places more weight on human responsibility than was typical out of reformation theology.

Listen to that text in relation to this next one, Romans 3: 21-26” But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:  for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,  whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” And now again this emphasis on the righteousness of God is based on this larger drama where God is to be righteous in fulfilling the redemption of the larger creation. You can see that larger picture in Romans, especially in Romans 8:18 and following. “I consider that the sufferings of this present time,” for Paul while we are still caught between Adam and Christ, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.  For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.  And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” The striking thing about this text in a document, the letter to the Romans where Paul is laying out this larger drama, salvation for him is not simply the atonement of the sin of individuals it is god reclaiming creation from the dominion of sin dominion of death. The last enemy to be destroyed is death, which is why redemption of our bodies is featured here in the way it is. This looks backs to the Adam story in Genesis of the fall where you see here, where it says “The creation itself was subjected to futility”. Are you thinking of a text in Genesis 3, “Cursed be the ground because of you.” So that not only are human beings sinful but the creation itself was subjected to futility as it groans and labor pains looking to share in the redemption of human beings, For Paul the creation itself became a less hospitable place for the good, and a more hospitable place for evil.

Hence for the resurrection of Christ, Christ leads a campaign according to First Corinthians 15:20 and following in which he puts all the enemies under his feet and the last enemy to be destroyed is death. And in Paul’s apocalyptic outlook, death is not the cessation of someone breathing, it is a cosmic power. In the same way that sin for Paul in the letter to the Romans is not this individual misdeed of a person, but is a cosmic power that exercises dominion and leads ultimately to death.

So where is the good news in this? Well, you saw the last text I read ended with this note that we have hope.  Because the redemption of our own bodies is tied up with the redemption of the creation and God’s own righteousness is at stake in fulfilling it. For Paul there is reason for great hope in that. That comes out most clearly in the next paragraph of Romans 8 “We know that all things worked together for god for those who love God who are called according to its purpose.” I don’t think that all things work together for good every minute of every day, but that this future projection that God has staked God’s own righteousness on, is something that we are a part of and can depend on. “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son In order that he might be the first born within a large family and those whom he predestined he also called and those whom he call he also justified and those whom he justified he also glorified. “

If I might break in and argue with Paul, “But Paul it has been a long time. It was a long time for Israel, this period of time where all the shepherds failed Israel. Recounted in first and second Kings with such brutal frankness has simply been time continuing. Paul, how do you keep confidence?” He writes, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” He is going to give a little list of possible terrestrial things that might separate us, “Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Now he is going to start listing some cosmic threats, tapping that apocalyptic tradition again, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” This is the good news according to Paul, Paul’s Davidic message, Paul’s son of David, is the one who makes this happen. Thanks be to God.

~Dr. James Christopher Walters

Associate Professor of New Testament,

Boston University

posted in Guest Preachers on 07.29.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

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Good morning.

The series of text that have been read this morning from the lectionary are in many ways remarkable. My guess is that there are a number of political leaders throughout the world who are not enjoying the lectionary readings today. Given what a sharp judgment they offer on Israel’s leaders and ask us to consider it as we grapple with leadership in the modern world. It’s a remarkable collection of texts.

In Mark 6, the text that was just read, Jesus sees a chaotic crowd of people and imagines them to be like sheep without a shepherd. This taps a very very long tradition in Israel’s scriptures where Israel time and time again is scattered lacking a shepherd. The text I read to you early from Jeremiah is the text from which this sermon’s title comes, “Woe to the shepherds,” the first four words from Jeremiah 23:1-6, “Woe to the shepherd who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture says the lord.” These shepherds are the Kings of Israel, and Jeremiah is following the fall of Judea and the exile of God’s people to Babylon. Ezekiel presents the same sort of critique in Ezekial 34, even harsher. You’ll recall that this is not a new theme in the biblical text. Beginning with Jeremiah or Ezekiel as a matter of fact, even a casual reading of first and second Samuel and first and second Kings should remind you that these lengthy narratives are by in large a judgment on the failure of Israel’s monarchies. Over and over again, we are told of a failed reign, followed by a failed reign, followed by a failed reign. The political disaster that was the monarchy in narrative form is judged as a moral and religious failure and hence ultimately a political failure.

The story continues as we are in an apocalyptic series this summer and you might recall this is rather a large theme in apocalyptic literature as well, if I might trace it down briefly. What we have is the fall of Judea the Southern Kingdom, and five, maybe six, of the Babylonians in exile and Jeremiah and Ezekiel offer their judgment on the shepherds of Israel. Following that exile there’s a return to the land and rebuilding of the temple. Ultimately the land falls under the control of the Talamies and the Salutes. Following Alexander the Great’s campaign in the east, there is a revolt against Salute rulers that we know of as the Maccabean Revolt, where new shepherds were put in power--followers of the Maccabees, the Hasmoaneans. But things go no better, as a matter of fact, after decades of Hasmoanean rule, where Israel is being ruled by its own Kings again, it’s almost as if it’s a relief when the Romans come to town. Oh and then we have the Romans and by now the misery of failed leadership takes on cosmic proportions. Its not just as if a king looks after the king’s own interest rather than the interest of the people, it’s not just that the game is rigged among political insiders. Oh it's worse. In an apocalyptic world view, the game is rigged in cosmic proportions, where the rulers are not simply rulers living out their own excesses and greed, but they are the puppets and the pawns of dark spiritual powers. If you’ve worked your way through the Book of Revelations, the Apocalypse of St. John, you’ve read the story told in violent and brilliant color. As the Roman Empire is held up for judgment and its shepherds are accused. The beast from the sea, is the Roman Emperors and the power of the Roman Empire comes from Satan himself, that’s the apocalyptic tale of Revelation 12 and 13. It’s a dark story. If you’ve read much political history, it’s a dark story.

The revised common lectionary encourages us to read Psalm 23 in dialogue with Jeremiah 23. It’s an interesting juxtaposition. We just worked our way through Psalm 23. In Psalm 23 we imagine that it is God who is the ruler, God is the shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest  my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever

It’s the universal longing of humanity, the universal longing, to be led to green pastures, for our cups to overflow, for goodness and mercy to follow us. It’s the path that Israel’s Kings were to lead Israel on, but far too often it was not the path that had been promised. The experience of failed leadership is an experience of terrific suffering, of victimized populations, of barrenness. You see if the 23 Psalm if its read in reverse it’s the opposite of the yearning of God and God’s people.

Bashar Al-Asad is my shepherd, I shall always want. He makes me lie down in barren pastures:  he leads me beside dry riverbeds, he destroys my soul, he leads me in the wrong path for his own sake.

You see Psalm 23 is not just that little pastoral text we learn to recite when we were children in church; it is a powerful statement about what the right leadership offers and should do for people. And hence the failed kings of Israel and the failed kings of today, whether in the Middle East and Syria in the case of Assad or in this country, results in people being led to barren pastures. One of the most pronounced themes in all of scripture is the theme we are talking about this morning. And we continue to be haunted by poor leadership; we continue to be haunted by barren rather than green pastures. It’s an old story.  The apocalyptic tradition is so pessimistic it loses hope that this can be righted. That it can be righted in the space of human history and imagined that God has to right it at the end of human history, God has to make it right in the end, that is the message of the Book of Revelations isn’t it. It’s not my desire this morning to encourage us to that level of pessimism, but even from this story to gain some hope, to work for greener pastures, to work for still waters, for goodness and mercy to follow us as opposed to judgment and wrath. But, it’s a hard path and we are foolish not to have our eyes wide open.

For the past 36 hours I have found myself wondering time and again why I agreed to preach this weekend, especially after the horror of Aurora, Colorado raised its head. A story I’m sure you know by now. A 24 year old neuroscience PhD student walks into a midnight showing of the latest of Chirstopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy movies, with four guns: two glock 40mms and an AR-15 assault rifle and a 12- gauge shotgun. He walks into that theater in battle armor from head to foot; his assault rifle has a drum magazine that holds 100 rounds. He bought all of this legally, within the last 60 days. He shot 70 people. The Washington Post reports this morning that apparently the assault rifle jammed so that all 100 rounds were not able to be dispersed. Now, I understand we have a gun debate in this country, I know something about the gun lobby, I grew up hunting on a farm in Alabama. Whether or not Mr. Holmes should have been able to purchase those four weapons, I’ll leave open for a moment, but I want to suggest to you that he should not be able to purchase a magazine that holds 100 rounds. It’s illegal in the state of Massachusetts but it’s legal in every other state but eight. The gun debate in this country is a failed conversation. More should be done to protect the sheep.

May it be so.

~Dr. James Christopher Walters

Associate Professor of New Testament,

Boston University

posted in Guest Preachers on 07.22.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service.

Click here to hear the sermon only.

Good morning.

It is a tremendous privilege to be here with you again for a second Sunday. I’m truly enjoying my trip back to beloved BU, again from rural Maine. My parents get back from their trip tomorrow so I had yet another week of mucking barns and caring for chickens and keeping track of gardens in this heat, which we’ve had up in Maine as well. It’s lovely to be back and to be a city girl for the day and to be here among you with my dear friends new and old. Nice passage right, I mean did that have to come up during the lectionary when I was preaching. Ok anyway here’s the sermon.

It’s nearly blueberry season in Maine again which is just about my favorite time of year. My son Leander took the kayaks over to the little pile of boulders we call Blueberry Island this past week. And sure enough the first blueberries had just started to turn that lovely purple blue that promises a delightful morning of blueberry picking from the canoe followed by blueberry pancakes made in a cast-iron pan at the camp, wonderful. If I could pick what heaven is like, I would defiantly choose Blueberry Island on a calm hot summer day in late July.

But Blueberry season also reminds me of another less happy blueberry story, one that points out that we are not quite in heaven, yet. I usually tell this story for a laugh because really if we weren’t laughing we would have to cry. So I guess I’ll tell it that way here to.

One summer, the last summer my grandma Jean visited Maine before her death, blueberry season came early. For my mom blueberry season means a flurry of activity. She bakes pies, she makes muffins, she boils mason jars and puts up blueberry jam for the winter. As she would explain to my grandmother, if there are blueberries, all other activities must and will stop. There will be a full day in the kitchen. My grandmother however could not abide with this nonsense.

You see Grandma Jean had left her own farm behind as a young teenager and never looked backed. Her family lost their farm in Iowa during The Depression, piling up all their worldly belongings on the back of their old Ford and trekking across the country to seek a new life in California. These were hungry times and the family barely survived. I can only guess at how wrenching this loss must have been for my grandmother, she dealt with it and with her new life in California by refusing to have anything to do with farming ever again. Her cooking reflected this decision; she never met a can of cream of mushroom soup that she did not like. And the idea of spending a day making jam seemed preposterous to her.

So there was my mom in the kitchen boiling jars and picking through the flat of blueberries as she removed the little leaves and green berries that inevitably get caught up in a blueberry rake. And there was my grandmother sitting at the kitchen table and offering a running commentary about the fruitlessness of making homemade jam during the modern age when you can just as well go to the grocery store and by blueberry jam for three dollars.

This argument masquerading as a discussion and hiding within it decades, if not a lifetime of mother-daughter pain and frustration finally ended with a daring repost of the part of Grandma Jean. “But Mom,” my own mother said, “I like to make jam and besides tonight we’ll have a fresh homemade blueberry pie.” “Blueberry pie,” Grandma said, “I hate blueberry pie.” Ok then, no blueberry pie for Grandma and no love and approval for Mom who had somehow and perhaps not entirely accidentally chosen to live on a farm and to therefore emulate her grandparents rather than her mother. As for me observing this whole exchange, I just tried to make myself disappear.

Thinking about blueberry pies, blueberry season, and the heavenly place that is Blueberry Island this past week while also hearing these lectionary readings brought this family fable to my mind. Reminding me about how unlike heaven even earthly heavens can be, especially once people and families with long memories get involved. And really we were and are such a lucky happy family. At the end of the day we love one another, we show up for one another.

By contrast, as I’m sure you noticed, the Herods were indisputably a mess, as Mark points out in this long digression on the death of John the Baptist. Mark is a decidedly ungenerous critique of the Herodian family, although few surviving writings have much that is positive to say about the Herods and the lengths they took to secure their Roman sponsored dynasty.  Nevertheless, in this story the gospel writer goes through exceptional lengths to embellish a set of unsubstantiated rumors about Herod Antipas, Herodias and an unnamed daughter that upon further inspection don’t quite hold up. But never mind the facts, by the time Mark was written the Herodian dynasty had lost much of its influence, crushed, Mark implies, by the weight of its own corruption. And he certainly does give us a tabloid shocker version of their history complete with a degraded, sexually suspect puppet king, a wicked bloodthirsty and conniving queen, and a beautiful young princess willing to do just about anything to please her father, or her stepfather-it depends on which manuscript one is reading-and her mother, or her stepmother, see above, including luring her father into executing a righteous man, Mark’s hero John the Baptist. Who needs a hot, thrilling, and violent summer blockbuster when one can simply read today’s gospel lesson.

In terms of facts here’s what we do know. Herod Antipas had John the Baptist executed. Herod Antipas was married to Herodias who had been previously married to his brother, another Herod whom Mark confuses with Phillip the tetrarch of an area north of the Sea of Galilee. Antipas himself had also been married to a Nabateaian princess who may or may not have been named Thalamus. According to the historian Josephus Herodias had a daughter named Salome by her first husband, though the young women in this story may also be a daughter of Antipas from his first marriage named Herodias like her mother or stepmother as some manuscripts of Mark suggest and as the NRSV would have it. At any rate Herodias’ daughter, Salome, she really did have a daughter named Salome really did eventually marry Phillp, the tetrarch another half-brother of Antipas sometime around 33 C.E.

Whatever the details of this sordid family history might be, and however fishy Marks version the gospel story makes one point clear the dynastic aspirations of the Herodian family were not only fruitless they also produced nothing but trouble, either for those sympathetic to Jesus and John the Baptist or for their own heirs. Indeed their attempts to secure their privileged position both at home and with their Roman patrons came at a high personal and familial cost; dividing brother against brother, mother against daughter, and wife against husband.

I’m not a huge fan of how Mark chose to deliver this message today. Did he really have to provide so much ammunition for future purveyors of erotized Orientalizing representations of the Herods? Oscar Wilde had a lot to work with. Did he really have to take the oh so obvious narrative tact of blaming political corruption on out of control male lust and the wilds of a bloodthirsty women? Tell me something else. But clearly all was not well, either in Judea or in Galilee during the latter Herodian period, and no amount of political, ideological, or familial intrigue had improved the situation. Both John the Baptist and Jesus were killed, at least in part, because of the extremely difficult political circumstances there. And by the time Mark was writing another of their followers had certainly been caught up and killed by the disastrous rebellion that changed the Judean and Galilean landscape forever. How sad that this little earthly slice of heaven, the chosen land of pomegranates and fig tress and honey, had become and still has often remained a home not of peace and harmony but of conflict and pain. Did the Harrods know what they were bargaining for when they sought to displace the Hasmonean, those heirs of the brothers Maccabees who more or less ruled the area before they did. Did they sometimes regret their palaces, their power, and their influence? I guess we’ll never know, because beyond their building projects and the coins they minted what remains of them are literary depictions that are largely unfriendly. For obvious reasons the gospel writers really had nothing at all nice to say about them. And larger public opinion, Mark suggests, was also openly critical.

Whatever led to the beheading of John the Baptist, the Judean and Galilean public were outraged, as the rumor about John’s possible resurrection suggests. It seems that this rumor was in fact historical and it followed the following logic: since Antipas had unjustly killed a righteous man he would certainly be haunted by the act. He was doomed to face what he had done, when the resurrected John justly returned to accuse him and give him his due. Part of what the theory of the resurrection could do for first century Jews, many of whom believed in it long before Jesus ever entered the scene, is promise that horrific murders would be avenged and that in the end God would not allow the righteous to suffer. John had won in the court of Judean and Galilean opinion. And Antipas would not easily live his decision down.

Our epistle lesson in its own way refers to this promise of resurrection, extending it to include all of Jesus followers and emphasizing not the revenge that resurrection offers, but the many good gifts that accrue to those who are faithful to the hope of its coming.  As was also the case with the Herods, dynastic succession is in view in Ephesians. But in this case the dynasty envisioned is described as a gift of god, rather than as a result of human effort. Writing to a wide circle of Paulean Christians, Ephesians promises that he followers of Jesus can rest secure in a divine heritage given to the whole adopted family. We have been chosen since before the foundation of the world, Ephesians writes, we are wanted children, destined for adoption, though Jesus Christ, and we have attained an inheritance given to us by divine will. Our belonging is made visible with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit which serves as a sign of the coming fulfillment of our family-centered hopes.

The relatives of Herod may have gone through extreme lengths to keep their wealth in the family to secure their rather tenuous position as Roman client-kings. But according to Ephesians, the followers of Jesus have simply received every spiritual blessing from the only ruler who truly matters. One family’s dysfunction led to the death of John the Baptist, another adopted family’s confidence in a purpose granted them a home in the heavenly places while they awaited the redemption to come.

Reading these visions of heaven the last two weeks, I am struck by how often images of family and belonging appear. Defending his apostolic credentials to the Christ followers in Corinth, which is the context of the story of the man who viewed heaven that we read last week, Paul calls himself their parent proclaiming that he would gladly spend all that he has for the Corinthians, wouldn’t any parent do the same? In his letters his regular labels for them include, holy ones, brothers and sisters in Christ, and children of God. And he concludes his second letter with an admonition to agree to live in peace and to greet one another with a kiss, just like any happy family would. Ephesians takes the family metaphor even further; believers are recipients of a divine heritage written in God’s will as it were, and they are a part of God’s household knit together in love. These visions of paradise and disclosures of the heavenly secrets lead both writers to exhort their audiences to find a way to  embody and live out that most elusive of human arrangements, the happy harmonious family.

The problem of course is that happy harmonious families can be less like paradise for their members then Paulean metaphors suggest. As sociologist Cindy Patton points out, the love identified with family feeling can turn out to be, “an insidiously structured form of obligation, rather than an expression of mutual recognition and regard.” One must submit to the point of view of the family and thereby serve the family’s needs, an obligation that can come at a very high cost for some members. Just think about the scenario Mark was imaging for the daughter of Herod or Herodias, whether or not these events happened as he described them. A young preteen aged girl, the Greek word used to describe her suggest that she had not yet hit puberty, dances before her father and as a reward for pleasing him is asked to participate in a plot to execute a troubling critic of her family’s regime and in a particularly horrific way. Her love for her family requires that she debase herself and become a party to murder. Or what about Herodias passed off from brother to brother, well actually from uncle to uncle, so that family wealth can be retained?  What about Herod the Great's sons Herod Antipas and Phillip, the tetrarch who had witnessed the execution of their three elder brothers on the order of their very own father? Or what about the followers of Jesus in Corinth that knew a little family of about a hundred believers already competing over which of their leaders could boost of the best heavenly vision? How long did it to go from new believer in Christ to competitors for God’s and the rest of the adopted family’s affection? And don’t even get me started about David who I’ve managed to avoid the last two weeks. Now obviously these are extreme examples of what families, actual or adopted, can do to one another, and to their children in the name of preserving the family name. But perhaps that is the point. Whatever heaven is like, and whatever paradise looks like, surely those who belong there do not and cannot behave like this. Surely God intends something else for God’s children. Surely there is some other way. Surely, it is possible to intimately love one another without causing one another harm.

When my mom and my aunt Donna were little girls my Grandma Jean would make them matching dresses by hand. On the wall in the little room in the farm house where my son sleeps when we visit there is a picture of the three of them dressed in matching outfits.  My grandmother is so sophisticated with her elaborate necklace, velvet top and perfectly coifed 1950s hair. My aunt Donna and my mother are wearing coordinated velvet jackets and white button-up shirts with peter pan collars. My aunt, the elder of the two girls has her hair combed to look just like her mom. My mom, the little one has her hair parted on the side; all three are smiling the broadest smiles you can imagine. All three are so lovely, so beautiful really, that my heart breaks. Why couldn’t my grandmother honor my mom’s choice to live on a small farm in Maine? Why can’t my mom forgive my grandmother for being, well, so very very, difficult? Why did it take more than thirty years of buried pain and stony silence for my mom and her sister to speak to one another again? Does the loss of an ancestral farm in Iowa have to reverberate forever, if that’s what caused the whole mess? Why couldn’t Grandma Jean have pretended to like blueberry pie?

Blueberry season in Maine is the perfect antidote to apocalyptic visions of doom and destruction; with every purple berry gracefully adorning every improbable blueberry bush, a bush that has somehow eked out its survival on a pile of granite boulders in the middle of a wild pond., a tiny delicious bit of heaven arrives to greet the summer once again. My sons and I paddle out to see the bushes just like we have every year since they were born. We watch the king birds chattering to one another as they flit from branch to branch of the stunted hemlock trees on the Island. Their young have newly fledged. If we are lucky the loon comes back, sometimes with a baby on her back. We spend the morning glad to be alive, glad that we too belong to this wild pond and to one another.

Adopted by the world, secure in the spiritual and material blessings that have marked my own life, I think about the family of which I am a part and the families I have chosen. What sort of heritage am I passing on? To whom do I belong? I suspect that I have made my own mistakes, that I too have served as a reminder that we are not yet in heaven. I am confident that I have. To paraphrase Ephesians, I may be destined for adoption and have forgiveness through Christ and have the grace that God has so graciously extended to me. In the meantime I am human and to be human means to fall and participate both knowingly and unknowingly in the fullness of all our human heritages for good and for ill. Nevertheless I too have a vision of paradise. In my paradise Grandma Jean loves blueberry pie. Her red hair, a color that never faded sparkles in the sun. And she sees my mom and loves her for who she is. In my paradise I would also like to imagine that Herod Antipas, Herodias and Salome are together with John the Baptist dancing even now.  Mark’s battles are no longer mine. In my paradise, having cast off the sin that clings so closely and found myself blameworthy and blameless, both at the same time, I discover that we are all family and I am very very glad.

May all of us know that we really do belong

May we be glad for the blessing of being here.

And may we all find a way to enjoy a delicious blueberry pie.

Amen.

~Rev. Dr. Jennifer Wright Knust

Associate Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins,

Boston University

posted in Guest Preachers on 07.15.2012 at 11:00 am

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