{"id":1021,"date":"2014-11-16T11:00:05","date_gmt":"2014-11-16T16:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1021"},"modified":"2019-10-29T12:15:56","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T16:15:56","slug":"impermanence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2014\/11\/16\/impermanence\/","title":{"rendered":"Impermanence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the service<\/a><\/p>\n

Micah 6:6-8<\/a><\/p>\n

1 Corinthians 7:25-31<\/a><\/p>\n

Matthew 25:14-30<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to listen to the sermon only<\/a><\/p>\n

Preface: Five and Dime<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/address>\n
If you have some change in your pocket come with me for a minute.\u00a0\u00a0 We are going into the village green five and ten cent store, to see what we can see.\u00a0\u00a0 Don\u2019t you love this little store?\u00a0 For fifty years\u2014even more\u2014the shop has somehow survived, meeting the essential impermanent desires of the day.\u00a0\u00a0 Here you buy pencils and notebooks for school, a scarf in the winter, a squirt gun in the spring, a yo-yo for summer, and come autumn again, something to wear at Halloween.\u00a0 John Wesley said his English people were \u201ca nation of shopkeepers\u201d.\u00a0 So in some regions, the small business, farm, store still provide economic backbone.\u00a0 The same scents and smells linger here, from so long ago:\u00a0 a mixture of newsprint and bubblegum and paint and perfume.\u00a0\u00a0 The uncovered tongue and groove wooden floor creeks in the same odd placesFor so many years this store was the stage on which its owner performed.\u00a0 He wore a handlebar mustache, bright white hair, a stunning smile, and cackled with a child\u2019s laugh.\u00a0\u00a0 He looked like the wizard of oz.\u00a0 Years later, when I sat next to him as a fellow, visiting Rotarian, he looked the same\u2014the wizard of oz.\u00a0\u00a0 His little world of tiny transactions, most of the purchases made by people who had to reach up to the counter, on tiptoe, somehow kept his soul lit.\u00a0\u00a0 Of all people, I guess, he could have had the most reason to doubt his role.\u00a0 His customers were few and supported only by weekly allowances.\u00a0 The transactions involved pennies and dimes.\u00a0 The days were long, the hours demanding.\u00a0 But the sun streaming through his clean window touched most often a smiling, happy face.\u00a0\u00a0 I can remember handing over some little coin in exchange for some little trinket.\u00a0\u00a0 In that little sunlight, over the exchange of impermanent capital for impermanent goods, somehow, there lingered a graceful, mysterious, spirited, permanence, too.\u00a0 Maybe that is what made the wizard so happy.<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n
When our son Chris was 6 years old, we went to the same store to buy birthday candles and a fishing pole.\u00a0 Chris also saw some candy.\u00a0 I turned to pick up the NY Times, and saw Chris reach up to the counter with his purchase.\u00a0 The wizard stood gleaming and ready.\u00a0\u00a0 Then Chris took out his wallet and stared up.\u00a0 He fished in the little pouch, and found his coin.\u00a0 Then the wizard looked at Chris, and Chris looked at the wizard.\u00a0\u00a0 The old eyes darkened with delighted understanding, and the handlebar mustache twitched and the wrinkled hand reached forward.\u00a0 And Chris held his ground and waited, fingering the coin, for that eternal moment that hangs between childhood and maturity.\u00a0 There they stood, matador and bull, boxer and champion, batter and pitcher, wizard and boy.\u00a0\u00a0 As he had for decades, the shop-owner patiently paused. At last out came the coin. The deal was struck.\u00a0<\/address>\n

Talents.\u00a0 Talents invested, exchanged, used, given.\u00a0 Well done thou good and faithful servant!\u00a0 You have been faithful over a little.\u00a0 We will set you over much.\u00a0 Enter into the joy of the master.<\/p>\n

I count it as a true, holy moment, as is any first experience, and especially any first experience of impermanence.\u00a0\u00a0 Sic transit gloria mundi.<\/i><\/p>\n

Once we begin to reckon with the impermanence of this life, so much paper and candy and seasonal needs, there comes another longing.\u00a0 For an experience of God.\u00a0 There arises in the heart, a longing for an experience of God, for the lapping light of the morning to touch the cheek, for the full permanence of \u2026grace, love, heaven\u2026<\/i>to enter our boyish, girlish, childish, or childlike life.<\/p>\n

People come to church for an experience of God.\u00a0 You would be surprised to know how hard, even in the ministry, it can be to keep this truth in view.\u00a0 Men and women come to church, longing for an experience of divine love.<\/p>\n

A place where the longing of the heart can be fed, that \u201cdesire of the moth for the flame, of the night for the morrow, the devotion to something afar from the sphere of our sorrow.\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/i><\/b>A Prophetic Approach to Impermanence<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The same longing we have tried to witness in the crowded aisles of the village green five and dime also pulses through the deep places of the Scripture.\u00a0\u00a0 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst.\u00a0 Micah Ben Imlah did hunger and thirst, too.\u00a0 In the pain and tenderness of too much loving, he wondered how, if at all, such an experience could be his.<\/p>\n

With what shall I come before the Lord?<\/i><\/p>\n

What shall I do?\u00a0\u00a0 Whom should I love?\u00a0 How should I walk?<\/i><\/p>\n

Amid the piles and aisles of impermanent, seasonal goods, where an experience of lasting love?<\/p>\n

A path toward the permanent, this is what Micah desires.\u00a0 In the uses of his resources, Micah believes, there lies hidden the potential for an opening into an experience of God.\u00a0 Underneath that apparently chaotic impermanence, there lies the potential for an opening into the experience of God.\u00a0\u00a0 Micah advises us not to get too comfortable.<\/p>\n

Do.<\/i>\u00a0\u00a0 We may learn to use our resources for the making of justice.<\/p>\n

Love.\u00a0 <\/i>We may come to love what cannot be seen, mercy, and then to use what can be seen, money, rather than loving what can be seen and using what cannot be seen.<\/p>\n

Walk.<\/i>\u00a0 Because our transactions, most days, involve bills and not coins, we, unlike the shopkeeper, we are more tempted to take ourselves overly seriously.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/b>2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/i><\/b>Paul and Impermanence<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

In this same vein, the Apostle to the Gentiles teaches us again today about impermanence.\u00a0 Is this not a glorious and a liberating word?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In treating a matter of moral discernment among the wayward Corinthians, Paul asserts the impermanence of this world.\u00a0 His blessed words are as strange for us as they are healthy to hear.<\/p>\n

Paul advises us not to get too comfortable.\u00a0\u00a0 Marriage, death, birth, work, life, all\u2014these Paul asserts are themselves impermanent goods, seasonal items in the aisles of life\u2019s five and dime.\u00a0 Good, holy, important, and, at last\u2026impermanent.\u00a0\u00a0 Let those who buy do so as those who have no goods.\u00a0 Let them recall that first experience, reaching up to the counter, of impermanence.\u00a0\u00a0 Let us treat our goods not in the form of this world, which is passing away, but in the form of the world to come<\/p>\n

Here is a great blessing, for those with ears to hear.\u00a0\u00a0 Within the land of impermanence, there is the possibility of an experience of God.\u00a0 It is for that experience\u2026 that touch of the divine hand upon the hand of the child of God\u2026 for which goods and seasonal items and crowded aisles and everything from five and dimes to great corporations exist.<\/p>\n

When we give, we open the possibility of experiences of God, not necessarily for ourselves directly, although that may be, but more often indirectly for others.\u00a0\u00a0 Giving and generosity bless us because they open up the opportunity for an experience of God.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/b>3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/i><\/b>Impermanence Today<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Now it is the autumn of the year.\u00a0 November 2014.\u00a0 Over six weeks, worthy causes and needy organizations will reach out to donors, generous supporters.\u00a0 Some are here and some are listening this very morning.\u00a0 Women and men are thinking about talents, about the coin in the pocket, and considering year-end giving.<\/p>\n

Of course we strongly encourage your ongoing support of Marsh Chapel.\u00a0 But many of you listening on the radio have your own churches.\u00a0 You may be driving home from worship, listening to us.\u00a0 You may be at home or at work this morning, listening.\u00a0 And you have a church home, a church family, a church that needs your support.\u00a0 I think prayerfully about you and your churches today.\u00a0 I think about the good people in those churches.\u00a0 I want to say an encouraging word about your giving to your church.<\/p>\n

Every church is an adventurous ride on the tide of generosity.\u00a0 You have no tax base in the church, like those which support schools.\u00a0 You have no product to barter, like those that support businesses.\u00a0 You live and die on the free choices, every fall, \u00a0that raise a tide of giving.\u00a0 I wonder, sometimes, what would happen if the churches could not fund ministry?\u00a0 What would happen to efforts with children and older folks, mission and outreach, staff and buildings, worship and music?<\/p>\n

Every fall the churches wait for the tide, like surfers.\u00a0 They crouch along the board, out beyond the San Diego Bay.\u00a0 The sun is high, the sky is blue, the air is warm, the day is fine.\u00a0 They feel the tide rising, and here it comes!\u00a0 They stand, and put toes out on the board.\u00a0 They hang ten.\u00a0\u00a0 And the tide rises, every year.\u00a0 Thanks to freely chosen gifts. \u00a0Thanks to you.\u00a0 Sometimes the tide is low, and we drift a little.\u00a0 Sometimes the tide is high, and we spin.\u00a0\u00a0 The uncertainty that is the sign of real freedom for the giver and the gift is that warm and vivifying wind that feeds us.<\/p>\n

Faithful people year in and year out generously, happily support the work of faith.\u00a0 One is an elderly man, gracious and loving, who learned at an early age to tithe.\u00a0 One is a fiercely able Trustee, who cares for the property and investments of the church, but who has a big heart for the poor in Honduras.\u00a0 One is a woman who has prayed mission into life, and has had the grace to live with surprising answers to prayer, answers other than what she expected. They for and they come from experiences of God.<\/p>\n

4. Taught to Give<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

What is lasting and good in my life has come from the church of Christ.\u00a0 Name and identity in baptism.\u00a0 Faith in confirmation.\u00a0 Community in eucharist.\u00a0 Wife and family in marriage.\u00a0 Work, and vocation, in ordination.\u00a0 Saving forgiveness in moments of\u00a0 pardon.\u00a0 Hope for heaven in the gospel of Christ.<\/p>\n

Whatsoever has any permanence for me comes from the church.<\/p>\n

So\u2026I guess I would be lost in the fall without a chance to preach a Stewardship sermon.<\/p>\n

I am here, really, out of a formation, long before adulthood,\u00a0 in the midst of people who knew that the form of this world was passing away.\u00a0 The superintendents who remembered to bring Christmas gifts, the military chaplainswho sat at the dining room table\u2014they did so with an existential reserve, a freedom from the impermanence of this world, a joyful and sober sense that the form of this world is passing away.\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t get too comfortable\u201d they seemed to say in deed as well as word.\u00a0 They modeled an existential itinerancy that is far more important the mechanical one we know too well in which, as we say, Bishops appoint\u2014and disappoint. The ministers who came and sang hymns in our homes, who laughed at and with each other, and who prayed for the salvation of the world\u2014they dealt with the world as if they had no dealings with it.\u00a0 The people in our churches, churches supported then and now by the tithing of retired school teachers, who cared about the world and about the next generation\u2014they knew the impermanence of the world around, and the brevity of our time here.\u00a0 They tithed, and so what remains of our church remains.<\/p>\n

Those who raised us, who could have had many more the goods of this passing world, lived with an aplomb, a grace, a savoir faire that better than any sermon interpreted 1 Corinthians 7.\u00a0 Let those who mourn do so as if they were not mourning.\u00a0 The discipline of the Methodists\u2014this is your birthright, your legacy, your history, Marsh Chapel\u2014comes from this presentiment about impermanence.<\/p>\n

In our raising, you could have the courage to live on less, to itinerate at the direction, if not the whim of a superintendent, to pull up stakes and make new friends, to know the hurt and the excitement of a gypsie life.\u00a0 How did they do this?\u00a0 Because they believed in their bones that what lasts is not the various goods and seasonal items of the five and dime, but the touch of the wizard\u2019s hand.\u00a0 That gracious experience of God that comes in and through the impermanent cacaphony of life, and is primed by giving.<\/p>\n

I wonder if we are ready to open the world up to experiences of God?<\/p>\n

People come to church for an experience of God.\u00a0 Giving is one doorway to such an experience.<\/p>\n

5. An Experience of God<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

It is great blessing, that giving opens opportunities for experiences of God.\u00a0 They come in God\u2019s time and they come over time and they come to others.\u00a0 But giving gives the chance for such an experience.<\/p>\n

A while ago I had a wedding.\u00a0 It was beautiful autumn day as so many have been this year.\u00a0 The service was wonderful.\u00a0 The organist played a version of \u201cLove Divine\u201d with bells that rounded off the service to perfection.\u00a0 I was proud to be a part of it.\u00a0 Later, in the ready room, a woman who had attended the service asked about my family.<\/p>\n

We talked, and I discovered that she was from the North Country, upstate NY, and had been raised with some difficulty by a single mother.<\/p>\n

Near Alexandria Bay<\/i>?<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Alexandria Bay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did you know Rev. Pennock, who was there in retirement (who is Jan\u2019s grandfather)?<\/i><\/p>\n

All of sudden her face became red and her eyes filled.\u00a0 I wondered what I had said to upset her.\u00a0 This is the \u201cjoy\u201d of the ministry–you enter a room and everyone is uncomfortable!\u00a0 You make small talk and women cry!<\/p>\n

\u201cNo\u201d, she said, \u201cyou don\u2019t understand\u2026When I was a young woman, I barely could go to college.\u00a0 Every semester I received a check from the Alexandria Bay church, money that was to pay for my voice lessons\u2026This kept me going in college, not just the money, which was significant, but more so the thought, the fact that somebody believed in me, could see me with a future, outside of my struggling family and small town, and invested in me\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

By now we were both emotional.<\/p>\n

What does that have to do with me? <\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cI learned a few years ago that your wife\u2019s grandfather is the one who gave the money for those lessons!\u00a0 His gift formed my life!<\/p>\n

What are you doing today?
\n<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cI am the director of music for a Methodist church near Albany.\u00a0 The bride grew up in my youth choir.\u00a0 Music is my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over all those years, and so many miles, across such a great existential distance, look what happened:\u00a0 I was given an experience of God, emotion laded and heartfelt and real and good, and even in church or at least almost, as a consequence of a gift made long ago and far away.\u00a0\u00a0 The hidden blessing of generosity is that giving opens the world to the possibility of experiences of God.\u00a0 Rev. Harold Pennock is long dead.\u00a0 His wife Anstress is long dead.\u00a0 But after a wedding, in the late afternoon, his thoughtful kindness opened the world<\/p>\n

Coda: A Midnight Prayer<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Sometime later tonight, especially if the sky is clear and if the stars come out, I am going to walk out onto the esplanade.\u00a0\u00a0 The moonlight glistening on the frosted riverbank, the sound of squirrels scurrying with nuts to store, the smell of the dampened leaves, the taste of crisp autumn\u2014the season of accountability—touching the tongue, hands clasped against the cold—now beneath a gleaming North Star it is time to offer a prayer.\u00a0 I wonder if you would pray this with me sometime later tonight:<\/p>\n

Dear God<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Help me to love you this coming year by giving to others this coming year.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I am going to give away 10% of what I earn.\u00a0 I am nervous about doing it.\u00a0 I need your help.\u00a0 I want to tithe, but the coin seems to stick inside the wallet somehow. I want to give but the counter top seems so high up.\u00a0 I want to invest my talent in life by faith with hope but this is something new and I am nervous. \u00a0So I need your help.\u00a0 Dear God.\u00a0 Help me to love you this coming year by giving to others this coming year.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Amen<\/i><\/p>\n

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/a><\/p>\n

For more information about Marsh Chapel at Boston University, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For information about donating to the Chapel, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the service Micah 6:6-8 1 Corinthians 7:25-31 Matthew 25:14-30 Click here to listen to the sermon only Preface: Five and Dime \u00a0 If you have some change in your pocket come with me for a minute.\u00a0\u00a0 We are going into the village green five and ten cent store, to see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1021"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1024,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}