{"id":1324,"date":"2016-02-28T11:00:21","date_gmt":"2016-02-28T16:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1324"},"modified":"2021-02-25T09:15:52","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T14:15:52","slug":"calvin-for-lent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2016\/02\/28\/calvin-for-lent\/","title":{"rendered":"Calvin for Lent"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Luke 13:1-9<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to listen to the meditations\u00a0only<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Lift up your hearts: \u00a0<\/span><\/i>Amid the furious, random hurts in life, which fall upon us without respect of person and without divine intention, in random chaotic violent abandon, there remains, over time, a chance for growth, the possibility of good change, a capacity for faithfulness, over time. \u00a0Learn sympathy. \u00a0Cultivate patience. Give it just a little more time. \u00a0Give it just a little more time. \u00a0Give it just a little more time. <\/span>Let it alone, Sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure. \u00a0And if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you may cut it down.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Calvin Again<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

This Lent we again, one last time, engage as our theological conversation partner in preaching, the great Geneva Protestant reformer John Calvin (1509-1564). \u00a0\u00a0We have found it helpful, in this season, to link our preaching here at Marsh Chapel, an historically Methodist pulpit, with voices from the related but distinct Reformed tradition, which has been so important over 400 years in New England. \u00a0\u00a0The Methodist tradition has emphasized human freedom, the Reformed divine freedom. \u00a0In Lent each year we have brought the two into some interaction, both harmonious and dissonant. For example, Genesis 1 is a more Anglican or Methodist chapter, if you will, representing the goodness of creation. \u00a02 and 3 are more Presbyterian or Calvinist, if you will, representing the fallen character of creation, known daily to us in sin, death and the threat of meaninglessness. \u00a0Both traditions, English and French, make space for both creation and fall. \u00a0But the emphasis is different, one more garden the other more serpent, one more creation the other more fall. \u00a0The English tradition emphasizes human freedom, and the French divine freedom. \u00a0(Both traditions are with us today, even embodied, as it happens, in our current Presidential campaigns, wherein still there is at least one Presbyterian and at least one Methodist (\u263a)). With Calvin we encounter the chief resource for others we have engaged in Lent in other years\u2014voices like those of Jonathan Edwards (2015), Paul of Tarsus (2014), Marilyn Robinson (2013), Jacques Ellul (2012), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a Lutheran cousin, (2011), Karl Barth (2010), and Gabriel Vahanian (2007), and themes like Atonement (2009) and Decision (2008). \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>2016 marks the tenth and last Lent in which from this pulpit we engage the Calvinist tradition. \u00a0Over the next decade, beginning Lent 2017, the Marsh pulpit, a traditionally Methodist one, will turn left, not right, toward Rome not Geneva, and we will preach with, and learn from the Roman Catholic tradition, so important in the last 200 years in New England, and some of its great divines including Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Ignatius of Loyola, Erasmus, Hans Kung, Karl Rahner, and others, one per year. \u00a0Perhaps you will suggest a name or two, not from Geneva, but from Rome?<\/span><\/p>\n

Calvin Interpreting Luke (1)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Let us listen, now, to John Calvin interpreting today\u2019s Gospel, Luke 13: 1-9. \u00a0\u00a0In brief, we might judge, his interpretation, utterly typical of his work on the whole, is both right and wrong, both true and false. \u00a0First true, second false.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, Calvin rightly and directly applies the passage to our self-concern, wherein we tend to be more self-centered than centered selves.<\/span><\/p>\n

Calvin: <\/span>\u201cThe chief value of this passage springs from the fact that we suffer from the almost inborn disease of over-strict and severe critics of others while approving of our own sins\u2026Whoever is not shaken by God\u2019s hand sleeps soundly in his sins as if God were favorable and propitious to him\u2026(Commentaries, loc. cit.)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Calvin judges, rightly, that we do not easily sympathize with others\u2019 hurt. \u00a0We sleep. \u00a0We sleep in our sins, unless somehow roused. \u00a0This gradual awakening to random hurt is at the very heart of young adulthood, and at the very heart of a college education.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of education: \u00a0You hear Elie Wiesel, in the death camps, saying that God is swinging on a rope in the face of the hung child. \u00a0You hear Arthur Ashe, dying of Aids, saying that the experience of racism is far worse than his mortal illness. \u00a0You hear Werner Klemperer bear witness to the slowly tightening noose around his Jewish neck in the Germany of the 1930\u2019s. You hear Frank McCourt tell about licking greasy newspaper to survive childhood in Ireland. \u00a0You hear Agate Nasal tell of unspeakable horrors inflicted on defenseless women on the eastern front in the 1940\u2019s. \u00a0\u00a0You hear Tim O\u2019 Brien remembering \u2018The Things They Carried\u201d. \u00a0And these all bear witness to hurt in history—with another list needed for hurricane and earthquake and tornado and plague, nature\u2019s own force against innocent life. \u00a0\u00a0You are becoming educated.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of emerging adulthood: \u00a0All of us learn in these years. In junior high school you often look in admiration at those just older. \u00a0Being with you takes us, daily, back to those fairer days. \u00a0\u00a0One remembers\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

When the senior youth gathered in the church or parsonage, we just younger watched and listened. \u00a0Our retired assistant pastor (he died suddenly at a church dinner a few years later) had a red haired son, Tommy. \u00a0He was a favorite for all\u2014happy, a prankster, kind. \u00a0The next fall the group gathered at Christmas, the spring graduates now home from college for the first time, and enjoying the firelight, the tree, the chocolates, and the mistletoe. \u00a0That Christmas Tommy stood out for his red hair, but also for his green uniform. \u00a0Bright red hair, sharp green private\u2019s Army uniform. \u00a0Red and Green. \u00a0He was headed to Vietnam. \u00a0He came to mind last week, getting the sermon ready, in a quiet moment of reading Tim O\u2019Brien\u2019s memoir, <\/span>The Things They Carried. <\/span><\/i>\u00a0A few years later, the war now over, some of us came home from our first year of college, too. \u00a0The pastor said, he teaching meager sympathy in a violent world, \u2018You might want to go over to the V.A. in Syracuse sometime this break. \u00a0Tom Mallabar is there. \u00a0He lost his legs, you know, in the war.\u2019 \u00a0We did not know. \u00a0We did go. \u00a0The pastor knew how easy it is, Calvin was right, absent an act of sympathy, absent a readiness to stop, to look, to listen, to look past the tragedy of lasting hurt. \u00a0We sleep, unless roused. How human it is to look past hurt, someone else\u2019s anyway. \u00a0\u00a0Some of in the years of emerging adulthood, includes waking up to others\u2019 hurt. \u00a0You are becoming adults.<\/span><\/p>\n

And a Lukan word from Ernest Tittle: <\/span>Perhaps we, too, would do well to reject the way of military force and violence, placing reliance instead on efforts to combat hunger, misery and despair, to lift from anxious peoples the burden and threat of armaments, to abolish racial and religious discrimination, bring industry under the law of service, and assure to all (people) everywhere the opportunity of a good life (39)\u2026(E.F. Tittle)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Calvin Interpreting Luke (2)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Second, however, Calvin misinterprets by a wide margin the fuller meaning of the Gospel today. \u00a0His penchant for judgment occludes his vision of grace. \u00a0On a regular basis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rendering not the stories now but the parable of the fig tree: <\/span>\u201cThe sum of it is that many are tolerated for a time who deserve destruction\u2026They do not realize their sin unless they are forced\u2026\u201d <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

But listen to the parable, Brother Calvin! \u00a0Here in Luke, not judgment, but grace is affirmed, not death but life, not authority or force, but growth and change. \u00a0In Luke 13, the question of \u2018Why?\u2019 is set aside in favor of the challenge to repent. \u00a0Governmental terrorism, in the hands of Pilate, and natural accident, in the case of a Tower in Siloam, are simply admitted to be what they are\u2014utterly random in impact. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the parable, the gardener points away from past performance and points toward future potential. \u00a0Time. \u00a0Time is given. \u00a0A time of reprieve, a time of reckoning, a time of recollection, a time of restoration. \u00a0Time heals. \u00a0There is impending judgment, but there is time for change. \u00a0This is Luke\u2019s own material. \u00a0This is Luke\u2019s own toddler, budding attempt to deal with what John, alone, in full adult fashion, addressed, the church\u2019s abject disappointment that the expected return of Jesus, on the clouds of heaven, \u2018before this generation passes away\u2019 (Luke 21:32) has not happened. \u00a0The first century is ending and Jesus has not returned. \u00a0In the main, Luke simply continues to hold out hope, soon and very soon, of the traditional expectation. \u00a0Not here in the parable of the fig tree. \u00a0Here he finds, channeling his inner Fourth Gospel Spirit, the possibility that more time may be a good thing. \u00a0We would all say so, 20 centuries later, since more time has become our time! \u00a0The Greeks taught us that life is long. \u00a0Give it just a little more time. \u00a0Here Calvin, wrongly, misses Luke\u2019s point and power, as much as earlier he caught both. \u00a0Too much TULIP and not enough fig tree. \u00a0Especially, and perilously: \u00a0too authoritarian and too inflexible, and too inerrant, a view of the Holy Scripture. \u00a0Scripture alone, not Scripture in tradition by reason with experience. \u00a0No, says Luke, change, over time, can come and can become lasting goodness. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Friday last week we sat in the southern California sunshine, the daily environment of our son and daughter in law, paradise, San Diego. \u00a0\u00a0Imagine our surprise as we opened the New York Times, the paper of record, that morning, in the blue-sky light breeze warm water SO CAL sun. \u00a0One of two letters to the editor was written from the pews of Marsh Chapel. \u00a0Written out of your community, sent to the great city of New York, printed, and passed on to the needs of the world around, including those of us reading 3,000 miles away, on Pacific Beach.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our friend, Advisory Board member, retired BU Academy Headmaster, Mr. James Berkman addressed the country, in four paragraphs, regarding the life, death and legacy of Antonin Scalia, and the matter of interpretation. The letter complimented recent Times reporting on Scalia. \u00a0The letter affirmed the \u2018inarguably brilliant\u2019 aspects of the judge\u2019s work, and its pervasive influence. \u00a0The letter recalled a question raised by the author to Judge Scalia, in Cleveland, years ago, and the creative \u2018dissent\u2019 the judge offered in response: \u2018he sidestepped to deliver a powerful answer on a facet he cared more about\u2019. \u00a0\u00a0Yet, the letter, in true honorable fashion, also recognized the limitations and dangers of \u2018originalism\u2019: \u00a0\u2018if we were to follow (Scalia\u2019s) philosophy, where would women and blacks be today: \u00a0still treated as second class citizens and slaves of our founding fathers?\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Interpretation of an ancient text, whether the US Constitution, or the Holy Scripture, does indeed require acute appreciation for what the venerable text originally meant. Without that mooring, we are adrift, forever at sea with our own proclivities alone to guide us. \u00a0But truth was meant to set sail and not merely to lie still in the harbor! \u00a0The bark needs both anchor and sail, both mooring and wind. \u00a0Interpretation, that is, also, and more so, requires of us the courage to exact from the text, not only what it meant, but also, now, what it means. \u00a0Our teacher Father Raymond Brown, said often, and taught repeatedly, that the full meaning of a text is not always best given in its mere wooden repetition. \u00a0In fact, the conservative Roman Catholic Father Brown taught otherwise: \u00a0what most resembles faithfulness to the ancient tradition may look very much like change, growth, something new, today.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>In life and in interpretation things take time. \u00a0Time. \u00a0Let the fig tree have another year. \u00a0Time. \u00a0Let me nourish the tree with water and nutrients. \u00a0Time. \u00a0Give this scrawny plant some time, and see what happens. \u00a0As the letter to the editor said, \u2018it is appropriate to weigh the balance of legacy\u2019. \u00a0One of the real, lasting dangers and perils left to us by a certain perspective in the Calvinist tradition, still strong and at large today across parts of this great land, is the shadow of Biblicism, even of Bibliolatry, the mistaken preference for the text over the very Lord to whom the text bears witness. \u00a0And the Lord is the Spirit. \u00a0And where the Spirit is, there is freedom. \u00a0Over forty years of ministry now, and over forty years of the privilege of teaching the Bible, which I love with all my heart, which I love with my very life and time and work, the terrible, stinging memory stands out, of ways the Bible has maimed children, women, men, families, others, when wrongly rendered. \u00a0Calvin and Luther may have needed all the weight and power of the Bible, without its aporia, nuance, variety and depth, to break from Rome. \u00a0Sadly, some of that weight, without time without water or nutrient, and without proper, educated, informed, disciplined interpretation, falls like a millstone upon the weak. \u00a0A case in point, of course, is current Methodist use of the Scripture to support bigotry against gay people. \u00a0When one brings to mind all the children in all the churches in all the pews in all the years, who know at age 8 that they are gay, and what they have heard from men in black robes, ministers respected and revered even by their parents, it causes one to tremble. \u00a0On one hand, asked how well I know the Bible, I can respond, \u2018The real truth is not how well I know the Bible, but how well the Bible knows me\u2019. \u00a0I love the Bible. \u00a0On the other hand, when the weight of holy writ, and the power of tradition, by bad–originalist?–interpretation\u2014six verses from Leviticus, Romans and Corinthians as opposed to whole New Testament, the whole Pauline corpus, and the whole letter to the Galatians, see the whole of its chapter 3\u2014falls like a millstone on the necks of children in the minority, and that with the blessing of many who should and do know better, but say nothing, and many of them educated at Africa University, and riding Methodist dollars into prosperity on that continent, then I do not love the Bible. \u00a0Calvin bears some responsibility here\u2014though of course, not alone. \u00a0One of the two great failings we inherit from Calvinism we see just here: \u00a0The Bible become a millstone around the neck. \u00a0(The second we shall address March 13.)<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Amid the furious, random hurts in life, which fall upon us without respect of person and without divine intention, in random chaotic violent abandon, there remains, over time, a chance for growth, the possibility of good change, a capacity for faithfulness, over time. \u00a0Learn sympathy. \u00a0Cultivate patience. Give it just a little more time. \u00a0Give it just a little more time. \u00a0Give it just a little more time. <\/span>Let it alone, Sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure. \u00a0And if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you may cut it down.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Bring sympathy and patience to bear. \u00a0Can you do that this week? Where in your life will a little sympathy and a little patience bear a lot of fruit? Paul Scherer, a fine Calvinist, wrote in a much more sympathetic and patient era: \u00a0<\/span>\u201cI know the things that happen: \u00a0the loss and the loneliness and the pain\u2026But there is a mark on it now: \u00a0as if Someone who knew that way himself, because he had traveled it, had gone on before and left his sign; and all of it begins to make a little sense at last\u2014gathered up, laughter and tears, into the life of God, with His arms around it!\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

– The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the full service Luke 13:1-9 Click here to listen to the meditations\u00a0only Frontispiece Lift up your hearts: \u00a0Amid the furious, random hurts in life, which fall upon us without respect of person and without divine intention, in random chaotic violent abandon, there remains, over time, a chance for growth, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,22],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324"}],"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=1324"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1992,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324\/revisions\/1992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}