{"id":1356,"date":"2016-05-01T11:00:57","date_gmt":"2016-05-01T15:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1356"},"modified":"2019-10-06T13:16:39","modified_gmt":"2019-10-06T17:16:39","slug":"a-topography-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2016\/05\/01\/a-topography-of-love\/","title":{"rendered":"A Topography of Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

John 14:23-29<\/a><\/p>\n

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

\u201cJesus answered him, \u2018Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

You are invited to walk in the land of love, from this day forward. Walk in love. \u00a0Walk across the landscape of love. \u00a0Make love your aim. \u00a0Love one another. \u00a0Here is a Johannine topographical map for your travels in just one verse alone, John 14: 23.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our earth science teacher had a way of finding a way to excite 13 year olds with the mysteries of topography. \u00a0A. \u00a0He traced the advance and retreat of glaciers, and their deposits, in kells and drumlins and valleys and lakes. \u00a0He reminded us that we are ice people, up north here. \u00a0He pointed out the undersides of the mountains and the different geological formations underneath the similar beauties of the Adirondacks and Catskills. \u00a0B. With great energy, he showed us how rivers formed and wound around and changed course. \u00a0He reminded us that Susquehanna means \u2018winding river\u2019, and then would drift off into meditations upon other native names: \u00a0Onondaga, Tioghnioga, Canandaigua, Oneida. \u00a0These place names, a part of one local topography, in his merriment and memory became lodged in us, placing us in their places. \u00a0The best of the days were those spent pouring over the maps, and the ways that rivers remake landscape. \u00a0There is a flow to things, a watery fluidity underneath and sometimes well above the apparent surfaces of life. \u00a0C. \u00a0He took us beyond the constellations\u2014Ursa Major and Minor, Draco the Dragon, Orion the Archer, Cassiopia on her throne\u2014which we had already located in scouting, and spread out the universe, 14 billion years of age, endless ranges of galaxies, meteors sailing, suns exploding, darkness and light. \u00a0He was trying to say something to us, looking back, about our place in the great Place of the \u00a0Cosmos. D. He gestured to the winds, the gusting climactic climate about us. \u00a0Freezing points, dew points, compass points\u2014all good points. \u00a0Behold the topographical mysteries!<\/span><\/p>\n

Ours today is a topography, not of earth but of heaven, not of earth science but of heavenly science, not of land but of love. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Love. \u00a0Are we lovers anymore?<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>It can feel blasphemous to speak of love at all. \u00a0In a <\/span>world <\/span><\/i>where warfare continues to bubble up and out of Tutsi and Hutu history; in a world where Ecuadorian huts and barrios are wrecked in natural catastrophic earthquakes; in a world in which Columbian children are kidnapped and made child warriors; in a <\/span>country<\/span><\/i>, our own, in which there is lasting dispute about whether non-rich children should have full access to education and health care to age 21; in a country in which democracy\u2014as both the ancient Greeks and our constitutional founders soberly feared\u2014suddenly seems to give way to demagoguery (largely it must be underscored, due to the habits of mind, forms of rhetoric, and decades of contention exported from one party and this year from one candidate); in a country that comes to resemble, in spirit, \u00a0the ancient Israel decried by Amos, and others, shot through with personal depravity, vapid worship, rampant neglect of the poor, and haughty, foolish overreliance on military might; \u00a0in a <\/span>culture<\/span><\/i> that prizes counting but not reckoning; in a culture which emphasizes knowledge to the exclusion of relationship producing citizens who are often knowledgeably advanced but relationally delayed; in a culture, bounded by misogyny, blinded by racism, bordered by greed, which sees no longer any eternal horizon, nor values any longer the traditions of self-giving which themselves gave the culture its very birth; in a <\/span>week <\/span><\/i>of further gun death, including that of a two year old shooting his mother from the back seat of the car; in a week of violence in city after city; in a week of smaller slights, hidden swindles, and personal abuses which all fill in the Latin phrase, <\/span>homo homini lupus<\/span><\/i>, man is a wolf to man; in such a world, country, culture and week it can seem the height of hubris, or naivete, to utter in public the word \u2018love\u2019 at all. \u00a0It can seem blasphemous to speak of love at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nevertheless\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Here we are! \u00a0Here you are! \u00a0Bearing witness, giving thanks, offering prayers and tithes, seeking the Lord together. \u00a0Sursum Corda: \u00a0Lift up your hearts!<\/span><\/p>\n

Our Gospel does so speak. \u00a0Of love.<\/span><\/p>\n

Are we lovers any more?<\/span><\/p>\n

Do we let love be our aim? \u00a0Do we think daily, and act weekly, and practice monthly the scales, vaults, verifications, and measurements of love? \u00a0Do we love God and love our neighbor, loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and loving our neighbor <\/span>as ourself<\/span><\/i>? \u00a0Are we going on to wholeness, to becoming healthy and whole in love in this lifetime (<\/span>Are you going on to perfection? \u00a0Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this lifetime?) <\/span><\/i>For what do we live? \u00a0If you are not going on to wholeness in love, what you are going on to?<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Are we familiar with a topography of love\u2014its glacial forms, its meandering rivers, its celestial stars and lights, its wind blowing where it wills?<\/span><\/p>\n

Are we lovers anymore? \u00a0Are you ready to get the lay of the land? \u00a0God\u2019s nature and name is love. \u00a0Are we loving people? \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our topography of love is a verse in four phrases.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Those who love me”<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/i>Ages ago glaciers cut lakes and hollows and mountains into lasting shapes. \u00a0\u00a0Love has done the same, cut lakes and hollows and mountains into lasting, existential shape.<\/span><\/p>\n

Faith is a gift. \u00a0Faith is not a task, not an achievement, not a work, not an accomplishment. \u00a0Faith is a gift, through which we live out our lives in thanksgiving. \u00a0Faith is a gift. \u00a0You gain no praise in receipt of such a gift, and you incur no blame in the lack of such a gift. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For those who have been seized by the love of God, the faith of Christ, the confession of the church\u2014is this who you are?\u2014love is the form, the topographical outline of life. \u00a0Walk in love.<\/span><\/p>\n

It must be stressed that, at least here in the Holy Scripture, and at least here in the Gospel of John, John 14: 23, there is no argument that some should jump across a line, or make a personal choice. \u00a0It is geological, glacial force at work, here. \u00a0Those called to love, those called to love Him, are those called to love, those called to love Him. \u00a0Is this you (pl.)?<\/span><\/p>\n

The verse affirms that there are those who have a revelation that they are meant to love. \u00a0They have the gift, the faithful gift of love. \u00a0Some have the gift of strength, some the gift of music, some the gift of philanthropy, some the gift of insight. \u00a0Faith (<\/span>pistis)<\/span><\/i> is such a gift. \u00a0Love<\/span> (agape)<\/span><\/i> is such a gift.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>For the first readers and hearers of this passage, our verse revealed a mystical union, a mystical audition, a mystical shift, a mystical experience, whose essence in retrospect became: <\/span>We are meant to live in love, as those who love Him.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

“Will keep my word”<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The lakes and rivers that filled with water, over long, flowing, fluid, time, kept alive a saturation, a potential to slake the thirsts of life. \u00a0Especially their propensity to meander, to wander, to saunter, to wonder, to move and live and have being, that propensity to fluidity makes a lively, loving word.<\/span><\/p>\n

We may want to wrestle a bit with both the verb and the noun here. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To keep is not to obey, to keep is not to hold, to keep is not to hear, to keep is not to possess, although it is all those things and more.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a small upper room, perhaps in Ephesus, maybe in the year 90ad, possibly with 30 or 40 present, a word is spoken and heard. \u00a0It is a voice that speaks like no other, \u2018so equable, magnanimous, and serene\u2019 (J. Ashton). \u00a0To hear it one needs to listen. \u00a0One needs to learn to hear, to practice listening, to train the ear, as some music schools do.<\/span><\/p>\n

A word is not text, ancient or cyber, nor a verse, however venerable or holy, nor a doctrine, even a powerful doctrine. \u00a0The word is near your heart and your lips, too. \u00a0\u00a0How will you hear a word of God without listening for such a word? \u00a0In Scripture, in Prayer, in Worship, in Conversation, in Meditation, in Sacrament, in Silence\u2014day to day pours forth speech. \u00a0But have we ears, ears to hear? \u00a0There is a kind of turning of the back upon the world commanded by this word, His word.<\/span><\/p>\n

(In an age sorrowfully awash in vulgar words, hateful words, misogynist, xenophobic, racist, artfully hateful words, in an age sorrowfully awash in a culture that languishes in the doldrums of a pervasive malaise, a pervasive amnesia, a pervasive torpidity, a pervasive ugliness, now unleashed, to our shame, in the political events of this year, one especially needs the care and cultivation of hearing.) \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Good news: \u00a0you may have confidence that such a word, yours to keep, yours for the keeping, may be spoken and heard. \u00a0Here. \u00a0Now.<\/span><\/p>\n

“My Father will love them”<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Now the celestial lights are before us. \u00a0The planets, the stars, the meteors, the darkness and the light, the evening sky\u2014these illumine our few days upon the earth.<\/span><\/p>\n

We this week had sign board on the plaza for students to use to write out what they hoped to do and be in life. \u00a0The word love was not absent, but almost so, as my friend pointed out. \u00a0Many other words were written on the chalk board, but not love, not often. \u00a0One wrote: <\/span>I hope to find someone to love. \u00a0<\/span><\/i>Another: <\/span>I want to love as I have been loved.<\/span><\/i> \u00a0But these sorts of sentences were few in number. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The day before we held vigil, again, for a student who died three years ago. \u00a0Her mother, her friends, her former housemates gathered, three years on, at the monument, the King monument. \u00a0You look for something sturdy in grief. \u00a0We stood with flowers, wreaths, and photos. \u00a0We \u2018said some words\u2019 (interesting locution). \u00a0We waited in quiet. \u00a0We wept, some at length and with profusion. \u00a0We lit candles, shielding them from a light wind. \u00a0When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.<\/span><\/p>\n

Again, there is no transaction here, no quid pro quo, no love for love trade. \u00a0Here is eternal love, \u2018my Father will love them\u2019. <\/span>\u00a0Topos<\/span><\/i> is place; <\/span>graphe<\/span><\/i> is writing\u2014the depiction of a space, a topography of love. \u00a0No one has ever seen God. \u00a0But if we love one another God\u2019s love abides in us and is made whole in us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Huston Smith, when teaching at MIT long ago, said:<\/span> \u00a0we are in good hands, and so it behooves us to bear one another\u2019s burdens.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

“We will make our home with them”<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/i>To see which way the wind is blowing you need an anemometer. \u00a0A glacial form, a river bed, a sacred canopy\u2014earth, water, stars\u2014make up our topography of love, with one addition, by the strength of this verse, John 14:23.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is to be an indwelling, a making oneself at home, Father and Son will come and take up residence, be present, become presence. \u00a0Here our humble sacraments, of holy baptism and holy communion, of bath and meal, of washing and eating, of cleansing and nourishment may bring a helpful reminder, with thanksgiving, of presence, His presence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet the earliest hearers and readers of our verse felt something more. \u00a0They felt Him making a home in their midst. \u00a0They felt Him living with them. \u00a0They felt Him dwelling among them. \u00a0<\/span>I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps. \u00a0They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps. \u00a0I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. \u00a0His day is marching on. \u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Here is Paul in the seventh heaven. \u00a0Here is Lydia opening her life. \u00a0Here is the Psalmist at peace. \u00a0Here is Augustine in the garden. \u00a0Here is Aquinas calling a lifetime\u2019s writing, \u2018so much straw\u2019. \u00a0Here is John of the Cross, <\/span>en una noche oscura. <\/span><\/i>\u00a0Here is Luther in agony. \u00a0Here is Wesley in the rain of Aldersgate Street. \u00a0Here is Harriet Tubman, walking north to freedom. \u00a0Here is Martin Luther King, signing books on Manhattan, suddenly wounded and bleeding. \u00a0Here is Francis, Bishop of Rome, in our time, imploring all to honor the conscience of the believer, which is inviolable. \u00a0Here is Howard Thurman, on the beach. \u00a0Here you are\u2014formed by love, guided by love, embraced by love, now touched by love. \u00a0You may recall in prayer: \u00a0<\/span>I am loved. \u00a0So I can love. \u00a0<\/span><\/i>The topography of love carries a mysterious, no a mystical, wind, breath, breeze\u2026spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Are we lovers any more?<\/span><\/p>\n

Do we let love be our aim? \u00a0Do we think daily, and act weekly, and practice monthly the scales, vaults, verifications, and measurements of love? \u00a0Do we love God and love our neighbor, loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and loving our neighbor <\/span>as ourself<\/span><\/i>? \u00a0Are we going on to wholeness, to becoming healthy and whole in love in this lifetime (<\/span>Are you going on to perfection? \u00a0Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this lifetime?) <\/span><\/i>For what do we live? If you are not going on to wholeness in love, what you are going on to?<\/span><\/p>\n

Are we familiar with topography of love\u2014its glacial forms, its meandering rivers, its celestial stars and lights, its wind blowing where it wills?<\/span><\/p>\n

Are we lovers anymore? \u00a0Are you ready to get the lay of the land? \u00a0God\u2019s nature and name is love. \u00a0Are we loving people?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJesus answered him, \u2018Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

– The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n


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Click here to listen to the full service John 14:23-29 Click here to listen to the meditations only \u201cJesus answered him, \u2018Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.\u2019\u201d You are invited to walk in the land […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356"}],"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=1356"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1966,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions\/1966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}