Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

To begin September we meditated together on the first meaning of the Eucharist, the Lord’s supper, which again we celebrate today: remembrance. ‘This do in remembrance of me’. To begin October we meditated together on the second meaning of the Eucharist, the Lord’s supper, which we celebrate again today: thanksgiving. Eucharist means thanksgiving. Now to begin November we shall complete the triad as we meditate together on the third meaning of the Eucharist, which holds for us not only remembrance, and not only thanksgiving, but also presence. We trust here in the real presence of Christ. Presence. Presence. ‘Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them’.

A friend reminded me that Charlie Brown once sat and talked with Linus about spiritual matters. I suppose they may have been speaking together between Halloween and Christmas. Linus was still awaiting the arrival of the Great Pumpkin. Charlie Brown was still telling him not to expect the Great Pumpkin because the Great Pumpkin was not real. This of course disappointed Linus, who sat gazing at the starry, starry night. Finally Linus burst out, “you may not think the Great Pumpkin is real, but he is a lot more real than that heavy set, bearded, old man dressed in red and riding behind reindeer who you wait for every winter”. Now it is Charlie Brown’s turn to look up at the starry, starry night for a few frames, which he does. Sigh. After which he says, ‘The world is full of theological differences”.

In this autumn we are mightily aware of differences, deep and lasting differences among us as a people. Some of these are social and political. But many lasting differences finally find their root in religious disagreement. And our view of resurrection, heaven, the last day, ultimate reality makes every manner of difference today. My once teacher and now colleague Christopher Morse’s new book, The Difference Heaven Makes, makes just this case.

As if we needed any further reminder of a world full of theological, we might even say eschatological, differences, we are met with today’s two readings. In different ways, they record the gospel as it is announced across serious differences. The writer of 2 Thessalonians, probably a student of St Paul honoring his teacher by writing in his name 50 years after Paul’s death, argues for a traditional day of the Lord to come. As 2 Peter will say another 50 years later, we should not doubt the fullness of divine promise, and should not doubt that the day of the Lord will come, even though our days and God’s days don’t seem to be the same the length of days. The writer even asserts that St Paul himself had written of various apocalyptic themes, when he was still with the church. The exact interpretation of this features and figures lies still beyond us, many years later. In fact, our writer himself does not seem to use easily or grasp clearly the intent and content of the terms he dusts off for use from the fairly distant past.

Clearly, someone in the church is arguing for a new teaching, or a different teaching, and our letter writer wants to hold onto the traditions that once were taught. Now we do not easily think in these apocalyptic terms today, so our hearing is challenged. But we do know about differences. We may take heart to hear that in the earliest church there were varieties of differences. The author of the 2 Thessalonians describes a contention about the day of the Lord as a backdrop for a larger announcement. We shall to listen with care for that larger announcement.

Then the Lukan portion of the Gospel of Luke (chapters 9-19) trails off and we return to familiar territory in chapter 20, including this account of marriage and resurrection which you have already heard in both Matthew and Mark. Here too we meet up with strange, unfamiliar arguments about marriage in heaven. Not marriage made in heaven, but marriage made on earth, in heaven. Whose wife will she be? Luke has taken Mark’s account of the question concerning resurrection, and reshaped it. In Mark Jesus harshly rebukes his interlocutors: ‘Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?’ He concludes, ‘You are quite wrong’. But in Luke the dialogue is Socratic and the love Platonic and the tone irenic. No criticism, no rebuke. And his contestants respond, ‘Teacher you have spoken well”. The older debates about Levirate marriage, between the resurrectional Pharisees and the non resurrectional Sadd-u-cees, recalled by Luke as if from a far off and exotic land, are presented as background, contentious background, for a larger Lukan pronouncement. We shall want to listen with care for that larger pronouncement.

To do so, however, we shall need honestly to acknowledge foreground dissonance. We meet difference every hour. Some may be transposed into lasting harmony. But some abides. Some things do not work out. Some relationships end. Some of these which end, end badly. That is why they end. That is, in their unhappy denoument we see clearly why the ending came. The manner of the ending is the ending itself. Some businesses, some partnerships, some relationships do not succeed. I do not say this lightly, especially with regard to the holiest of companionships in friendship and marriage. But sometimes, for the sake of friendship, a friendship ends. And sometimes, for the sake of marriage, a marriage ends. To get close to home: sometimes people need to find another church home. Life is too short to spend a high percentage of the 4,000 Sundays we have on earth in a relationship that should end. Sometimes you just need to ‘slip out the back, jack’. And find someplace your soul can breathe. Now you know I do not say that lightly. I say it though as a gift of freedom for you. Every human being both needs and deserves a community of faith, a congregation to love and a church to enjoy. As much as humanly possible, I want this community of faith to become yours, a church family to love and a church home to enjoy.

Our lessons make their way to a large announcement about presence.

Our two Scripture lessons provide us horizontal and vertical dimensions by which to name presence. In the teaching about the day of the Lord, the last day, there is a sweeping promise that ‘out that long way far further than you see beyond the last horizon and beyond that too’, there abides the God who chose you from the beginning, to be saved, to be sanctified, to be inspired, to be true. In the teaching about the resurrection there is a sweeping promise that ‘up beyond a long way up farther than you see beyond the highest hill and farthest star a way up beyond that too’ there abides the God who is the God of the living, and all live in him whether living or dying. The presence of the Lord, from the last day until today, and from the highest heaven down to this humble chancel, is known to us in the promises of God, the God of the living.

Let us put it this way, when it comes to resurrection and heaven and people. As C S Lewis once meditated, when you see another human being, you are seeing a being fit for heaven, now a little lower than the angels, but one day, one fine day, angelic too. Such a thought may make us a bit careful, a bit cautious about how we treat each other.

For those listening from afar, along the highway or in the kitchen or at the desk, you may want to settle your imagination close to where we are right now. You are with us here. Presence has no limit, no zip code, no curb, no boundary. Behind me is a lovely, laden altar. To the left, to my left, and to the right, to my right, are beautiful stained glass windows, which represent the traditions of the church, from Augustine of Hippo to Lincoln of Springfield. Before me is gathered a singing congregation, lead by a beautifully singing choir. Stone, glass, and wood meet flesh, bone and voice. Along the Avenue a trolley carries us a little tintinnabulation as a grace note. Then, around, the whole universe, robed in silence.

Elie Wiesel told a story this week, about a precocious young rabbi to be. Someone said, ‘I will give you a gold coin if you will tell me where God is’. The boy replied, ‘I will give you five if you tell me where He is not’.

Ours is an open table. We trust at this table that real remembrance of the Lord will prevail. We trust that at this table a full sense of thanksgiving will endure. We trust that at this table we stand in the real presence of the Living God. Over thirty and more years of gathering for communion, this presence has been my lived experience. I do not presume or pretend to have a novel theory of presence, real presence, at the table of the Lord. But I bear witness to such presence. I take the words of the 16^th Psalm: ‘The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; though holdest my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage…Thou dost show me the path of life; in thy presence there is fullness of joy, in thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.’

Jan and I began together at Eucharist in the pews of Riverside Church, as William Sloane Coffin began his ministry there. He squeezed his ample Presbyterian self into the simple Baptist liturgy for communion, as Frederick Swann accompanied the choir. The bells of that great tower still ring in the mind and memory. His voice is as real today as it was 35 years ago: There is more mercy in God than there is sin in us. Guilt is the last refuge of pride. I’m not OK and you’re not OK, but that’s OK. The separation of church and state is not the separation of a Christian from his politics. In tragedy God’s heart is the first to break.

Real Presence in 1977.

An illness took us to Ithaca and Cornell. The sacrament was administered then (I had no orders yet) by a retired preacher, Roy Smyres, who had known Pearl Buck when her husband served that little church, who had served it himself in the 1920’s, just following John R Mott, and who had walked across Africa. I see today his worn shoes.

Real Presence in 1981.

Then outside Montreal, an hour or so south, we once had communion on Maundy Thursday in the town where Almonzo Wilder lived and where Laura set her book Farmer Boy. Except that the oil furnace did not fire. So 70 of us went into the parsonage, many you could sense just out of the barn a bit earlier, and had communion around the piano, and through the house, and up the stairs and in the kitchen.

Real Presence in 1984.

In Syracuse, later, one Christmas Eve, a dozen new students from around globe joined us at midnight. Some were holding their hymnals upside down, in the dark. All enjoyed the candles, as the wax touched our palms . I spoke about Ernie Davis and tragedy and faith.

Real Presence in 1990.

Then in Rochester, from under a pulpit like that from which Coffin taught us, ‘fifteen feet above contradiction’, and in graveshot from those about whom he taught us (Douglass, Stanton, Anthony, Rauschenbush)to close the circle, in a simple service of the Lord’s Supper a friend’s face from 40 years earlier, unexpected and unconnected, looked up and partook, with a smile and a tear.

Real Presence in 2001.

And this morning, in range of Cape Cod and Portsmouth, of Worcester and Nashua, and otherwise around the globe, here we are. Alongside Daniel Marsh and William Bashford and Earl Marlatt. And you, and you, and you.

Real Presence in 2010.

Spirit Consoling let us find

Thy hand when sorrows leave us blind

In the gray valley let us hear

Thy silent voice “Lo, I am near”

My study of theology began in 1976 at Broadway and 120th street in New York, a fine avenue, if not quite Commonwealth Avenue. There walked in those days on those streets the ghosts and memories of saints past, like Reinhold Niebuhr and Abraham Heschel, one from the Union Theological Seminary and one from the Jewish Theological Seminary. In fact, the story or myth or legend was that on fall afternoons and evenings, Niebuhr and Heschel could be found walking, and talking, in the 1950’s, as they circled Grant’s Tomb, and strolled along Riverside Drive, and lingered in the shadows of Riverside Church. It is just that kind of refreshing and leisurely stroll I would like, metaphorically speaking, to take with you this morning. I would like to remember two saints, and to imagine their conversations.

You probably know Niebuhr, or at least his serenity prayer about patience, courage and wisdom. You may remember too that Heschel was the greatest voice of his generation, and century, to interpret the Hebrew prophets. Micah 6. Amos 5. Isaiah 55. Hosea 11. He said, ‘the higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments’ (repeat). With humble confidence and confident humility, in books and lectures and articles, Heschel taught a generation the unique, sui generis, power of the prophetic tradition. I like to think of Reinhold and Abraham, of an afternoon, celebrating difference, honoring diversity. They probably would not have used that phrase. But their conversation, and others like it, holds a part of our future. In thinking about All Saints, Heschel and Neibuhr came to mind. In Memoriam. With you I meditate upon them today.

I wonder if they discussed difference, considered diversity in the past? If they did, they would have recognized that diversity often precedes unity. E pluribus unum, says our dollar bill. Out of many…one. Diversity comes first in history, and in religious history. Huston Smith and Stephen Prothero could help us to remember this. Their books, a generation apart, are nonetheless equally contemporary. Smith is a perennialist, Prothero is not. Meaning Smith highlights the similarities among religions, but Prothero emphasizes the differences between them.

Yet what sometimes escapes careful notice emerges at the intersection of diversity and history. In religious history, diversity regularly precedes unity. In earliest Christianity, to take one example, diversity preceded unity. Before there was one canon of Scripture, there were many books. Before there was one central authority, there were many city congregations. Before there was one unity of doctrine, there were many and various expressions of faith. I think often of my teacher Cyril Richardson, who brought this understanding to bear on his students. The 27 books of the New Testament show startling diversity. Four gospels, all distinct, especially the most radically different, John. 14 letters somehow connected to Paul (including Hebrews here), all very different, especially the 7 authentically Pauline. Throughout the collection, a range of expression of resurrection, which Valentinus (for someone and something completely different), in his Treatise on Resurrection, called ‘a revelation, a transformation, and a transition into newness’.

Diversity came first. So, difference does not surprise, astound, alarm, or confound us. Difference does not frighten us. Hold that thought. Difference does not shake us. We expect it. It is in our history, after all.

I wonder if Heschel and Niebuhr talked about diversity in our time, in this the late modern period? If they did, on those autumn and spring late afternoon ‘paseos’, along the Hudson, they might have brought up Howard Thurman. Thurman preached and taught in the 1950’s. He did so here in Boston, right here in Marsh Chapel. I tell my students about Thurman, my predecessor at Marsh Chapel, by saying that he was ‘100 years ahead of his time 50 years ago, which puts him still 50 years ahead of us’. In those years, people would go one Sunday to Trinity Church to hear Theodore Ferris, and the next Sunday to Marsh Chapel to hear Howard Thurman, and the third Sunday to Harvard Memorial Church to hear George Buttrick. And the fourth Sunday they stayed home, I guess.

In all cases and places, those hearing Ferris, Thurman and Buttrick would have heard echoes of a recognition that diversity includes the poor. ‘Those at the dawn of life, those in the twilight of life, those in the shadows of life’. The disinherited. This morning, we might especially recall those displaced from their homeland, at various points in history. Those who wandered. Those who became strangers. Those who were refugees. Those who became immigrants. You too once were so. Remember. In memoriam.

Thurman spoke about ‘common ground’. John Dewey spoke about ‘common faith’. Today at Marsh we talk about ‘common hope’. But Thurman wrote a book and scores of sermons on ‘The Search for Common Ground’. He hunted for those places of connection. “People, all people, belong to one another”, he taught. For this Thurman is well remembered. But Thurman also emphasized the distinctive, the particular, and the individual. He especially highlighted the plight of those ‘whose backs are against the wall’. Long before the slogan about ‘God’s preferential option for the poor’, Thurman was probing the need and experience of the poor. His best book is ‘Jesus and the Disinherited’, in which one finds a consideration of present diversity, including those whose backs are against the wall.

Our present understanding of difference, of diversity, which we offer in memoriam, provides an ample space for the emerging claims, the just claims, of those most in need.

I wonder if Rabbi Abraham and Pastor Reinhold took time, in their wandering ‘tertullias’, for some imagination about diversity and difference in the future?

A sense of diversity into the future provokes an attitude of prayer. One thing about a walk, either along the Hudson or the Charles, is that it keeps your feet on the ground. You are not free to see the world from 30,000 feet in the air. You see things up close.

In 2003 this country trag
ically entered into a war that for the first time in our history placed us outside of the bounds of inherited understandings of just war. Religious traditions have made space for pacifism, on the one hand, and just war theory, on the other. The latter, particularly in Judeo Christian tradition, has emphasized war as a last resort, as an international or communal imperative, as a response to unjust incursion, and with attention to proportionality and reciprocity. This was our heritage as a people, as well. But in 2003 we entered a campaign that was pre-emptive, unilateral, imperial, unforeseeable, reckless, immoral, post Judeo-Christian, and wrong. So, some seven years later, now we find ourselves in standing in the need of prayer.

The world’s great religious traditions have everything to offer to us. Here are the treasure troves of the languages of lament, hymns of compunction, psalms of contrition, poems of regret, and prayers of confession that we shall need again to fulfill our human being, our being human. Dealing directly, on the ground, feet on the ground, with diversity provokes prayer.

One aspect of this prayer, provoked by tragic mistake, is the outworking of prayer in action. Here is on example. Refugee Immigration Ministries, under the leadership of the Rev. Ruth Bersin, is offering us water to slake our thirst for compunction, the bread of life to feed our deep need for confession and pardon. For this reason, we at Marsh Chapel have strongly and happily partnered with her since 2007.

Prayers are deeds. And deeds are prayers. Diversity provokes prayer as we enter an unforeseeable future. As Heschel wrote, ‘when I was young I admired clever people. Now that I am old I admire kind people’.

With Huston Smith, I tend to the see the similarities, the perennial, lasting common ground. Maybe you do too. There is a spirit of wholeness, one expression of which is our judeo-christian tradition.

We are all more human and more alike than we regularly affirm, all of us on this great globe. We all survive the birth canal, and so have a native survivors’ guilt. All six billion. We all need daily two things, bread and a name. (One does not live by bread alone). All six billion. We all grow to a point of separation, a leaving home, a second identity. All six billion. We all love our families, love our children, love our homes, love our grandchildren. All six billion. We all age, and after forty, its maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. All six billion. We all shuffle off this mortal coil en route to that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns. All six billion.

I remember sitting in chapel, at McGill University, in the autumn of 1981. The preacher was my teacher, for whom I was teaching assistant, until very recently the Bishop of Durham, NT Wright. He stunned us by saying that just before service his wife had telephoned. Anwar Sadat had been killed.

Sometime read again the way prison changed Sadat. Time in prison changed so many in the course of history, from Paul to Martin Luther King. Sadat wrote eloquently about the quiet and inner peace that he found, which led to his courageous leadership, which led to his death. He wrote, ‘I should like them to write on my tomb: he has lived for peace and he has died for principles’ (repeat).

May we live for peace, and give ourselves to lasting principles, including these: diversity precedes unity; diversity includes the poor; diversity provokes prayer. May we live with clear memories of those who have given us saintly versions of living.

There has seldom been a better week in which to meditate upon the saving power of a faithful persistence.

From one half mile beneath the surface of the earth, by dint of prayerful persistence which did not lose heart, by dint of persistent effort which did not give in, 33 Chilean miners emerged from the cave of death and out into the world of life. You may have seen the older leader who emerged, hugged, sang and waved. Then he fell on his knees, arms dangling to the side, chinned bowed. He personified a faithful persistence.

We are taught in the gospel that we, as disciples, should always pray and not lose heart.

The first person to meet us in today’s reading is the Lord Jesus himself, this morning in his role as teacher. You should pray and not lose heart, we are taught. It appears that the very act of praying, events coming and going as they do, itself contests the loss of heart. We should pray and so not lose heart. By the practice of intercessory prayer, weekday and Sunday, we do not presume to try to direct. We are not Babe Ruth pointing to the upper deck, showing the way the ball will go. We pray in order to hearten the heart, regardless of where the ball may go. Intercessory prayer is not only a matter of doxology, and not only a matter of therapy, but is a discipline that affects the heart. Its practice involves a faithful persistence.

Surrounded as we are by the effects of quasi-human communication, in all its technologically potent and existentially unproven forms, we deeply need the nourishment of prayer, including Sunday ordered worship with beauty its in music and homily and liturgy: enchantment not entertainment.

Erazim Kohak who once taught here once wrote:

The ageless boulders of the long abandoned dam, the maple and the great birch by twilight, the chipmunk in the busyness of his days and of his dying, even I, making my dwelling place among them, are not only right in our season. We also have our value in eternity, as witnesses to the audacious miracle of being rather than nothing. Ultimately, that is the moral sense of nature, infinitely to be cherished: that there is something. That is the eternal wonder articulated in the rightness and rhythm of time which humans honor in their commandments, the wonder of being…

Jesus meets us today in an exhortation to the faithful persistence of prayer. Those within earshot have some practice in such practice. But how much love have you shown to a neighbor whom you have not yet invited to pray with you, to join you? To whom you have yet to say: I will be at Marsh Chapel on Sunday. We could have a coffee afterward.

It is our fortune that the Gospel has told us the meaning of the parable in advance. Pray so as not to lose heart. For the parable itself careens wildly away from such an easy reading. For the second person we meet is an unjust Judge, who cares nothing for God nor man. His temperment and outlook make him an unlikely God figure, even though it is to him that the parable’s entreaties are presented.

With his growling grumpiness, he is yet a person among other people. His carelessness is not foreign to us. The revelation that decisions are being made behind closed doors, or doors at least closed to us, on less than virtuous grounds, is not news to us either. The humanity of the unjust Judge at least puts the Gospel right in the soil, down in the gritty dirt of life, a secret hidden in the dirt itself. The gospel is about and for people, after all.

Say what you will about the third Gospel, Luke has colorful characters. An outcast Samaritan, who is the savior. Mary and Martha in eternal dialogue about human beings and human doings. An importunate friend, who like the unjust Judge gives in because he is bothered. A Rich Fool with big barns and sudden death. A woman long infirm, touched and healed. A great banquet sent out to the least, last, lost. A man building a tower who ought to count his shekels. A king off to war, who ought to count his troops. A woman hunting a coin, a shepherd finding a sheep, and three prodigals—a son, a brother and a father. A dishonest steward—my favorite accountant. Lazarus teaching Dives. A slave whose master has him work day and night, inside and out. Ten Lepers healed, one thankful. Say what you will, the Gospel is memorably populated, and heavily populated. You feel like they would all make memorable dinner guests. ‘God bless the enemies of your enemies’ they would say as grace for the meal.

Our judge does not well represent law or theology. He represents enlightened self-interest, before the phrase was around. Maybe not so enlightened. Just self-interest. Scoundrels appear with regularity in Luke. There is no expectation that they represent morality or amorality. But they are present. They are part of the human condition, the existential given, that abiding anxiety, alienation, accident that is such a part of our experience. And sometimes to deal with power unattached to love requires us to give voice to love unattached to power. Sometimes that is all we have.

Within our little village of Boston University on the Charles River, two and one half miles long by a half -mile wide, we hear voices raised in love over against seemingly immutable power.

Professor Tariq Ramadan emphasized at our Law School this week that all religions need to practice a mixed measure of humility and consistency and respect “amid modernity’s porous pluralism and the pluralized ethical horizons of our age”. He challenged our young adults , first, to religious self knowledge: “when you don’t know who you are, you are scared by who you are not”. His cure for injustice? “Education, especially in history, philosophy, religions, and the arts”.

Dr. Karl Kaiser spoke to us this week in the International Relations school, regarding the labor involved in the reunification of Germany some twenty years ago. In a fascinating aside, he made reference to the involvement of theological students and theological studies in building part of the community and commitment needed to move two parts of the country together.

Sometimes the route forward involves a faithful persistence, which even the least just judge judges justly.

The stark contrast between powerless widow and powerful judge could not be clearer. A faithful persistence may face down such impediments to justice, when and where nothing else can. Luke back at the examples given in the Gospel thus far this fall: A faithful persistence that handles change. A faithful persistence both inward and outward. A faithful persistence that expresses thanksgiving. A faithful persistence that pursues justice. A faithful persistence that seeks and finds the lost. Luke is hanging portraits of faith along the dusty hallways of our memories, so that when we most need them we may draw on timely examples in timely ways. We talk at Marsh Chapel a fair amount about justice. But just how much justice have we directly done, recently, in our spending, in our voting, in our speaking, in our choosing?

Our Gospel next introduces us to a third person, a bothersome widow, who has gone to court against an adversary. It is not clear just how this story applies to prayer, as the introduction said it was. Her prayer life seems to be one long
legal deposition, and maybe that carries a truth. We are told elsewhere in the Scripture that we are to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5). Such instruction suggests that every word and every whisper involves prayer. We do well to prize our time, now we have it, the Scripture also reminds us (Hebrews 11).

Tonight our Muslim community will celebrate the somewhat recent completion of Ramadan with an Eid feast from 7 to 10pm, which many of us will attend. Our decisions about where to place ourselves on the map, each week, are part of our prayer life, too. In fact our forms of social location have everything to do and much to say about who, in faith, we are choosing to be, day by day.

Now and then, the Gospel testifies, we may want and need to place ourselves alongside the powerless but vocal widow. We may need to learn about speech from the underside.

From this pulpit our colleague (S Hassinger) recently encouraged us to ‘follow, lead and get out of the way’. By ‘follow’, she meant learn, or re-learn, for some learning means unlearning what has been learned. By ‘lead’, she meant discover how to lead from the second chair, not the first chair, for few of us end up in the first chair. By ‘get out of the way’, she meant give people back their own work to do.

The entitled materialism of the last decade may require you to unlearn some things about what matters counts and lasts. Your place in the second row may inspire you to learn the beauty of the viola, in contrast to that to the violin. A sermon on persistence may prompt me to give your work back to you. Remember: your fieldwork is not a substitute for your domestic duties. Pick, shovel, tractor, computer, i-phone, blackberry and calendar are not a replacement for setting the table of the heart and hearth, for sitting inside the house of peace, for preparing a meal of spiritual nourishment. The journey of faith falls along a route of persistent faithfulness.

A highlight of our fall each year at Boston University is the University Lecture, offered this week by Professor Jeremy Yudkin. He showed the discipline, the persistent concision of the music of Beethoven, Miles Davis, and Paul McCartney. A faithful persistence is something the great musicians, including these three, all share. Davis chose his notes carefully, and played only a few of them. Yudkin reminded us of his motto: “You don’t have to play all the notes”, he once said, “you just have to play the pretty ones”.

Researchers say that excellent proficiency in a skill requires 10,000 hours of practice, of actual experience in kicking the ball, playing the sonata, performing the operation, landing the plane, teaching the seminar, chairing the meeting, preaching the sermon. How honest, how realistic are we with ourselves about persistence? We had an old song we used to sing, ‘if you can’t bear the cross then you can’t wear the crown’. Why should we be discouraged about less than perfect performance with less than adequate practice? Practice, practice, practice. Outdated pedagogy? Not according to today’s gospel, and not according to one particularly importunate, especially bothersome, utterly unyielding widow.

We are met by only one other person, one final, fourth figure today. Jesus teaches. The judge vindicates. The widow importunes. Then the account that began in prayer, and continued in virtue, now concludes with a reference to judgment, apocalypse, the end of time. The community’s concern about the delay of the return of Christ is turned on its head. The question, says Luke, should not be ‘when?’ Soon enough, soon enough. The question should be one of preparedness. When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith?

The figure of the Son of Man would have been well known to Jesus of Nazareth. Whether or not Jesus attributed the title to himself we do not know. Here, the Lord’s question makes it seem anyway like he sees the Son of Man coming, but does not identify himself with that figure.

In general, in the Gospel’s, apocalyptic sayings and teachings are forged again in the white heat of the church’s instruction about how to live. That is, because it is later than you think, you will want to make the most of the time you have. It is this sensibility that one notices in the air and along the hallways of a great University, about this time in the fall, that is, about the time midterms are administered.

If you have a list of two things that truly matter to you in life, whatever they be, and you steadily attend to them, faithfully, persistently, assiduously, then you will see results, you will see progress. It will take longer than you want, but the results will come. It will take longer than you think it should, but the results will come. It will take longer than it would have with another judge in the chair, but the results will come.

Maybe there is a deeper reason why this combination of verses ends with a salute to the last judgment. It may be a warning to us, that is to us all, that is to you, that is to those of you who are already fairly faithful, and fairly persistent. Not everything is worth your persistence. There are other competing, rebalancing texts and sermons for other days: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging; the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results; better defeat for the right than victory for the wrong. Misdirected, misinvested, our persistence can do harm. Not just persistence, but faithful persistence is the announced good news from this late Lukan chapter. To what will you attend, in full, this month, this year? Our gospel challenges you to place faith at the heart of your persistent attention. Attend to the things of faith. Prayer, in word and song. Scripture, by morning and on Sunday. Compassion, in deed and word. A space for faith, a space for Christ in the hotel of your heart. Our friend Wendell Luke put it well in a poem:

The Chapel’s gothic nave, built to lift the spirit, welcomes you.

The Chapel’s sixty year history, at the heart of Boston University, welcomes you.

The Chapel’s regard for persons and personality, both in its Connick stained glass windows and in its current ministry, welcomes you.

The Chapel’s familiar love of music, weekday and Sunday, welcomes you.

The Chapel’s congregation of caring, loving souls, in this sanctuary, welcomes you in spirit.

Welcome today as we enhance our endowment.

We celebrate the endowment we already have. It is a rich and treasure. It is an endowment vocal not visible, audible not audited, psychic not physical, moral not material. Listen for its echoes…listen…

All the good you can…

The two so long disjoined…

Heart of the city, service of the city…

Learning, virtue, piety…

Good friends all…

Hope of the world…

Are ye able, still the Master, whispers down eternity…

Common ground…

Content of character…

Congregation and community, you come too.

Earthly assembly and heavenly chorus, you come too.

We’re going out to clean the pasture spring.

John Donne once sharply evoked, in a 17th century sermon, the power of divine covenant. Our cantata today coes the same, sharply evoking the power of covenant embrace, of the human, by the divine. Today’s cantata grew up out of a wedding cantata. And weddings are symbols of covenant, human and divine.

Donne preached long ago in London at a May wedding. Rather than reflecting in the abstract about the nature of marriage, or about the understanding of the church as the bride of Christ, or about divine love in general for the human being in general, Donne imagined himself in the bride’s place. He envisioned himself walking publicly down the aisle, to meet the Lamb, the bridegroom. He pictured the procession, his walk toward the Lamb, the bridegroom. He imagined truthfully what the townspeople would whisper about him as he walked forward: “Look at Donne. Do you remember what he did, all that he said, where he failed, all his faults?” How could he possibly be worthy?” Donne had probably seen many seen as many weddings as we do, summer by summer, with their processions, their thresholds of new creation, their sacramental covenants.

Peter Hawkins, our dear friend and teacher, summarize the moment this way: “The Son of God as bridegroom does not care a whit that his intended’s sins once were scarlet. All the bride has to do is lose her scruples, proceed and join in the feast to follow…with complete confidence in the bridegroom’s choice of her. Even if everyone else thinks the union is a mistake, ‘The lamb shall marry me” says Donne the preacher, “and marry me in aeternum, forever”.

It is this kind of covenant joy which the cantata today evokes.

Heavenly Flames

Heavenly Flames: To Be Your Temple

Souls pleasing to you in faith

You chosen souls whom as chosen as his dwelling

Who could choose a greater bliss

Who can count the throng of blessings

So will the site of sacrament be rewarded

Peace Over Israel, Psalm 128

Celebratory, rather than condemnatory

Joyful

Thankful

Give thanks, God has considered you.

I don’t know how I could live without Bach.

Today’s music - written by those great musical preachers of the Baroque Bach and Schütz – amplifies the central Christian message of salvation for all who believe by faith, and enter into covenant with God in Christ.

Let’s start with our offertory anthem, ‘Viel werden kommen’ by Heinrich Schütz. You can read the translation in your bulletin. He draws on a small portion of the text from Matthew Chapter 8 about Jesus’s encounter with the centurion. If you recall the passage, the Centurion, presumably a gentile, comes to Jesus asking him to heal a sick servant. Jesus is moved by the Centurion’s demonstration of faith, and after the miracle – true to form – Jesus finds in this the act a teachable moment. Here comes our text for the anthem. Despite the gnashing of teeth imagery, the scripture in full context ,means that access to Salvation, communion or covenant with God, is available to all, even the most unlikely – think of the woman at the well. He goes a little further here to indicate that, moreover, those who make assumptions about their Salvation may find themselves in the hot seat – just as Rich man Divies in today’s lesson from Luke.

We can’t be certain about biblical interpretations during Schütz’s day, but the set of pieces from which our motet is drawn was published at the end of the Thirty Years War, that awful period which pitted brother against brother, and confession against confession. In the Matthew lesson, Jesus clearly meant that the Centurion, a gentile, shared an equal chance at Salvation. Perhaps Schütz, in the 17th Century, was making a similar statement about Catholic versus Protestant. No great of logic is required to define which divisions plague today’s global community. Regardless, when we meet Schütz at the heavenly banquet with Abraham, Isaac, und Jakob, we can be sure to ask him!

Now to our Cantata for the day. Bach celebrates this communion with Christ, this holy wedding where Christ is bride-groom and we, the Church, his bride, in truly spectacular ways. Originally written for a wedding in 1724, Bach recasts his cantata for a Pentecost Sunday in the early 1740s. More than fifteen years later, he recognized the superior quality of his earlier effort, and found in it a text that suited the celebration of covenant, not just between two people who profess love and devotion for one another, but that this relationship mirrors the believer’s life in Christ, a devotion – a love – fanned by the flame of the Holy Spirit.

Music of the high Baroque is much like a Swiss clock - there is extraordinary beauty in the clock itself – face and casing - but that beauty is deepened by the wonder, precision, and complexities of the moving parts beneath the surface. As an aural guide for Cantata 34, listen for how Bach sets the word Ewiges – or eternal, and at the same time the flickering, darting line sing for the word Feuer – or fire. Notice how Bach sets the word for ‘ignite’ – entzünde – you can almost feel the music spark each time the choir sings it. The trumpet signals the arrival of Christ, as bride-groom, of this most royal of weddings.

The central movement of the cantata, focuses on the rapture of the individual whose body becomes Christ’s Holy Temple. There is a perfection and naturalness of beauty here – directly from the sublimity of Eden’s garden.

The cantata ends in thanks and praise, but not without significant emphasis on Christ’s pronouncement, ‘Peace upon Israel.’

Today we observe two masters whose musical settings give voice to Christ’s wedding invitation. An invitation to all, without amendment or exclusion.

We prepare ourselves for cantata and covenant, in wonder and vulnerability and self-awareness…

Wonder

Self Awareness

Before us today stands Jesus Christ, robed in mystery and announced in a strange parable. There is no easy interpretation for this parable. Why is its hero, my favorite accountant, commended for dishonesty which is a breach of the ninth commandment? We do not know. Why is his master happy to be cheated? We cannot say. Why is an accountant’s swindle upheld, in this parable here attributed to Jesus, as a preparation, somehow, for heaven? No one can tell. What, please, does verse 9, as tangled in the Greek as it is in your bulletin, intend? We do not see. What possible connection is there between the story, and the four trailing proverbs? Little at all, except that they all deal with money. How did this collection make it into Luke’s travel narrative? It is not clear. Is this dishonest manager our role model, in the church, as we try to “manage wealth in the direction of justice?” (Ringe)

Let us recall the mystery of Christ, the Stranger in our midst. Today is voice, so equable and magnanimous and serene, can just barely be heard above the cadence of the traditional (rabbinic?) story here told. Today his voice is like a whispering soprano descant. We can announce his presence today, again today. He is among us: dealing with issues we dismiss…speaking with people whom we dislike…considering options we disdain…selecting vocations that do not yet fully exist…expanding spaces that we constrict…accepting lifestyles that we reject…attending to possibilities that we ignore…approaching horizons that we avoid…healing wounds that we disguise…questioning assumptions that we enjoy...protecting persons whom we mistreat…making allowances that we distrust. So, strangely, is He among us.

For the mystery of Jesus Christ falls upon us, approaches us, and enchants us, when and where we least expect Him. In the strange world of the Bible. In the midst of the community of strangers that is the Church. Hidden in the odd estrangements of our personal life. Here, behold, the Lord Christ Jesus, the Stranger.

Contrary to much preaching, televised and popular today, his presence is neither simple, nor surface, nor easy, nor fundamental, nor shallow, nor ideological, nor one dimensional, nor ahistorical, nor primarily political. He draws us, lures us, and enchants us. So he sets us free.

For St. Luke has captured a collage of portraits of Jesus, “On the Road”. We are on a journey, as Luke reminds the church. We are making a trip to the promised land. We are headed in a certain direction. With our spiritual forebears, we are traveling, on a journey. Israel left Canaan to go to Egypt to find bread. There they became the slaves of Pharaoh. But Moses led them out, parted the Red Sea, and guided them through the wilderness. He brought them the ten commandments. At last, he sent them forth, with Joshua, to inhabit the land flowing with milk and honey. In such a glorious land, they hunted and farmed. They even built a temple, and chose a King. Samuel, Saul, David, and Solomon reigned, but were followed by others less wise and less strong. Although the prophets did warn them, the children of Israel left their covenant and their covenant God, and at last suffered the greatest of defeats, the destruction of Jerusalem and the return to slavery in Babylon, 587bc. Like Israel marching in chains to Babylon, and then trudging home again two generations later, we people of faith are on a journey, from slavery to freedom.

Luke’s mysterious Christ meets us today, hidden in the calamity of unexpected change and economic crisis. On the road, the journey of faith, Luke has most to say, and Jesus most regularly addresses the issue of money. Remember how Luke traces the Gospel. Mary in the Magnificat honors the poor. John the Baptist preaches justice, in the great, unique tradition of the Hebrew prophets, from Amos forward. Isaiah’s words and hopes are affirmed. Jesus blesses the poor, not just the poor in spirit, in his ‘sermon on the plain’. Remember the parable of the ‘rich fool’, “tonight is your soul required of you, and these riches, whose shall they be?” Luke sets Christian discipleship at odds with, in contest with, anxiety about possessions. And in conclusion, meet Lazarus and Dives. Jesus Christ calls us to manage our possessions toward justice, both as a church and as individuals.

Keep this portrait of the shrewd manager in your wallet, especially for the days your wallet is empty. He meets the report of his mismanagement, itself possibly false, with calm. He does not try to change the world, or this news. He raises the basic question with courage: “what shall I do?” He thinks creatively, acts with enterprise, communicates astutely, relates cleverly, strategizes shrewdly...and lands on his feet. When the cheese moves, he does too. He moves quickly. Here we overhear in a contralto solo the alto voice of an earlier period in the life of the church, earlier than Luke that is.

Before we understand the parable of the crafty steward against a moderate, modest background of proverbial wisdom, as does Luke, we might sing alto for a minute. Before we recall ‘wise as serpents, innocent as doves’, we might want to hear the parable of the clever steward against a sterner, more rugged background of judgment: ‘the Lord himself will descend with a cry of command…Some there are who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man…The kingdom of heaven…the good seed bears fruit, 30 and 60 and 100 fold. Quick. The contralto voice of the church before Luke may have heard it just so. Seize the day. Now is the acceptable time. Today is the day of salvation. Quick. It’s later than you think. Quick. Someday you may need to make a hard, sudden decision. Keep this parable in mind. Quick. You have been shrewd, clever and prudent in the decisions of this age, this world—houses and jobs and moves:

And what of the lasting things? Matters of heart, of soul, of friendship, of love? Have you been as assiduous with the things of God as you have been with things? Quick.

But you may wonder whether this parable speaks to you, especially if you are in financial calamity. Along Luke’s Jerusalem road, Jesus has a healing word to say about possessions, money, wealth. At least, in a tenor voice, this is what look says. He reads the parable remembering other teachings: before you build a tower, count the cost; before you wage war, study the enemy; be clever, shrewd and prudent; one man sharpens another like iron sharpens iron. The lord affirms not dishonesty but prudence. So at least our gospel writer sings out in his firm tenor voice.

To me it is clear that the chief communal issue before Luke’s (Antioch?) congregation was the management of wealth. This means that they had money. This also means that they did not immediately throw it away. This further means that they reasoned that the apocalypse of the end was not so very near that no financial planning was necessary. This additionally means, as Luke’s writing shows, that they were trying to lear
n to become prudent, astute, imaginative, shrewd, clever, insightful, accountable, enterprising managers. So they are reminded, in argument from less to more: “Keep faith in the little things, to be ready for the big ones.” An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. “Be faithful with money, which belongs to God, so that you will become faithful in soul, which belongs to you.” A stitch in time saves nine. “Do your pre-season training with possessions, so that you will be ready for the regular gridiron season of the spirit.” Look before you leap. Be penny wise, not pound foolish.

In other words, “use possessions so as to gain, not to lose, your future” (Craddock). Be creative. “For all the dangers of possessions, it is possible to manage goods in ways appropriate to life in the Kingdom of God” (Ringe). Remember that you are a manager of someone else’s accounts, an absentee landlord who has a claim. And go ahead, be clever. Be creative and loyal, but if you have to choose—be creative.

The deeper truth in this passage, though, is simply that faith handles change. And this is the bass line, the deep voice of the community of faith, which has lived with this odd parable for 2000 years. Faith carries the power to master the vicissitudes of change. Ultimately, this parable cannot be interpreted along moral, or economic, or even political lines. So read, it makes no real sense. Luke has gone ahead to read the parable so, in part, by appending the four parables about fiduciary fidelity. We have honored his teaching. But the parable itself says something else. Like the mystery of Christ itself, the story is not moral but mystical, not theoretical but theological, not law but grace. It is good news.

The good news is that faith handles change. A man gets the pink slip, and leaves under suspicion, with the sheriff on the way. He is looking at doing time. He is on the lamb. He is headed for jail, prison, the lockup, the pokey, hoosegow, calaboose, the slammer, the joint, the tank, in stir, goin’ up the river, doin’ time, in the brig, the gray bar hotel, the big house, the can. (Isn’t language wonderful? As the steel magnolias said, “accessorize—it’s the only thing that separates us from the animal kingdom”. I would add speech.) He is not a moral exemplar. But just as his ingenuity handles the sudden change in his circumstance, so the powerful grace of faith, the faith of Jesus Christ, handles the constant change of life. Faith manages change, masters change. So Paul can shout, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.” (Gal. 2:20). The faith of Jesus Christ, working heteronomously through life, handles change. Faith is nimble, not flatfooted; agile not stolid; creative not loyal; shrewd not complacent; quick not quiescent; fast not slow.

A couple of Sundays ago I came home in the early evening to settle in and read the papers. On the front page of the (NYT) book review I was surprised and delighted to find a report on THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS. Over dinner, last year, I had come to know the author, BU professor Isabel Wilkerson. As sometime marvelously happens, at table, she had captured my imagination about the book was finishing. She enthralled me with accounts of three people, on three trains, in three generations, headed north. Hers is the story of the epic migration of African Americans from the south to the north, on three train lines: one along the east coast, one up the Mississippi, and one across Texas to California. “What linked them together was their heroic determination to roll the dice for a better future.” Of course I found the account mesmerizing, told as it was in such fine detail, with such realism and hope: “a hopeful search for something better, any place but where they were. They did what human beings looking for freedom throughout history have long done. They left.” And of course I found it such a quintessential BU story, of freedom wrestled for, freedom won, against the tides of prejudice and poverty. What troubles have we seen, what mighty conflicts past? Fightings without and fears within since we assembled last.

Then, nearly setting the paper aside, I leafed quickly to the last book review page, and there again, a similar account, a fine book, a BU friend and author. Andrew Bacevich, a military man and a conservative, whose voice is one of the truest of our time in its search for the things that make for peace. His latest book, WASHINGTON RULES, calls to us to look hard at what we are doing around the world. He criticizes our condition of permanent national security crisis. He criticizes our tendency to ignore those doing the actual fighting on our behalf. He praises Eisenhower’s warning against the ‘military industrial complex’. ‘Bacevich in his own populist way sees himself as updating a tradition—from George Washington and John Quincy Adams to J William Fulbright and Martin Luther King, Jr.—that calls on America to exemplify freedom but not actively to spread it…the country is lucky to have a fierce, smart peacemonger like Bacevich’. And so is this community, this city, this University.

Days earlier, reading another day’s paper, I came upon the account of the Mt Nebo Bible Baptist Church in New Orleans’ 9th ward. Katrina wrecked the church and parsonage. Over five years, the pastor rebuilt his home, and conducts services there, now, every Sunday. The long story of wreckage and rebuilding was well told in the article. But it was the ending that stuck with and struck me:

When Mr. Duplessis first inspected the wreckage of Mount Nebo's building - pews tossed aside like toothpicks, chunks gone from the roof, there a wall knocked loose - he also learned that several boats had been tiedto the steeple. With 20 feet of water around, the second floor of Mount Nebo was, in more ways than one, a sanctuary. And so he has persevered in his living room. On this particular Sunday, the faithful finally did arrive, a dozen by 10:15 a.m., nearly 25 by 10:35. Mr.Duplessis preached from the Book of Joshua, all about determination. He conducted a baby blessing. And he joined his people in singing lyrics that were almost unbearably freighted with double meaning:

Are we ready to apply this gospel to our own lives and to affirm in the ways we live that faith handles change?

Beloved let us love one another.

Was there ever a time, a season, a year, week or month more hungry than ours now for this inspiration? Was there ever a more timely word?

Beloved let us love one another. For love is of God and one who loves is born of God and knows God.

This is the Johannine inspiration that comes from the Gospel and Letters of John, including our reading from 1 John today. In a strange way, the same spirit emanates from the center of the Gospel of Luke, in chapter 15. We hear today of the loss and return of a coin and a sheep, and on another day of the loss and return of a prodigal son. These beautiful parables, like the Johannine inspiration, come shorn of overwrought doctrine or tradition. They place us in the moment of loss and return, of coming home.

Beloved let us love one another for love is of God and one who loves is born of God and knows God. One who does not love does not know God. For God is love.

Words sublime. The high peak of Johannine inspiration. We crave the hearing and trusting of such words today, amid the cacophony of so much language, religious language included, that is less inspiring.

In this is love that God sent the Son that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us.

And yet. Those who have read through the letters of John and the Gospel itself, will have a question or two. Across the river at Harvard three autumns ago, after an evening presentation, a wise and kind man clearly said: “I have trouble reading the Johannine literature. I really have a hard time reading John”.

We can surmise what he probably meant. Our lovely lesson read earlier comes after, and as a by product of, a long, pained history of religious conflict. The community of John had good reason to state: one who does love does not know God. One feels that they had been on several sides of that locution over many years. It takes one to know one. We are not the first generation to know the scalding of religious conflict. The question is whether we can emerge from it with inspiration.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. But we love one another God’s love abides in us and is made whole in us.

These words of light were born in darkness.

For in John and John 1 we find various troubling, troublesome, troublous passages. We read repeatedly the phrase, ‘the Jews’, for example. We come upon Jesus saying harsh things, fore and aft. We turn the page to find ‘gentle Jesus meek and mild’ bluntly assaulting his countrymen, his fellows in religiosity, his co-inheritors of law, prophets, writings, of Moses, Amos, and Job, with the following exercise in humility: ‘all who came before me are thieves and robbers’. We find that far more than the already heated anti-semitism of Mark has been baked into the account of the crucifixion.

An historical, a diachronic reading of John it is, one that looks at its place and time, its community of origin, or life setting, which frees, and which alone can give a measure of the promise of 8:31, ‘you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free’. We know about overheated religious rhetoric. We know of this from the current wrongheaded, heated, unfortunate rhetoric with reference to our Muslim sisters and brothers. We also find it here in our own Bible, in the Johannine literature. It is not be understood literally or literarily. It is to be understood historically and theologically as a particularly dark moment in the shameful Christian tradition of anti-semitism. We need to know this first, and more.
John’s Jesus makes several remarkable claims, given Philippians 2 and Matthew 5. Are many of them historically reliable? Some are, but many are not. They reflect a changed understanding of the Christ, hard won and hard earned. The titles for Christ—Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man—come from different points it the community’s journey, history, and theology. We need to know this first, and more.

John’s community has suffered trauma that has caused change. Trauma brings change. They have suffered the trauma of disappointment. The end of the world which they expected did not come, disappointingly enough. They found the courage to admit it, and change. That is, in disappointment they discovered freedom. They also have suffered the trauma of dislocation. They have been thrown out of their religious home, de-synagogued if you will, and are wandering out in the street when they write. They lost their mother tongue, motherland, mother tradition, which is huge dislocation. They found the courage to face it, and change. That is, in dislocation they discovered grace. Paul, who did not write or know John, might well have said, see, I told you, ‘when I am weak, then I am strong’. We need to know this first, and more.

We come here to the stunning heart, the surprising marrow of inspiration, Johannine inspiration. Out of the forged iron, as from a refiner’s fire, of all this deep disappointment and dark dislocation, there emerged a document (perhaps best printed in poetic form), which has been the height of inspiration for almost 2,000 years. John has been the spiritual and sublime gospel, the poets’ gospel. Out of all this hurt there somewhere emerged our morning’s ‘epistle’ lesson.

For four years I have along side me as teaching assistant in the Gospel of John a most brilliant, funny, young mother, Episcopal priest. She is a literary critic. She practices rhetorical criticism. She loves poetry. Twice a term I ask her to bring her potent medicines, the alchemic mixtures of literary criticism to bear on our text.

The Rev. Ms. Regina Walton every term shows our students three poems which grow out of the Johannine literature and illumine its meaning. For today’s sermon, I determined to have you hear them as well. They are light, joy, truth, power, meaning, and love. Gospel. They are beautiful. They are rhetorically beautiful religious language. What other than such beauty, epitomized by our lesson from 1 John, will drive out the demons of hateful religious rhetoric?

More: could it be that years from now, in some way unforeseen and unforeseeable, as if forged in a refiner’s fire, the deep disappointments and dark dislocations of our current religious culture might drive us up, out and back to holy beauty, as happened over millennia with John? Listen in our time for the poets emerging to recall us to our rightful minds.

George Herbert lived from 1593 to 1633. The English Civil War occurred soon after his death, leading to ‘disestablishment’. Herbert was an ‘orator’ at Cambridge, and sickly. From a young age he knew that he was called to write devotional poetry. He knew John Donne, who was a friend of his mother’s. He employs both trochaic and iambic meters. He writes, among other things, of the soul’s call to God, and of the claim the believer has on God. That is, in his work there is a Johannine courage. Love made me welcome, but my soul drew back…You must sit down and taste my meat…Herbert wrote of love. Here is a poem that draws directly on John 14:17, John 6:6, and John 16:22:

Henry Vaughn lived from 1622 to 1695. He fought on the Royalist side during the great war. Vaughn is known as one of the best followers and imitators of Herbert. In 1649, Charles I executed Oliver Cromwell. The Church of England was disestablished and the Book of Common Prayer was outlawed. The King was understood to be anointed by God. Incidentally, his brother was an alchemist. Vaughn lived during a dark time, and his poetry evokes his time. He recalls the great Pseudo-Dionysus and the Cloud of Unknowing. He celebrates night and the darkness of God, in way that I believe connects truly to our time as well. It is no accident that he bases this poem on Nicodemus at night, John 3:2ff, portions of which we now hear:

You will not be surprised, many of you, by the choice for our third poet. T.S. Eliot was born in America, yet lived most of his life in England until his death in 1965. He was the greatest poet of his age, and one of the greatest of any age. While our generation does not cling to him as did an earlier one, and this itself is a pity, nonetheless he touches us too. To him we owe the rediscovery of the metaphysical poets. Eliot found God’s presence in God’s absence. Like Herbert’s mature claim upon God, like Vaughn’s love of night, Eliot’s presence in absence seems strikingly close to the spirit of our own age. I dedicate this reading to my dear colleague and deceased friend Sam Davis. The following poem owes much to John 1:1 ff:

Here are three poems, three moments of Johannine inspiration. One for those in need. One for those at night. One for those troubled by absence. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Words sublime. Is there a time that more needed the power of their beauty?

The poets have something, and have something in common. We leave you with their Johannine inspiration today. In fact, we address and challenge you with that inspiration today.

The poets have a sense of something. They have a premonition, an awareness of a looming Presence. Their words, and the words of Scripture, point us toward this premonition, this awareness, this inspiration.

A looming Presence, in way and truth and life. A looming Presence in night and dark and light. A looming Presence in word and speech and silence.

In a reality beyond our inescapable reality, they tell us, we are ever in the presence of One brooding over the fracas of history, brooding over the chaos of nature, brooding over the conflicts in religion, and brooding over our struggles in faith and life. A looming Presence whose nature and name is love.

In the morning mist, out along the lake, you hear, as you run, the crowing of the rooster from across the road. The earlier you pass, the more frequent his morning call to life, call to prayer, call to devotion. The cock crowing has a haunting, a lastingly haunting sound.

The mind turns over. Rooster. Our son for many years had stuffed animal, which was a Raccoon, whose name was given as ‘Rooster’. ‘Rooster Raccoon’. Rooster twice was burned, being placed too near the stove. Big patches of used cloth held him together. One limb he had lost in a tussle with the Labrador. And an ear. He lived with us a decade, until he came apart at the seams. But to recall his name is to remember, in the morning mist, a beloved bygone epoch.

The mind carries your memory as the feet carry your body out along the lake, with the Rooster calling, such a distinctive, troubling sound. Once long ago the crowing somehow seemed a marker—a note was sent to a colleague to this effect—a marker of what the church had been and could yet be.

The seven greatest gifts of my life have come directly by grace through the church: name in baptism, faith in confirmation, community in eucharist, work in ordination, friendship in marriage, freedom in forgiveness, and eternal hope in unction. So, of course, the reminder, the remembrance has strict power: ‘before the cock crows twice you will have betrayed me thrice’. It is the work, the labor, of grace to lift us up after betrayal.

Speaking of labor. Do you see how the mind curls around itself, in remembrance? Labor omnia vincit. Even with all of Twain’s mocking of work in Huckleberry Finn—one sees again the whitewashed fence—we know in the marrow the saving worth of work. People need work, work to do, meaningful work. 80% of a family’s health comes with a decent job. So it is striking that we do not remember, better, those most of us with work, what it is like to lack work. The 90% will want to remember the 10%, because we all once were the 10%.

Sometimes students and others do genograms. These are helpful exercises. You might ask your parents about their grandparents, your great grandparents, about what they learned in the 1930’s. Most families have some lasting hurts, bruises. Sometimes the stories are muted. Listen for them. Your mother’s grandfather might have been traveling the country, a hobo, jumping onto and off of trains. This is Labor Day weekend. The mind connects us to what we have known long ago. Brings it to remembrance. Another generation could list the four freedoms, including freedom from want.

Speaking of freedom. Do you see how the mind curls around itself in remembrance? We are together in Boston. The cradle of liberty. We walk the freedom trail. And others come from around the globe to do so. Have we forgotten what kind of freedom was sought here? Along the Massachusetts Bay? It was a longing for space, for place, for space and place for…for what? For freedom. But the particular freedom in our DNA, our real remembrance which we sometimes forget, is freedom to come before life, to worship God, in our own way, freely, without governmental constraint. The Tea Party in Boston was the outgrowth of a surge toward freedom—of religion. For minority, displaced, outcast, Puritan, religion, on the low side of the old world. We were born, now that you remember it, out of a desire to make space and place for worship. The big old center city Methodist church in Utica NY opened last week, newly rebuilt as a mosque to serve the large immigrant population there. The city is understandably proud. Sometimes you have to go a bit out into the periphery of life to encounter real remembrance.

Speaking of periphery. The mind still curls around… Our summer series of preachers this year brought voices from across the country, from out on the periphery, to acclaim the gospel of grace and freedom, and to reflect with us upon renewal. They merit our remembrance. The voices of Rev.’s Carter, Lightner and Amerson acclaimed the good news of divine grace, the good news of human freedom. We want to remember their wisdom. Do we? We want to remember Rev. Carter’s citation of the Haitian proverb, ‘God gives but he does not share’. God’s benevolence is all around us. It is our work to manage a just distribution. We want to remember Rev. Lightner’s ode to the joy of reading. Good news can come in unexpected packages. Do not judge a book by its cover. Read and read widely and you will be blessed. We want to remember Rev. Amerson’s account of the history of Boston University, and particularly of John Dempster from 1839. Faith can come, at last, through struggle, he affirmed, remembering a struggling friend who offered a wise malapropism in a healing service: ‘I pray that my strength may be faithened’. Exactly. We can give up a little expectation and take on a little expectancy. Sermons are not only for hearing but also for remembering. For remembrance.

Speaking of remembrance. In a way, all of Scripture is a sacrament like our table prepared this morning. Through bread and cup, and the words of tradition, we reach a sixty generation long arm back to Jesus. Through reading and interpretation, we reach a sixty generation long arm back to Jesus. We remember Him. His remembrance is our strength. St. Luke is careful to remember his stern teaching, amid the joys of feasts and prodigals. Count the cost. Nothing worth having ever came easy. Labor omnia vincit. Renounce all. Do not let the many lesser loyalties obscure the one great loyalty. Remember thy creator in the days of thy youth. Remember your mortality. Remember your capacity to harm others. Dust art thou, to dust shalt thou return. This year, and particularly in Lent as we remember Bonhoeffer, we shall have ample further time to consider the cost of discipleship.

Last spring term we celebrated the completion of forty years in ministry here of our Rabbi, Joe Polak, Director of the Hillel Center. A thoughtful student leader had arranged a special evening, a surprise party of sorts, by which to mark the occasion. The room was packed and joyous, full of singing and testimony. To have a place at the feast was itself a sheer privilege. As planned, a series of speakers offered remembrance. Each one was itself a gem. At a concluding point, the student leader who had arranged the affair offered her own statement. Her words linger in the mind. “We are grateful for the Rabbi’s ministry among us. His teaching and counsel have helped us. His voice and advocacy have supported us. He has provided for us an example, an example of how to live and how to lead.” Then she provided this telling insight: “Those of us who have been active here these years have been privileged. We have decided to practice our faith, during our years as students. We have done so in order that our memories of these years will not be held apart from our religious faith, our faith tradition. Our memories of college will be joined to, connected with our faith and our tradition.”

And you? Wi
th what manner of depth and meaning will you later connect the remembrance of these few years?

One of the three primary modes of eucharist and meanings of communion is remembrance. ‘This do in remembrance of me’. In the simple, plain grace of the sacrament we receive what we have been given:

‘for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me’.