{"id":1157,"date":"2015-07-12T11:00:47","date_gmt":"2015-07-12T15:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1157"},"modified":"2019-10-08T12:56:01","modified_gmt":"2019-10-08T16:56:01","slug":"intimations-of-a-beloved-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2015\/07\/12\/intimations-of-a-beloved-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Intimations of a Beloved Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Mark 6:14-29<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Our gospel is a grim reminder of the prophetic precursor to Jesus, whose own death prefigures the Lord\u2019s. \u00a0My friend Jennifer, a celebrated New Testament scholar, once referred to the passage as \u2018the only mother and daughter scene in the NT\u2019 a way of sidestepping its bloody horror with a mordant, wry wit, a not unusual reaction to such a gruesome passage. \u00a0\u00a0Mark is foreshadowing the coming cross of Christ, by remembering John the Baptist.<\/p>\n

We can do the same. \u00a0There are those who at cost have paved the way, affirms our Scripture today. \u00a0As we gather in summer worship this morning, here in historic Marsh Chapel, we may take some sustenance from such a reminder, and be inspired to remember those who paved a way for us. \u00a0Who stands as a true precursor for your life and faith? \u00a0As in these months and weeks, across this great land, a country yet filled with latent goodness, we brood about violence and prejudice, we may take some sustenance from such a direct reminder of the prophetic spirit, truth spoken for love in the face of adversity. \u00a0Who risked friendship for the sake of you, as a friend? \u00a0As, this summer, we meditate together upon the mighty theme of the Beloved Community, we might recall earlier intimations, prophetic voices, which paved our way, cut our trail, made a space and place in grace for our own hopes.<\/p>\n

I have driven to you at dawn this morning along the Mohawk River. \u00a0It is the same route John Dempster took on his way to New England to give life to Boston University, in 1839. \u00a0Let your mind wander with me, this morning, \u2018fifteen miles on the Erie Canal\u2019. \u00a0Think back and think west. Think precursors. \u00a0This region bears the distinction of having given rise to many women and men who did not leave freedom to somebody else. \u00a0Its price of eternal vigilance they provided in very daily, very personal, very local, very immediate ways. \u00a0In the same manner by which we take for granted Niagara Falls, so close and so grand, we take these mighty stories for granted, saving stories of freedom and faith.<\/p>\n

The Mohawk River, the Erie Canal. \u00a0This is the land of Hiawatha (\u201cwho causes rivers to run\u201d). \u00a0Such musical names adorn this landscape: \u00a0Canandaigua, Tioghnioga, Onondaga, Tuscarora, Cuyahoga. \u00a0Hiawatha, the great native leader of the Iroquois showed in the 15th century the critical need for union, for space and time in which to live together. \u00a0His leadership was focused on common space, on collegial relations, on counsel together, and so he is harbinger of all the examples of faith and freedom to come up along the Mohawk and the Erie Canal. \u00a0In nineteenth century verse:<\/p>\n

All your strength is in your union<\/i><\/p>\n

All your weakness in discord<\/i><\/p>\n

Therefore be at peace henceforward<\/i><\/p>\n

And as brothers live together<\/i><\/p>\n

This is the land of Harriet Tubman. \u00a0You may want to visit her home in Auburn, NY. \u00a0(Her neighbor William Seward, Lincoln\u2019s rival and Secretary of State, also from Auburn, bought Alaska, considered at the time a folly, an \u201cice-box\u201d.) Tubman\u2019s grand niece, Janet Lauerson, was on my church staff for a time in Syracuse, after we both migrated down from the far north country, not far from the burial place of John Brown. \u00a0His body lies moldering under a ski lift near Lake Placid. \u00a0He and Gerritt Smith, founder of Peterboro, were not compatiblists regarding slavery. \u00a0As Lincoln would later say, they felt those who most affirmed slavery should start by trying it for themselves. Brown, Smith, Seward and others were the chorus before which Tubman could sing out the life of freedom, following the underground railroad. \u00a0Remember her wisdom: \u00a0\u201cWhen I found I had crossed that line (on her first escape from slavery, 1845), I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. \u00a0There was such a glory over everything…<\/i>I started with this idea in my head, \u2018There\u2019s two things I\u2019ve got a right to\u2026death or liberty\u2019\u2026\u2019Twant me, \u2018twas the Lord. \u00a0I always told him, \u201cI trust you. \u00a0I don\u2019t know where to go or what to do, but I expect you to lead me, and he always did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that we are as far west as Auburn, you will expect to hear something of Frederick Douglass, buried in Rochester. \u00a0His burial plot is across the street from Strong Hospital. \u00a0As one patient said, looking through the window, \u201cit gives you something to think about\u201d. \u00a0Douglass printed his newspaper, the \u201cNorth Star\u201d, in Rochester, and through it developed a voice for a new people in a new era. \u00a0At Syracuse University, 100 years later, it was Professor Roland Wolseley who developed the first national program in Black Journalism. \u00a0Wolseley was formed in the faith under the great preaching of the best Methodist preacher in the 20th century, Ernest Freemont Tittle, when Wolseley\u2019s young wife was Tittle\u2019s secretary. Wolseley was my pastor parish chair for 10 years. \u00a0Digressing, for a moment, where the vale of Onondaga meets the eastern sky, you might look in the Carrier Dome at the moving tribute to Ernie Davis, a young man from Elmira, who, a century after Douglass, and in the lifespan of Wolseley, gave tragic, courageous, and lasting embodiment to the common hope of racial justice, harmony and integration. \u00a0He also played football. \u00a0\u00a0The voice of Douglass rings out against the harmonic background of Tittle, Wolseley, Davis and others. \u00a0In the North Star, Douglass wrote: \u201cThe whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle\u2026If there is no struggle, there is no progress. \u00a0Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. \u00a0They want the ocean without the awful roar of its mighty waters.\u201d Or maybe we should give the honor to his ally Sojourner Truth: \u00a0\u201cThat\u2026man\u2026says women can\u2019t have as many rights as man, cause Christ wasn\u2019t a woman. \u00a0Where did your Christ come from? \u00a0From God and a woman. \u00a0Man had nothing to do with him!\u201d<\/p>\n

Susan B. Anthony did not leave the project of freedom to others. \u00a0I wonder what sort of dinner companion she might have been. \u00a0Her constant consort with governors and senators across the Empire state made her an early Eleanor Roosevelt. \u00a0My grandmother grew up in Cooperstown and graduated from Smith College four years before she had the right to vote. \u00a0My mother was born in Syracuse only a few years after full suffrage. \u00a0My wife is a musician and teacher, my sister is a corporate attorney, many of my closest colleagues in ministry are female. \u00a0I scratch my head to imagine a world without their voices. \u00a0Syracuse produced Betty Bone Schiess, one of the first women ordained to ministry in the Protestant Episcopal church. \u00a0One of the Philadelphia 11. \u00a0We study her now in Introduction to Religion. \u00a0One rainy day when my daughter Emily was 13 and had the flu, we met Schiess, at the druggist. \u00a0The pharmacist called her name. \u00a0I clamored over to investigate whether it were she, the famous Schiess. \u00a0\u201cWho wants to know?\u201d she replied. \u00a0As she left, after good banter, she turned in her slicker and totting an umbrella pronounced this blessing: \u00a0\u201cOne day you will be a Methodist bishop\u201d. \u00a0\u00a0I was about to reply when I realized she was speaking to Emily. \u00a0\u2018Thank you\u2019, my daughter replied. \u00a0Think about precursors whose prophetic voices and costly faithfulness paved your way. \u00a0We may need such a brief reminder, this summer, \u00a0that real change is real hard but it comes in real time when real people really work at it. \u00a0So. \u00a0You may visit the birthplace of suffrage and feminism in Seneca Falls. \u00a0\u00a0Anthony\u2019s witness stands out among the witness of so many others: \u00a0your grandmother, your mother, your sister, your wife, your daughter, your pastor, Betty Bone Schiess, and so many others. \u00a0Who can forget the motto of Susan B. Anthony: \u201cFailure is impossible\u201d (on her 86th birthday, 1906), or her warning, \u201cCautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about reform. \u00a0Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world\u2019s estimation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes the freedom train derailed. Not everything along the Mohawk River was perfect or turned round right. \u00a0Exuberance can produce minor collisions. I want to talk to you about sexual experimentation, that is, a long time before the summer of love. \u00a0Woodstock paled by comparison with the communal experiments along the Erie Canal during the nineteenth century. \u00a0\u00a0The Shaker Community and the Oneida Community perhaps can bracket our discussion. \u00a0Under Mother Ann Lee, and starting in farm country near New Lebanon (Albany area), not far from from Tanglewood, and our BU musical program there, one of the current sponsors for WBUR, the shaking Quakers firmly and unequivocally addressed the matter of sex. \u00a0They forbade it. \u00a0Like the desert fathers and Qumran communities of old, they took Paul at his word and meditated fully on 1 Corinthians 7, \u2018let those who have wives live as if they had none\u2019. \u00a0In the Shaker community, women and men came together only once a week, in worship, on Sunday morning, for ecstatic singing and dancing, like David in the ephod before the ark–hence their name, \u2018shakers\u2019. \u00a0This made church attendance somewhat more than casual liturgical observance. \u00a0I understand attendance was quite good. \u00a0However, the practice did not amplify the community itself: \u00a0infant baptisms lacked the requisite infant, and so were infrequent. \u00a0Consequently the Shakers moved to Cleveland where they blended into Sherwood Anderson\u2019s new Ohio, returning to the old ways of industry, monogamy, and frugality. \u00a0In short, they became Methodists. \u00a0\u00a0Hear again the Shaker tune:<\/p>\n

When true, simplicity is gain<\/i><\/p>\n

To bow and to bend we shan\u2019t be ashamed<\/i><\/p>\n

To turn, turn, will be our delight<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2018Till by turning, turning, we come round right<\/i><\/p>\n

Now, the Oneida\u2019s. \u00a0You may want to read the book, Without Sin<\/i>, the best review in our generation of their somewhat different experiment. \u00a0Also along the Erie Canal the Oneida community set out to find heaven on earth, the end of all oppressions, and even the hope that, as John H Noyes read from Revelation, \u201cdeath itself will be no more\u201d. \u00a0Although I went to High School in Oneida I do not recall a full lesson on the matter of stirpiculture, the heart of the Oneida experiment. The Oneidas practiced \u201ccomplex\u201d marriage, in which every man was married to every woman and vice-versa, and sexual relations were freely permitted as long as the men practiced \u2018continence\u2019 to avoid pregnancy. \u00a0Procreation was planned, through a deliberated, committee processed, but nonetheless free-love sharing of the marriage bed in the hope of producing a better race, a finer human being. (For those of you for whom this is more information than you require, I apologize) <\/i>Three hundred in number at their greatest growth, the community produced bear traps and then silver, continuing, in some fashion, until just a few years ago. \u00a0Of all the utopian experiments, the Oneida project is the most fascinating. \u00a0After word got out about the doings and practices in Oneida, clergy in Syracuse banded together and ran them out of town, first to Canada and then to the Midwest. \u00a0Noyes died on the trip, and the community disappeared, except in the silver on your dinner table, in wedding gifts, and in quality restaurants. \u00a0Let us remember the love of freedom, as Noyes expressed it, even if we cannot affirm his methods: \u201cI am free of sin and in a state of Perfection\u201d.<\/p>\n

Precursors remind us of what can be done. Another drum along the Mohawk you will find perhaps an unlikely name to include, that of Norman Vincent Peale. When we were at Union Seminary in New York the faculty there, both regularly and rightly criticized the inadequate theology of the Marble Collegiate Church. \u00a0I remember James Sanders sternly referring to this famed congregation as the \u201cFirst Church of Marduke\u201d, (not an accolade). \u00a0Of course you know that for fifty years, a graduate of Boston University, and Ohio Wesleyan, and a proponent of the power of positive thinking held forth, without notes, from the so-called Marduke pulpit. \u00a0His son in law, Arthur Caliandro, followed him, with notes. \u00a0You may not trust his theology. \u00a0I myself am a critic, schooled as I was in the dour, German realism of Tillich, Niehbuhr, and company. \u00a0You may find it too shallow. \u00a0Everybody has their criticism of Norman Vincent Peale. \u00a0Even Adlai Stevenson had gripes. \u00a0When attacked from Marduke Stevenson defended his Christianity on the basis of the Apostle to the Gentiles, all this in 1956, and rounded out his peroration thus: \u00a0\u201cSir, I am a Christian. \u00a0As such, I find Paul appealing, but Peale, appalling.\u201d \u00a0You too may find Paul appealing and Peale appalling. \u00a0But hold one thought. \u00a0Peale began his preaching a stone\u2019s throw from where my morning drive and this morning\u2019s sermon began, this morning. \u00a0In Syracuse, at University Methodist Church. \u00a0He found there a happy people. \u00a0He found there a positive people. \u00a0He found there a hopeful people, an optimistic congregation. \u00a0Why, they were so good to him that he relaxed and fell in love and married an SU coed, Ruth. \u00a0My old, good friend Forrest Whitmeyer, a graduate of Boston Latin, knew them both well. \u00a0It was that native buckeye spirit (Norman) married to that native orange soul (Ruth), and it produced the power of positive thinking, itself a form of faith and freedom not to be entirely forgotten. \u00a0A time or two in the course of a full ministry, we might just remember Peale, positively. The Peales, Ruth and Norman both, did not leave the project of freedom to somebody else. \u00a0It is biblical and faithful to remember Peale\u2019s seven most important words: \u00a0\u201cYou can if you think you can.\u201d \u00a0Yes, you can.<\/p>\n

Intimations of a Beloved Community. \u00a0God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Gimself. \u00a0The faith of Jesus Christ and the freedom of Jesus Christ we offer you today. \u00a0As Paul\u2019s student writing in Ephesians put it: \u00a0\u2018In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance\u2026so that we might live for the praise of his glory\u2019. \u00a0Our forebears were disinclined to leave the pursuit of freedom to others. \u00a0They seized freedom in their own hands and by their own lives. \u00a0They did not wait on others. \u00a0They did not pause to seek a secret blessing. \u00a0They did not wait until some ethereal sign emerged. \u00a0They did not expect some magic insight. \u00a0They preferred deliverance to diffidence. \u00a0They glimpsed and then followed after intimations of a beloved community.<\/p>\n

In earshot of our Lord\u2019s teaching, in remembrance of the freedom and faith in our shared past, and especially on this Lord\u2019s day, there is no avoiding a very personal question: \u00a0as a Christian man or woman, what are you going to do to continue to expand the circle of freedom in our time? \u00a0Where is your tribal council to create? \u00a0Where is your slavery to escape? \u00a0Where is your North Star to publish? \u00a0Where is your franchise to find? \u00a0Where is your libertinism to avoid? \u00a0Where is your hope to share? How will you lift a hand?<\/p>\n

And take heart. \u00a0Have you watched the dawn come? \u00a0This morning I drove due east, along the Mohawk river, into a full black sky, darker than a hundred midnights, down in the cypress swamp. \u00a0It seemed forever before there was any light. \u00a0But somewhere around 5am, imperceptibly, very gradually, black became dark blue, and dark blue a misty gray, and gray a lightened blue, and blue a bright sun. \u00a0Little bit by little bit by little bit. \u00a0Dawn came. \u00a0Like the glory of the morning on the wave\u2026<\/p>\n

All that Mohawk river water falls finally into the ocean, running at the feet of Emma Lazarus\u2019 poem:<\/p>\n

Give me your tired, your poor<\/i><\/p>\n

Your huddled masses yearning to breath free<\/i><\/p>\n

The restless refuse of your teeming shore<\/i><\/p>\n

Send these, the lost, the tempest tossed to me<\/i><\/p>\n

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.<\/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 6:14-29 Click here to listen to the sermon only Our gospel is a grim reminder of the prophetic precursor to Jesus, whose own death prefigures the Lord\u2019s. \u00a0My friend Jennifer, a celebrated New Testament scholar, once referred to the passage as \u2018the only mother and daughter […]<\/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\/1157"}],"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=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1160,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions\/1160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}