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Sunday
May 29

If…Then…

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear Sermon only
John 14: 15-21
Psalm 66: 8-20
1 Peter 3: 13-22
Acts 17: 22-31

Once again I find myself compelled at the outset, and even in his absence, to thank Dean Hill for his gracious offering to me of a preaching series during the late spring and early summer. Some of you may remember that we began on May 8, Mothers Day, with a reflection on life’s journeys in conversation with the resurrection story of Jesus meeting the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Yes, here you are, whether you intended to be here, or more likely not, on Memorial Day Sunday, right in the middle of Br. Larry’s 2011 secular holiday preaching series. Whether you are here in person or listening over airwaves or internet signals, it is good that you have come on Memorial Day weekend, so that you may pray that what follows you might quickly forget. Speaking of prayer.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray.

God of memory and of mindfulness, guide our hearts and minds in these moments of reflection that they may be turned to you, to your wisdom and your grace, and that our lives may benefit from the beneficence of your most Holy Spirit. In the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, we pray.
Amen.

Have you ever sat and watched as a baby, sitting in the middle of the floor, attempts to get up and go after a ball or some other toy that she has flung across the room? This attempt at locomotion is often accompanied by a facial expression of some degree of anguish. It is as if said baby wants to say, “If only I could get up and go, I could get across the room and get my toy. Alas, since I cannot get up and go, I shall have to put on a show of consternation in order to motivate someone around me to get it for me.” Amazingly, as the facial expression of anguish turns to vocal consternation, someone usually does just that.

And so it begins: life in the conditional. If the baby cries, then someone goes to get the toy. If the child pushes the button, then the screen comes on. If the adolescent breaks curfew, then the parents ground him. If the young adult gets a job, then she can pay the rent. If the politician commits adultery and his constituents find out about it, then he will be voted out of office. Well, maybe. Life in the conditional is at the heart of the human endeavor. It is so much so that the great modern philosopher Immanuel Kant put it at the heart of his articulation of the nature of knowledge and experience alongside time and space: the conditional movement of causality is constitutive of pure reason.

Actually, reality is a bit more complicated than this. And so we ask, do you live in the world of Sir Isaac Newton or the world of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr? This is an important question for us here at Marsh Chapel who seek to live faithful lives, and not merely for the physicists working in labs across the street. So, let’s have it, do you live in the mechanistic universe of Newton, where things move around bumping into each other like billiard balls such that when one thing encounters another it causes the thing it runs into to alter course? Or do you live in the probabilistic universe of Einstein and Bohr, which is to say the quantum universe, where outcomes of interactions are only certain to a degree of probability? While it is probably best for us to leave it to the physicists to demonstrate why the latter is the more robust view in the laboratory, we can confirm it in our own lived experience. After all, does the adolescent not run a rough calculus of the probability that his parents will ground him for staying out past curfew? And does the politician not calculate both the probability that he will get caught in adultery and the probability that his constituents will find out about it? Perhaps we will address the question of why it is that both adolescents and politicians are so likely to miscalculate their respective probabilities when we gather for the third and final installment of the 2011 secular preaching series on Independence Day weekend.

And so it is that we find ourselves living in a probabilistic conditional world. It should not be entirely surprising, then, that we carry the presuppositions of our probabilistic conditional world over into our spiritual lives. Our lesson this morning from 1 Peter is an excellent example of this phenomenon. “Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?” Transcription: If you do what is good, then you will not be harmed. The fact that the world is not merely conditional but probabilistically conditional comes into play in the next sentence: “But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed.” That is, for those of you who are good but fall outside of the probability of not being harmed, and thus are in fact harmed, do not worry too much, because you are still blessed. This is beginning to sound a lot like the witch test: if she drowns, then she was clearly not a witch! Oh dear.

It is an interesting thing to consider that religious people figured out that the world is probabilistically conditional long before the physicists did. After all, how often have you heard stories of people praying, “God, if only you will X, I promise to Y”? How often have you prayed such yourself? Martin Luther prayed in the forest that if he would survive a thunderstorm then he would become a monk. He survived, so he did in fact become an Augustinian. Of course, it is notable that these promises tend to arise at the extremities of life. That is, these promises tend to come about when life itself is at stake, taking the form of, “God, save my life and I will give my life to you.” This has the side effect of effectively negating the probabilistic quality of the conditional. After all, if God does not save them, then we never get to hear their story of praying that they will do something if God saves them.

No, it is much better to look to the more mundane spiritual conditionals to understand their probabilistic nature. These are more wont to take the form of, “God, if you will only find me a parking spot, I promise to stop doing whatever it was that I was doing that made me late in the first place.” Here in Boston, I am quite confident that there are more such prayers offered daily in the confines of motor vehicles than all of the prayers offered in all of the houses of worship in this city combined. And multiply that number by 100 when the Red Sox are in town! This mundane conditional is much more interesting because of the fact that it frequently does not come true. How often have you seen a host of angels swoop down and carry off a car so that you can take its space? No, often as not you are left driving around frustrated that your meeting is starting in a building mere feet away and you are stuck outside trying to dispose of a massive hunk of metal.

Of course, not all non-mortal conditionals are so trivial. How many of you have offered prayers, perhaps in this very nave, for family and friends who are terminally ill? And how many of them have died? How many of you have prayed for work? And how many of you are still unemployed? How many of you have prayed for peace? And how long will we remain at war? The fact of the matter is that these non-trivial conditionals do cause some people to abandon faith and abandon God. That this happens should not be surprising. But what is truly fascinating is how many people do not flee from faith and God upon finding themselves outside the desired probability. In religious and spiritual life we are accustomed to the probabilistic conditional.

The movement from if to then that constitutes the conditional is a place of deep anxiety in human life. The probability that the if will not come about, and the probability that the then will not in fact follow, leaves a great deal of uncertainty as to how and when to move. And the fact that the probabilistic conditional figures in the literature of our spiritual heritage does not make living in the midst of such instability any easier. However, acknowledging the reality of the probabilistic conditional as one of the primary modes of human engagement of experience is not the only testimony of the religious and spiritual traditions. The good news offered in the spiritual quest is precisely a transcendence of the if-then dichotomy of human affairs. There is more to life than predicting a probability and then hoping for the best. Our Gospel lesson from John highlights this point. “If you love me, keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.” The if-then conditional of the first sentence is not the last word. The uncertainty of Good Friday’s crucifixion is transcended, but not eclipsed, in the confidence of the Easter resurrection. The uncertainty Jesus’ departure in the Ascension is transcended, but not eclipsed, as we shall see in the next weeks, in the confidence of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The promise of the Holy Spirit is not simply another conditioned clause. It is its own indicative statement. The Advocate will come in spite of our fulfillment of the condition, not because of it. We are saved by faith, not by works.

This movement of transcendence-sans-eclipse is an important one in our spiritual lives. The transcendence of the if-then dichotomy is the source of the hope that is in us, of which we are called to account in 1 Peter. And yet, we are called to give this account “with gentleness and reverence.” This is because in this life we never fully depart from the dichotomy of the probabilistic conditional. We can never escape the vicissitudes of life. At the same time, the transcendence is not merely cast off into some future afterlife. The transcendence-sans-eclipse of our Easter and Pentecost experience is a source of real hope and transformation in our lives now.

Paul testified to the importance of this transcendence in his speech in front of the Areopagus in Athens, accounted in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Paul testified about the unknown god to which the Athenians had built a temple. He testified that this unknown god of the Athenians was “the God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth.” Furthermore, he testified that the creator of the world cannot be bound in shrines or works of human hands, or even served by human hands. Paul testified to a God who transcends the conditional tense of daily life. God “allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope and find him – though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’” Our searching for the transcendent God should not lead us to place our hope in something finite, but it should also not lead us to place our hope in something to come in the future, which is, after all, also finite. No, the transcendence-sans-eclipse of the hope promised in Easter and Pentecost provides a living hope in the midst of the probabilistic conditional experience of life.

The hope that is in us is not that God will fulfill all of our desires, no matter how mundane or extreme. It is not even that we will always come out on the preferable side of the probabilities. No, the hope that is in us does not transcend the conditional character of life by resolving its dichotomies but transcends the conditional character of life without eclipsing that life as it is. After all, it is the life God gives us and calls good. Instead, the hope that is in us is the hope of life and love. “Because I live, you also will live,” Jesus proclaims in the voice of the fourth Evangelist. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10: 10). “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them an reveal myself to them.”

The good news of Jesus Christ for us today is that life and love are not faint hopes. They are hopes in the power to overcome the brokenness of life in the conditional tense. They are movements toward wholeness that draws together not only the preferably possibilities but also those we might wish to avoid. Life would not be life without death. Love would not be love without struggle, pain and loss. “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” And is not the achievement of holding such disparate and diverse realities of life together in a more awesome whole far greater than finding a parking space?

Amen.

~Br. Lawrence A. Whitney, LC+
University Chaplain for Community Life

posted in Br. Lawrence A. Whitney, LC† on 05.29.2011 at 11:00 am

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Sunday
May 22

Baccalaureate

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear Dean Hill's introduction of Dr. Zewail and Dr. Zewail's address
Click here to watch the video of Dr. Zewail's address

Boston University's 2011 Baccalaureate speaker was Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Ahmed Zewail. Later in the day, Dr. Zewail was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree at BU’s 138th Commencement. For more information about Dr. Zewail, please read BU Today's article.

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

posted in Baccalaureate, Uncategorized on 05.22.2011 at 11:00 am

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Sunday
May 15

This I Believe

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear all 4 reflections with interlude music

Acts 2:42-47
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10

"This I Believe" Narratives

Tyler Sit

God be in my end, and in my departing.
I have spent four years at Marsh Chapel, with some hiatus in the middle for living abroad. The worship service we are sharing today has followed me through my college career, regardless the continent I was on, and for the sake of our time (which is now) and the sake of our place (which is here), I would like to frame my beliefs in the elegant rhythms of the Marsh Chapel worship service. And what better place do we have to begin but the end—from this choral response, let us step back to the prompt. God be in my head.

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you…

I believe we can be a benediction for each other, and in so doing witness a gospel in the present tense. I believe the Spirit lives in the hearts of all, and we cannot begin to understand the nature of God without the participation of all.

I mentioned I lived abroad but surely the most important travel I have ever done was to visit the temples of every-body, to sit in the pews of another person’s understanding of God and glissando in reverence of another person’s chorus. The past four years gave me conversations with people who envision God from a different angle—my Orthodox Jewish brothers looking back throughout history, my Buddhist sisters looking around and within, my Catholic friends looking—well I’m not really sure, but they are indeed beside me and I cherish them like I do my Muslim classmates and Hindu roommates and the debates I have with the swell of atheism that characterizes this generation.

What a benediction they are to me, how earnestly I try to represent Christ to them.

I believe that our offertory can be a social one, that when we are with each other we can bless others just as we have been covered with blessings. For it is when we are with each other that we find our place within the Creation that has already been worshiping:

All Creatures of our God and King, lift up your voice and with us sing, Alleluia! Alleluia!

It is when we walk in offering and sacrifice to God that we can hear each other, that the prayers of the people can find volume. How greatly the capacity of our hearts enlarge when, kneeling next to each other, we can support the whole world and work to end suffering that we can only touch by prayer. And for the suffering that we will encounter once we step outside of this sanctuary, we orient ourselves right, crying:

Lead me Lord (for I have lost my inspiration), lead me in thy righteousness (for we have rejected our liberation), make thy way plain before my face (Oh You, our object of adoration).

And after such contemplation I find I can’t help but preach about it. To share a gospel with my tongue but also to deliver a sermon with my living—that each song I sing can be like David that each lesson I bring can be like Paul. Not that either of those guys were particularly holy, which works out because I’m not either. The good news, though, is that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, this proves God’s love for us—now all we need to do is prove that we can love each other.

I believe that each morning gives us opportunity to begin worship anew. Just like this morning, how we gather—now, here—where the dawn of the east meets the twilight of the west, and the cool of the north touches the calm of the south. We follow the same worship rhythm, but the song changes with every breath.

Amen.

Monica Castillo

I never suffered growing pains when I was younger. If you can’t see me behind the podium today, you now know why. Childhood didn’t quite prepare me for the lessons I learned in college. I wasn’t challenged out of my comfort zone often. I went to middle school with practically the same people and teachers as I did when I left for college. Change was not something I was used to, but it was something I desired.

On my own for the first time, I felt truly lonely. Seeking to keep some regularity in my life, I came to Marsh Chapel for services on a very windy, but sunny day. I dragged my parents along to a service they said reminded them of “The Phantom of the Opera.” Yes, the music was new for me too, but the message was similar. After the service, they offered a trip to the JFK Library, and I decided to tag along.

And along I stayed. It was in Marsh I found a home away from home. I ran here when news of the stock market crash hit and since then, nearly every crisis I’ve gone through has ended with me coming here for help. Within the first month of classes, I lost one of my youth pastors from home and ended up in the sanctuary crying. I wasn’t alone for long, before someone came and talked with me. I found other people just as interested as I was to find friends and stability. I started to joke that Marsh had adopted us bratty freshmen. One friend and I even made a Marsh family tree, with Dean Hill and his wife, Jan, as our grandparents, Elizabeth as our aunt, Ray as our uncle, and Brother Larry as our brother. To further the joke, I started to write the Thurman Room couch #1 as my address in the red books in the pew.

It saddens me to walk away from all this after only three years. After all this trailblazing, I don’t want to go anywhere else. I want to stay here, in Boston, at Boston University. In my case, I won’t even graduate with the girls I was so closely friends with. They have still a year to go, and I am leaving early. My family is coming up from the South to see me graduate, but I want my Northern family, my Marsh family, to be there too! Perhaps this is a kind of sadness that acts like a growing pain, letting me know it’s time to move on. I fear that to graduate is to lose them. But wherever this graduation process drops me off, I hope to still have my faith in this family. Because that’s what Marsh has taught me. Not faith in the good book-I’ve had that for awhile. No, Marsh Chapel have given me back my faith in the family, faith in friendships, and restored my faith in nearly everyone around me. Perhaps I will be able to walk away from here as I did from my home in Florida, assured that even if I move or they move that we will always have the times we once shared in a place we called home. Perhaps these growing pains would at least lend me an inch or two in time for graduation.

Rachel Hassinger

Good morning!

My name is Rachel Hassinger.

Thank you for including me in your service today.

I started this journey to graduation many years ago at a diffe
rent school. Now I am finishing here at Boston University.

I am a woman of faith. I used to believe in a God that heals. I still do, but it hasn’t been easy.

I grew up a believer. I led the youth group, and studied the bible with my peers and my mentors. I joined ecumenical and other student religious groups at my previous college.
Unfortunately, my experiences with extreme antigay hatred and fear have catapulted me out of the church.

While this may not change soon, I trust, that although my student life at BU did not lead me through Marsh Chapel or other religious groups, my finals days as an undergraduate student are just the beginning of my future -- grounded in a faith that knows no boundaries, a faith that transcends creed, class or nationality.

This I believe:

I believe in a goddess of suffering, a god of true life.

I believe in a spirit of justice, a father/son, mother/daughter, tree of life.

I believe in a faith that shatters and is yet still restored.

I believe in a Jesus that lived on this Earth, and suffered beyond human understanding.

I believe when an officer shot and killed Danroy Henry, a black, 20-year old Pace University student, sitting in a car outside a New York bar last year, our Yahweh mourns. And when that same cop is crowned Officer of the Year, we can hear Her wail in sadness and rage.

I believe that God created each of us in Her image – that race and gender are built by humans to explain oppression based on color, country, gender expression, sexuality or creed.

I believe that a person who steals bread is first and foremost hungry -- that we as a society are accountable for acquiescing to a system that leaves that one – and a million more – starving and underfed.

I believe that God knows no boundaries; God knows no walls.

I believe if we listen to the oppressed: such as the Palestinians, whose homes are being bulldozed in Gaza, the Jews who came before whose lives were shattered, the Muslims targeted by xenophobia and bigotry, or the persecution of the brown skinned in the name of fake borders and walls -- we can hear our Lord calling us to turn over the tables in our temples of greed.

I believe in a Love that seeks justice, in a love that kindles passion and purpose in those that know Her.

I believe that God does not only bless America or Boston University, the wealthy, the light skinned, the able-bodied, or the straight -- god blesses all.

I believe that no matter what humans conjure up as creed, that the single most important truth resides in these words from Jesus: love your neighbor as you love yourself.

RuPaul – host of Logo’s hit show RuPaul's Drag Race -- says it another way: "If you can't love yourself, how (in the hell) you gonna love someone else?"

"Can I get an Amen?"

Radha Patel

Two weeks left of our undergraduate education, and the first sunny day of the season upon us, a new friend and I sat on BU beach. Our professor had just mentioned the saying, “all paths lead up the same mountain” while my friend had recently heard a similar proverb, “the view is the same at the top of the mountain”. Thus began our debate on whether the two maxims had the same significance.

This moment was a triumph for me in more than one way. Not only had I picked up on a nuance in the sayings, but because I myself confessed what I believed to be true. All paths up a mountain indicates, everyone looks for a universal divineness believed to be at the top, while climbing for a view highlights a moment for contemplation at the top.

An underclassman once asked me if I ever found myself overwhelmed, depressed or confused by deciding to double major in religion and biology. It was the first time I was asked to contemplate my personal beliefs and how they were affected by studying religion and science, and I was scared. Until then, I carefully isolated what I studied from my faith. Being a student, there is an understanding that we are to be the pragmatics in society; better to be one while at the forefront of a progressive one. I wasn’t ready for my faith to confront what I was learning. I was frightened by the possibility of coming to the logical decision to reject God. And, I was ashamed to admit, if He did exist, I didn’t want to be punished by God for rejecting him.

Instead, it was easier to shunt those niggling reservations. I even thought to myself that I would reflect when I had the time- I was too busy making friends, studying and traveling to be able to peacefully think. Obviously, this wasn’t successful. Whenever there was a quiet moment, the conflicts between logic and faith screamed to be heard in my head, and so, slowly, in the sanctity and secrecy of my own mind, I began to pose questions in an assumed format: Humans are only given so much responsibility because God believes us to be capable- right? God ensures that in the end, it is a just world- right? I then became more ambitious and I asked: Is there a paramount realization experience to be had if we meditate hard enough? Should authentic reactions of hate, jealousy, and anger, though facets of humanity, be denied because they are ugly, or, are all faiths taking different paths up the same mountain?

Learning and enquiring has threatened my faith, however it is thrilling and I have developed a more nuanced view of it. Questioning is strenuous and a blessing. You are your own most judgmental critic, but in this way, once you form your fluid convictions you understand the path you took to get there.

This I believe: Having absolute static beliefs is easy. Allow yourself to doubt and form dynamic beliefs.

While it may make you feel vulnerable, it is right before then, that you see the view.

posted in This I Believe on 05.15.2011 at 11:00 am

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Sunday
May 8

Journeying On

By Marsh Chapel

Allow me this morning to publicly express my gratitude to Dean Hill for giving me my very own preaching series. Yes, indeed, you have arrived at Marsh Chapel, whether in person, or by radio waves or by internet signals, for the first offering in Br. Larry’s 2011 secular holiday preaching series. We begin today, Mother’s Day, and will pick up again at the end of May with Memorial Day. The series concludes on July 4, Independence Day. I consider it the highest honor to have been invited to participate in the life of Marsh Chapel in this way, although I would encourage you to note that Dean Hill reserved for himself that pinnacle of secular holidays. Yes, the very one you are remembering just now from back in February, Groundhog Day. I can only pray that some day I will attain to such a stature in preaching as to aspire to be invited on so noble an occasion. Speaking of prayer.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray.

Holy and Gracious God, we gather this morning of Mother’s Day and we celebrate the mothers here with us and the mothers, for some of us, who dwell far away. Keep our hearts and minds, this day and all days, in the mothering presence of your most Holy Spirit, that the thoughts of minds and the meditations of our hearts might be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Surely you have had the experience of being a passenger in a car traversing the streets of Boston. You are riding along on your way to an afternoon at the Museum of Fine Arts. You know where you are going. Your driver knows where she is going. You sit smiling as you gaze out the windows. Then, your driver takes a turn. “Hmmm…” you think, “this must be a shortcut. I should pay attention for the next time when I am the one driving.” Another turn. “Really. Interesting. I never would have thought to go this way,” your minds voice utters. A third turn. Now it is impossible for you to contain your words any longer. “Um, where are you going?” “Well,” your companion replies, “I am going to the MFA. Where did you think I was going?” “Yes, I thought we were going to the MFA, too, but the MFA is over there,” you reply, pointing back through the rear windshield. “Yes, dear,” says your companion, soothingly. “But this is Boston. Sometimes it is necessary to circumnavigate the entire city just to get next door.”

Amen? Amen.

“Where are you going?” There are actually two questions bound up in this one verbal ejaculation, but let us begin by taking the question at face value. It is certainly a legitimate question to ask as we consider the journey of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. There is another question that we might wish to ask along with Cleopas of his companion, namely, who are you? That line of questioning, however, at least at this stage, is not terribly likely to arrive at positive results. On the other hand, it is not entirely clear that our “Where are you going?” question will lead to positive results, either given that there is no clear evidence of a village called Emmaus two stadia, which is about fifty miles, from Jerusalem. This is to say that we do not know precisely where Cleopas and his friend were going, but the question remains relevant for us.

“Where are you going?” This question may be a constant, and perhaps somewhat grating, refrain for many of our graduating students here at Boston University. Family, faculty, friends, chaplains: all want to know where our graduates will be going next. Bound up in the question are clearly many other questions. “Do you have a job?” “Are you going to graduate school in the fall?” “Are you staying in Boston or moving back home or somewhere else entirely?” There are broader implications of the question as well, not merely about the immediate future but about the long term. “Do you have a plan?” “Are you career minded?” “What are you going to be, now that you are grown up?” And the questions have implications beyond merely the trajectory of career and work. “Are you going to get married?” “Are you going to have children?” “Are you going to be able to put your life together in such a way that you will both be fulfilled and able to pay the rent?”

“Where are you going?” In a time of global economic and political uncertainty, it can be especially challenging to even acknowledge the question. “Do you have a job?” “No, but not for lack of trying.” “Are you going to graduate school?” “Well, yes, but only because I cannot find a job, and by the way, I have no idea how I am going to pay for it, either now, or in the long term.” “Are you going to stay in Boston or move home?” “Well, I would like to stay in Boston, but Boston is expensive, and although I really do not want to be the graduate who spends the next two to three years living in my parents basement, I really do not see that I have any better options at this point.” Sorry, dear friends, but here at Marsh Chapel we do not preach a prosperity gospel but a Gospel of responsible Christian liberalism, which is to say that we abide in a realistic spirit with great hope for the possibilities of the future. It is in the spirit of realism that we must confess that the prospects are not what we might have hoped when we began four years ago. And it is in hope that we journey on.

It is a funny thing, returning for a moment to our pair of companions seeking to find their way to the MFA, that the question posed by the passenger to the driver, “Where are you going?” is not really a question as to the destination, but as to the route. This is to say that passenger and driver are both clear on where it is they intend to go. They are both aiming toward the MFA. It is just that the real route of the driver does not quite align with the ideal route of the passenger. Indeed, the real question the passenger is asking when verbalizing, “Where are you going?” is, “How are you going to get there?” This too is a question we may wish to bring to Cleopas and his companion on the way to Emmaus. After all, it is a neat trick not only to arrive but merely to set out toward a village of which there is no evidence of existence. How do you get to somewhere that isn’t?

It is my great hope that there is a primacy of the “How are you going to get there?” question in the “Where are you going?” inquisition that our graduates are racked upon by family, friends, faculty, and yes, chaplains. Indeed, of the two, it is the more profound. “Where are you going?” is simply to inquire of a single point, and the final point in the series, at that. “How are you going to get there?” inquires as to all of the infinitesimal points in between here and wherever it is you may be going. Furthermore, it is not so much a quantitative question about the points themselves, but a qualitative and relational question directed more toward the person for whom those points will be constitutive of their life. This is to say that the “How are you going to get there?” question is really a question of “Who are you, and how will you be in the world?” It is not a question of doing but of being, not that the two are ever more than theoretically distinguishable. It is a question of what sort of
person you are and what manner of being you will endeavor to live into.

“How are you going to get there?” The reason that I hope that this question is the primary question implied in the “Where are you going?” inquisition is that this is the question that a university education should prepare you to answer, even if it does not prepare you to answer the “Where are you going?” question on its face. If nothing else, I pray that our graduates have uncovered something about themselves in their experience at Boston University, whether in the classroom, in the dorms, on the athletic fields and courts, in the dining halls, while studying abroad, while participating in community service, or just walking up and down Bay State Road. This is to say what Howard Thurman said much more eloquently: “Do not ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go and do that, because what the world needs is people who come alive.” In the final analysis it is a sense of concrete, embodied purpose, which only comes by moving through the spiritual process of self-discovery and actualization that empowers those who change the world. To transform others, be ye first transformed, and journey on.

Now that we have winched tight the inquisitor’s rack on Cleopas and his companion, perhaps we should stop for a moment and ponder the fact that the two questions that spring immediate to mind for us, “Where are you going?” and “How are you going to get there?” are actually not the question that Jesus poses. Jesus does not ask where these two disciples are going. It would have made sense if he had. After all, we hear throughout the Gospels of how the disciples are constantly misunderstanding what they are to do, where they are to go, and most importantly, why they are to do what they have been given to do. It would make sense that Jesus would be concerned that these disciples have once again wandered off, and as the good shepherd, that he would seek to bring them back to the fold.

Instead of asking, “Where are you going?” Jesus asks, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” Jesus is interested neither in the destination nor in the route but in the relationships built along the journey. If Jesus had been in the car making its way through the streets of Boston toward the MFA, or at least intending to be moving toward the MFA, the driver and passenger would not have been riding along silently such that the first audible sound is the inquisitor’s whip, “Where are you going?” Had Jesus been in the car, he would have wanted to know why the pair was going to the MFA. “Well, there is a new Art of the America’s wing that has just opened, and we have heard so much about it.” “Is American art important to you?” “Yes, we are particularly captivated by the expansive landscapes of the Hudson River School.” “What captivates you so?” “Well, I think it has to do with the way the artists work with light, so that parts of the painting are illuminated while others fall into shadow. In so many ways it is more real than the actual view of which the painting is purportedly a record could ever express.” “Is not this the point of art?” “Yes, seeing the world in an artistic lens tells us more about who we are than we could ever otherwise come to know.”

Of course, the conversation with the disciples fails to actualize the potential for such a conversation. After all, these are the same dumb disciples who have been misunderstanding Jesus and his purpose and ministry since the get go. They are entirely bound up in trying to reconcile themselves to the crucifixion, and now also to the reports that Jesus is resurrected. And so Jesus must turn to admonishment. “‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” Once again, Jesus is left trying to bring the disciples up to speed. It is clear that the disciples have a ways yet to go as they journey on.

Speaking of journeying on, it seems that this is just what Jesus is intent to do, and what Jesus would have done had the disciples not intervened to invite him to Emmaus with them for dinner. Now, it is important to remember that these two disciples did not yet recognize that this was Jesus. Is this not often our experience as well, that we fail to recognize Christ in our midst. Often as not, Christ comes to us in the figure of others, the very same family, friends, faculty, and the occasional chaplain who winch us tight on the inquisitor’s rack. St. Francis said, “You may be the only vision of Jesus Christ someone will ever see.” A dear friend of mine said it even more boldly: “You may be the only Jesus Christ the world will ever see.” It is indeed a great responsibility.

It is significant that, even though they did not recognize Jesus, the disciples invited him into their home for dinner. The saying goes that you should always extend hospitality to strangers because you never know when you might play host to angels. Well, apparently you may also end up playing host to Christ. Jesus becomes known to the disciples in the breaking of the bread. Of course, the disciples later recognize that they had in fact felt the presence of Jesus as they journeyed together along the road, in the familiar sense in which Jesus had always made their hearts burn. Perhaps, not realizing that the feeling signaled the presence of Jesus, they even took an antacid. That is what you do for heartburn, isn’t it? Anyway, they had not recognized him, which is to say, the familiar sense of hearts aflame had not risen to the level of conscious awareness, but now they were aware of the connection between what they felt on the road and what they had felt as they accompanied Jesus throughout his ministry.

This is to say that as you journey on, I would encourage you to extend and receive hospitality. In the end it is neither the goal nor even the path that is truly important. It does not really matter whether or not you ever make it to the MFA. What matters is the relationships you cultivate along the way. This is the good news of Jesus Christ for us today: resurrection and salvation by relationship. I leave you today with the prayer of my order, of the Lindisfarne Community: that we may be as Christ to those we meet, and that we might find Christ within them.
And in all things, make your mother proud. Amen.

~Br. Lawrence A. Whitney, LC+
University Chaplain for Community Life

posted in Uncategorized on 05.8.2011 at 11:00 am

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Sunday
May 1

Spring in London

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear Sermon only
John 20:19-31


1. Love Divine

Love Divine all loves excelling
Joy of heaven to earth come down
Fix in us thy humble dwelling
All thy faithful mercies crown
Jesus thou art all compassion
Pure unbounded love thou art
Visit us with thy salvation
Enter every trembling heart

2. Deeds That Speak

We hear today the ringing conclusion of the Gospel of John, the courageous Fourth Gospel, the gospel of love divine.

Notice the unique appearance of Thomas, so unlike anything else in any other gospel. Notice the power and irony that he who mistakes the gospel of believing for the truth of seeing, nonetheless announces the full gospel’s full truth: My Lord and my God! Notice the gospel writer who forever reminds us that signs and wonders are deeds that speak (Bultmann, TFG, 698). Notice the ardent proclamation of a personal faith that is not a conviction that is present once and for all but must perpetually make sure of itself anew, and therefore must continually hear the word anew (ibid, 699)…The recounted events have become symbolic pictures for the fellowship which the Lord, who has ascended to the Father, holds with his own (696). Seeing is not believing: believing is seeing. Touching Thomas tells the truth.

3. All Weddings Are Royal

Deeds that speak include weddings, royal and common.

The spring London fog lifted Friday and the spring London rain waited and we enjoyed a royal wedding, 2 Billion of us. The hymns, prayers, liturgy, vows, and spirit of the service are closely similar to the dozens of weddings we will solemnize here at Marsh Chapel this year. As the minister said, all weddings are royal and every bride and groom is a king and queen. For a moment the fog of three questionable wars, a warming environment, a cooling economy, and 400 tornado taken in the south lifted and the rain of anxiety waited and there was a dress, a ring, a carriage, a kiss, a party and a convertible. 60 million Britons had a holiday, and you got up early to watch. Why did we watch?

I hope we heard the sermon. A good word about a generous God who evokes generosity in us. A good word about a new century in which the discoveries of the past century we will need to control and manage: the emphasis on science in the 20th century may be giving way to an emphasis on religion in the 21st, a shift from discovery to community, from creation to redemption. A good word which quoted a personal prayer. A good word about seeds of devotion growing into eternal life, of which the Gospel of John eternally speaks. I hope we applied the sermon to ourselves, along with the beautifully read verses from Romans 12.

But I doubt that is why we watched. In fact, only one observer to my ear so far, among the 2 billion, has come closer to the deeper reason for our attention. Those of us listening to Bonhoeffer this spring will not be surprised.

4. Freedland

“The power of the young Elizabeth’s brief scenes in the King’s Speech is not solely chronological. It is not only that she was around a long time ago; it is that she was around then, during what Churchill predicted would be known thereafter as Britain’s finest hour. She is the last living connection to an episode—the island race standing up to Hitler—that has become the foundation story, almost the creation myth, of modern Britain…Britain alone, Churchill, 1940, the Blitz—this is the tale of unalloyed heroism that the country likes to tell and retell itself. And as long as Elizabeth sits on the throne, Britons remain tied to those events directly” Jonathan Freedlander, New York Review of Books, 4/28/2011, 30.

5. Their Finest Hour

We used to remember that. It is the courage in history of a real love of freedom, that has preserved our way of life, and that has us speaking English today, and not German. Wesley said he knew how to prize “the liberty of an Englishman”. That fierce, pugnacious, relentless, John Bull, bulldog, dog with a bone love of freedom. At the right moment, one momentous Spring in London, 1940, Winston Churchill faced down the more polished, better heeled, more popular and more experienced old Britons of his newly formed war cabinet, and steadily led his country away from their desire to compromise with Adolf Hitler. With Belgium defeated, Churchill clung to a love of freedom. With France cut in two, Churchill clung to a love of freedom. With 400,000 men stranded at Dunkirk and escape virtually impossible, Churchill clung to a love of freedom. With the whole German airforce poised to incinerate England’s green and pleasant land, Churchill clung to a love of freedom. With Lord Halifax ready to seek terms and Lord Chamberlain ready to let him Churchill clung to a love of freedom. Read this summer John Lukacs’ Five Days in London, May 1940. He concludes: “Churchill and Britain could not have won the Second World War. In the end, America and Russia did. But in May 1940 Churchill (alone) was the one who did not lose it.” Churchill’s mother grew up south of Syracuse in Pompey. One wonders if some of his paternal love of freedom came from the winds of the Allegheny plateau. Authority is about love of freedom.

6. Hell’s Destruction

When I tread the verge of Jordan
Bid mine anxious fears subside
Death of death and hell’s destruction
Land me safe on Canaan’s Side
Strong Deliverer, Strong Deliverer
Be Thou Still My Strength and Shield
Be Thou Still My Strength and Shield

7. Aldersgate Street

The freedom and love in today’s Scripture lesson provide an alternative. Authenticity, finally, is at the heart of any godly authority.

We once remembered that. It is the experience of freeing love, that ignited our church. At midlife, one enchanting night in the English Spring of 1738, John Wesley heard something said in church that warmed his heart for good. He had been on Aldersgate street that Sunday evening, going to chapel service more from duty than from passion, when he heard a preacher read Romans 8 and also Martin Luther’s commentary on that passage. There is something so fragrant and so full about damp London in the springtime. As he left church, Wesley felt something new, a freeing love in the heart, which is the creation and work of the Holy Spirit, which blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it. Authority is about freeing love. If you missed Easter Vigil, you missed a part of this story.

8. Resurrection Changes Us

“So let us listen to the stories of Jesus and his miraculous birth, his calling of disciples and teachings of friendship, his sharp knocks at hypocrisy and love of childlike innocence, his proclamation that the last will be first and the first last, his miracles of healing and his struggles with fickle crowds, his interpretations of history and parables of the Kingdom, his gospel of love and demands for justice, his institution of sacraments and founding of a beloved community, his bitter betrayal and corrupt trial, his bloody suffering and desolate crucifixion, his harrowing of Hell and glorious resurrection, his blessing of our maturity and gift of the Spirit, his ascension into Heaven and mythic transformation into the atonement for all sins, into the Cosmic Christ, into the Second Person of the Trinity, into the divine founder of the Christian movement, into an ever-loving friend personally available to each of us, into a reality that is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. All of these things are part of the deep truth that works in us when we celebrate them. Better yet, let’s sing them, because music moves the soul faster than words alone. What changes with resurrection? We do. What is that change? A closer connection with God. What is that connection? An entry into the divine life whose wildness is embraced with Easter joy. “And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood?” You bet!! “Bold I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown, through Christ my own.” Amen.” (Robert Cummings Neville, April 23, 2011)

9. Moral Lessons

Just how shall we live changed lives? I have studied, preached, taught and interpreted the fourth Gospel for 33 years, but I never tire of wonder and amazement at what John does not say. He says nothing to us about how we are to live. There is not a single ethical sentence in the gospel—not a proverb, not a moral, not a parable, not a wisdom saying, not a command, not one, no not one. For John trusts—John believes—that once the heart has changed, once our own devotion, decision and discussion are strangely warmed, then we will figure out the rest for ourselves. We shall to build Jerusalem, and then we shall do so.

Let us make a start today. Let us take communion with the promise to live the communion. Let us keep faith with our partners and spouses. Let us tithe, give away 10% of what we earn—at least 10%. Let us worship—an hour a week of careful liturgy, prepared preaching, vibrant music, real fellowship. You can do this. You can. I know you can. We should get ourselves into our own Westminster Abbeys more than once every thirty years.

10. Jerusalem

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning Gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O Clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire.

I will not cease from Mental Fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.


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

posted in Uncategorized on 05.1.2011 at 11:00 am

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Sunday
April 24

In the Garden

By Marsh Chapel


Preface

In the garden, resurrection is utterly personal.

Mary supposes she sees the gardener. Mary points to resurrection, in the garden, which is utterly personal and calls out our devotion, decision and discussion.

In the garden, resurrection is utterly personal.

When we think garden we think Eden and Gethsemane, creation and crucifixion, birth and death.

My dentist, a raconteur of the first water, told me a story. (I have little chance to respond to his stories, given the instrumentation filling my jaw. It is one of the few times a preacher, who makes his living by the sweat of his jaw, is necessarily silent .) The story is about a man visiting a troubled part of the world. He finds a native and asks him what he sees. ‘Tell me in a word, how are things?’

‘Ah, in a word, good’. In a word, things are good.

Unsatisfied the traveler asks again. ‘OK, could you expand a bit. ‘Tell me, maybe in two words this time, how are things?’

‘Ah, in two words, not good’.

In a word, things are good. In two words, things are not good. Eden and Gethsemane, good and not good. Which brings us to the garden and gardener of John 20:15, and to Mary of the utterly personal resurrection.


1. Devotion

Mary announces: “I do not know (where they have laid him)” she says.

Mary has waited in the garden.

Such a lush image, such a powerful setting, a garden. In one word we have evoked Eden and points east, creation and fall, good and not good. Garden. In a word we have evoked Gethsemane and Empty Tomb, cross and resurrection, death and life. In the garden. We treasure our gardens: one of the loveliest common spaces anywhere is our Boston Public Garden; and of course we hope our Celtics will find victory in one garden or another. In the garden. There Mary has been waiting and weeping.

‘They have taken my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him.’ Other than the cry of Psalm 22, Jesus’ last word in the other gospels, there is hardly a more pathetic, sorrowful sentence in the Bible, or in history. The cross uncovers the marrow of our hurt, burrowing more deeply into our very loss and death, grief and guilt, than we ever could on our own. For us men and for our salvation: the resurrection follows but does not replace the cross. In the garden.

Earlier with the frantic run of the mysterious beloved disciple, and later with the ample doubt of the doubting Thomas, the gospel has fixed before us a discreet interaction. The same happens here. Mary and Gardener meet. Mary mistakes what she sees. She at first thinks she sees. She thinks she sees a gardener.

Mary sees the gardener, what one would expect in a garden. Such a lush image, such a powerful figure. The world of work, evoked here. The world of struggle, evoked here. The world of birth and decay, living and dying, evoked here. In the garden, a gardener.

In the Fourth Gospel resurrection is emotional, relational, and verbal: utterly personal. In the garden, resurrection is utterly personal, like devotion and decision and discussion. In the garden, resurrection includes tears. In the garden, resurrection ask for choices. In the garden, resurrection evokes speech. Why are you weeping? Emotion. Whom do you seek? Relation. I have seen the Lord. Word. In the Fourth Gospel resurrection is emotional, relational, and verbal: utterly personal.

In the garden, resurrection, so utterly personal, is meant to change the heart. “A sermon begins with a lump in the throat.”

Our families moved regularly in the adventurous rhythms of the itinerant Methodist ministry. I came home from college once to a reasonable assemblage of old belongings removed to a new space, including a box of prized baseball cards by then 10 years old. I looked through the camping gear, the scouting badges, the photos and high school letters. I took a quick look through the cards. There was Roberto Clemente and Willie Mays, just where I expected them.

Later my mother said:

‘Your little brother wanted some of your old cards. I told him I knew you wouldn’t mind. He traded some of them with his new friends. They seemed pleased. I knew you wouldn’t mind’.

With some anxiety I inquired: ‘oh, which ones did he trade?’

‘Oh, I don’t remember. One was something like Roy Rodgers’

‘You mean Rodger…Maris?’

“Yes! Good for you! What a great memory you have. College has been good for you!’

“Yeah. Right.”

“Oh, and another one, something like one of the Walt Disney characters. You know Minnie or Mickey”

“You mean Mickey…Mantle?”

“Yes! Good for you! What a great memory you have for names. College has been good for you”.

“Yeah. Right”

The last boy, Mickey Mantle, led a desperate life, unlike the one suggested by his smiling countenance on the card I once owned. He chased Roger Maris all the way to the edge of a record number of home runs in a year. But he also chased drink and women. My friend George Mitrovich recently reminded me though of his devotional experience, late in life. I thought about him again, watching the Red Sox over in our shared mystery garden of Fenway Park last Saturday. Speaking of gardens. I remembered the conclusion of his life.

Toward the end of his life he fell ill. After a full life and a great career, his hard living and drinking and carousing caught up with him. But something remarkable happened, at the end. After a life of success, pressure, stress, performance, a driven life, after a driven life with some predictable habitual consequences, the last boy found himself quiet, open and empty. Some Texan friends visited him, and over time, won the trust that allows one to pray with others. And they prayed with him and for him. Somehow, in those moments of simple devotion, the last boy saw more than the gardener. I only will quote his way of putting it because it so gospel and so true: “In their prayers, somehow, I saw that I did not need to perform in order to be loved.”

That is grace, prevenient grace. That is the gospel, the love of God. That is resurrection, in the garden, utterly personal.

Faith is a gift meant for reception. It comes when we have some openness. When I go to Fenway, to our neighborhood garden, a garden of history and mystery, I enjoy a reminder of the distance from performance to love, from garden to glory, from gardener to teacher, from anxiety to wisdom, from death to life.

Such a recognition, like the recognition of the Lord in gardener apparel, can happen in very ordinary ways, even in a crowded Easter service, with communion on the way, and the sermon rounding first base. Just now, for instance.

Such a lush image, garden! The garden of Eden, our image of creation. The garden of Gethesemane, our image of crucifixion. The garden of the empty tomb, our image of salvation.


2. Decision

The Gospel of John is throughout a call to decision. ‘This things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that believing you may have life in his name”. All manner of other dualisms—heaven, earth; light, dark; life, death, present, future—take a back seat in John to the dualism of decision, the decision in faith, for faith, with faith. Easter may roll around just in time each year to put first things first, to let the main thing be the main thing.

We have the capacity to deceive ourselves about what matters most. In the academic world we pretend that if we can write it down we need not live it through. We perceive accordingly. In academic settings we can sometimes presume that if we write it down we do not have to live it through. Not so, not so. The percentage of stellar academics—students, faculty and staff—who age, who stumble, who die is remarkable similar to the percentage of plumbers, farmers and custodians who age, stumble and die (☺).

A long time ago we were asked, in a psychology class, to identify cards as they were lifted. 2 of hearts, Jack of clubs, 8 of spades. Or so we thought. But the 8 was an 8 of hearts, only the heart was black, so we all saw in spades. We ‘saw’ within a legitimate range of what legitimately we expected to see. Hearts and diamonds are red. Clubs and spades are black. A red spade or a black diamond we do not expect to see, and so we do not see them. We saw the gardener, not the Lord.

Our moral and spiritual linguistic universe, in 2011, is something like this. We see cards in four suits, when in the garden—whether Eden or Gethsemane or Easter—the imaginative categories are different. It can require an apocalypse for us to see.

The Gospel of John, in the whole course of this 20th chapter, has a lesson for us about resurrection. “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.’ (Jn 20: 29). For John, all that is necessary has been accomplished since 1: 14, ‘The word became flesh and dwelt among us’. God has loved the world in his Son. Crucifixion adds nothing essential to this saving incarnation, for John. Resurrection adds nothing essential to this ancillary crucifixion, and so nothing to Incarnation, for John. All four separate (if not in fact different) endings to the Gospel, as found here in chapter 20, folkloric as Hansel and Gretel (the race won by the beloved disciple to the empty tomb, Mary and the gardener, the disciples cowering behind closed doors, touching (or doubting) Thomas), themselves are additional—even superfluous—to a needless resurrection, a needless crucifixion and a sublime, saving Incarnation. The Gospel of John is all over in the first chapter.

So. Why is all this here?

Because they are part of the story, and John has chosen to write a Gospel, not a psalm, not a sermon, not a letter, not an apocalypse (though this comes closest). So he tells the stories—tomb, garden, closed room, touching hands—and, it may be, believes them. But they are not the point. The point is in a way the opposite. Seeing is not believing for John. Believing is seeing for John.

These things are written that you may believe…

After an evening program one spring, in the verdant garden of a campground retreat, an older man and I walked at dusk. Here is a Christian gentleman: steady in worship, regular in tithing, committed in faithfulness, devoted to faith and able to discuss this gift with others. In the garden, resurrection is utterly personal. He said:

‘Now that you are my pastor, I guess I better tell you why I am the way I am. In 1944 I was hiding in a garden, along a fence like this one we are walking along, near a field like this one by us. All about me unfriendly fire was raining down, a kind of horrible death rain I had never known in 19 years growing up on a Nebraska farm. To survive I had to pass through the garden and then run, without cover, through a clearing, fully exposed. So, I ran through the garden. Before I crossed, I knelt and said a prayer: ‘If I survive this my life is yours’. I survived. So, my family and I make our decisions in the light of that decision in a garden in France a long time ago. We try to be attentive to small things. We try to put our faith first. We try to be salt and light that others can see’.

Utterly personal. Justifying faith, call it health or salvation or happiness or grace, is not so much about the freedom of the will as it is about the freeing of the will (this Augustine not just Hill). One kneels in a garden. One prays: ‘let his cup pass from me…as thou wilt’.


Discussion

John teaches us about a sanctifying grace, known in the daily discussions, the daily voices which remind us of the resurrection radiance, the real presence, in Word and Sacrament.

In the garden, resurrection is utterly personal. Sometimes it takes the death of a close friend, or mentor, to remind us. The ancient refers to this in the petition about those whom we love but no longer see. No wonder Gov. Patrick eulogized Rev Prof Gomes by saying ‘he was the freest person I ever knew’.

There is a difference between seeing things as they are and dreaming of things that never were. 43 years ago this month on the tarmac runway in Indianapolis, Robert F Kennedy said something because he saw something. He was able to recall Aeschylus because he had placed his eye on a resurrection horizon. He was able to counsel courage and patience because he placed his gaze on a resurrection horizon. He was able to mention his brother’s death, without wincing, because he placed his gaze on a resurrection horizon. He was able to meet the gaze of a rightly angry hour by lifting his gaze, lifting his chin, lifting the sight lines of a crushed people in a frightful hour. There was a transfiguring transcendence in his manner of discussion.

1 O LORD, thou hast searched me and known me! 2 Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar. 3 Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether. 5 Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. 7 Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, "Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be night," 12 even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee. 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

Resurrection is verbal, vocal.

As many of you know, my Dad died this year, and nearly died in September of 2008. We had two extra years with him. In November of 2008, as he recuperated, I saw him one morning learning to walk all over again, with my mother ever present and loving alongside. It was a miraculous sight, as was the rest of his healing. He told us in those days about a vision or dream he had had, in the coma. I share it with you to close, not as evidence of eternity, for resurrection neither needs nor admits of evidence from us, but rather as evidence of a lo
nging for eternity, and so a comfort and an encouragement. He said that in the hours near death he saw a kind of light, shining through what he described as a lattice work. “Behind and around me I could hear voices”, he said.


Coda

In the garden, resurrection is utterly personal.

We are in no position, ever, to say what God can and cannot do. If God is the God of the ordinary, then God is the God of the extraordinary, too, of the plain and the mysterious, of the known and the unknown.

As Huston Smith (no stranger to Marsh Chapel) reminds us: ‘we are in good hands and so it behooves us to bear one another’s burdens’.

John has chosen to write a Gospel, not a psalm, not a sermon, not a letter, not an apocalypse (though this comes closest). So he tells the stories—tomb, garden, closed room, touching hands—and, it may be, believes them. But they are not the point. The point is in a way the opposite. Seeing is not believing for John. Believing is seeing for John.

Utterly personal, in emotion of devotion, in the relationship of decision, in the voices of discussion: so resurrection, in the garden.

The point is prevenient grace: “I learned that I did not need to perform in order to be loved”. The point is saving grace: “I will make this vow: if I survive, my life is yours”. The point is sanctifying grace: “he was the freest person I have ever known”.

Why can’t we let a story be a story? These things are written not that you may see, but that you may believe.

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven
 and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only
 Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
 He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
 was crucified, died, and
 was buried. He descended to the dead.
 On the third day he rose again.
 He ascended into heaven,
 and is seated at the right hand
 of the Father.
 He will come again to judge
 the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church,
 the communion of saints,
 the forgiveness of sins,
 the resurrection of the body,
 and the life everlasting.

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

posted in Uncategorized on 04.24.2011 at 11:00 am

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Saturday
April 23

What Changes with Resurrection?

By Marsh Chapel

Exodus 14: 10-31
Matthew 28: 1-10

The Easter Vigil is a peculiar service, marking as it does the transition from the desolation of Holy Saturday to the joy of Easter. Given that the Jewish day begins at sundown we are already into Easter Day, although still holding vigil for the resurrection to happen. What is peculiar about the service is that it is part of the repetitive liturgical year: we pretend to be waiting but we know the outcome already because we have held the vigil for years. We the Church have held it for centuries. Since we’ve been over this before, it is time to ask what difference resurrection makes. What changes with resurrection, that we pretend to wait for it each year? As if it hadn’t happened?

A standard answer is that the resurrection was an historical event that happened almost two thousand years ago and that our Easter Vigil is only a service of remembrance, not a vigil at all. But then, what changed with that one and only historical resurrection, assuming for the moment that’s what happened? Filled with belief in Jesus’ resurrection, his followers assembled a community of people convinced that Jesus was inaugurating a new divine Kingdom, about to appear, that would culminate in their own resurrection, perhaps the resurrection of everyone. The Kingdom did not appear, of course, and the result was that instead of the Kingdom we got the Church. Now the Church is not bad, at least not very bad. Our Orthodox brothers and sisters believe the Church is a foretaste of the end-of-time resurrection of all of us to feast with Christ in Heaven. But as for what happened after Jesus’ time until now, the whole history is compatible with Jesus’ resurrection changing nothing, just as it is compatible with the claim that Jesus was not raised at all, that his body was stolen away by his disciples who made up the story of his resurrection appearances, which is what most people in the world think about that story.

So we need to look again at what resurrection means. This is the Holy Saturday part of my sermon where all otherwise presupposed certainties are thrown into question. Literally, resurrection means coming to life again after having been dead. The Bible has many resurrection stories. Both Elijah and Elisha raised people from the dead, as did Jesus, the most notable of whom was his friend Lazarus. Matthew said that when Jesus died, many tombs were opened and people rose from the dead; after Jesus’ resurrection, that is, after the Sabbath, these newly resurrected individuals came into the city where many people saw them. Matthew did not say what these resurrected people did when they went about the city, but surely they must have been looking for lawyers to reverse the probating of their estates. Imagine the consternation that would have been caused by a large group of newly resurrected people whose goods had been passed on to their heirs who now needed to get their lives in order again! That we don’t hear about this consternation suggests a bit of myth-making in Matthew’s account. But the point is that resurrection in these cases only means returning to and continuing the lives that had been lived before. Resurrection itself had little religious significance beyond signifying the power or mysterium tremendum in the persons or occasions that caused the resurrection.

The literal meaning of resurrection is not religiously interesting. So those of you who worry about whether you should believe in a literal resurrection that you find hard to believe can stop worrying. Even if resurrection is literally true, that is not religiously interesting. What did Jesus do after the resurrection? Taking the resurrection appearances at face value, he made sudden appearances and disappearances, talked with his disciples, and cooked, all of which he had done in ordinary life. The astonishing transformation of the disciples and growth of the Christian community came from a deeper meaning of resurrection, not a literal one.

What then could the deeper meaning be? Is resurrection a metaphor for something else that is like resurrection? In these late modern times we know how much the mind and its expression in soul are so closely linked with the biology of the brain that bodily death is hard to square with reanimation. So preachers often say that resurrection is a metaphor for something like it, such as renewal of nature in the spring, starting over without being bound to the past, signs of vitality, fresh starts, hope for the Red Sox. Resurrection is a powerful metaphor for things such as these. The metaphor of resurrection gives zing to things like renewal; but renewal and the vernal equinox are sad come-downs from the dramatic power of resurrection in the life of Jesus. What should we think about metaphors in religion?

Step back, if you will, from the loaded metaphor of resurrection in the Easter Vigil and think about the 23rd Psalm. The King James translation is one of the cornerstones of English-speaking culture and its words resonate in our souls with a thousand associations. Say with me, if you know it:

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

The Psalm literally says that God is a shepherd and that the singer, that is, we, are sheep. Now surely, no one past the age of ten ever has believed that literally. This would be idolatrous in reference to God and overly humiliating in reference to us—sheep are stupider than the dimmest human. A literal interpretation is nonsense.

The age-old tradition of interpretation is metaphorical. Like a shepherd who cares for his sheep, God supplies what we need, life in pleasant places, peace, tonics for the soul, a righteous life, no evil even in death, comfort, gloating repasts in the face of enemies, anointing oils, overflowing cups, a life attended by goodness and mercy lived in the constant presence of God. Each of these divine beneficences is itself a metaphor for thousands of other benefits from the benevolent God. The 23rd Psalm is such a classic because everyone understands this metaphoric meaning and is in love with the vision it sings.

But it is false! Life is full of trouble and grief, want and desolation, humiliation and defeat, and always death. To think God is like a provident shepherd is just perverse in the face of life’s realities. Sure, life has many good things, including occasional triumphs and the comforts of the overflowing cup—but all these things pass, and many people get none of them. The ancient Israelites knew this as well as anyone. The Psalm traditionally has been attributed to King David, who was anything but a docile follower of the divine shepherd. Remember how he lusted after a married woman, impregnated her, and had her husband killed. Then to punish David, God killed their newborn baby, according to the text. That text of David’s grief and resignation was read at the funeral of our daughter who died at four months. Life is trouble, not green pastures and still waters, save on rare vacations. And everyone knows this.

How then do we understand the extraordinary moving power of the 23rd Psalm when it is literally
nonsense and metaphorically false? Both literal and metaphorical intentions are claims that God and life are like what the Psalm says, in different but related senses of like. The deeper meaning of the Psalm, which everyone gets, does not have to do with likeness at all. It has to do with becoming connected. If we shape our souls with the images of the Psalm, even though it is literally nonsense and metaphorically false, we become connected with God and our own lives so as to be transformed into gratitude and peace that passes understanding, a truth far more profound than satisfaction with the good things of life. In fact, it is because life is filled trouble and grief, want and desolation, humiliation and defeat, and always death, that we move beyond the historical to the depth dimension of our relation with God. Because we know that the life of a happy sheep is a lie (remember why shepherds keep sheep), we come to realize that the genuine comforts of God are not like that. But letting the 23rd Psalm work in us to shape our soul causes us to connect with God beyond that superficial metaphor, and to take overwhelming comfort in the Abyss out of which the maelstrom of life arises. The depth meaning of the Psalm is not in its likeness to anything: it is not an icon. The depth meaning is in its transformative pointing and connection: it is an index, like a pointing finger whose direction we follow until we connect with something otherwise inaccessible. That transformative depth meaning has worked for centuries with astonishing indexical power regardless of people’s literal or metaphorical thoughts in the matter.

Come back to the resurrection of Jesus as we work our way out of Holy Saturday into Easter Sunday. The depth meaning of Easter resurrection lies neither in the literal meaning of coming back to life nor in the metaphorical meaning of springtime renewal and fresh starts. So whatever you believe about these iconic or “likeness” meanings of Jesus’ resurrection does not matter much for religious purposes because the depth meaning of resurrection does not lie there. Rather it lies in what the fulsome celebration of the resurrection stories does to transform our souls so as to connect us with God the Creator in deep ways. With those deep connections that grow from the Easter stories we can embrace the goodness of creation even when we are not so good, the wholeness of creation even when we are not so whole, the loveliness of the world even when we are halting lovers, and the meaning of life even when our own achievements are middling. Most of all we can embrace with gratitude and profound love the gratuitous and shocking creation of this wild world filled with troubles, ecstasies, desolations, satisfactions, and death because those stories of Jesus, when lived with, raise us up into that glorious creation. Those resurrection stories are not what the world and God are like. They are pointers causing us to be raised into life’s most profound ecstatic connection with the Abyss whence we come. This is the Easter triumph: not a life in which everything is new and fine but a life that transforms all the metaphoric content of crucifixion and death into the joyous glory of God’s creation itself.

The transformative work of the Easter celebration does not happen all at once. Perhaps it takes a lifetime--Good Friday, Easter Vigil, Easter Day every year. The resurrection stories of Jesus cannot be separated from all his other stories, his teachings, his historical roles, the birth narratives, and all the mythologizings of the Church that changed a rural Galilean into the Second Person of the Trinity. All these stories interweave, not as literally or metaphorically true but as indicatively true, causally true, transformatively true. So do not worry about either literal or metaphorical truth, however interesting those questions might be on their own. Do not worry about the credibility of the virgin birth, or the sagacity of the Wise Men, or the reliability of the accounts of the Transfiguration, or what really happened when people thought they saw Jesus alive after Good Friday. They are not religiously important in the long run. Worry rather about how to make those stories about Jesus and his resurrection transformative elements in our souls. Enjoy them all. Delight in the crowds of newly raised people swarming into Jerusalem after the thunderous breaking open of their tombs! Perhaps none of these stories is true as a likeness or icon of what happened. But all of them have been true for at least some people in transforming them into New Beings, as Paul put it, lovers of God: and they can be true for us.

Most Christians believe those stories with naïve innocence and are transformed by them. But it is not the likeness kind of truth that is important, however much they might believe it is. Rather it is the causal consequence of dwelling in those stories that is spiritually and theologically important. Some people these days find the stories incredible if construed to interpret reality as being like what those stories say. Sadly, such people often go on to conclude that the stories therefore simply are not true, which is a mistake. The depth meaning and truth of the stories is not in their iconic likeness to anything but in their indicative transformative powers that bring us into connection with the source of all things, with gratitude, joy, and peace that passes understanding. This is how it has always worked, even when people believed that salvation comes because the stories are literally or metaphorically true. That was naïve of them even when they actually were transformed. We need not be naïve like that. What would be naïve of us would be to think we can do without the stories and their celebrations in our souls. To proclaim the resurrection is not to assert it but to lead in the celebration of it.

So let us listen to the stories of Jesus and his miraculous birth, his calling of disciples and teachings of friendship, his sharp knocks at hypocrisy and love of childlike innocence, his proclamation that the last will be first and the first last, his miracles of healing and his struggles with fickle crowds, his interpretations of history and parables of the Kingdom, his gospel of love and demands for justice, his institution of sacraments and founding of a beloved community, his bitter betrayal and corrupt trial, his bloody suffering and desolate crucifixion, his harrowing of Hell and glorious resurrection, his blessing of our maturity and gift of the Spirit, his ascension into Heaven and mythic transformation into the atonement for all sins, into the Cosmic Christ, into the Second Person of the Trinity, into the divine founder of the Christian movement, into an ever-loving friend personally available to each of us, into a reality that is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. All of these things are part of the deep truth that works in us when we celebrate them. Better yet, let’s sing them, because music moves the soul faster than words alone. What changes with resurrection? We do. What is that change? A closer connection with God. What is that connection? An entry into the divine life whose wildness is embraced with Easter joy. “And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood?” You bet!! “Bold I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown, through Christ my own.” Amen.

~Rev. Dr. Robert Cummings Neville,
Easter Vigil, April 23, 2011

posted in Uncategorized on 04.23.2011 at 7:30 pm

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Sunday
April 17

A Meditation on the Palms and a Meditation on the Passion

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 21:1-11
Matthew 26:14 - 27:66

A Meditation on the Palms
Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill
Seeing with the Heart: Meditations from Marsh Chapel, 2010

The Dean: If we believe that life has meaning and purpose
People: And we do
The Dean: If we believe that the Giver of Life loves us
People: And we do
The Dean: If we believe that divine love lasts
People: And we do
The Dean: If we believe that justice, mercy, and humility endure
People: And we do
The Dean: If we believe that God so loved the world to give God’s only Son
People: And we do

The Dean: If we believe that Jesus is the transcript in time of God in eternity
People: And we do
The Dean: If we believe that all God’s children are precious in God’s sight
People: And we do
The Dean: If we believe grace and forgiveness are the heart of the universe
People: And we do
The Dean: If we believe that God has loved us personally
People: And we do
The Dean: If we believe in God
People: And we do

The Dean: Then we shall trust God over the valley of the shadow of death
People: And we shall
The Dean: Then we shall trust that love is stronger than death
People: And we shall
The Dean: Then we shall trust the mysterious promise of resurrection
People: And we shall
The Dean: Then we shall trust the faith of Christ, relying on faith alone
People: And we shall
The Dean: Then we shall trust the enduring worth of personality
People: And we shall
The Dean: Then we shall trust that just deeds, merciful words are never vain
People: And we shall
The Dean: Then we shall trust the Giver of Life to give eternal life
People: And we shall
The Dean: Then we shall trust the source of love to love eternally
People: And we shall
The Dean: Then we shall trust that we rest protected in God’s embrace
People: And we shall
The Dean: Then we shall trust in God
People: And we shall.

A Meditation on the Passion
Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill
Deliver Us From Evil, 2005

The Dean: To the question of evil let us live our answer by choosing the cruciform path of faith.
People: Let us meet evil with honesty, grief with grace, failure with faith, and death with dignity.
The Dean: Let us carry ourselves in belief.
People: Let us affirm the faith of Christ which empowers to withstand what we cannot understand.
The Dean: Let us remember that it is not the passion of Christ that defines the Person of Christ, but the Person that defines the passion.
People: Let us remember that it is not suffering that bears meaning, but a sense of meaning that bears up under suffering.
The Dean: Let us remember that it is not the cross that carries the love but the love that carries the cross.
People: Let us remember that it is not crucifixion that encompasses salvation, but salvation that encompasses even the tragedy of crucifixion.
The Dean: Let us remember and that it is not the long sentence of Holy week, with all its phrases, dependent clauses and semi-colons that completes the gospel, but it is the punctuation to come in seven days, the last mark of the week to come in 168 hours, whether it be the exclamation point of Peter, the full stop period of Paul or the question mark of Mary—Easter defines Holy Week, and not the other way around. The resurrection follows but does not replace the cross. The cross precedes but does not overshadow the resurrection. It is Life that has the last word and there is a God to whom we may pray, in the assurance of being heard: “Deliver us from evil”

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

posted in Uncategorized on 04.17.2011 at 11:28 am

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Sunday
April 10

Bonhoeffer and Bach: The Passion According to St. Matthew

By Marsh Chapel

Brisk air, breathtaking view: we can imagine for a moment the sights from, the sights of the great mountain peaks near and far. Mount Washington, Mount Everest, Mount Marcy, the Matterhorn. The Bible itself moves from promontory to promontory, from Mount Sinai to Mount Nebo to Mount Tabor to the Mountain of the Transfiguration to the Mount of Olives. Up high, we pause.

We have come this far this Lent. Now we are ascending and descending the great mountain of beauty before us, The Passion According to St. Matthew. We have come this far this Lent. We pause here to survey the scene, to take in the brisk air the breathtaking view the beauty of the music. Thus far the Gospel of John has shown us our path: Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman, the Blind Beggar. Thus far the witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer has shown us the trail: The Cost of Discipleship, Cheap Grace, Religionless (though not churchless) Christianity, and Life Together. Thus far the muted but audible voice of Franklin Littell, the father of Holocaust studies, has provided a way to orient ourselves, Sunday by Sunday. For a moment, we shall simply rest and wait. As Howard Thurman said of the power of waiting and resting, we need not ‘fear the fallow’. We need not fear the quiet, the quiet power of height, beauty, grace.

Yet in the midst of turmoil far and near we hunt for hope. ‘Faith is the conviction that hope works’ (so Professor Gomes, of blessed memory). Many of our younger friends have been partly cut off from the traditions of faith and memory, of morality and hope which have the power to guide us, to recall for us our own best past and so our own best paths. We want to respect and affirm the ‘fragility of goodness’, and so to find ways to expand that circle of goodness, in our time. And goodness knows our time well needs such expansion. In this hour we prayerfully wonder about shocks and aftershocks in Japan, leaks and spills and heroic labors to bring remedy. In this hour we soberly wonder about peace and war in our so called middle east, and wonder further about ways forward when none seems just right. In this hour we lay on the altar of reckoning and hope the endless multiple liberties and longings of our beloved country of more than 300 million souls. The tides of worry can wash so hard against the very rock of our souls that it seems all we can do to hold out and hold on in trust that ‘faith is the conviction that hope works’.

So our reflections emerge along the cliff walk of this high summit, this high peak, this mountainous musical beauty. Brisk air, breathtaking view. From our Lenten journey we shall carry forward and with us a collection of convictions.

We too, with Bonhoeffer, refuse to set back the clock. We know that this world in which we take our places as working and caring human beings, is not the world of a hundred or two hundred years ago. Nothing human is foreign to us in a world come of age. We neglect no truth, and fear no growth in learning of new truth. If we are to be women and men for others, we shall in truth need to be and become women and men with others, in all the complexity and difficulty of life at its height and breadth and depth. We hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, and read the two with rapt attention.

We too, with Bonhoeffer, live in hope, with our loyalty and love given to the Lord of Life himself. In Christ we shall again see the great vistas of beauty and grace. In Christ we shall again learn the seasoned wisdom of discipline, work, labor, earnest and diligent care. In Christ we shall again gain courage to become we are, to be who we are most meant to be, to let our lives speak. In Christ, we shall trust the meaning of the cross and resurrection, the triumph of substance over form, of grace over law, and love over death. We shall trust that love outlasts death. We shall trust that faith, hope and love abide.

We too with Bonhoeffer, will give of ourselves to the transformation of our time, to the transcendent transformation of all of life, of the very bits and places of culture committed to our care, starting with Sunday morning, but not ending there, or here. This hour of worship is to be the first in a long seven day series of hours given, shared with others. We shall strive to Biblical Ethics: ‘all contingent on the call of Christ’ (Green, 256):

1. Do what needs doing (Ecc 9:10)

2. Be exact in small matters (Lk 16:10, 19:17)

3. Do Domestic duties first (1 Tim 3: 15)

4. Do not interfere with others (1 Pet 4: 15)

And we shall recognize ‘Discipline, Action, Suffering, Death’ as stations on the road to freedom.

From this Lent, for the faithful living of the days to come, we shall honor our inheritance in truth, affirm the faithfulness of Christ, and look forward to the time and space which Isaiah did foretell, streams in the desert.

“By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered

And confidently waiting come what may

We know that God is with us night and morning

And never fails to greet us each new day.” (UMH 517)

~The Reverend Doctor Robert Allan Hill
Dean of Marsh Chapel

posted in Lenten Series 2011: Bonhoeffer, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 04.10.2011 at 12:10 pm

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Monday
April 4

Bonhoeffer: Life Together

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear Sermon only
John 9:1-22


Preface

For Lent 2011 at Marsh Chapel we have listened for the gospel in Scripture, in the life Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and in application of the gospel of truth to our own time, with help from Franklin Littell. Bonhoeffer’s affirmation of liberal thought, affirmation of Christ as Lord of life, and affirmation of the transcendent transformation of human culture in the preaching of the Gospel, are at the heart of our own life together here.

Like many today, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s family did not regularly go to church. They were cultural but not observant Christians. They assumed and affirmed the place of the (Lutheran) church, but did not attend. In this light, it is especially, movingly meaningful to remember how Bonhoeffer’s father, an eminent psychiatrist, responded to Dietrich’s decision to study theology. For this family, such a decision might have become one that came with the name tag, ‘black sheep in training’. Yet this is not the response his Dad gave. On the contrary, there was an openness, a respect, an admiration, mixed in with the predictable surprise, concern and criticism: In any case you gain one thing from your calling—in this it resembles mine—living relationships to human beings and the possibility of meaning something to them, in more important matters than medical ones. And of this nothing can be taken away from you, even when the external institutions in which you are placed are not always as you would wish. (Metaxas, 213).

One detects in this early letter something of the freedom and grace within the Bonhoeffer home. On this freedom, and on this grace, one may surmise and imagine, Dietrich Bonhoeffer relied as he gradually developed an understanding of life together. The disciplines of study, science and music from his home were transposed into the disciplines of prayer and worship in the church’s life together. The convivial joy of gathering and celebration, which his family exemplified even through 1944, were transposed into the regular reading of psalms, both thanksgiving and lament. The brotherhood, sisterhood of his own upbringing were transposed into a kind of fraternal love—in his churches, his classes, his school, his friendships and even in his imprisonment—on which all who knew him well regularly reflect. The fierce sense of loyalty, duty, responsible freedom, acquired within the liberal culture of Berlin in his youth, became, one could argue, and with some sense of irony, the ground out of which his later understanding emerged. Culture became the culture of faith. The Gospel speaks to the height and strength of human being.

Exegesis

Speaking of height and strength, in John 9 we reach the summit of the Fourth Gospel. Here this morning is the crucial chapter within the Fourth Gospel. In it we see clearly the two level drama of faith which John acclaims. Said Luther, “preaching the Gospel is one beggar telling another where they both may find bread”.

Today we meet two beggars. One is a man lost in the mist of memory, who somehow recovered his sight at the pool of Siloam. The other is the church, John’s church, and by extension the whole church including the community of Marsh Chapel, existentially lost, who somehow recover sight at the hand of Jesus the Christ. John has two eyes at work. One is trained on the distant memory of a powerful Jesus. The other is trained on the experience of the Risen Lord in the life of the church. Both see again, by the healing action of the divine.

This blind beggar, and his healing, and all the trouble that such a good deed occasions, is important to John because in him John sees clearly what is going on in his own church. At Siloam, there was a lonely beggar. We are beggars too. In Jerusalem, one was powerfully healed. We have been healed too. With Jesus, a man’s sight, his most prized faculty, was restored. So too our spirit. So long ago, Jesus was heard to say, “I am the light of the world”. He is the light of our world too. Did Jesus of old bring healing to the needy? By grace he does so every week in our midst still! What the earthly Jesus did for the blind beggar, the Risen Lord does for the beloved church.

That’s the good news.

There is other news too.

At Siloam, Jesus heals on the Sabbath. We too have learned that the Sabbath was made for man and not the other way around. In Jerusalem, there is immediate conflict over what this new Power means for old traditions. We too know the conflict between gospel and tradition. With Jesus’ healing there comes a division between generations. Such contention and difference is ours too.

Our gospel shows us two beggars, one in Jerusalem a long time ago. And one which is the church itself, to whom Jesus speaks, the Risen Lord speaking in the spirit through the very human voice of John.

Two blind beggars, one a man and one a church. Expulsed, thrown out, shunned, set apart.

Most especially, in this crafted memory, the blind man given sight is then thrown out of the synagogue for consorting with Jesus. And this is the central communal dislocation of John’s church. The story, culminating in 9: 22, ‘thrown out of the synagogue’, is the story of a struggling community, which, like a beggar, is wandering outside of what inherited tradition alone can provide. And we are, too. John 9 is about what happened to a community of faith in the late first century. Its rancorous depiction of opponents, ‘the Jews’ or the ‘Judeans’, refers to those siblings, those closest in heart and mind, with whom there has been a rupture. Not to understand the history of the fourth Gospel so is tragically and irresponsibly to enhance anti-Semitism both ancient and modern.

The expulsion from the religious family of origin has two dimensions, one of sight and one of sound, one sociological and one theological. First, in actual experience, the little and poor community has lost its roots and its support. It is dislocated. Second, in the nature of hope, the community has now to find new resources, new ways of thinking about hope. It is disappointed.

(Why the separation? For ample reason. For the Jewish community, John’s high claims about Christ amounted to a breach of monotheism, a kind of ditheism, two gods. “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one….” And the charge had merit. Now we can say so many years later, why this is minimal, look, by the fourth century the church acclaimed not one, nor even two, but three persons in the Godhead!)

Just here is the good news. In the very depth of dislocation, John’s church experienced grace in their life together. We may too. In the very depth of disappointment, John’s church experienced freedom in their life together. We may too.

Bonhoeffer’s teaching and life bear such witness.

Exposition

That is, to complete the affirmation begun last Sunday, religionless Christianity is not churchless Christianity. For the sake of life together Bonhoeffer, and we, together, set our minds and hearts against pride, sloth, falsehood, and against superstition, idolatry and hypocrisy. That is, it is not a question of avoiding the church, but of avoiding the inherent illnesses of religion, and of strengthening the disciplines and commitments within the church.

So Bonhoeffer cherished preaching: The Christian hope of resurrection in contrast to (religious) otherworldliness sends man back to his life on the earth in a completely new way. The Christian must like Christ totally give himself to the earthly life. (Green, 322)

So Bonhoeffer cherished teaching: I want therefore to start from the premise that God should not be smuggled into some last secret place, but that we should simply recognize the autonomy of man and not run him down in his worldliness but confront him with God at his strongest point. (Green, 324)

So Bonhoeffer cherished marriage: ‘It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on the marriage that sustains your love’‘ (Metaxas, 4580

So Bonhoeffer cherished the church: ‘A state which includes within itself a terrorized church has lost its most faithful servant’

So Bonhoeffer cherished silence: ‘God comes to people who have nothing but room for God and this hollow space this emptiness in people is called in Christian speech, faith’ (Coles 46)

So Bonhoeffer cherished witness: ‘Only he who cries out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chant (Littell, 50)

So Bonhoeffer cherished the prophetic: ‘It is rather the task of Christian preaching to say: here is the church, where Jew and German stand together under the Word of God; here is the proof whether a church is still the church or not’ (Metaxas 155)

So Bonhoeffer cherished the Bible: 136 ‘I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions…’ (like listening to someone whom we love) (Metaxas 136)

So Bonhoeffer cherished faith: ’love is the name for what God does to man in overcoming the disunion in which man lives’ (Coles 84)

So Bonhoeffer cherished Life Together—hymns sung, prayers offered, gifts given, sacraments administered, friendships honored, letters written, listening practiced, reading enjoyed.

So shall we. If an hour of worship is not worth our attention, what is? If one hour of real attention a week to all that lasts, counts, matters and works is not worth engaging, what is?


Application

We have relied in this Lent’s application of the gospel on Franklin Littell, former Dean of Marsh Chapel, for some guidance and insight about how best to apply our exegesis of John and our exposition of Bonhoeffer to our own lives. Littell, the father of formal Holocaust studies in America, a Methodist minister who had witnessed both the rise and the terror of Adolf Hitler, preached from our pulpit for one year in 1952. But his lasting voice continues to address us, in part through his book, The Crucifixion of the Jews: the failure of Christians to understand the Jewish experience.

Life together, for John and Bonhoeffer and Littell, has meant the courage to find grace in dislocation. In expulsion and imprisonment and failure, we become dimly aware of real grace. But we first have to endure being expulsed from our earlier religion. We first have to endure the inescapable discipline of imprisonment. We first have to endure the crime and punishment of failure. Littell’s premonition was that the very same issues which led to the majority failure in Christianity to contend with Hitler are still and pervasively alive and abroad in the church. These are the religious issues, named last week, which continue to strangle and hobble real church life, real community, real life together. Individualism eclipses the common good. Episodes in experience occlude our view of community. Intellectual dishonesty precludes our ability to speak a full truth. Religion, which infantilizes, blocks the way to faith, which gives maturity, or responsible freedom. Littell has this for us to ponder: what if the faith tradition most damaged by the Holocaust, in the long term, was Christianity?


The Holocaust was the consummation of centuries of false teaching and practice, and until the churches come clean on this ‘model’ situation, very little they have to say about the plight of other victimized and helpless persons or groups will carry authority. There is a symbolic line from Auschwitz to (present troubles), but what the churches have to say about (present troubles) will not be heard until their voice is clear on Auschwitz. The tune must be played backward, the ball of scattered twine must be rolled up through the difficult and mysterious byways of the maze, before we come again into the blessed daylight of faith.

The meaning of the Holocaust for Christians must be built into the confessions of faith and remembered in hymns and prayers. That was the turn in the road that most of the churches missed…Antisemitism is not just a peculiarly nasty form of race prejudice; Antisemitism is blasphemy—a much more serious matter!

When Christians denied their obligations to the Jews, the way to boasting and triumphalism was opened wide, and most churchmen are still marching cheerfully through it (Littell, 65)

Coda

How shall we proceed? How shall we live up to the gospel, and live down our waywardness?

Through a moment of self-critical honesty, as when Maureen Dowd recently took the measure of her own tradition:

‘It is time for (us) to take inspiration from that sublime—even divine—side of the church, from those church workers whose magnificence lies not in their vestments but in their selflessness. They’re enough to make the Virgin Mary smile (M Down, NYT).

Through a moment of reflection on experience, as when James Matthews thought about his travel to India?

‘India enabled me for the first time to see myself and America as others see us, and it liberated me to be at home in the world’ (Bishop James K Matthews, BG 9/25/10).

Through a moment of Lenten discipline, as we struggle against the great pollutions of our time in air and debt and internet? As we park our car and save our money and do not ‘reply all’?

In Scripture (especially John), in History (especially Bonhoeffer), in Life (especially Littell), we are called to live in responsible freedom. We are called to shuffle off any and all religious or secular impediments, so that we may freely choose, responsibly decide. It is in our life together that we find the nutrients to sustain this perilous journey.

So, today, a table of mercy, a cup of salvation, the bread of life


~The Reverend Doctor Robert Allan Hill
Dean of Marsh Chapel

posted in Lenten Series 2011: Bonhoeffer, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 04.4.2011 at 6:04 pm

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