Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

By Marsh Chapel

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Good morning,

It is a wonderful privilege to be here at Marsh Chapel with some many friends and former students and collogues on this warm July day. I am especially pleased to be in Marsh Chapel and be reminded about how much I really do love being a professor at BU, as much as I’m enjoying my summer vacation.

I’ve been living in Maine the last several weeks, helping my parents out with their farm and trying to finish some writing projects which are going so-so. As some of you may already know, living in rural Maine means driving, a lot. It takes a half an hour to get to the nearest book store, grocery store, or home improvement store and even longer if I want to access certain, probably unnecessary luxuries urbanites like myself have come to depend upon for our daily maintenance. So I’ve been driving more than usual which means I’ve been listening to more radio than usual most often MPBN the public radio station in Maine. Can we just stop for a moment to say thanks to MPBN, WBUR, and public radio in general? I would not survive summers in Maine without it. As a result of all of my radio listening, I am highly informed. I am also however, getting tired of listening to prophets. Between call-in shows and news programs, I’ve heard just about every sort of reaction to the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a Obamacare by now. Especially from those running for president, but also from just about every other sector of our society as well: journalist, politicians of every strip, law professors, the proverbial man on the street, pundits from one think tank or another; all of whom who are busily spelling out what will certainly happen next, what this means for our future. A great number of the voices on my radio are not unexpectedly prophesizing doom in the form of government intervention, lack of access to medical treatments, a sicker population, and even death panels, which have reappeared under the guise of purported set of policymakers eager to pull plugs and deny life support. For some, Obamacare is yet another sign of the decline and fall of American civilization. Others however are glad for anything that gets us closer to healthcare for all, even as they spell out the limits and unintended consequences of this new law.  As for me sitting in the car listening to the radio, I just find myself happy that first Romneycare and now Obamacare have made it possible for our older son to remain insured under our policy until he is 26. Now that he is 23 this really matters to us as a family. I am also hoping that this change will allow a friend of mind with a pre-existing condition to find a way to get out of a truly soul-killing situation at work while keeping health service for himself and his family; that is my prayer. If Jesus were consulted, perhaps he would agree that healthcare coverage is a good thing. After all, as Mark says in our gospel lesson today, though Jesus could do no deed of power in Nazareth, he healed a few sick people anyway. Healing people seems to have been among his priorities.

At any rate, driving around rural Maine thinking about our sermon series this summer and working on a chapter about the Book of Revelations that is due by the end of July, which swiftly approaches, I find myself in prophesy overload.  What is it about American culture that makes prophesies of doom so very popular? Why do we love to envision dystopia instead of utopia in our movies and on our TV shows? Do we really need to destroy New York City one more time, and do we need to interpret events as sure signs that further misery must certainly be on the way. Must our public prophets be so fixated on telling us what’s wrong with the world, or our Christians recount once more how near God’s judgment must surely be. Must we be kept in a constant state of fear and discouragement? I sometimes think the drip drip drip of bad news and prophetic warnings about a worse future has done more to alienate and isolate us one from another than it has provoked change for the better or helped us find a way to be a people of faith. And when this never-ending stream of bad news is combined with assurances that the day of finally initiated destruction and punishment are inevitable, don’t we risk putting ourselves on the side of the very things we supposedly hate? I mean really, why bother to fight the tide of suffering if God is going to destroy everything anyway? Shouldn’t we just concentrate on saving the righteous few while leaving the rest to their fate, however horrible?

I am also worried that today’s gospel lesson doesn’t much help me in my current malaise, at least not at first reading. After all in Mark, Jesus instructs his disciples to shake the dust off their feet if the village they visited didn’t welcome them. This testimony to them, or against them as the NRSV has it, appears to contain within it some sort of ritualized threat. Some manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark take the point further, adding the warning, truly it would be more tolerable for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than it will be for that city. By shaking the dust of their feet the disciples were saying, “good bye, good riddance, and good luck to you when God’s judgment comes, you’ll be sorry.” Is that what Jesus was trying to tell the residents of Galilee then? Listen to me and my disciples or else? I think it is possible to read Mark’s gospel this way and certainly people have, including those who are even now claiming that the end will come in this generation, that God’s punishments are swift and sure and that only those who are righteous in those particular ways that current prophets of doom understand the term, will be saved.

I would like to call our attention to another feature of Mark’s story, the verse, “And he could do no deed of power there except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.” Isn’t that curious? Jesus was unable to perform miracles in Nazareth, really? From Mark’s perspective and ours today in this chapel, Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God and the son of Man, so surely Jesus could do whatever he wanted to do. I checked Matthew’s version and he appeared to have the same reaction I did, when he read Mark. Editing the problem away, he simplified the verse to read, “Jesus did not perform many miracles there because of their lack of faith.”  Of course, from Matthew’s perspective, Jesus could have performed miracles, but he chose not to since he was annoyed. But, that’s not what Mark says, according to Mark, Jesus could not perform miracles, he was not able to do it, though he did manage to heal a few people. Then Mark adds, “And he was amazed because of their unbelief.” So the NRSV that’s printed in our bulletins this morning reads, “unbelief,” but I would like to amend that translation of the word pistis to suggest instead, lack of faith or unwillingness to trust instead. As I often tell my first year Greek students, pistis and its opposite apistis were doing words, a fact that sometimes lost in our words belief and unbelief. Perhaps a Protestant emphasis on inward transformation, that transformation that takes place when one believes in one’s heart in Jesus Christ, has helped us to forget that in antiquity and maybe today pisitis, faith, trust, loyalty, and also belief, involved doing things like getting up and displaying our loyalties in our daily actions.

Back in the day when Mark was written, one could have faith and show loyalty to one’s city, one’s gods, one’s family, and even the emperor. This pisitis was clearly visible and was supposed to be seen by all. It seems to me then that the apisitis, the lack of faith of the people of Nazareth offers a possible key to Mark’s interpretation of events that transpired there. The rejection of their hometown prophet by the people of Nazareth in my reading was related not to some lamentable failure in their part to believe to assent to a set of doctrines, inwardly, within their souls, but to their inability to trust in and therefore show loyalty to the good news that Jesus wanted not only to share but also to do, to do with them and for them. Because that’s what Jesus was up to, good news. It’s the gospel of Mark remember. According to Mark, before Jesus arrived in Nazareth he expelled a demon by the name of Legion from a truly miserable man who lived among the tombs of Gerasenes, he cured a women who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years and as a result had lost everything to doctors, who couldn’t heal her. We know something about that in our culture. And Jesus had raised a twelve year old girl from the dead. If those are not a series of acts that bring good news I don’t know what would be.

Whatever wisdom Jesus was teaching in the local synagogues, that wisdom that led his former neighbors to marvel at him, I suspect that his words and his actions had more to do with healing, health, and hope, than with end times judgment, God’s wrath, and the current list of reasons why we should be filled with despair. If so, then the problem in Nazarath was that Jesus’ former friends and neighbors could no longer hear and enact good news in their daily lives. And using their familiarity with Jesus and their family as an excuse it was this inability of act on the basis of renewed hope that prevented their hometown hero from performing a deed of power while he was there. But, why should they believe in good news when the drip drip drip of bad news had taught them to expect the worst. I can just imagine how it would be hearing every day of the latest abuses of the Roman prefect, the latest conflict between the local Galileans and the local Judeans, the latest Roman tax hikes, the empty fishing nets, the daily March of scarcity, illness and want, you name it. Perhaps bitter experience had made it clear to them that expecting the worst is the more sensible and frankly the safer way to live. So someone is ill, a cure can’t be found and she has lost everything to doctors, what else is new. Ok many are struggling to find food and shelter and a living while others have so much more than they need. Show me a village, or a city, or a nation where that isn’t true. Yes, to adopt Marx’s terms, Nazareth as we know was burdened with a foreign government quite understandingly it didn’t much like. I can just imagine Jesus’ neighbors asking him, “Do you really think that demon or those legions can be expelled?” Believing in good news, acting like good news can and will maybe happen is really just too painful. You of all people should know that mister hometown boy.”

If my interpretation is right, then Jesus could not perform a deed of power in Nazareth because no one was willing to play on his good news team. His fellow Nazarenes were simply too attached to their despair to allow themselves to even desire a change for the good and to lend themselves to making good prophesies come true. And who could blame them, but in a world were even good news, my son Axel’s access to healthcare, my son Leander who survived a broken neck because doctors at Brigham and Women’s knew what they were doing, my dad’s heart attack didn’t kill him last summer, and my friend with the pre-existing condition who can dare to imagine a better life. When even this good news can get drowned out by threats of doom and fears of the bad things that will surely come, I would like to be on the side of good news this morning. The good news we can actually proclaim. The good that Jesus actually did by healing even a few. I might go so far as to argue that the threats of doom and the insistence that we only see gloom keep us from envisioning deeds of power that are actually already in our grasps. Those positive changes for the better however small, that help us live, honor our neighbors, and remind us that God made the world for good.

Listening to Moth Radio on my way back from the mountains last week, told you I’ve been listening to a lot of radio, I heard the most wonderful heartfelt story by Alif Shfalk, a Turkish writer struggling with writers block and her journey through it. I know about writers block. She described her sense, after a devastating earthquake shook her neighborhood, that she had once again had lost faith in what she was doing. Her heart is like the pendulum, she said, that swings back and forth between a necessary optimism that enables her to keep writing and this other darker loss of faith she could no longer believe that her writing, her work, was worth much of anything. In face of larger works in the world, really why bother? Yet, at some point she noticed something else, a difficult neighbor with whom she could finally share something, enemies on the block with whom she for a moment became friends. And the small ways that people manage to reach out to one another out of empathy. “That’s what we writers want,” she concluded, “Something to remain, a spark of empathy and the possibility of a change.”

Trusting in the possibility of some good news is hard, or at least it has sometimes been hard for me, and I’m probably the most privileged person I know. Big deeds of power however, seem to require that we risk it. And by big deeds of power I don’t mean flashy predictions by prophets who purport to know exactly what God has in mind, or who can boost of their fitness at biblically inspired detective work. Paradoxically the Markian Jesus tells his disciples the gospel he is sending them to profess requires not flashiness, but a walking stick, sandals, and a single cloak. This gospel requires vulnerability and a willingness to trust even our very lives to the wellbeing of strangers, come what may. This gospel, Paul adds, is made evident in weakness, however powerful and amazing our visions and startling our revelations, even of paradise. The prophesy I think the Markian Jesus is trying to get us to hear, is not one of doom, but of the daily good news of the many blessings we all have and the possibility that maybe, somehow, we can do, be, and know good news ourselves. And so as that pendulum swings toward why bother, or worse, self-satisfied predictions of the doom of someone else, I think Jesus is saying stop it, listen, look, notice, even now I am healing a few people; even now a spark of empathy can ignite; even now good news remains possible.  Yes, there will be bad news, I’m sure I’ll hear more of it as I continue to drive around the state of Maine. There’s 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? Yes, bad things are happening, really really bad things and hiding our heads in the sand will not make them go away. Yes we can rest assured that more bad news is coming tomorrow and frankly the weight of sin and suffering is and will continue to be heavy, but whatever the final bad news will be assuming that such finality must and will someday come, our daily job, our daily task is to be people of the light, if we can possibly manage it. As the Psalmist put it “We are to ponder God’s steadfast love and wonder at the beauty of our beloved city.” As Mark suggests, we are to go out on our journeys ready to encounter one another, openly assuming the best from our neighbors, even when experience has taught us bitterly to expect the worst. Above all we are to anoint with oil those who are sick, not to tell them that they deserve the misery that’s coming to them.

On a beautiful summer day in the state of Maine, in a flash rainstorm at the top of Mt. Washington, after a long climb with friends and watching people be kind to one another, perfect strangers meeting in the general store, on the T, in the subway in New York, and even on the roadways going back and forth from one place to another, all I can think is, who wants all this doom anyway? Can we please stop wanting it? May we err today on the side of good news? May the drip drip drip of daily sorrows fail to win the day and may God’s true prophets speak to us of hope and wholeness and refrain from wishing for the worst.

Amen

~Rev. Dr. Jennifer Wright Knust

Associate Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins, Boston University

posted in Guest Preachers on 07.8.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 07.1.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

Galatians 3: 23

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Something Unearthly and Final

1.  Later in the summer evenings, seated in the dark natural womb of our hedged backyard, you can hear a strange cacophonous chorus.  A small Toyota drives past, its muffler nearly superannuated.  There are crickets, humming from nearby, yet from nowhere.   A prop jet cruises overhead, spraying its round steady roar.  Then there is the neighbor’s radio, and a couple who murmur and mutter as they stroll out front.  Somewhere a screen door bangs shut.  And yet another car, stereo pounding. But then, lovely and strange it comes, and as from a foreign shore or the far bank of the river Styx, one faintly overhears—how unspeakably sweet—the long, low mellifluous whistle of an unseen train.  A train whistle at dusk:  is there not something unearthly and final in such a sound?

2.  Every dawn breaks differently from the last, as the older and sicker and more lonely among us can see, better than others.  Some may watch from the dawn for spiritual reasons.  Most who see it daily, one suspects, see it through the lenses of sheer loneliness, or throbbing and sleep stealing pain, or nightmarish angst.  You are awake, again.  And there again is the tempting, promissory light of yet another day.  See it break!  A luminous haze.  Or a streak of dull yellow.  Or even a sky now confederate gray, now federal blue, now…orange! and crimson! and rose! and all manner of Fire.  The color of dawn:  is there not something unearthly and final in such a sight?

3.  To touch.  To touch and to speak and to speak with touch and to touch with speech.  For four years you have been in uniform and at last you lie down again beside the mother of your children.  Such a touch.  Or maybe you were crippled, nearly killed, in an atrocious accident and slept, years, downstairs in a makeshift hospital bunk until, at last, you lie down again against the husky shoulder of husband become nurse become husband again.  Such a touch.  Or, maybe, you are estranged for years when Grace reunites you two and again you rub cheek to cheek.  Such a touch.  The touch of human love and desire:  is there not something unearthly and final in such a feeling?

4.  The footrace is overlong and you are past the wall, the wall of endurance.  You have hit the wall.  Now, only out of dumb habit do your legs move, still, forward and forward.  Another hill, another mile.  You ache and you hurt, but mostly you thirst with an arid dusty mouth and cracked lips.  Now!  Someone has thrust a cup of cold, clear water to you.  You lift it and you drink.  The force of water upon thirst:  is there not something unearthly and final in such a taste as this?

5.  There is a scent, an aroma that  your friend wears, partly natural, partly cosmetic, partly a strange mixture.  You can sense it in his sweater, in her office, in his car, in her closeness, in his intimacy.  It has no name.  But it is a fragrance which outlives her, or him, if only for a few weeks or months.  Of all things, it makes cleaning the room unbearably and sweetly awful and hard.  This is a fragrance to end every other.  Such a scent:  is there not something unearthly and final about such a fragrance?

Come with me for just a moment this morning out to the very edge of life.

For the human senses all have their own horizons, their own outer limits, their own twilight zones:  sound, sight, touch, taste, scent.  They all have their zenith, nadir, and apex—their horizon.  Each, bittersweet, is a foretaste, a harbinger and a chilling reminder of the brute limits of our life, even—no especially—at its very very best.  They take you out to the limit.  To the end of the pier.  To the crest of the hill.  To the edge of the cliff.  To the brink of…eternity.

Come with me for just a moment this morning out to the very edge of life.

The Apocalypse of God

Where human experience ends, God begins.  Like a tangent touching a circle.  On the far side of that train whistle and that orange dawn and that erotic touch and that slaking taste and that heavenly scent—there, God.

A preacher some years ago spoke in a rowdy college auditorium.  Posters lined the walls.  One read, “God is other people”.  The preacher began:  “I have come to put in the comma.”  And he walked to the wall poster and penned in a comma:  “God is Other, people”.

God is Other.

When Paul spoke to the Galatians, he preached the revelation of God.  The greek word is apocalypse.  The apocalypse of God.  The God beyond god.

This is why, in the first instance, the earliest Christians worshipped Jesus’ death and not his life.  For in the cross of Christ comes God’s final, martial apocalypse.

God’s last word.

In Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, in this marauding and final act—the revelation, the apocalypse of God—God speaks and acts.  And we today, east and west, may be with appreciation of millenium and holy war viscerally closer to the New Testament than almost any other generation, save that of Jesus and Paul and John.

Behold a mystery, out at the very edge of life.  The apocalypse of God finishes all millenial fear and all jihadic anger.

The apocalypse of God:

Permeates

Invades

Steps in

Attacks

Transforms

Eclipses

Seizes

Graces

The apocalypse of God:

Is not freedom of the will but freeing of the will.

Declares war on this territory of tyranny

Repairs, rebuilds, replaces…all else.

And there is no religious addition, no postscript to the redemptive, apocalyptic act of God in Christ.

This is why St Paul can be so outrageously, shockingly bold to say—it is a baptismal formula—that in Christ there is no longer any difference based on religion (Jew\Greek), or on economics (Slave\Free) or on sex (Male\Female).  He says it with the finality of the millenium and with the ferocity of Holy War.

The Apocalypse of God invades our twilight world.  Even in church—the last refuge of a scoundrel.

See, hear, taste, touch, smell it.

First, this church opens its doors every day to religious and unreligious, alike.  The apocalypse of God is, simply, the end of religion—the end of distinction based on tradition alone, or doctrine alone, or tribe alone or habit alone.

Second, every year we pool our money in community.  It is an uncanny event, to collect and disburse a million dollars and more, from each according to his ability and to each according to his need.  The apocalypse of God is, simply, the end of money—the end of distinction based on wealth alone, or position alone, or inheritance alone, or success alone.

Third, this month we begin to hear again the event of the preached Word.  The apocalypse of God is, simply, the end of sex—the end of distinction based on body alone, or gender alone, or orientation alone, or physique alone, or appearance alone.

Oh, I know.  You can so easily miss the apocalypse, since it appears in a mere open door, a mere collection plate, a mere soprano voice.  You can miss it, for it lies over the edge of our experience, and touches us as if from nowhere, on a cross.

I dare you to watch for what is real.  The erasure of religion, the toppling of money, the disappearance of sex.  All killed.  All defeated in God’s millenial jihad.

Without religion to separate us, without money to enslave us, without sex to divide us, what will become of us?

Why…we will become a beachhead in the invasion of God’s new creation.  Real Millenium.  Real Jihad.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 06.24.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

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Mark 13:1-8

1. Preface:  Andrew Young on Faith and Religion

A few years ago Boston University was graced by the voice and presence of Andrew Young—activist, pastor, theologian, congressman, ambassador, mayor and close confidant of Martin Luther King.  One pastor said:  “He is one of our ‘wise men’”.   We were honored to be at breakfast with him, across a round table in the Howard Thurman center, guests too of the office of the Dean of Students.  BU students, Ken Elmore, and Kathryn Kennedy provided the hospitality.

For those of a certain generation—those of us now with bifocals, aging joints, haphazard memory, thinning hair—Andrew Young is a wise man and an icon too. We are aware, too, that for ranges of humanity in other generations, his name is slipping from its household word quality into more of a vintage mode.  C’est dommage.

Mr. Young answered several questions.  One:  “What should the relationship be of politics and religion?”  You might be surprised at his answer.  It recalls Paul in the 15th chapter of Romans, extolling the virtue of those, his enemies, who nonetheless were preaching Christ.  There is wisdom in magnanimity, and there is magnanimity in wisdom…

Every great revolution in the history of this country was supported by a religious revival or enthusiasm—the Revolutionary war, the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement…No, I do not agree with Pat Robertson and those folks, but I also recognize that they are doing some good in the world…they are sending missionaries and feeding the hungry and other good things.  Faith and politics invariably go together.

2. American Eschatology:  21st Century Consolation Literature

It is a particular, peculiar, and potent intersection of the two which concerns us this morning.  In our time, religion and politics have intersected at an unusual point, that of the doctrine of the last things, of eschatology, or the doctrine of the Christian hope.  As we have propounded for six years from this pulpit, on a reliable hope hangs our future.  But to approach such a globe saving, history opening hope—I speak here of salvation in the little and in the large—we shall need to clear the ground of unreliable hope.  The remaining historic churches (orthodox, catholic and protestant) have done a poor job in contesting the region of hope.   We have not steadily and repeatedly reminded both church and culture about what, historically, and so theologically, we may understand regarding biblical teachings about hope.  We have not done our job, to translate tradition into insight for effective living.  To some degree we have turned aside from the apocalyptic language and imagery of the New Testament, in turn embarrassed, frightened, offended or simply baffled by the ancient hope, like that in Mark 13, read some moments ago.

And what has become of the void of interpretation we have left behind?  It has become filled by material about being ‘left behind’!  Of all the dangerous literalisms which can infect the pseudo-interpretation of scripture, none has become more damaging than the literal, non-historical, rendering of apocalyptic material in the New Testament.

A summer or two ago, one of our Marsh Chapel members came by the office.  He told me about his workmates who were reading popular apocalyptic material, from The Late Great Planet Earth to Left Behind.  “Can you do something to address this part of Christianity for the rest of us?”  His question is the basis for our national summer preaching series this year, 2012.  Over ten weeks we shall do our best, with a little help from our friends at Boston University, to respond.  I thank in advance the Dr Knust, Dr Walters, Dr Jacobson and Br Whitney for their support in the preaching of the gospel on the theme, ‘Apocalypse Then’.

This summer we are excited to present sermons, in June, July and August, which intend to provide reasoned, historical and theological reflection on some of the apocalyptic passages and themes in the New Testament. Our hope is to provide publicly accessible yet theologically responsible perspectives on these texts, in contrast to some other current and popular forms of interpretation. We are privileged to present preachers from the Boston University School of Theology, each of whom brings particular interest and expertise in this area.

For many people living culturally outside the range of religious reality that encourages literal apocalyptic language, the broad reading and public enjoyment of such literature can seem unbelievable.  How did 20 million homes accommodate copies of the fictional accounts of rapture, in the Left Behind series alone?  How did this series become the primary lens through which, for many, the Christian hope is seen?  Kevin Phillips recent work, American Theocracy, in his two chapters, Radicalized Religion, and Defeat and Resurrection, put a full spot light upon this phenomenon, including its connections to political agendas.  According to Phillips, 55% of all Americans believe the Bible is literally true and  59% of all Christians expect the events of the Book of Revelation to occur (p 102).  When combined with the sort of covenantal ‘exceptionalism’ and ‘righteous remnant’ perspective that often accompanies such a reading of the Scripture—found in Ireland, South Africa and the American South at crucial junctures—the influence of literal apocalypticism has become significant.  ‘Lost Cause’ religion becomes the seedbed for left behind theology (p110ff).

Further, these affirmations and perspectives are often tinged with a particular kind of understanding of God’s will.  A few years ago, during the outing of  a bright, effective large church pastor who homiletically condemned but also apparently practiced homosexuality, several evangelical commentators reflected on ‘God’s timing’ in bringing forth this ‘revelation’ about Pastor Haggard.  ‘God just decided that it was time to bring this to people’s attention’ is a comment typical of this position.

Timing is everything , but is everything God’s timing?

On this (mistaken) view, God is free, but we are not.  God is free to be, but humans are slaves of providence.  God is making the choices about when outings occur, not actual humans.  At crucial points, there is, on this worldview, a hearty willingness to let go of human freedom, human responsibility, and human wisdom gained through hard experience, and to let God take the blame.

Which, of course, is the sad heart of literal apocalyptic.  In apocalyptic, the future is not open, not evolving, not influenced by the myriad choices of individuals and groups--and so not my responsibility.  I let that go.  No, in apocalyptic, the future is assured by God, controlled by God, chosen by God and so is God’s sole responsibility.  So, in letting go, I let God be, well, God.   It is a temporarily consoling perspective for those who crave such fleeting consolation.   It is a darkly fascinating rendering of the slogan, let go and let God.

But it is not true.

Not to our reason, not to our experience, not to our tradition, and finally, in careful interpretation, not to our Scripture either.

3. Ancient Christian Apocalyptic Eschatology:  1st Century Consolation Literature

On the basis of sound biblical interpretation, it is time to leave behind ‘left behind’ thought.

Our gospel lesson, Mark 13 was probably written in or near the year 70, in the shadow of that century’s judeo-christian version of 9/11, the final destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.  Our chapter today assumes that the reader—‘let the reader understand’ (v14) will intuit the imagery of buildings and stones.  More, the later Gospels are written in the ever lengthening shadow of a truth hard to swallow, at least for the early church.  The end was not in fact in sight.

Jesus, Paul, the earliest church and most of the New Testament carry the common expectation that within days or years, but soon, the apocalyptic end of the world will occur.  All were mistaken.  Even 2 Peter, who changes the math, and makes a day equal to 1000 years, has grudgingly to wrestle with the delay, the postponement, of the first Christians’ fervent hope.  Recite 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18 several times and you will get a sense of what this apocalyptic hope entailed.  It is early Christian mythology.  As with all myth, it carries meaning, including meaning for us.  But as a world-view, as a view of history, it is wrong.

It did not happen.

What Jesus predicted, and Paul expected, and Mark awaited—did not happen.  The end did not come.  And centuries of further sparkles of expectation, from the Montanists, to the Medieval mystics, to the Millerites of upstate New York, to the Jonestown community of 1978, to the Y2K enthusiasts of just a few years ago, did not make it so.  December 12 2012 will also come and go with the sun rising and setting the next day. This biblical apocalyptic may be mythologically meaningful, but it is chronologically corroded.

Further, the language and imagery of the New Testament are apocalyptic through and through.  Apocalyptic is the mother tongue of Christian theology, especially of Christian hope.  So our beloved Bible must be interpreted anew, in a non-mythological way.

Fortunately, the New Testament itself begins to do so.  Some of that reassessment is beginning in our passage this morning—‘the end is not yet, this is but the beginning’.  Some of the ethical application and communal reinterpretation of this will come in a few verses:  you have no idea if or when the end will come so, in scout fashion, be prepared.  But most of the courageous imagination in this regard is found in the Gospel of John, aided somewhat by the later Paul.

The fictional, pseudo-biblical, consolation literature of our 21st century apocalyptic literalism needs to be left behind.  It is not true:  not to the Bible, not to the church, not to the mind, not to your experience.  Humans may make of this earth the scenery of the new novel, The Road.  We pray, pray it may not be so.  But even if it were to occur—the end is not yet.  You cannot escape your responsibility for the future of planet earth by hiding behind the skirts of an unfounded, ultimately unbiblical apocalypticism.  It will not do, in this sense, to let go and let God.

We are not free to avoid our responsibility to the environment, with the excuse that the Lord may return in a generation or two anyway, and who needs gasoline in the rapture?

We are not free to avoid our responsibility to seek a common global peace, cognizant of the hard won insights of pacifism and just war theory both, on the bet that time is running out for the late great planet earth.

We are not free to construe current events in the Middle East on the templates of colorful but unhistorical apocalyptic myths, for the consoling succor of somehow thinking that God handles the Middle East any differently than Asia or the Alaska.

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.

And for goodness sake, leave behind ‘left behind’.

4. Coda:  Andrew Young’s Worldview

We could see at breakfast that Andrew Young had aged.  He walked more slowly.  His skin is weathered.  He carried some more weight.

But he is a wise man, our wise man.  And he lives in hope.

Asked about his education, he recalled a single informal study group, led by Professor Bill Bradley of Hartford Theological Seminary.  The students gathered for hours of conversation, encouraged by their teacher.  “That group gave me hope.  They gave me my worldview.  The worldview I have to this day.  It is a worldview centered in Christ”.

Young’s worldview owes something to Reinhold Niebuhr, with whom we close:

“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.”

~Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill

Dean of Marsh Chapel

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 06.17.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

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Though I have almost no nautical knowledge or understanding of shipbuilding, one of my favorite museum exhibits has always been the collection of maritime paintings at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. These are masterfully executed renderings of eighteenth and nineteenth-century ships from all across New England. Their aesthetic, which is captivating to me, combines strength and power with delicacy of line and grace of movement. However, while the paintings themselves are unbelievably detailed, maritime paintings as a genre fall into a very limited number of categories: you have ships in a calm harbor; ships in a storm; whaling ships in pursuit; ships in battle; ships in battle in a storm; and, the tragic ne plus ultra, the shipwreck. Despite the restricted subject matter, I think part of my fascination with these paintings, beyond the antiquarian aspect, has to do with what you might call their moral message: even the pinnacle expressions of human craftsmanship and ingenuity are no match for either the elements, or human nature; for wind and water or war.

Wind and water have always been used as metaphors for the spiritual realm. Right in Genesis 1, the Spirit moves over the waters, ruffling the abyss, churning it up as God began the work of Creation. In the Exodus, the Lord sends a driving east wind to part the Red Sea and let the Israelites walk across on dry land. Jesus, who in his teaching used the metaphor of the Holy Spirit as wind, walks across the raging sea to the terrified disciples, and calms the storm, demonstrating his command of the natural and the supernatural world.

Wind and water: we can see outlines, direction, response; we can feel the pressure drop, we can smell the rain on the air before it falls, but the forces that cause this are invisible, and out of our control.

And so it is with the Holy Spirit, which two Sundays ago we celebrated on Pentecost. We feel the Spirit and see its effects; it is Presence, but not a Presence that can be pinned down. The Holy Spirit is the wildcard of the Trinity. The Spirit itself does not speak; it only speaks through.

The Holy Spirit is the opposite of every broad human preference: where we want order, predictability, control, tangibility, and hierarchy, the Holy Spirit is unbound, unpredictable, out of control, immaterial, and, to use Biblical language, “no respecter of persons.” Especially important persons!

In other words, the Holy Spirit is rarely good news for the status quo.

In today’s scripture readings, physical reality, the facts of this world, its established structures and relationships, “real life” as it is often called, is pitted against spiritual reality, the immaterial, the hidden but strongly felt presence of God manifest, the great mystery of our existence.

The Israelites, in the lesson from the Old Testament, want a king. The age of rule by the judges and prophets is coming to an end. The days of the Exodus, and of wandering in the wilderness, of being led by a pillar of cloud and fire, are long gone. The Spirit of the Lord has rested on various prophets and judges, speaking through them. When Israel has followed the Torah, the Law, it has prospered; when it has not, it has faced disaster.

But now the great prophet Samuel is old, his sons are corrupt, and Israel is tired of this system. “Appoint for us a king to govern us, like other nations.” We just want to be like everybody else, the chosen people say, sounding a bit like junior high school students. We want what everyone else has! Why do we have to be different? (pause) Why can’t we have a king that we can see and touch, who can speak to us directly, not from a mountain or fiery cloud or in thunder, not from behind the curtain of the Temple. We want someone accessible. We want someone who will go out ahead of us and fight our battles. This is yet another dig at Yahweh. Hasn’t he been fighting for them? What about the walls of Jericho? What about entering the promised land of Canaan? But they want someone in a crown and a shiny suit of armor, not a hidden force from above.

Now at this point Samuel could have said, “Okay, but how about a constitutional democracy?” But he doesn’t. He consults with the Lord, who tells Samuel that they are really rejecting the Lord as king, and not Samuel. The Lord tells Samuel to “give the people what they want,” but to warn them about what life under a king will really be like.

By forgoing the spiritual leadership of the Lord as king of Israel, the people will be subjected to economic oppression. Samuel’s sons may be taking bribes and hogging the sacrificial meat, but that is nothing compared to what a king will take: their sons and daughters, their labor, their harvest, their livestock. Samuel tells the people “You shall be his slaves.” You would think that, after Egypt, this would maybe give them pause; but it does not.

So Samuel anoints Saul to be king over Israel. Saul’s main qualifications for kingship, we learn in 1 Samuel, are that he comes from a wealthy family, he is incredibly handsome, and he is much taller than anyone else in Israel. He definitely has the ancient equivalent of “presidential hair.” In other words, he is everything they want. And he is an utter failure, who will be replaced by David, of Goliath and slingshot fame. And so the nation of Israel begins their long and difficult relationship with monarchy, which will end in exile and the destruction of the Temple, the biblical version of the maritime shipwreck painting.

The Israelites’ impulse—to prefer the physical, visible and tangible to the spiritual—is a characteristic of human nature. At some point or another, we have all tried to fix spiritual problems, or, if you like, emotional or psychological ones, with physical solutions. We want a quick, clean and tangible fix. We prefer to deal above the surface only.

We are unhappy in our relationship or in our job, so we buy lots of things we don’t need and fill up our houses with stuff. Or we decide that if we were ten or fifteen pounds lighter, we would feel much differently about our lives. Or that we need to renovate or redecorate, again. We want visible solutions, even if they are not the right solutions for what ails us.

We do this as individuals, and we do it as communities as well. I’ve been a member of several different faith communities over the years, and I’m always amazed at the lengths church vestries or boards will go to reframe any problem in terms of a physical solution. I think the best example of this was when I was asked, along with several other people from churches in the western suburbs, to work with the remaining members of a tiny, tiny congregation that was finally ready, probably a decade too late, to face its own serious decline and think about its future. There were only about ten people at Sunday worship; they could no longer afford a clergyperson. And so a group of us gathered with them to talk about options; if they should try one last time to grow, or simply to close and end their ministry in that place.

They had recently asked a roofer to look at the church roof, and the roofer had said that it would need to be replaced in about a year. For many other members of the committee, that roof became a big topic of discussion at every meeting. How would we pay to fix the roof. Should we wait the year or try to do it now. Should we take out a loan to fix the roof. And on and on. This roof got lots of attention, sitting atop an almost completely empty church!

Now, I am a person not generally prone to thoughts of arson. But I did catch myself thinking . . . once or twice . . . how convenient it would be if, for some reason, this dilapidated old millstone of a church building would just—you know—disappear, go up in smoke, collapse, what have you—at night when no one was there . . . and then we could get on with the real work that we were called together to do: to decide if this congregation had a future. (I didn’t give in to these thoughts, by the way, and the church building still stands: as condominiums.)

As followers of Christ, we always want to be aware of the temptation to solve our problems with concrete, tidy solutions that completely bypass the spiritual realm, and thus avoid the will of God, and the examination of our souls. The spiritual solution to whatever problem we are dealing with is often time-consuming, messy, and full of vulnerability on our part. Because it involves faith and trust in God, whom we can’t see. It’s much easier, as individuals, families, or faith communities, to do our own version of fixing the roof, distracting ourselves with something that is tangible, but immaterial to our problem. Or, worse: our own version of anointing a king, taking our trust away from our very present but hidden Lord, and placing it in someone or something of this world. The Bible’s term for that is “idolatry.”

But the Holy Spirit, always calling to us, always reaching out to us, wants more for us than superficial solutions: the Holy Spirit wants wholeness and abundant life for us. And this is only possible through deep grappling with what is really wrong under the surface, not with what is easy to fix.

Jesus, in his earthly ministry, was always calling on those who followed him to pay attention to the hidden but present things of God, to the way that the Kingdom of God was trying to unfold in this world. And so he held the Spirit of God, and spiritual relationships, above human institutions and natural or biological relationships.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus, still at the beginning of his ministry, has been traveling around, healing people, casting out demons and speaking in strange parables. He decides to return home for a while. But when he gets to Nazareth, the scripture says that “when his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.”

Upon hearing that his mother and brothers and sisters are outside asking for him, Jesus says, “Who are my mother and my brothers? Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

Jesus denies his biological family, his “family of origin,” we might say, in favor of the spiritual community constituted by those following God’s commandments.

This moment is completely consistent with Jesus’ teaching elsewhere. Let’s review, for a minute, what we might call Jesus’ family values.

A man who wants to follow Jesus says, “Teacher, first let me bury my father, and then I will follow.” Jesus replies, “Let the dead bury the dead.”

Another time, a woman in the crowd calls out to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that nursed you!” Jesus answers, “Blessed are they who hear the word of God and do it.” And even more challenging, in Matthew 10: “I come not to bring peace but the sword . . . and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”

Friends, these are Jesus’ family values. Not very traditional, are they. Difficult to accept. The Spirit of God has more claim on individuals than their families. This, frankly, is a radical notion even now, let alone in the first century.

A little aside here, about Mary. Jesus, as we heard, rejects the notion that his mother is to be honored simply for the fact that she is his mother. Instead, Mary is held in the church’s memory because of her faith, and her assent to God’s will for her. As Mary’s cousin Elizabeth says to her in the Gospel of Luke, “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” [Luke 1:45] It is Mary’s belief, not her biology, that makes her blessed. And in this, we are actually able to imitate her.

Jesus didn’t go much easier on other physical identity markers, such as tribe, nationality, and class. All of this was secondary to life lived in obedience to God’s will.

Women and slaves held leadership positions in the earliest house churches founded by followers of Jesus. This was unheard of among the Greek mystery religions that competed with Christianity for converts, and it was one of the reasons why the young church grew so rapidly.

In God and in Christ, we are not limited by our earthly identity markers, by our gender or sexual orientation, by our families, our race or ethnicity, by the various tribes to which we belong, professional, educational or class-based. The Apostle Paul said, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.”

This does not mean that these things become invisible or insignificant. It means that they are not the sum of all we are in God. In Christian community, we are able to transcend the restrictions placed upon us by the circumstances of our lives.

Jesus’ family came to restrain him. Many of us come from wonderful families, and many of us come from less wonderful families. Probably all of us have at one time or another felt restrained by our families in some way: by their expectations of us, or their vision of who we are meant to be, or who we are meant to be with, or not be with. Restricted by their ideas of the limits of what we can accomplish, or conversely, by their ideas of the unlimited things we could accomplish, if only we were trying harder!

Jesus reminds us that ultimately, we are accountable to God alone. We can form relationships in our faith communities that support us in ways that our families, or the members of our various secular “tribes,” cannot. Each of us has to learn to look for the movement of the Spirit working in our lives and in the world around us, and we need to learn how to respond to that same Spirit to bring about God’s kingdom. This is why we need our spiritual brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers. This is why we need to put our trust in God, so hidden and yet so very present, rather than in all the shiny distractions vying for our fragmented attention.

Paul says to us in Corinthians, “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.”

How much attention are we giving to our inner nature? Our physical homes are full of stuff; how much furniture is in our spiritual homes? In whom are we putting our trust? From whom are we getting our support?

One of the things I love the most about the glorious paintings of ships in the Peabody Essex Museum is the way that the water is rendered. The light reflecting off it, the exquisite details of the individual ripples and waves. The ships are magnificent, but the vast ocean itself is even more so.

Our Christian lives are undergirded by the waters of baptism. Through our baptism we received new life, regeneration from sin, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promises we made in baptism, or that were made on our behalf, form the foundation of our faith.

Our baptism may have taken place years and years ago, but we can always float in our baptismal waters. On that day, the germ of our faith, or the faith of our sponsors, joined with God’s infinite and vast faith in us to create an indissoluble bond that will always sustain us. This bond will remain when all else, even our physical bodies, has passed away. So, finally, the spiritual life is real life, and it is only in the Spirit that we become truly alive. In God’s name, Amen.

~The Rev. Regina Walton

Curate, Parish of the Good Shepherd (Episcopal), Waban, MA

www.goodshepherdwaban.org

posted in Guest Preachers on 06.10.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

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Three weeks ago, Katie Matthews was awake at 2am.  Her good friend, she learned hours earlier, had died in New Zealand, one of three Boston University students lost in a car accident.  Katie wondered what to do.  She could hardly believe Austin was dead.

Katie was about to graduate: an education major, a future teacher, a native of Albany NY, a parishioner at BU Marsh Chapel, a leader, a person of faith.  She felt something needed doing.  Could she do something?

Katie thought maybe 20 or 30 of her closest friends could get together on the plaza of Marsh Chapel, Boston University, a space centered on the monument to Martin Luther King, Jr., to honor her friend. The Chapel website has a page about vigils.  She made some notes.  She froze for a moment.  Could she carry this off?  She began to reach out on Facebook in the wee hours of the morning.  Could she do something?  She decided she would try to do something. One of the chaplains at BU saw her positing and pledged support.

At 10am the next morning, unbeknownst to Katie, 20 BU administrators met to consider the dreadful tragedy of 3 deaths a half a world away, and just a week before Commencement.  They began to plan for various responses. Could we do something, they wondered?  The chaplain reported that a student group was planning a vigil that night at 8pm.  Would they like some help?

By 8pm not 20 but 300 students, faculty, and staff were gathered with candles on Marsh Plaza.  The President spoke.  The Provost spoke.  The Dean of the Chapel spoke.   Students spoke.  Live streaming carried the moment around the globe, especially arranged for those other students studying in so many places around the world. And for their parents. Katie spoke too. 'I knew I had to do something' she said.  Here are some other things said at the vigil:

Tonight we are One BU in mourning.

We lift the names of those who died:  Austin, Roch, Daniela.

May we help one another find our way to some solace.

Our hearts go out to their parents and families.

We want to face loss with love, grief with grace, disappointment with honesty, and death with dignity.

May we find the power and faith to withstand what we cannot understand.

Standing beside the monument to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., let us remember him not only as a prophetic national leader, but also as a wise and caring pastor, who said in a similar time of tragedy and loss. ‘when it gets dark enough you can see the stars’.

Against a dark backdrop, brightness stands out. The brightness of friendship, relationship, youth, hope, dreams, faith, and love…

It is important to speak.  But as the dusk settled in the Cradle of Liberty, Boston MA, and as the stars came out in the dark, and as the candles flickered in the gentle breeze, speech gave way to presence.  Speech is important.  Presence is more important. The vigil lasted 40 minutes, the gathering around candles lasted 2 more hours.  Stories. Hugs. Tears. Hugs. Stories. Will somebody light my candle?... I wish we had Southern California weather, we could use this plaza like this all year long, this way...Do you remember that time we were in Rhode Island and…

Dusk comes.  When dusk comes it is good to gather together, to grieve, to remember, to accept, to affirm.  Our limited tenure walking on this green earth—our mortality, our fragility—is not easy to face, especially if we try to do so alone.  That may be what Katie Matthews felt at 2am.  So she found a way, just before Commencement, at a time of great joy, to help to gather our community in grief, in a time of great sorrow.  Maybe she remembered the Apostle, ‘rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep’ (Rom. 12:15).  Maybe she recalled the psalmist, ‘weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning’ (Psalm 30:5).  Or maybe she was thinking of her fellow Bostonian Robert F. Kennedy, ‘one person can always make a difference’.

At Commencement on Sunday May 20, Boston University tried to strike this same spiritual balance of celebration and mourning, in opening words, in invocation, and in benediction.  Katie Matthews had led the way.

She leaned forward into grace, sanctified, made a bit more whole, or holy, by grace.  Maybe some of the history and memory of her University, of this place and plaza and pulpit, was active and at work with her.

‘My grace is sufficient for thee’, wrote the Apostle Paul, ‘for my power is made manifest in weakness’. (2 Cor 12: 29)

By the grace of God, we are gathered this morning, a divine grace working to make us whole, holy.  A sanctifying grace.

Isaiah acclaims holiness, the ancient apprehension of holiness enshrined in our ancient Scripture.  The heavens are telling the glory of God.  Creation.  Holy, holy, holy…The mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the mystery in which we live.  The fingers of a child in the first day of life—mysterium tremendum.  The sudden sense of awe at daybreak—mysterium tremendum.  The uncanny arrival of a thought or image, just as it is needed—mysterium tremendum.  Parents placing shoulder boards, epaulets, on their sons and daughters in the hour of commissioning—mysterium tremendum.  The gifts of the table, bread and cup and thanksgiving and memory and presence—mysterium tremendum.    As we watch the celebrations in London this weekend, we recall the rainy night, the strange dark night in late May 1738, in which a troubled cleric, John Wesley, found himself nearly alone in a Sunday evening vesper.  Quiet readings from Romans 8—our chapter today—and from Martin Luther.  A hymn and the London fog to follow.  But then, there, strangely, he found his heart strangely warmed, and had awakened in his soul a sense of personal faith, the prevenient first step on the path of grace.  ‘I felt my heart strangely warmed’, he later wrote.   Will we open our hearts to a personal nudge this morning?

John acclaims such a nighttime encounter, a birth from above.  The baptism of water is a place to start.  But the encounter with spirit, holy spirit, is the doorway to the divine.  Nicodemus moves out of the shadows, one in a long train of several persons in this gospel.  For all the universal power of John, his gospel is a catenae of personal encounters.  Mary at the wedding.  Nicodemus at night.  The woman at the well.  A healing personally delivered.  A man born blind.  Lazarus scratching his way up and out.  We are meant, in this gospel, to picture our own encounter, our own moment.  Holy Communion is the altar call of sanctifying grace.  Step and step.  Hand and cup.  Hand and bread.  Step and step.  A reporter called recently to ask if in Methodism, the historic root of Marsh Chapel, one who has greatly strayed can be forgiven?  A current news story raised the issue.  Hear the gospel:  God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.  The marrow of the divine is loving and giving.  The effects of our sin remain, often incalculable and unexpected.  Sin remains—but does not reign.  Yes, one who has greatly strayed may be forgiven.  In fact Mr. Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, made his signature question to be:  ‘Do you know God to be a pardoning God?’  So you say yes?  And God forgives you.  And your neighbor forgives you.  Now comes the hard part:  you will need to forgive yourself.  Can you forgive yourself? For being that thoughtless, that unheeding, that overweening, that unsuspecting?  The spirit blows where it wills, free and loving and gracious.  Are you ready to have done with lesser things, to take up the cross and follow?  Here is a just and justifying place to start:  Do you know God to be a pardoning God?

Paul acclaims a leading spirit, making children of earth into children of God.  A shout shall lead them!  Abba! A spirit bearing witness with our own best selves, our ownmost selves, that we are children of God.  We have the capacity—immersed in grace prevenient, absolved in grace rightwising—to be clothed in sanctifying grace.  Ours is an apocalypse, a cosmic grace, grace as divine freedom to choose, to change, to take a chance.  John Wesley asked his preachers:  ‘are you going on to perfection, and do you expect to be made perfect in love in this lifetime?’  Perfection meaning wholeness, holiness of heart and life.  Completion, a roundedness of heart and life.  And he would add:  if you are not going on to perfection what you are going on to?  Imperfection?  We are not finally perfectible, but we can go on, grow on, learn and grow.  Start with the ten commandments (no other God, no graven image, no taking of the name of God in vain, remember the Sabbath day, honor father and mother, do not kill, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness or covet).  Start there.  Step up to the beatitudes (happy are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the hungry for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted for righteousness—and you when falsely condemned).  Step up there.  So day by day learn to:  Love God and love your neighbor.  It is not that we lack direction.  We lack desire and stamina and willpower and persistence, yes, but not direction.  We know the way, back toward One who is loving us into love and freeing us into freedom, by means of a sanctifying grace.  Are you going on to wholeness?

Katie Matthews said, ‘I just knew I had to do something.’  You will come forward to the table of grace in a moment.  What do you need to do this week?  Come to receive, but come with a response, too.  What do you need to do this week to sense the holy, to feel forgiveness, to grow in grace?  Come to eat and drink, knowing, though, with Katie, that this week you will want to do something.

Breathe or breathe thy loving spirit

Into every troubled breast

Let us all in thee inherit

Let us find that second rest

Take away our bent to sinning

Alpha and Omega be

End of faith as its beginning

Set our hearts at liberty

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 06.3.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

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Paul on Spirit

In the passage of 1 Corinthians read earlier, the apostle Paul has exhorted his energetic Corinthians to sense the Spirit.

We could use a measure of Spirit, too.  In this religious mudslide across the country that has deposited determinism, quietism, pessimism into our common life, we especially hunger for what Paul writes.  We truly hunger to pick up what he is putting down here.  Are picking up what he is putting down?  It’s not heavy.

The future?  The future is open, and at least in good part the future of our planet will be forged by the freedom of individuals and groups to make choices for health and life.  The present? The present is a good time.  The best time to plant an oak tree is a hundred years ago.  The second best time is today.  The present is second best, and that is pretty good.   The past? The past is not in charge.  The past is not dead, and therefore not past, but the past is not ruling the roost.  You are.  What you choose not to do matters.  That is why we continue happily to harp on the crucial centrality of tithing, and of inviting.  Give away 10% of what you earn, and invite some person every week to church, and you will be like the child born on the Sabbath day:  happy, witty, bright and gay.

It is the one Spirit, the same spirit, from which we drink this morning.  You know this well, but a few reminders for those who may have been absent on Pentecosts past, or asleep like Elijah’s Baal, on Sunday’s past, or just not really interested in Spirit.  First, for Paul there is absolutely no separation between spiritual life and life.  Spirit is in life and the much prized division between material and spiritual, prized in ancient Greece and prized today here, Paul humiliates.  The same spirit roves and ravages in what is said, what is predicted, what is healed, what is remembered, what is done, what is given.  For him, there is no distinction between religious and secular.  The same Spirit inhabits all.  Second, the Spirit is the Lord.  And the Lord is the Church.  It is like a body.  Many parts, one body.  Did you notice just where you expect Paul to say “church”—so it is with...---he says Christ.  For him the church is the body of Christ, in some mystical, magical, mysterious, miraculous way.  Christ has actual feet.  Yours.  Actual hands.  Yours.  Actual muscles.  His.  Actual voice.  Hers.  Actual presence.  Third,  Paul distinguishes gifts from fruit.   Fruit if general, lavished upon all—love, joy, peace….Gifts are individual, to one this, to one that.  Fourth, the reason for the gifts.  You have particular gifts.  What are they?  Name one.  You have at least one, and Paul in know way means his glory hole collection list here to be exhaustive.  I do find it compellingly interesting that his list is almost all related to hearing and speaking.  It is curious, and not explicable, that he names faith as a gift that some have, and others, apparently, share by extension.  You may go to church for many in your family and neighborhood, too.   Fifth, the Spirit brings freedom the Spirit evokes grace, the Spirit spreads love.  Sixth, and most significant, in the opening of the gifts of the Spirit, for Paul, all of these manifold gifts have one central purpose:  the common good.  The common good.

In most ways, the conditions in Corinth could not be more globally different from our own.  They in tatters, we in Sunday best.  They in a borrowed upper room, we in a fine Gothic nave.  They in untutored simplicity, we in educated elevations.  They in uproarious shouting, we in decency and order.  They at the salt water edge of the Mediterranean, we fresh water fish all, along the Genesee.  They expecting that the form of this world is passing away, we not expecting that, unless by nuclear incident.  And what could we possibly have in common with such a community so torn by Gnostic speculations, incestuous relationships, lawsuits filed member against member, questions about the morality of marriage, selfish inhospitality at table, and a boundless enthusiasm that like earlier Methodism must have seemed “noise and nonsense” to those all around?

One thing we share.  As a global village, and as a church, we are perennially threatened by the various shadows and filters that can muffle the sense of full, same Spirit of which Paul speaks here in Corinthians.

Our particularities, in church and nation, can become the sideshows that eat up the circus, the varieties that threaten to obscure the same Spirit at work in all.

The Sound of Spirit

Notice the vocabulary of the gifts Paul names.  They all have voice.  Our age has become one of email communication: visual communication.  Email is a wonderful tool, as long as its visual features are kept in mind.  It is immediate, indelible, irretrievable, international, infinitely transferable.  And it carries no voice, no body, no sound.  Paul has tuned his ear to the speaking of the Spirit, in many voices.

The Spirit speaks in any utterance of wisdom.  Note, this is not any religious as opposed to unreligious wisdom, but simply whatsoever things are true.  Truth finally needs no defense, even as falsehood finally has none.  It is an utterance which Paul connects first with Spirit.

The Spirit also speaks in the utterance of knowledge.  Paul does not equate wisdom with knowledge, a lesson for the knowledgeable to bear in mind.  He may have in mind the knowledge so prized by his spirited opponents, the Gnostics, who like most predominant religious expressions in most ages, including our own today in America, gain adherence through certainty, whether knowledge of the stars, or the planets, or the spheres, as in Paul’s time, or whether knowledge of eternity, or calling, or determination, as in ours.  There is a reason that determinist, certainty promising religions, Gnostic or sacramentalist or fundamentalist, generally do well.  To certainty Paul opposes confidence, as in the next gift.

The Spirit also speaks in faith.  Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God.

The Spirit also speaks in healing, that is in words of healing:  ‘Rise, take up your pallet and walk’;  or, ‘your faith has made you well’; or ‘Lazarus, come out’.

The Spirit speaks in the dynamite of change, of miracle that is the unexpected, whether understood naturally or supernaturally.  All nature sings…

The Spirit speaks in prophecy for the common good.  The Spirit speaks in conversation about other speaking, discernment.  The Spirit speaks, even, Paul allows here, in ecstatic utterance, glossallalia,, as long as other speech is able to hear some meaning.

The sound of Spirit has reverberated in every rebirth of the church, from the noise of Pentecost day, to Paul and his noisy Corinthians, to Augustine and his noisy sermons, to the noisy whispering in the medieval monasteries, to Luther’s noisy shout, “I can do no other”, to Wesley’s noise and nonsense, as his detractors said, in band, class, meeting, conference, worship, sermon and music, all the way to Azusa Street and the birth of post-Methodism, the Pentecostals. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is noise, sound, freedom, speech.  And this in great variety.

We too have varieties of gifts, right here.  We are gifted with various passions in our speech to one another at Asbury First.  There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit, varieties of service, but the same Lord, varieties of activities, but the same God.  To one is given the gift of… music, mission, management, money, Methodism…all for the common good.  Let each one match his passion for a particular gift, with the shared commitment to the common good, known in our faith by tithing and invitation.

Gifts Activated for the Common Good

When conviction is quickened by imagination there is action that makes a difference.

Jesus of Nazareth spoke by imagination when he said, ‘blessed are you poor, for God’s reign is for you’.  John Wesley spoke with imagination when he said, ‘there is no holiness save social holiness’.  Vaclev Havel spoke with imagination when he said, ‘Hope is not prognosis, but a willingness to work for what is right’.

We may differ in our choices of tactics.  On supports governmental programs.  Another advocates work by private companies and charities.  A third prefers a blend.  But all are supported by the same Spirit, at work for the common good.  God is at work in the world to make and keep human life human.  The world can work.  It can.  We need not discount environmental decay, nor nuclear accident, nor global warming, nor fundamentalist terror, nor rampant disease.  All these and other horsefolk of the apocalypse have long been spied.  Still, the word can work.  The future is open.  The present is a really good moment.  The past is not in charge.

When imagination is quickened by conviction there is action that makes a difference.  Imagine for a moment, a spirited moment directed toward the common good…

Wouldn’t it be nice if the prisons in this country were half-empty and the streets free of homeless vagrants?

Wouldn’t it be nice if every generation received a better education than the one that preceded it?

Wouldn’t it be nice if every man and woman who wanted a job could get one, and so we did not waste a single person or view any person as ‘redundant’?

Wouldn’t it be nice if schools and hospitals and churches and charities had more money than they knew what to do with?

Wouldn’t it be nice if men and women were getting along so well that abuse and abortion were virtually unheard of?

Wouldn’t it be nice if budgets, public and private, were set with a clear, frugal eye to the future, and without being based on borrowing from the next generation?

Wouldn’t it be nice if the measure of success in this great country were formed not against the question of individual achievement, but against the desire for the common good?

Wouldn’t it be nice if we really took seriously, really believed in a final judgment, the day of the Lord, in which hearts are sifted and measurements made—against the prospect of the common good?

Wouldn’t it be nice if warfare ceased, and if what remained only occurred within the bounds of Christian just war doctrine?

Wouldn’t it be nice if democracy, not only of voice and vote, but also of education and endowment and employment and environment were our song?

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could go to bed at night, not as those who all day have been rivals for position and power and privilege, but as those who have worn an easier yoke and a lighter burden, that of the broken Master, that of real community, that of the common good—I mean as those who have helped each other?

Wouldn’t it be nice if the criterion for medical care were simply, “how sick are you”?

Wouldn’t it be nice if the communal virtues, the gifts of Spirit that work for the common good, the very signposts of salvation—responsibility, industry, frugality, respect for authority, a sense of limits—replaced those of mere success?

Wouldn’t it be nice if every kid in this country had enough to eat tonight?

Wouldn’t it be nice if the love of Jesus Christ, and the fear of disappointing him, and the hope of meeting him in glory, and the joy of working in his fellowship were all that we really wanted and needed?

Wouldn’t it?

Too idealistic?  Really?  Jesus, John Wesley, Vaclev Havel, did not think so.  Where has our early love gone?  Where is the love revival of our first kiss of faith?  Have we begun with the Spirit to end with the flesh?  Where is our imagination?

George Bernard Shaw, as usual, had it right:  “You see things as they are and say ‘Why’?  But I dream things that never were and I say ‘Why not’?

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 05.27.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear Dean Hill's introduction of The Honorable Sandra L. Lynch and her address.

Click here to watch the video of the address.

Boston University’s 2011 Baccalaureate speaker was The Honorable Sandra L. Lynch, Chief Judge of the Unites States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Later in the day, Judge Lynch was awarded an honorary Doctor of of Laws degree at BU’s 139th Commencement. For more information about Judge Lynch, please read BU Today’s article.

There will be no sermon text posted for this Baccalaureate address.

posted in Baccalaureate, Guest Preachers on 05.20.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the entire service.
Click here to hear all four reflections with interlude music.
John 15: 9-17

"This I Believe" Narratives

Michael Bruffee

Click here to hear Michael's reflection only.

I believe that at our root we are all joyous, compassionate beings with a natural drive to be loving and kind to each other.

My spiritual journey here at Boston University all started with a question. When I was a freshman I was a little lost, and didn’t know what I wanted to do, academically or otherwise. I had lots of big questions about life, such as who am I, what is my passion, how do I help people? So I did what any college freshman would do: I went looking on Facebook.

There was this little club called the BU Zen Group that met every wednesday night, right here in the basement of Marsh Chapel, so I decided to join them for sitting meditation. As I remember, those first fifteen minutes of meditation were the longest I’d ever sat still in my life. But something about the quality of that experience resonated with me and planted a seed, for here I am five years later and I’ve dived right into the practice of Buddhism.

There was no one telling me how to live, no one telling me what I should or shouldn’t do, there was just a sense of, here, come sit down with us and experience your life as it unfolds in this moment. Find your own truth, then use that to help other people. It was astonishingly simple.

I believe in people. I believe that people love to be acknowledged, that we need to be attended to, and that deep down we all recognize that this feeling of being separate from each other, separate from the universe, separate from God, is fundamentally delusion, and that in reality we have a shared existence. We are not separate from each other, and we are certainly not separate from the universe--we’re very much a part of it! And we create suffering for ourselves and others when we forget this point and start wanting something extra out of our lives, or pushing certain things away. Rather, if we can recognize this shared existence, if we practice acceptance of everything that appears in our lives moment to moment, then we can wake up to our true compassionate nature and help this world.

Out on Marsh Plaza in front of this chapel is a statue of doves wrought from iron dedicated to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his vision of peace. On one side is a quote from a sermon Dr. King gave more than a few times. He said, “Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, the command to love thy enemy is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization.” We have this legend here at BU that when the world finally realizes this vision of peace and brotherhood, those iron doves will be released from their pedestal and fly off into the sky. I am grateful to be at an institution which has given me the opportunity to wake up to that spirit of unconditional love. That’s not just a Christian idea--all the major religious traditions of the world teach the same thing. In Zen we call that Great Love, Great Compassion, the Great Bodhisattva Way.

It’s even as simple as keeping a smile on your face. It’s the kind of smile that, when you are doing your job and helping others, appears all by itself. There’s a contagious quality to smiles and laughter--when we see someone smiling, we can’t help but follow suit, and that gives us a little bit of peace. No matter what I end up doing after graduation, it has become my aspiration in this life to share that joyfulness and peace with as many people as I can. I hope that as you go about your own lives you can, in your own way share a little piece of joy with someone. Wake up, find your own truth, help others.

Muna Sheikh

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As a Muslim student, I'm often asked questions about my views on Islam and the role that my faith plays in my own life. Over the past four years at BU, thinking critically about my faith experience and practicing my faith in a college environment, my own answers to these questions have changed considerably.

I came to college with a bias against my own faith community, and an unwillingness to associate myself with Islam. I had accepted a negative narrative about Muslims that framed Islam as something backwards, dogmatic, and incompatible with American ideals. Growing up in a family in the South Asian diaspora, I had developed an understanding of Islam that was culturally specific and didn’t always accord with my situation as an American. I didn't understand Islam well, and I was both distraught over my misunderstandings about the religion and unsure about where I could find answers to the questions that I had about my faith.

Coming to college afforded the opportunity for me to examine my faith academically and authentically. Studying, living, and interacting in an environment that encouraged me to engage in discussion and dialogues with students of different backgrounds pushed me to think critically about my interpretation of Islam. As I explored religious sources independently, for the first time, I learned to cultivate a faith practice that both respected and celebrated what was culturally normative for me and was also religiously authentic. On a personal level, my faith has helped me cope with challenges, and it has served as the backbone and motivation for everything I do.

Over time, I also came to understand that integrating into a college environment didn't necessarily mean that I had to keep my religious identity intensely private. Rather, I came to understand integration to mean embracing and appreciating my own faith as something that could offer something positive in a pluralistic environment. It meant reaching out to different faith communities to change negative stereotypes, to foster love and respect, and to replace mutual judgment and uncertainty with compassion and understanding.

Most importantly, my faith has encouraged me to think about what I offer to society, as a college student. My faith keeps me focused on the ultimate goal of using the skills I've gained at college to rectify societal injustices, alleviate human suffering, and benefit society. It's meant never losing sight of the common bond that we share with humanity, and our responsibility to help one another, unconditionally.

Over four years, my faith has become something much more than an individualized experience. Through working to stay involved in my community, by striving to serve others and build bridges between our various traditions and backgrounds, my experience as a part of the BU community has helped me give depth to my religious beliefs and kept my faith practice alive.

Rebekah Phillips

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On your way into church this morning, you may have noticed Marsh Chapel’s ornate doors, appreciated its statue of John Wesley, or noted the beautiful stones that create this strong Chapel. On your way into church this morning, you may not have noticed Marsh Chapel’s “Fallout Shelter” signs. Now, I’ve never been too worried about needing a nuclear fallout shelter on campus, but with a best friend obsessed with zombie apocalypses, it’s nice to know I have one just in case.

As one might expect, as a bright-eyed youngin’ from South Carolina in my first semester, I needed some shelter- and not only from the bad weather Boston is wont to provide. I made my first group of friends at Marsh Chapel. I joined Servant Team. And then one fateful day, I managed to land a job at Marsh Chapel. What sealed the deal was the bummy tee-shirt I was wearing, depicting a rock opera by “The Who.” Ray Bouchard instantly became my boss and mentor for classic rock theology.

Again, as one might expect, a youngin’ from South Carolina in my first semester, I did a lot of painful growing and changing. At times, I felt decimated by a natural disaster: College. The hail of homework, the debris of dating, and the floods of friendship. And where did I find myself? Here, in your friendly local fallout shelter.

I remember one particular day, I stormed into Brother Larry’s office, distraught and demanding answers. “Brother Larry, Brother Larry,” I exclaimed throwing myself in his office chair, “I don’t think I believe in hell!” I expected some comforting words, a shelter from that storm, and a “You’ll come around, pray about it.” But no, that’s not how shelter works at Marsh Chapel. No, Brother Larry just looked up and said, “So?” See, here, shelter is not a place to hide from the scary parts of life and growth, shelter is the place that gives you safe space to prepare for those scary parts. Shelter is that calm and gentle question that invites you to sit with your questions. “So?”

Over the past four years, I have come to Marsh Chapel for work, worship, guidance, food, theological exploration, and nap time. This has been my home at Boston University; my shelter. This safe space has made my spirit strong. A young man, whose initials are Dean Robert Alan Hill, once said that “We must remain faithful to the growth.” The patience and gentle questions at Marsh have remained faithful to my growth. I have grown within these walls in ways that will support me outside of these walls. This I believe: Religion and faith at their best, offer not only a shelter from the world, but a place to prepare to better be a part of the world. This I believe: Wherever I am called to serve God’s world, I can go with strength, knowing that I will always carry a safe space with me.

Kate Rogers

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The first time I entered the British Library during my semester abroad in London, I knew I had found my academic temple. Replete with literary treasures—two of the four surviving Magna Cartas, the original Gutenberg Bible, and scribbled first drafts of The Beetles most famous songs among them—and abounding with resolute scholars, vested with pencils and laptops, I felt connected to the whole history of humanity in the pursuit for something higher. The British Library gets 8000 new publications a day, so it naturally became the base from which I wrote my term paper, and in that setting I felt as though there was nothing I couldn’t learn. In that space, with hundreds of years of scholarship behind me, and hours of reading before me, I felt close to God.

I believe that all parts of life can be, well, life giving, and I came to BU (a year later than most of my graduating class because I transferred as a sophomore) knowing I wanted such an experience from my new university. I believe things that are life giving push you to be your best self, achieve what you can, and accept who you are. I wanted invigorating classes with professors as invested as myself. I wanted to be surrounded with refreshingly broadminded people. And, I wanted a connection to a church family, where I might talk about the joys, doubts, and beauty of my faith with people who wanted to do the same. Since the moment I arrived at BU I have been hearing the echo of Howard Thurman, asking me to look for the sound of the genuine and urging I find the things that make me come alive. I didn’t only experience these awe-inspiring suggestions in gothic chapels or studious classrooms, but also in casual settings like Outlook, Marsh’s LGBTQ ministry or around the table of my cooperative house’s nightly dinners.

Occasionally, when I tell people I study Christian Theology and plan to go to seminary, they ask if knowledge of Christian history and teaching is incompatible with my faith in God. To them I say, not at all. Reading and analyzing the legacy of believers behind me has deepened my sense of the divine in everything, and further I tell them for me, knowledge and faith must be fused together. People tell me the Bible condemns homosexuality, and I say proudly my denomination and community affirm the sanctity of human love, connection, and commitment found in all human relationships. And when people tell me they’ve left the church because of its hypocrisy, I can confidently offer my experience at Marsh Chapel as a counter example. In the classroom as in the church, I believe my faith in God’s presence has infused everything I’ve done at BU. This I believe: settings where you feel pushed to find the genuine in yourself and search for the things that make you come alive, academically, personally, and spiritually, must not be restricted to lofty libraries, but invigorate and animate the core of human life everywhere.

posted in This I Believe on 05.13.2012 at 11:00 am

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By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service.

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1 John 4: 7-12

Mark 16: 1-8

‘To be mature is build schools in which you will not study, to plant trees under which you will not sit, to grow churches in which you will not worship.’ (Ernest Campbell).

John would agree:  John Dempster.  John Appleseed.  John Wesley.  1 John.  John would agree.

The cataract of Easter, its shattering, thunderous, calamitous, munificent, apocalypse of love, leaves parcels and morsels strewn about the lawn of life.  Our Holy Communion in Eastertide is forever an unfinished grace.  We stumble about, following the Easter kiss of grace (gnadenkusse), the Easter quickening.  We bump into bits and pieces left behind the resurrection tornado.

For one thing, the gospel for this Easter, Mark 16, re-read this morning, ends in mid-flight, end in mid-sentence, its last word a preposition, ‘for’.  A weak case (from the critical moderate viewpoint0 finds a couple of other sources in antiquity, in ancient Greek literature, which end with this dangling preposition.  But the much more muscular view, as usual, is that of the moderate critics, not that of the critical moderates.  The end of the scroll (as often happened to beginnings and endings of these documents) probably was torn and lost.  The Easter gospel is literally (not a word I usually associate with the Bible) unfinished.  Its ending is unending.  For….what?

If you doubt this, let me remind you that all the subsequent editors of Mark tried to fix up the finish.  Beginning with Mark.  There are three different endings to Mark.  The unfinished original, and two finished unoriginals, the shorter and the longer.  They are not improvements, except in a grammatical sense.  Next come Matthew and Luke, writing 20 years after Mark.  They also both replace the unfinished finish, with a finished finish, not original, but, like a nice addition to an old house, appropriate to the space.  The Fourth Gospel enlarged Mark’s sketch (a version may have influenced John), with three other stories (of Mary, of the disciples, and of Thomas).  And of course Paul knows nothing of any of this, so had nothing to add.  Whether or not you want to think about unfinished grace as the metaphorical unfinished symphony of Being is your choice.  The fact stubbornly remains:  Mark 16 ends unfinished, in mid-sentence, ‘they were afraid for…’

Life is open.  Freedom is real.  Easter causes us a little humility about what we think we know.  Unfinished grace cautions us at Easter.  Life is unfolding in unfinished grace.  If, for instance, you have attended a recent lengthy conference or meeting which was by all accounts an unmitigated disaster, and you are tempted to despair, beware.  Grace is afoot, alive, active, and unfinished.  There is more future than you may think in the future.

For another thing, in the aftermath and after glow of Easter, sometimes when we come to our senses we deeply realize unfinished work, unresolved issues, unappreciated love.  Every year, studying the Gospel of John, this hits like a trailer falling out of a tornado.

I am speaking of Nicodemus.  We didn’t hear about him this year, for he is only in John.  You remember his awkward appearance at night in John 3.  He disappears, but reappears at the very end, John 19:29, and helps Joseph of Arimethea to bury Jesus’ body.  ‘Nicodemus, who first came to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes’.  So poignant, this, so true to life, so accurate about us.  We don’t know what we have got until it is gone.  At last—too late but not too late—Nicodemus responds in love to the Christ who loved him to death.  He shows up at the burial.

Some returning faithful souls from Tampa Florida may this month suddenly realize what has been lost in the Methodist church.  You don’t what you’ve got until its gone.  For 200 years in various forms our church supported a security of appointment, a modest kind of connectional tenure.  In this practice was located the basis for the covenant of the clergy in conference.  In this practice was located the functional basis for itinerancy, in appointment and apportionment.  In this practice was located the final protection of the freedom of the pulpit from harm and muffling by Episcopal leaders for whom such freedom is uncomfortable.   I

In short, the church said to those entering ministry: ‘you study for four years in college, three years in seminary, work for three years under supervision, and agree to go anywhere you are sent at the appointment of the Bishop, along with your family by the way, and live in a parsonage and earn $40,000 a year.  We will at least guarantee you a place to preach, however modest that may be.  But now, the demands on the young clergy are the same, but the responsible balance, the fair deal from an earlier day is gone.  All the weight is on one end of the teeter totter.  Beware of mendacious and predatory Bishops:  power corrupts, and absolute power, now in view, corrupts absolutely.  It is the equivalent of eliminating tenure on the Charles River campus in one vote, with no full debate.

Maybe the judicial council will rule this too out of order.  You don’t know what you have got until it is gone.

Nicodemus doesn’t know what he has until it is gone.  Still, there is a way—100 pounds of treasure way—for Nicodemus to find faith.  Part of the joy of Easter is that this spiritual street theater involves audience participation, a play unfinished until you, like Nicodemus, step upon stage, take your cues, memorize and deliver your lines.  Unfinished grace includes us—if we will allow it—at Easter.

Yet another thing:  as bread and wine await.  1,000 of us worshipped here in the triduum—an explosion.  Odd, I looked up at Frances Willard, Easter day.  She is found standing perpetually alongside Abraham Lincoln, here in our western stained glass.  To finish Marsh Chapel, sixty years ago, Daniel Marsh had to decide on one final figure, for the last stained glass window.  The choice became a cause célèbre, with letters and advice flying fast and furious.  In a day when people felt strongly about Connick stained glass windows.  Who should it be?

Marsh finally chose Frances Willard, the female force behind prohibition.  Interesting.  A quintessential Methodist choice, in one sense, and a lingering, awkward physical presence on a secular, urban, large, cold, Northern, anything but temperate let alone abstinent, campus.

Here is what President Marsh wrote about Frances Willard:

‘I dare to prophesy that as the years go by and the history of the New World comes to be read…the name of Frances Willard will stand by the side of Lincoln’ (Lady Somerset of England).  Dean of Women at Northwestern…Her upbringing, her religious convictions, her natural bent for reform…put her in the temperance movement…President of the WTCU…A statue of her stands in the rotunda of the Capitol…It is a monument to a beautiful life. (Charm of the Chapel, 182)

Willard said: ‘temperance is moderation in the things that are good and abstinence from things that are foul’; ‘I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum’;  ‘the struggle of the soul is toward expression’ She was born near Rochester (Churchville).  She gave 400 speeches a year in the company of her longtime companion, Anna Adams Gordon: ‘there is no village that has not its examples of ‘two hearts in counsel’ both of which are feminine’.  For Willard, temperance was primarily a movement at advancing the cause of suffrage (to my mind anyway), ‘ Yet eighty years after the experience and failure of prohibition (with thanks for Ken Burns’ recent portrayal) Francis Willard is still here, and we still have unfinished work, unfinished imaginative labor to do regarding alcohol.   I am not in favor of prohibition and not a t-totaller, although I grew up in a dry home.  But as a Dad, granddad, pastor, chaplain, Dean and minister, if the choice is between prohibition and sexual exploitation, I take prohibition in a New York minute.  Our work on college campuses regarding alcohol is unfinished.

I will linger with Willard a brief moment longer.  Notice her way of living.  She lived all her life with her life long partner.  One day, our denomination will honor the emerging Frances Willards in our midst, the 10% of those 8 and 9 year old kids who know that somehow they are just a little different from the majority, who know they have a God given and different orientation.  We will bring them to Marsh Chapel and introduce them to one of their forebears, Frances Willard, a feminist, suffragette, international leader, dean, temperance advocate, pioneer, and very probably a gay woman of the 19th century.   She didn’t see her main goal, voting rights for women, in her lifetime.  That happened twenty years after she died.  But it happened.  If you are limping home from a General Conference that was an unmitigated disaster, take a little heart from those who labored for causes that came to fruition only long after they had died.  Just so, unfinished grace challenges us at Easter.  Grace challenges us to remember that real change takes time, but it will come.  It is coming.  It is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave…

‘To be mature is build schools in which you will not study, to plant trees under which you will not sit, to grow churches in which you will not worship.’

John would agree:  John Dempster.  John Appleseed.  John Wesley.  1 John.  John would agree.

Beloved let us love one another, for love is from God and one who loves is born of God and knows God.  He who does not love does not know God for God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.  Beloved if God so loved us we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God;  if we love one another God’s love abides in us and is perfected in us.

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

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 05.6.2012 at 11:00 am

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