{"id":1080,"date":"2015-02-15T11:00:17","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T16:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1080"},"modified":"2019-10-22T12:31:01","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T16:31:01","slug":"high-peaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2015\/02\/15\/high-peaks\/","title":{"rendered":"High Peaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Mark 9:2-9<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Whence Saving Insight?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

When and how does a moment of insight come? \u00a0What are the steps up along the mountain trails, the high peaks of life that give a moment of clarity that can save us?<\/p>\n

Peter has just heard our Lord\u2019s ageless command: \u00a0\u201cIf anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow.\u201d \u00a0Then Peter is led, step by step, up a high mountain, where something\u2026unearthly\u2026occurs. \u00a0He sees what cannot be seen. \u00a0And, from this mountain view, for a moment, there is insight and there is clarity.<\/p>\n

When and how does such a moment arrive, a moment of clarity that can save us from an anger that leads to murder, or a heartache that leads to suicide, or a despair over a gun-totting nation drenched in violence, or a chagrin about a country that ever more closely approximates Fosdick\u2019s verse, \u201crich in things and poor in soul\u201d?<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Gospel offers us a mountain view, clarity and insight, found step by step along the rocky trail of life, that can lift us up above sin and death and the threat of meaninglessness. \u00a0It\u2019s five step program was inspired by Josiah Royce\u2019s little Boston book of 1912, <\/i>The Sources of Religious Insight<\/i>.<\/i><\/p>\n

In earshot of insight on the mountain of transfiguration\u2026Walk along with me, if you will, for just a few minutes\u2026up the mountain path we go\u2026and take, Come Sunday, a divergent road. \u00a0Insight is born in worship.<\/p>\n

Insight Through the Thicket of Personal Need<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

One step toward insight lies through the thicket of personal need. \u00a0Careful, step carefully here. \u00a0Here you recognize your mortality. \u00a0\u201cIt is a great life, but few of us get out alive.\u201d \u00a0We truly do not know the hurts and needs others face. \u00a0Every heart has secret sorrows. \u00a0Here you admit that the acts of desperation in news reports come from conditions you also know. \u00a0Fear, anger, jealousy, hatred, dread. \u00a0Here\u2014step lightly\u2014you see the shadow, and your shadow in the greater shadow. \u00a0One called this \u201cthe feeling of absolute dependence\u201d. \u00a0Here we are confessional. \u00a0We say, \u201cHello. \u00a0My name is John Smith and I am an alchoholic.\u201d \u00a0We say, \u201cWe have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.\u201d \u00a0We say, \u201cThere but for the grace of God, go I.<\/p>\n

The first time I was left alone with our first child, to give her mother a night out. \u00a0She had been the most pleasant of children, happy and bright, sleeping through the night. \u00a0She hardly cried. \u00a0But that hot August night, at the very moment the door closed and the car drove off, she began to wail. \u00a0Not to whimper or weep, but to wail and shriek and scream. \u00a0Five, twenty five, fifty minutes. \u00a0I was really shaken, terrified, angry and frustrated, \u00a0at my wit\u2019s end, and probably at the edge of some irrational behavior. \u00a0Over the din of the howling daughter, I heard the doorbell. \u00a0In came our church\u2019s lay leader, Bernice Danks, a veteran nurse and teacher of nurses at Cornell who wordlessly took the child and somehow the howling ceased. \u00a0\u201cOh, I like to make a few house visits a week. \u00a0It\u2019s a little routine of mine\u2026You know I tell my nursing students that we call the things that are most important, \u2018routine\u2019\u2026and I came by the parsonage and for some reason I decided to stop. \u00a0I hope you don\u2019t mind the intrusion\u2026What a pleasant baby she is!\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe in this winter of our snowy discontent, we who are more ambulatory, as we skitter through the snow, will realize how my friend Tim in a wheelchair confronts the drifts, and especially the iced, choked, formidable street corners. \u00a0Insight comes through an experience of personal need.<\/p>\n

When we are helpless, insight can come.<\/p>\n

Wesley is still with us to ask, \u201cwill you visit from house to house?\u201d \u00a0Insight sees inside the closed door of personal need, and measures the distance between public appearance and private reality. \u00a0We recognize personal need with every Sunday, at an Marsh Chapel with gusto, in confession and kyrie, cry for forgiveness.<\/p>\n

Insight Over the River of Others\u2019 Hurts<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

A second step toward insight lies over the river of another\u2019s hurt. \u00a0Here, we\u2019ll jump the river at the portage path, where we bear each other\u2019s burdens like canoes carried in tandem. \u00a0A moment of clarity can come when you truly see another\u2019s plight, and feel it in your heart. \u00a0Some insight comes from serving others, some from sensing others\u2019 hurt. \u00a0It is really a matter of understanding power, this insight about others. \u00a0\u00a0Think of the Prince and the Pauper, or of Lazarus and Dives. \u00a0Insight happens in the chorus of the common life, when we sing out, \u201cso that\u2019s what is like to be you\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The social gospel tradition, theological and political,(Douglass, Anthony, Gladden, Rauschenbusch and others) may be criticized as a \u201cjohnny one note\u201d presentation. \u00a0But if you have to choose just one note to play, this is one to pick. \u00a0Jesus means freedom. \u00a0Real religion is never very far from justice. \u00a0To learn about the nature of power, and the effects of power, we listen to the powerless.<\/p>\n

Men, listen to the women about whom you care, as they describe being pulled over on the highway in a winter night. \u00a0With red lights flashing\u2026sirens wailing\u2026car door thudding\u2026a tall male figure in uniform and wide brimmed hat\u2026a revolver in the belt\u2026 \u201cMay I see your license please?\u201d\u2026Men, listen to women.<\/p>\n

Majority, listen to the minority describe the feeling of being stopped on the front porch step, at night, after a long day of menial work, and questioned, with Ferguson and Staten Island and other scenes in memory. Do you remember the New York tragedy of some years ago? \u00a0With the lights flashing and the uniforms and hats and, when you reach for your wallet some one yells.\u201dGun!\u201d. \u00a041 bullets later a tragedy\u2014unintended to be sure\u2014has occurred. \u00a0Not a gun but a wallet. \u00a0Such a tragedy for all. \u00a0But maybe such tragedy can begin to help all to gain insight, to begin to feel what others feel. \u00a0Majority, listen to minorities.<\/p>\n

Insight comes through the life long common song that recognizes another\u2019s hurt.<\/p>\n

In February of the year 2015, perhaps, Elijah, a chair left open for him guarding a shoveled parking spot in south Boston, the spirit of Elijah that is, broods over the face of New England snow fields. \u00a0\u00a0The sore muscles of a shoveling people, the tired torsos of a commuting community, the undaunted willingness still to help a neighbor, the gritty determination to get through the blizzard, the awareness of needs for investment in the communal forms of transport, the gladness of children and the extra time of adults, the same spirit visited. \u00a0\u00a0You may not daily see Elijah. \u00a0But his spirit is present, in the stamina, perseverance and goodness of a good, prayerful, New England people. \u00a0Morning in reading. \u00a0Mealtime in prayer. \u00a0Evening in quiet. \u00a0Sunday in worship.<\/p>\n

You know, we recognize this chance for insight every Sunday as we sing hymns together, in four part harmony, to recognize that we are all in this together, especially on a Snow Day.<\/p>\n

Insight Scaling the Cliffs of Reason<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

A third step toward insight lies over the cliff of reason. \u00a0\u201cCome let us reason together\u201d says the Psalmist. \u00a0God has entrusted us with freedom, and with minds to think through our use of freedom. \u00a0While reason has its limits, it is reason, finally, that will help us learn the arts of disagreement\u2014at home, at work, in church, in the community. \u00a0We say, \u201ctry to be reasonable\u201d. \u00a0And reason often prevails. \u00a0If you ever doubt the power of reason to bring insight, remember the words of the Psalmist, and the voices of great minds through the ages. \u00a0Josiah Royce\u2019s Sources of Religious Insight<\/i>, is itself a gem of such reasoned discourse. \u00a0Come let us reason together\u2026<\/p>\n

Now I submit to you that this meaning of the word reason is perfectly familiar to all of you. \u00a0Reason, from this point of view, is the power to see widely and steadily and connectedly. \u00a0Its true opponent is not intuition, but whatever makes us narrow in outlook, and consequently prey to our own caprices. \u00a0The unreasonable person is the person who can see but one thing at a time, when he ought to see two or many things together; who can grasp but one idea, when a synthesis of ideas is required. \u00a0The reasonable man is capable of synopsis, of viewing both or many sides of a question, of comparing various motives, of taking interest in a totality rather than in a scattered multiplicity. (87).<\/i><\/p>\n

It takes something like this capacity to reason together to develop a healthy marriage. \u00a0On this snowbound weekend two beautiful couples, one yesterday and one this afternoon, take their vows right here in the nave of the chapel. \u00a0One couple met in the undergraduate BU class of 2006. \u00a0The other are post-docs, one from England and one from France. \u00a0(Welcome to Boston!) For better, for worse\u2026To love and to cherish. \u00a0Well, to find a way to reason together.<\/p>\n

Our BU assistant vice president of the Office of Marketing and Communications and executive editor of BU Today, Art Jahnke, kindly asked about the service and sermon this morning.<\/p>\n

You know, we recognize this chance for insight, this moment of clarity, every Sunday through a sermon, a word (we hope) fitly spoken, as in, right now.<\/p>\n

Insight Across the Gorge of the Will<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

A fourth step toward insight lies across the great gorge of the will. \u00a0Look before you leap. \u00a0We are here ever closer to the mountaintop. \u00a0Real insight comes in a moment of decision. \u00a0Some say we learn to choose. \u00a0But our experience is that we learn by choosing.<\/i> \u00a0Viktor Frankl spent his whole life developing the \u201clogotherapy\u201d around this one conviction: \u00a0we grow by deciding. \u00a0Choose. \u00a0You cannot lose, in the fullest sense, and in the long run. \u00a0Choose. \u00a0Either way, you have learned, you will grow, you have changed, you will improve, you have developed. \u00a0Choose.<\/p>\n

Faith is not a matter of emotion or feeling or soul or heart or intellect only. \u00a0First, faith is a decision. \u00a0\u201cIf anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Kierkegaard put it, \u201ceither\\or\u201d\u2026 Either God or not. \u00a0Decide. \u00a0Either you see God in Christ or not. \u00a0Decide. \u00a0Either Jesus Christ has a claim on your life or not. \u00a0Decide. \u00a0Either every day is a chance for love or not. \u00a0Decide. \u00a0Either the way of love means particular consequent acts regarding your time, your money, your body, your community\u2026or not. \u00a0Decide.<\/p>\n

Faith is not as much thrill as it is will.<\/p>\n

You share with me a desire to honor those who have chosen to help us today. \u00a0Our choir and musicians, somehow present and accounted for. \u00a0Our support staff, Tim who shoveled out the plaza, and David who cleaned and warmed the sanctuary, and both who have come to worship! The dedicated choices over decades by Boston University, to support this broadcast, and WBUR to carry this broadcast, and our engineer Eddie to manage the broadcast, and our ushers in the back, our readers in the front, and all manner of friends in between. \u00a0Thank you.<\/p>\n

You know, we recognize this chance for insight every Sunday, in a moment of invitation\u2014to devotion, to discipline, to dedication.<\/p>\n

Insight Upon the Summit of Loyalty<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

A fifth step toward insight brings us to the summit. \u00a0There. \u00a0Take a breath. \u00a0Up here, the air is rarified. \u00a0Up here, you may have a moment of clarity. \u00a0For the fifth step toward insight brings us to the altar of loyalty. We are in the thin air that requires a use of archaic words\u2014loyalty, duty, chivalry. \u00a0Beware though the sense that loyalty is a matter of sullen obedience. \u00a0On the contrary! \u00a0Loyalty is the red flame lit in the heart\u2019s chancel, lit with the admixture of personal need and social concern, illumined by the reason and ignited by the will. \u00a0Loyalty combines the conservative concern for morality with the liberal hunger for justice. \u00a0Loyalty is life, but life with a purpose.Insight, real clarity, can come with a brush up with loyalty. \u00a0Tell me what you give to, and I will tell you who you are. \u00a0Tell me what you sacrifice for, and I will tell you who you are. \u00a0Tell me what altar you face, and I will tell you who you are. Dime con quien andas, y te dire quien eres<\/i><\/p>\n

And real loyalty is magnanimous. \u00a0Real loyalty is bighearted enough to honor an opponent\u2019s loyalty. \u00a0At the summit, there can be a reverent respect for another\u2019s loyalty, truly lived, even when it clashes with our own. \u00a0Maybe especially then. \u00a0US Grant felt this at Appomatox as he took the sword from RE Lee. \u00a0It is chivalry, this honoring of loyal opposition. \u00a0We were once known for this kind of chivalry, a reverent respect for divergent loyalties, as long as they did not eclipse the one great loyalty. \u00a0I overheard this kind of chivalry from a local football player this week, a burly formerly bearded lineman, who said, \u201cThey played better than we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such a memory could help our political conversations, reminding us that at depth loyalties converge out of difference. \u00a0Surface difference can occlude deeper agreements. \u00a0Loyalty has a magnanimous depth that honors others\u2019 divergent loyalties.<\/p>\n

One of the strangest turns in the New Testament is found in 1 Corinthians 15. \u00a0After Paul has reached the very summit of our faith, and sings of the resurrection in such heavenly tones, then, immediately, he turns to\u2014do you remember?\u2014the collection! \u00a0A matter of loyalty.<\/p>\n

Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.<\/p>\n

You know, we recognize this chance for insight every Sunday, through the presentation of gifts, an expression of loyalty, at the altar of grace and freedom and love.<\/p>\n

High Peaks<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Several years ago, we worshipped in the tiniest church in our area. \u00a0A little Adirondack chapel, at the end of the trail, high up in the northern mountains. \u00a0Beyond Owl\u2019s Head, and Chasm Falls and Wolf Pond, there is the summit of Mountainview, with its chapel and pump organ and wooden pews and simple pulpit, and humble service, still though a service like this one or any — a chance for saving insight as we recognize personal need, others\u2019 hurts, the power of reason, the importance of will, the force of loyalty\u2014in the prayer of confession, the music of community, the preaching of the Word, the invitation to decision, and the loyal offering of gifts.<\/i><\/p>\n

This Lent: \u00a0Let insight abound on the curvaceous slopes of personal need! \u00a0Let insight abound on the majestic mountains of social holiness! \u00a0Let insight abound on the prodigious cliffs of reason and will! \u00a0Let insight abound on the purple mountain summit of loyalty\u2014from every mountainview, let insight abound! \u00a0So that, to paraphrase the spiritual, we might sing, insight at last, insight at last, thank God Almighty, we have saving insight at last!<\/i><\/p>\n

Somehow we were deluded to think that worship is optional. \u00a0Many things are optional. \u00a0For those, however, who desire to see life as human and keep life human, worship is essential, essential, essential to insight, essential to the insight that keeps life human. \u00a0How can we be human without seeing our own frailty, without knowing another\u2019s pain, without learning to reason together, without the courage to decide, without the love of loyalty? \u00a0So let us improve in Lent.<\/p>\n

Let us worship God together. \u00a0As you are doing, do so more and more.<\/p>\n

Let us make it our earnest desire to worship God each Lord\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

Let us make preparation for our ordered worship in daily prayer and reading.<\/p>\n

Let us sing lustily, as Wesley taught, and pray with energy, and listen with care.<\/p>\n

Let us do as OW Holmes regularly did with every sermon, ill or well though the sermon was: \u00a0\u201cI applied it to myself\u201d.<\/p>\n

Let us shake off our timidity and seize every opportunity to include others, friend and neighbor and relative in worship.<\/p>\n

Let us savor the memory of Sunday all week long\u2014humming familiar verses, reciting familiar phrases, chewing on various themes.<\/p>\n

Let us expect and experience of love, of presence, of God.<\/p>\n

Let us enter silence with grace and song with freedom.<\/p>\n

Let us prepare to worship, Lent 2015.<\/p>\n

To Quicken the Conscience by the Holiness of God<\/i><\/p>\n

To Illumine the Imagination by the Beauty of God<\/i><\/p>\n

To Open the Heart to the Love of God<\/i><\/p>\n

To Devote the Will to the Purposes of God<\/i><\/p>\n

Words at the Kyrie Eleison<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Confession in Snow: \u00a02\/15\/15<\/p>\n

Our Kyrie Eleison, and prayer of confession, are meant to open us to transformed, changed perspectives, to greet this as a day of new beginnings, to help us to think in a different way. \u00a0For example: \u00a0what if the Bible had been written in snowy New England rather than in the sunny Near East?<\/p>\n

Imagine\u2026<\/p>\n

And God separated the snow banks from the snow banks, those from under the firmament, from those over the firmament, and God called the firmament heaven. \u00a0And there was evening and morning, a second day.<\/i><\/p>\n

And Abraham took his huskies to drink by the frozen lake, and there met Rebecca, who came to break the ice and draw water. \u00a0And he said, \u201cPray, put down your pick ax and let me drink from the icy flow\u201d.<\/i><\/p>\n

And Pharaoh\u2019s daughter saw a sled come by downhill, in which there was wrapped in a snowsuit, a little boy, named Moses. \u00a0Pharaoh\u2019s daughter took him home, and warmed him by the fire.<\/i><\/p>\n

After the children of Israel had skated across the frozen Blue Sea, \u00a0and Pharaoh\u2019s army was in close pursuit, the Lord God sent a heat wave that melted the ice and Pharaoh, and his chariots and his army plunged down into the\u00a0briny\u00a0deep.<\/i><\/p>\n

By the icicles of Babylon we sat down and wept as our tormentors said to us, sing to us one of the songs of Zion.<\/i><\/p>\n

Save me O God! \u00a0For the avalanche has cascaded upon me\u2026I have fallen into deep drifts and the snow sweeps over me.<\/i><\/p>\n

Many snow drifts cannot bury love, neither can blizzards smother it.<\/i><\/p>\n

Let Justice roll down like an avalanche, and righteousness as an unending blizzard.<\/i><\/p>\n

I baptize you with snow, but One is coming who will baptize you with fire<\/i><\/p>\n

Except a man be born of snow and the spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven.<\/i><\/p>\n

God sends his snow upon the just and the unjust alike<\/i><\/p>\n

The wise man built his house upon the rock. \u00a0The snow fell, and the blizzard came and the lake effect wind blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it was built upon the rock.<\/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,\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For information about donating to the Chapel,\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the full service Mark 9:2-9 Click here to listen to the sermon only Whence Saving Insight? When and how does a moment of insight come? \u00a0What are the steps up along the mountain trails, the high peaks of life that give a moment of clarity that can save us? Peter […]<\/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\/1080"}],"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=1080"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1082,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions\/1082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}