{"id":1331,"date":"2016-03-13T11:00:54","date_gmt":"2016-03-13T16:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1331"},"modified":"2021-02-25T09:15:38","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T14:15:38","slug":"calvin-for-lent-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2016\/03\/13\/calvin-for-lent-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Calvin for Lent"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

John 12:1-8<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

By an imaginative grace in the mind of a Presbyterian minister, we were invited to spend part of a seminary year in Geneva, Switzerland, underneath the shadow the great mountains, the Alps, of that region. \u00a0The minister was the Rev. George Todd, a founder two decades earlier of the East Harlem Protestant Parish, a still exemplary incarnation of community engagement against poverty, against racism, against bigotry, against xenophobia, against sexism, against the notion that the \u2018poor you have always with you\u2019. \u00a0Apparently, given the rhetoric and revelations of this political season in the United States, we still have a great deal of work to do. \u00a0Would somebody please shut the windows of heaven, that the saints need not hear our current discourse, language lastingly insulting to Mexicans, to Muslims, to women, by coarse extension to others who are other, and with the capacity for lasting hurt, especially in the ears of our children. \u00a0Shut the windows of heaven. George and Kathy Todd, with others, raised a generation of ministers and missioners, now the subject of a fine, new study, in a dissertation just completed here at Boston University, by a friend of Marsh Chapel, Ada Focer.<\/span><\/p>\n

George corralled us, and a few others, to work for him at the World Council of Churches, whence he had recently gone, to provide, as he growled, \u2018heat, light, and running water\u2019. \u00a0Jan, you can still overhear, in those months, accompanied by piano the World Council mid-week worship service, with Emilio Castro or Philip Potter preaching. To think back upon George Todd\u2019s influence, now decades past, is to scale up a great high peak, and to look out upon the vast beauty and need of a human race, longing, in such odd ways, for the presence of Christ. As we complete this decade\u2019s reflection at Marsh Chapel, in dialogue with Calvin for Lent, George and others like him stand up and stand out as signs of hope for the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

One summer Saturday that year we left Geneva, John Calvin\u2019s city, and we drove an old car, a <\/span>\u2018deux chevaux\u2019,<\/span><\/i> a \u2018two horse\u2019, to find our way into the mountains. \u00a0After a while we transferred to a train, going higher still, and then later from Zermatt to Gornergratt, along old railroad lines. \u00a0As the sun came to a noonday brilliance, a cable car took us thence to the top of a great mountain, snow in July, and the powerful height, the pristine beauty of the creation, a hint of the power and majesty of Calvin\u2019s view of the Creator. \u00a0Calvin is seen best from the pinnacle of the Matterhorn. \u00a0For this theological height, for this reverence for the divine freedom, for this austere, awesome vista, in his work, we are lastingly thankful, notwithstanding all and many profound disagreements along the railway up and forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

“TULIP” <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/i>John Calvin\u2019s theology has traditionally, perhaps over-simply, but at a first approximation accurately, been summarized by the so-called TULIP formula: <\/span>\u00a0Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, Perseverance of the Saints.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>A sober if not an entirely cheery, happy creed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet, in the New Testament as a whole, the full gospel, at a first order of approximation, the opposite is expressed. \u00a0In the Gospel, Jesus loves people. \u00a0These people, and we too, we could discern then, must not have been totally depraved. \u00a0In the Gospel, as today, Jesus recognizes the choices that inevitably make us who we are. \u00a0Choice is relational and conditional, and makes us inspect what condition our condition is in. \u00a0These people, and we too, must have not been unconditionally elected. \u00a0In the Gospel, Jesus gathers everybody, all, and addresses all with the invitation, as today, to repent. These people, and we too, we could discern then, must not have been limited to the very narrow, tiny minority of the pre-destined elect. \u00a0In the Gospel, Jesus faces, heartsick, the brutal truth, that people, and we ourselves, can and do resist the invitations of love. \u00a0They must not have been powerless. \u00a0Jesus\u2019 grace was resisted, steadily and effectively, to the path of the cross. \u00a0Speaking of the cross, here Jesus himself does not persevere, not at least in Jerusalem, or in the spiritual culture of our time, nor does his cause, at least not in this passage. \u00a0Persecution not perseverance awaits this holy one, our work of memory in Lent.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this decade, come Lent, we have pondered and wondered about Calvin, and conjured something like this: \u00a0A real celebration of the Gospel will depend upon another TULIP: \u00a0\u00a0T. Something <\/span>temporal<\/span><\/i>. A heart for the heart of the city\u2014a longing to heal the spiritual culture of the land. U. Something <\/span>universa<\/span><\/i>l. An interreligious setting. \u00a0L. Something <\/span>lasting \u00a0<\/span><\/i>of love in mind. A developed expression of contrition. \u00a0I. Something <\/span>imaginative.<\/span><\/i> A keen sense of imagination. \u00a0P. Some real<\/span> power<\/span><\/i>. An openness to power and presence. <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

A Biblical Chorus Line<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Hear again the gospel in John 12. \u00a0The main trouble a preacher faces, with regularity, is how to understand, and so interpret, a passage from 2,000 years ago. \u00a0Every gospel passage, like this one from John 12, is like a hymn, or an anthem. \u00a0There is soprano line (the lead, the voice of Jesus of Nazareth). \u00a0There is an alto line (the most important voice, that just below the surface of the text, the voice of the early church, in its preaching of the gospel, its remembering, hearing and speaking. \u00a0For the early church Jesus meant freedom, and his cross and resurrection meant one thing\u2014the preaching of good news, that we may face the world free from the world). \u00a0There is the tenor line (what we read from the pulpit, the gospel writer, in this case John). \u00a0And there is the baritone, basso profundo (the way the line reverberates throughout the rest of scripture, and down through nineteen hundred years of experience to us today, as John gives way to 1 John, and 1 John to Irenaeus, and Irenaeus to Calvin, Calvin to Wesley, and Wesley to March 13, 2016.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Calvin on John 12<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Calvin\u2019s reading of John 12 emphasizes the overarching divine freedom, and a determinism at work in human affairs. \u00a0He writes:<\/span><\/p>\n

It is surprising that Christ should have chosen as treasurer a man whom He knew to be a thief. \u00a0For what was it but giving him a rope to hang himself with. \u00a0Mortal man\u2019s only reply can be that the judgments of God are a profound abyss.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Here is the inheritance of determinism, along with the view of Scripture addressed two weeks ago, the second lastingly great trouble for us, coming out of Calvinism. \u00a0Calvin:<\/span><\/p>\n

God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation\u2026We ought to contemplate providence not as curious and fickle persons are wont to do but as a ground of confidence and excitement to prayer.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

So let us take stock of our Gospel today. \u00a0It includes one of the most infamous lines in Scripture, \u2018the poor you have always with you\u2019. \u00a0\u00a0John here is making a Christological point, another sermon for another day, but in much regular memory of the Bible, especially when colored by a kind of Calvinism, the verse has not been a way of recognizing the overwhelmingly gracious presence of Christ, overshadowing all other concerns, but rather a tragic support to careless disregard for those at the dawn of life, those at the twilight of life, those in the shadow of life. \u00a0Be careful about your theological inheritance.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

K Tanner, in recent essay: \u00a0<\/span>\u201c<\/span>More specifically, a religiously inspired psychological sanction for hard work in the pursuit of profit reaches its height, Weber thinks, among religious people of a Calvinist stripe who believe in double predestination\u2014that God predestines from all eternity some to salvation and some to damnation\u2014and where the only effective way, it\u2019s also believed, of stilling anxiety about whether one is to be saved or damned is the outwardly disciplined character of one\u2019s everyday behavior without regard for material enjoyment. If one is graced by God, among the elect, one\u2019s actions in ordinary pursuits will be of this character: coolly self-disciplined, restrained, non-hedonistic. And in that way amenable to capitalism\u2019s requirements.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The poor always with us? \u00a0Nonsense. \u00a0On a daily basis, we have as many poor among us as we choose to have poor among us. \u00a0There is no divine determinism about how many 12 year olds across this land, let alone those younger, are stripped of layers of human dignity, and saddled with the lastingly crippling effects of childhood poverty. \u00a0The poor we have are the number we choose to have, as a society. \u00a0The number of children and others without full education, effective health care, protective communal services that we have is a direct consequence, not of some pre-ordained, divinely determined formula, but of human choice, of human freedom. \u00a0It is a result of our choices in election and selection. \u00a0It is a result of our choices, in tithing and generosity. \u00a0It is a result of just how many poor we want to have with us, or how many we can somehow justify having with us. \u00a0There need not be any. \u00a0There need not be any. \u00a0\u00a0It is a matter of human not divine freedom. \u00a0Diane Ravitch (NYRB 3\/16): <\/span>\u00a0As a society we should be ashamed that so many children are immersed in poverty and violence every day of their lives.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Presence For Lent<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Jesus Christ may enter your life, at this point, along this night road crowded with terror. \u00a0This house is filled with the fragrance of perfume \u00a0covering him by grace. So utterly gracious is He that you may not notice without at least a homiletical whisper of introduction. \u00a0\u00a0To the question of the poor, He makes no philosophical response. \u00a0To Plato he leaves the Thought that, really, suffering is illusory, unreal. \u00a0To Aeschylus \u00a0he leaves the proposition that suffering produces wisdom. \u00a0To Boethius he leaves the idea that suffering is instructive, since we need truth more than we need comfort. \u00a0To Freud he leaves the deep insight that all life, all creativity springs forth from some birth-pangs of suffering. \u00a0He makes no philosophical response. \u00a0His response is personal, and divine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather, he prepares for his crucifixion, his burial, and his lasting resurrection presence. \u00a0Jesus meets us inside our suffering. \u00a0He meets us when we ask to withstand even when we cannot understand. He is with us. \u00a0Search the Scripture. \u00a0We find Jesus in the longsuffering of our people.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>In the Old Testament teaching about the utter patience\u2014passion–of divine love\u2014in Jacob who worked for 7 years for Leah and another 7 for Rachel, throughout the exodus (Exodus 34), in the heart of the wilderness (Numbers 14), in psalms of lament (Psalm 86), in prophetic pain (Jeremiah 15). \u00a0Can\u2019t you hear Jeremiah crying out: \u00a0\u201cO Lord, thou knowest: \u00a0remember me and visit me and take vengeance upon my persecutors. \u00a0In thy patience, take me not away, now that for thy sake I bear reproach.\u201d? Here he comes, prefigured in Job. \u00a0In Hosea, patient with adultery. \u00a0In Isaiah, awaiting resurrection. In John the Baptist, patient before death. In Paul, and Peter, and John of Patmos.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes, when we miss Jesus amid all our activity, we may find him again, or rather be found again by him, entering the poverty and hurt of his people\u2026standing with the ill, ministering with the aging, incarnate to the lonely, showering himself on the pains of this life, present as the charismatic fullness of real life. \u00a0Jesus Christ empowers us to withstand suffering, even when, honestly, we have no way to understand it. \u00a0Here is Jesus Christ, publicly portrayed for you as crucified, who, unlike any merely religious representation of God, who, come Lent, invades the depth, the troubled dark night of life, to claim that darkness is as light for Him and for his own.<\/span><\/p>\n

One Day<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

One day, in the fullness of time, compassion will reign.<\/span><\/p>\n

One day there will emerge a people fully filled with a passion for compassion.<\/span><\/p>\n

One day, as the Old Testament says, in the heart of difficulty with Job we will \u201csing songs in the night\u201d. \u00a0And, \u201cthey that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. \u00a0They shall mount up with wings as eagles. \u00a0They shall run and not be weary. \u00a0They shall walk and not faint.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

One day, as the New Testament says, the \u201clong-suffering\u201d grace of God will prevail. \u00a0Suffering will produce patience, and patience endurance, and endurance hope, and hope shall not disappoint us, because of the love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ.<\/span><\/p>\n

One day\u2026and why not start here, and why not begin now?\u2026there will be a real community setting a patient, passionate, compassionate beat, a cadence of quiet endurance.<\/span><\/p>\n

One day, in the fullness of time, His presence will reign.<\/span><\/p>\n

O Day of God draw nigh<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In beauty and in power<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Come with thy timeless judgments now<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

To match our present hour.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Bring to our troubled minds<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Uncertain and afraid<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The quiet of a steadfast faith<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Calm of a call obeyed.<\/span><\/i><\/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 John 12:1-8 Click here to listen to the meditations\u00a0only Mattherhorn By an imaginative grace in the mind of a Presbyterian minister, we were invited to spend part of a seminary year in Geneva, Switzerland, underneath the shadow the great mountains, the Alps, of that region. \u00a0The minister […]<\/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\/1331"}],"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=1331"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1988,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1331\/revisions\/1988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}