{"id":1108,"date":"2015-04-05T11:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-04-05T15:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1108"},"modified":"2019-10-22T12:15:54","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T16:15:54","slug":"easter-sunday-whence-benevolence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2015\/04\/05\/easter-sunday-whence-benevolence\/","title":{"rendered":"Easter Sunday: Whence Benevolence?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Mark 16:1-8<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Frontispiece<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Whence benevolence?<\/p>\n

How did a sprawling, violent creation, 15 billion years in the making, and within it life emerging out of natural selection through random mutation leaving for the devil the hindmost, make space for goodness?<\/p>\n

In a world in which<\/i> a suicidal pilot takes with him 148 innocent victims. \u00a0In which<\/i> religious adherents to ancient eschatologies leave video games in Minneapolis for firearms in Syria. \u00a0In which<\/i> bigotry through race and orientation fill the internet and the pages of newspapers. \u00a0In which <\/i>measures of personal and material success become around the globe themselves the measures of meaning itself. \u00a0In which<\/i> drugged or drugging young adults shoot point blank our faithful policewomen and men. \u00a0In which<\/i> a healthy young man places a home-made bomb directly behind 8 year old boy and detonates it in our very neighborhood. \u00a0In which<\/i> a war of all against all, a world in which<\/i> homo homini lupus<\/i>, man is a wolf to man appears to be the default reality all around us, especially the cyber reality all around us. \u00a0In such a world, whence benevolence? \u00a0Where does good come from?<\/p>\n

\u2018Love is benevolence or good will to others\u2026the disposition which one has who desires and delights in the good of another\u2019.<\/i> \u00a0\u00a0The disposition one has who desires and delights in the good of another\u2026So, Jonathan Edwards, 1745.<\/p>\n

Bene…good. \u00a0Volo\u2026will. \u00a0Good will. \u00a0The will to know, do, be\u2026good. \u00a0Whence?<\/p>\n

I wonder.<\/p>\n

I wonder in such a world if I have any right to ascend a fine pulpit and speak about God and about 20 minutes, and extol the grace of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the promise of heaven, the power and durability of love? \u00a0Where is true benevolence in the teeth of such and lasting evil, all around us? \u00a0How do we prove to be honest about evil and still celebrate good? \u00a0How do we preach and live a dual realism, of cross and resurrection?<\/p>\n

It makes me wonder.<\/p>\n

And then, something happens, to nudge us forward. \u00a0Tuesday I was passing by the TV\u2014I wish I had made notes\u2014and I heard something like this:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are going to give your kidney to a woman who needs a kidney, but you are giving it to someone you don\u2019t even know? \u00a0Why are you giving your kidney to someone you don\u2019t even know?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I tell my kids they should be good to other people. \u00a0I try and tell<\/p>\n

them that. \u00a0Do good to others. \u00a0But then, I think, how can I tell them that if I don\u2019t do that myself? \u00a0How can I teach them right from wrong if I don\u2019t do that myself? So I decided to give the kidney to someone who needs it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whence benevolence?<\/p>\n

Traditions<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

From tradition. \u00a0From inheritance. \u00a0\u00a0Benevolence comes from traditions that honor and cradle the good.<\/p>\n

All three of the New Testament accounts of resurrection, those of Peter and Paul and Mary, so attest. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Think carefully, for just a moment, about these witnesses. \u00a0In John, Mary mistakes Jesus for a gardener, her brilliant witness forever clothed in ignorance. \u00a0In Corinthians, Paul recounts what he has heard and said, and ruefully, mournfully confesses that he is not \u2018fit to be called an apostle, because he persecuted the church\u2019. \u00a0In Mark, in the long week past as recorded in Mark, Peter, later the rock on which the church is built, is himself shamefully remembered, in the firelight, as the one who denied, who forsook, who failed.<\/p>\n

And the cocked crowed, again, and again, and again\u2026 The rooster sounding out and sounding forth the birth, the creation of a new day and carrying in song the honest recollection of the prior night.<\/p>\n

Let us look closely, particularly, at Paul this year. \u00a0What he gives he has received, and what he preaches he has been told, by others. \u00a0His account is utterly different from Mark\u2019s: \u00a0didactic not narrative, theological not spiritual, male not female witnesses, appearance not disappearance, presence not absence. \u00a0\u00a0Yet his confidence in resurrection, which is the basis for his obedience of faith, is every bit as strong as the story of the empty tomb in Mark. \u00a0\u00a0There are many ways of keeping faith. \u00a0There are many ways of teaching faith. \u00a0There are many ways of preaching resurrection. \u00a0\u00a0All of them, somehow, cause us to consider the possibility that resurrection is more real than our experience, that resurrection questions us, not the other way around.<\/p>\n

It is not only the physical agony and social disgrace of Jesus on the cross at the heart of our traditions today and everyday, but also, and more so, if one may say so, the soul wrenching agony and personal disgrace of Peter and Paul and Mary, in cowardice and false zeal and ignorance, which is at the bedrock heart of Easter. \u00a0In the blinding brilliance of cross and resurrection, the tradition sturdily and starkly records, our humanity is naked. \u00a0\u00a0Such pain.<\/p>\n

Maybe that is part of why we avoid going to church. \u00a0We know about cowardice, and about falsehood, and about ignorance, and we know about it from our own actions, our own prejudices and our own mistakes. \u00a0\u00a0They are grievous to recall, as our religious traditions, especially at Easter, force us to do.<\/p>\n

Richard III was reburied last week after 500 years. \u00a0His spine is still crooked, his skull still crushed, and his cruelty still recalled. \u00a0\u00a0He was buried out of an Anglican church. \u00a0Of course he was. \u00a0Where else would you be able, with honesty, to take him, before burial, but to a cathedral, where the traditions, sturdy and stark, can bear it. \u00a0\u00a0The seaside? \u00a0Stonehenge? \u00a0The white cliffs of Dover? \u00a0The lake district? \u00a0Not enough sand. \u00a0Not dark enough, stark enough, with bark enough\u2026<\/p>\n

In our traditions, Peter found a way forward, through betrayal, Paul found a way forward, through violence, Mary found a way forward through blind sight. \u00a0And we can, too. \u00a0And I can, too. \u00a0And you can, too.<\/p>\n

Tradition does not give life, but tradition does give a way to life, in the Risen One, the Living One, the Sovereign One. \u00a0Tradition is not life. \u00a0Music, Scripture, Sermon, Communion are not grace. \u00a0They are the silver and china, but not the meat and milk. \u00a0They are means, not ends. \u00a0The end? \u00a0Love. \u00a0And love, \u2018Love is benevolence or good will to others\u2026the disposition which one has who desires and delights in the good of another\u2019.<\/i><\/p>\n

In fact, what little lasting goodness there may be around us at this late date, rises up come Easter out of our traditions. \u00a0Where does good come from?, Huey Long in Robert Penn Warren\u2019s ALL THE KING\u2019S MEN<\/i> is asked. \u00a0From bad. \u00a0Good comes out of bad.<\/p>\n

Our traditions, at their best, at their truest, and at their toughest, tell a painful story. \u00a0Benevolence comes out of the pain of failure, out of the cross. \u00a0\u00a0It comes out of what we see in our own souls, when we are most honest, most vulnerable, and most naked.<\/p>\n

That is why ministry is so connected to self-disclosure.<\/p>\n

We minimize our traditions at our peril. \u00a0A great university without its history, its traditions, its considered past, its chapel, say, is no longer a great university. \u00a0And a great education, summa cum laude, out of earshot of the same, is no longer great.<\/p>\n

Whence benevolence? \u00a0Tradition. \u00a0Tradition empowers benevolence.<\/p>\n

Church<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

And from church. \u00a0From relationships. \u00a0You could say community. \u00a0Or fellowship. \u00a0Or society. \u00a0Or even culture. \u00a0But people would miss the point. \u00a0\u00a0Pau\u2019s word here is church.<\/p>\n

Benevolence, good will to others, appears, against significant odds, including our own carelessness and wan, glib neglect, in church.<\/p>\n

Here is a place where a birth can be celebrated with proper joy, shared happiness, and musical grace. \u00a0Here is place where children and young adults can grow up without having to be instantly perfect or prematurely finished. \u00a0Church is for the unfinished. \u00a0(Like you. \u00a0And me.) Here is a place where meaning, belonging, empowerment, community, the things that make human life human<\/i> as opposed to measured<\/i>, or productive, or efficient, <\/i>can thrive. \u00a0Here is a place where older people can remember and share memory and be remembered and given help. \u00a0Here is a place where death can be faced with dignity, with honor, with grace and with kindness.<\/p>\n

The Jesus of Calvary was so born, and did so grow, and was so loved, and did so die.<\/p>\n

Starlings swirl together in \u2018murmurration\u2019. \u00a0They swirl together by the hundreds in spirals, cone shaped and lovely. \u00a0It is a form of protection. \u00a0A predator has no easy target against that spiral, that communal form, and that shared meaning, that hereditary empowerment, that protective belonging. \u00a0You are worth more than many starlings.<\/p>\n

Our friend Dean Ray Hart, in his great book UNFINISHED MAN AND THE IMAGINATION,<\/i> teaches us about the hermeneutical spiral, the beautiful movement of spiraling interpretation in the quest for meaning, and belonging and empowerment, and truth.<\/p>\n

I believe in the resurrection of the body, asserts the creed. \u00a0That is a reference to the Body of Christ, that is, the church. \u00a0I am not smart enough, strong enough, or sensible enough to get along without the church\u2014fellowship, community, congregation, society, culture, others.<\/p>\n

Students need the love known and shared in the church. \u00a0Sunday by Sunday and term by term. \u00a0\u00a0In prayer. \u00a0In music. \u00a0In fellowship. \u00a0In teaching. \u00a0In gathering. \u00a0In example.<\/p>\n

My father died nearly five years ago. \u00a0On his desk there was book, whose theme was benevolence, of a piercing sort. \u00a0He had many books, taught here at BU by Allan Knight Chalmers to read a book a day. \u00a0The book, short and little known, carried the argument that one should experiment with the attempt to give oneself over to the projects of others, including those people whom we detest, but whose work we may value. \u00a0Where will find a book like that? \u00a0In Silicon valley? \u00a0In the heart of autocracy? \u00a0In the heights of academia? \u00a0Where will you find the steady measured argument that encourages you to desire and delight in the good of others, including those whose very presence makes you sick? \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0You might find a hint of it in the body of the crucified, or in the musty library of a deceased preacher.<\/p>\n

I think of the great hearted people whom we have served with over the years, and their benevolence. \u00a0\u00a0Their teachers and families empowered their benevolence. \u00a0Their communities, families, and marriages embodied their benevolence. \u00a0Their own spiritual journeys provided examples of benevolence. \u00a0Some teaching out of the distant past. \u00a0Some formation out church, community, of true loving relationship. \u00a0Some experience of trustworthy people.<\/p>\n

After one huge gift to a church, my wife Jan said, I don\u2019t know how I would think about giving that huge amount of money, or how I would feel, or how I would decide or how I would do it. \u00a0<\/i>\u00a0As you would have, I replied, \u00a0Isn\u2019t that great! \u00a0Just think, you won\u2019t ever have to worry about that! \u00a0You won\u2019t have to face that anxiety! \u00a0You married me! \u00a0I have spared you all that and so much more!<\/i><\/p>\n

But actually, we do all have inheritance and community and experience for our benevolence to use. \u00a0Maybe not a kidney. \u00a0Maybe not a fortune. \u00a0But something. \u00a0Beginning, it may be, with our most precious possession. \u00a0Our time.<\/p>\n

Our mentor J Louis Martyn preached at the funeral of Paul Minear, his fellow NT scholar, some few years ago. \u00a0He remembered a visit to Boston from Rudolph Bultmann, and Minear\u2019s respectful response:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is between us, Mr. Bultmann, much in common.<\/i><\/p>\n

And<\/i>, as is always the case, what we have in common<\/i><\/p>\n

makes plain the major difference between us.<\/i><\/p>\n

You have as one of your chief concerns<\/i><\/p>\n

to demythologize the New Testament,<\/i><\/p>\n

while I have as one of my chief concerns<\/i><\/p>\n

that the New Testament demythologize us.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

The church tries at Easter to say a benevolent, true word. \u00a0It is not we who question the resurrection, but the resurrection that questions us.<\/p>\n

Whence benevolence? \u00a0Church. \u00a0The church embodies benevolence.<\/p>\n

Experience<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

And from experience. \u00a0From life. \u00a0A couple of weeks ago I heard this sentence: \u00a0\u2018Love is benevolence or good will to others\u2026the disposition which one has who desires and delights in the good of another\u2019.<\/i> \u00a0\u00a0I preached it, quoting J Edwards. \u00a0But, by ricochet, I also heard it. \u00a0In my own experience. \u00a0\u00a0You will not find benevolence apart from benevolence. \u00a0You will not experience benevolence apart from benevolent people.<\/p>\n

Here is the weight of Paul\u2019s letter. \u00a0In the names, the people, his predecessors. \u00a0And in the verb, OPHTHEY, \u2018appeared\u2019. \u00a0\u00a0Mark this. \u00a0Resurrection happens inside this world not outside this world. \u00a0The absence of the empty tomb and the presence of the Living Appearance both, by Paul anyway, happen here. \u00a0Paul\u2019s argument is to his context, his community, wherein there is difference, disagreement and doubt. \u00a0We are not the first, come Easter, to know these masters of disillusionment.<\/p>\n

Paul sings Resurrection in Life!<\/p>\n

A few years ago a neighboring minister, highly effective in his work, came to say that he had gone through several cycles of goals in pastoral work and preaching, but that now he was not going to set any more of his own, and not going to try to achieve any more of his own. \u00a0He said: \u00a0I decided I would go and work on someone else\u2019s.<\/i> \u00a0He asked if there was anything he could do for me. \u00a0I must say that although I did respond, to this day I have not fully responded. \u00a0It sort of took my breath away\u2026<\/p>\n

I have written enough books. \u00a0Let me help you with yours. \u00a0I have built enough companies. \u00a0Let me help you with yours. \u00a0I have earned enough degrees. \u00a0Let me help you with yours. \u00a0I have had enough jobs. \u00a0Let me help you find yours. \u00a0I have had enough successes. \u00a0Let me help you achieve yours.<\/i> \u00a0I am not fully there yet, not fully benevolent yet, I guess. \u00a0It is a different kind of thought, and life. \u00a0But I can sure feel the power of it, especially in receipt. \u00a0Can\u2019t you? \u00a0So Dietrich Bonhoeffer simply said of Jesus: \u00a0A Man for others.<\/i><\/p>\n

Think of someone who has desired, truly desired, and delighted in, genuinely delighted in, your good. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Whoever, and wherever, and however–thence benevolence. Conjure a moment when you truly desired and delighted in the good of another. \u00a0At a little league game. \u00a0At a concert. \u00a0At a wedding. \u00a0At a graduation. \u00a0In lovemaking. \u00a0At a retirement dinner. \u00a0In a prayer. \u00a0\u2018Love is benevolence or good will to others\u2026the disposition which one has who desires and delights in the good of another\u2019.<\/i><\/p>\n

Benevolence is our path for life following death.<\/p>\n

Now deceased\u2014that move across the little comma, the light punctuation separating the independent clause of life from the dependent clause of death\u2014a Colgate and BU grad, then minister in Oriskany Falls, \u00a0Russell Clark, offered condolence and asked his friend how she somehow survived her husband\u2019s sudden death. \u00a0\u00a0She said: \u00a0Nothing has ever been so hard. \u00a0But as you know I have chickens to feed. \u00a0When the sun comes up, they get up. \u00a0They call to me. \u00a0And I get up. \u00a0I might want to stay in bed, but they need to be fed. \u00a0Their life is really mine, or mine theirs. \u00a0Don\u2019t take this the wrong way, Rev. I love my traditions and my church. \u00a0But it was the clucking of those hens that got me through. \u00a0The clucking of those hens meant more to me than all the hymns of Easter.<\/i><\/p>\n

Whence benevolence? \u00a0Experience. \u00a0Experience exemplifies benevolence.<\/p>\n

Coda<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is the marrow of tradition, as the cock \u00a0crows. \u00a0Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is the very body of the church, as the starlings swirl. \u00a0Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is the lived experience of love, as the chickens cluck. \u00a0Whence benevolence? \u00a0You need hunt no farther. \u00a0\u2018Love is benevolence or good will to others\u2026the disposition which one has who desires and delights in the good of another\u2019.<\/i><\/p>\n

Now make a life with that disposition.<\/p>\n

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.<\/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 16:1-8 Click here to listen to the sermon only Frontispiece Whence benevolence? How did a sprawling, violent creation, 15 billion years in the making, and within it life emerging out of natural selection through random mutation leaving for the devil the hindmost, make space for goodness? […]<\/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\/1108"}],"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=1108"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1110,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions\/1110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}