{"id":14,"date":"2011-08-07T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-07T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2011\/08\/07\/fear-not-the-fallow\/"},"modified":"2020-02-18T17:38:42","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T22:38:42","slug":"fear-not-the-fallow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2011\/08\/07\/fear-not-the-fallow\/","title":{"rendered":"Fear Not The Fallow"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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Click here to hear Sermon only<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Romans 10:5-15<\/a> <\/span>
\nMatthew 14:22-33<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n


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Jesus meets us today dressed in summer attire. <\/span><\/div>\n
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\nWater, wind, boats, mountains, crowds, quiet, waves, sea\u2014these are the forms of raiment he wears coming toward us this morning, out of the unforeseen, out of the future.<\/span><\/div>\n

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We has sent the crowds away.\u00a0 He has ordered the twelve into a boat, with a destination given \u2018on the other side\u2019.\u00a0 He has gone up, gone out, gone away, onto the mountain to pray.\u00a0 Day came and then evening, morning and then night, and he was there on the mountain alone.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Soon there will be much and more work to do.\u00a0 The wind will come up, the team will be afraid, the waves and wind will rise, and he will be called out at the fourth watch of the night, late at night, the wee hours, \u2018dark thirty\u2019.\u00a0 And all of this will arise, we are taught in the Scripture, as an invitation to faith. \u2018O Man of Little Faith\u2026\u2019<\/span><\/div>\n

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Just for now, though, just for a minute, there is a clean summer wind blowing across the top of the mountain, whence Jesus bids us come.<\/span><\/div>\n

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One year, some miles west of here, within a time and space of joyful ministry, we passed a year in which snow fell on every major holiday and Sunday.\u00a0 Snow fell on Halloween.\u00a0 Snow fell on Thanksgiving.\u00a0 Snow fell on Christmas Sunday, on Christmas, on New Year\u2019s, on Ground Hog Day, on Palm Sunday, on Easter.\u00a0 To top it all off, snow also fell on Mothers\u2019 Day.\u00a0\u00a0 In our region, when summer comes, we recognize a different, necessarily different, season.\u00a0 A fallow time.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Howard Thurman, by the report from Oregon in email this last year, once gave a sermon with this title.\u00a0 We find no record of it, nor need we one.\u00a0 The title tells it all.\u00a0 There are full times, with much snow, and there are fallow times, wherein we are restored, free from snow.\u00a0 These fallow times, mountain times, lake times, breeze times, quiet times, and faith times, we need not fear.<\/span><\/div>\n

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In the summer, in the north, we often gather for family reunions.\u00a0 Here we are connected vertically, by generation and time, rather than horizontally, by work and space.\u00a0 You may have some reason for caution and for anxiety, heading for such a party.\u00a0\u00a0 Our families of origin bear within them difficult memories, hard words spoken, past hurts, settled, negatively settled, relationships.\u00a0 Yet, in the fallow time, we go to the place where \u2018when you have to go there, they have to take you\u2019.\u00a0 Fear not the fallow.\u00a0 You may discover someone, something, a story, a memory, an uncle, a gift, which could only come your way in a quieter mode, up a mountain, apart from the economics of work \u00a0and the rest of life.<\/span><\/div>\n

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In the summer, in the north, we may have more time for friendship.\u00a0 If you are forever fiddling with the latest blackberry or other quasi communication, as is part now of our technological turf,\u00a0 you may be uncertain, even anxious, with the quieter rhythms of friendship:\u00a0 listening, more listening, speaking, quiet.\u00a0 Fear not.\u00a0 Our friends give us back our real selves, our own best selves.\u00a0 They both require and deserve our undivided attention, come summer.<\/span><\/div>\n

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In the summer, up here in the north, we too may take to the high mountain.\u00a0 It is the attention, the mind, once freed, which illumines the natural world.\u00a0 The monarch butterfly is always there.\u00a0 In the quiet, with enough warmth to get around and to watch and look, we of a sudden may be able to appreciate the miraculous wonder of the created order.\u00a0 Fear not the fallow.\u00a0 It is the forecourt of prayer.<\/span><\/div>\n

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In the summer, in the north, we may find the idler rhythms, the fallow mode, if we can shake off the natural fear of a different way, a different habit: in travel, in exercise, in reading, in devotion, in silence.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Our being, our human being, is not fully exhausted, though we may be, by our fretful and grasping construction and expenditure, the getting and spending by which we lay waste our powers.\u00a0\u00a0 An hour a day, a day a week, a week a quarter, a quarter a year, a year every seven:\u00a0 these are not times meant only for a few.\u00a0 We are human beings not human doings.<\/span><\/div>\n

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From this pulpit, in this summer, we have prayerfully paused to listen for the gospel under the theme of \u2018Evangelism in the Liberal Tradition:\u00a0 South, North, Youth.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0 From Kentucky, Rev. Wade brought us deeply to consider faith, in the binding of Isaac and the Ethiopian Eunuch.\u00a0 From New England, Rev. Garner and Rev. Thomas announced with us the goodness of God and the presence of God.\u00a0 Next week, and the week following, Rev. Olson will bring us her wisdom regarding the gospel and young adults.\u00a0 Voices from South, North and Youth ask us to consider the grace of invitation.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Jesus, by the record of St. Matthew, \u2018went up on the mountain by himself to pray\u2019.\u00a0 By his example he invites us to join him, as Frost wrote, I am going out to clean the pasture spring.\u00a0 I\u2019ll only stop to rake the leaves away, and watch the water clear, I may.\u00a0 I shan\u2019t be gone long.\u00a0 You\u00a0 come too.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n

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We pause by the table of grace, with bread and cup prepared.\u00a0\u00a0 A natural, urgent objection, opposition, response, may arise as we see Jesus in summer attire.<\/span><\/div>\n

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What of our sisters and brothers, near and far, for whom the fallow is the fullest time there is?\u00a0 What of those who are waiting, without idols but without fruit, for a harvest time, a morning time, a full time, a work time?<\/span><\/div>\n

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Here is a man, whose day, every day, is fallow.\u00a0 He watches from the hospital bed, blank eyed. <\/span><\/div>\n
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Here is a woman who has known the power and happiness of real work.\u00a0 She again scans the screen, the paper, the mail, the news, looking for a place to invest her real gifts.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Here is a couple who have much in memory to share, much in life earned wisdom to share, and no visitors.\u00a0 My grandmother had a sign on her kitchen door:\u00a0 Do you know who I would like to cook a big chicken and dumpling dinner for?\u00a0 Anybody.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n

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<\/em><\/span>Those who can remember, can help those who are learning to remember.\u00a0 Frost:\u00a0 When to the heart of man was it ever less than a treason, to go with the drift of things, to yield with a grace to reason, to bow and accept the\u00a0 end of a love or a season?<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n

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<\/em><\/span>Look about you.\u00a0 14 million Americans who are looking for work are not finding work.\u00a0 The income of the top 1% of the population exceeds that of the bottom 50%.\u00a0\u00a0 Average household wealth for Caucasian families is 20 times that of families of color.\u00a0 We may lack to some degree the pastoral or personal imagination such a time requires.\u00a0\u00a0 We may need films, novels, sermons, books, which quicken the heart, in an appreciation for what such a fearsome fallow time can mean. Do we remember what it feels like to be left out?\u00a0 We need an Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin of unemployment, and a Harriet Beecher Stowe of loss of work.\u00a0 We need a Grapes of Wrath of unemployment, and a John Steinbeck of loss of work.\u00a0 We need an Ironweed of our current unemployment, and a William Kennedy of loss of work.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We need a Cesar Chavez of unemployment, and a workers movement for loss of work.\u00a0\u00a0 For those who have not been vocationally excluded, who have jobs, and who have good minds and hearts, we need a rhetoric which will touch the heart, open the heart, warm the heart, change the heart and move the heart.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Can you remember what it feels like, what it is like, to lack what others have, and to want it badly?\u00a0 In meditating on today\u2019s Gospel, the figure of sinking Peter brought a memory.\u00a0 You know, Peter means \u2018rock\u2019.\u00a0 Usually we think of this as a reference to his found
\national strength in the building of the church.\u00a0 In this passage, as he goes under water, his name perhaps has more direct reference to his sinking qualities, \u2018sink\u2026like a rock\u2019.\u00a0 For some years, I taught swimming and ran a waterfront at a church camp, along the shores of a most beautiful lake.\u00a0 Those years, and the men and women I met there, caused me go to seminary.\u00a0 It was not what they knew, or what they professed, or what they did, even, that drew me.\u00a0 It was the way they lived, in freedom and love.\u00a0 I pray that here, year by year, somehow, others will see in you, and me, such freedom and such love.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I looked this week at a now very worn BOOK OF WORSHIP, a gift from one such soul who inscribed: To Bob the lifeguard, firs you saved lives, now you\u2019ll save souls.\u00a0 God bless you.<\/em> Some gifts do last a lifetime.\u00a0 In those summer years, we had a firm rule:\u00a0 no drowning.<\/em> Yet with the right preparation, you really should not have any, drownings that is, anyway, which thankfully we did not.\u00a0 But occasionally, we had to dive in after somebody.\u00a0 One of the most poignant, frightening, and repeated instances occurred, you will think this odd, during the swimming tests.\u00a0 Young teenagers had to show that they could swim 50 yards, and tread water, in order pass the swim test and swim in the deep water.\u00a0\u00a0 Most did fine.\u00a0 But every now and then, a fourteen year old who did not know how to swim, and who did not want to admit it, but who did not want to be left out, and who did not want to be seen as different, would get in line, stay in line, and then, I guess hoping for who knows what, would jump in, and begin to sink.\u00a0 They just did not want to be left out.\u00a0 In the eyeglass of memory I look at those young people. Can you remember what it feels like to be left out?\u00a0 Can you remember what if feels like, to lack what others have, and to want it so badly?\u00a0 Can we remember, come autumn, what it feels like to be in our teens?\u00a0\u00a0 Today, can we gain a little measure of empathy for 9.1% of the population looking for work?<\/span><\/div>\n

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Our gospel commends faith, the antidote for fear.\u00a0\u00a0 Humans do not easily walk on water, as Peter, the Rock, reminds us.\u00a0 My own experience with gravity, is not unlike your own.\u00a0 Rocks rolling down the hill go all the way.\u00a0 Consistently.\u00a0 Cars on ice slide down hill. Consistently. Boat hoist wheels once loosed and holding the boat spin uncontrollably.\u00a0 Consistently.\u00a0\u00a0 Swimmers who do not know the prone float sink.\u00a0 Consistently.\u00a0 Matthew 14 was not written to erase the need for a swim test.\u00a0 Granted that we are not ever in a position to say what God can and cannot do, our experience with gravity holds.\u00a0 So too does our need for faith.\u00a0 So too does our need to face the fallow.\u00a0 Fear not the fallow.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Why do we fear to face the fallow?\u00a0 We are uncomfortable with silence, with solitude, with quiet, with lack, with anything that interrupts the 24\/7\/365 din of information falling like a not so gentle rain upon us.\u00a0\u00a0 The fallow is meant as a season, not as a permanent condition.\u00a0 It is meant as Sabbath, preparation, restoration, reinvigoration, as the balance that provides a living critique of our idolatry of work.\u00a0 The fallow is meant not to last but to lean upon us, to shift our body weight, to raise a question.<\/span><\/div>\n

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In the summer I pass by daily a farm still operated, forty years later, by an elementary school friend.\u00a0 We were caused one year to perform a stage version of Tom Sawyer\u2019s playful entrapment of Huck Finn along the fence.\u00a0 Do you remember this typically Twain send up of work? <\/span><\/div>\n

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Tom is told to paint the fence.\u00a0 He begins, when up comes Huck, who is curious.\u00a0 Tom couldn\u2019t possibly give up the joy of the job.\u00a0 The more he smiles, the more intrigued Huck becomes.\u00a0 Finally Tom relents, and says he will graciously allow Huck to paint the fence for him, which delights Huck.\u00a0 Only, Tom finishes, Huck will have to pay for the privilege of work.\u00a0\u00a0 He has only an apple to his name, which Tom seizes and departs.<\/span><\/div>\n

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How deeply have we thought about just how much we adore work?\u00a0 Has Twain\u2019s story caught us at all?\u00a0 It should.\u00a0 Work is crucial, especially for those who lack it.\u00a0 Work is perilous, especially for those who cannot see its limits.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Man does not live by bread alone.\u00a0 Bread alone will never begin to bring us to terms with life or death, with loss or betrayal, with choice or failure, with sin or death or the threat of meaninglessness.\u00a0\u00a0 More, bread alone will not ever help us set the theological balances by which we live and die:\u00a0 how much creation, how much fall; how much\u00a0 grace, how much sin;\u00a0 how much freedom, how much constraint; how much divine, how much human;\u00a0 how much mind, how much heart;\u00a0 and, in today\u2019s encounter with Jesus, how much full time and how much\u00a0 fallow, how much work and how much prayer.<\/span><\/div>\n

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We need not fear the fallow, if we face the fallow, and fix the limits of the fallow, with a measure of personal empathy, of sympathy for those for whom the fallow is all they have.<\/span><\/div>\n

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A measure of faith may help.\u00a0\u00a0 To move from fear to faith means learning how to float.\u00a0 You know, sometimes, after failing the swim test, and through the rest of the week, a young person would come for lessons, to learn to swim.\u00a0 The difference between sinking and swimming is floating.\u00a0 To float is to learn to trust that the same water in life that can sorely threaten you will also hold you up.\u00a0 No analogy is perfect.\u00a0 But the trust that allows one to float, to learn the prone float, is like the trust that keeps one afloat in life, and moves one from fear to faith.\u00a0 Lessons in the strokes come later.\u00a0 First there comes a moment when you stretch your arms and lie face down in the water, and a wait for your feet to rise.\u00a0 You see?\u00a0 You can float.\u00a0 You have faith.\u00a0 The water will hold you up.\u00a0 We are in good hands, and so it behooves us to bear one another\u2019s burdens, as Huston Smith once said.<\/span><\/div>\n

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We may thereto find a way to mark out a new way of living, perhaps not quite walking on water, but one that carries us forward by faith in one who stills the waters and calms the sea.\u00a0\u00a0 Then our fullness will be fallow, and our fallow full.\u00a0 So Frost, Yield who will to their separation, my object in living is to unite my vocation with my avocation, as my two eyes make one in sight.\u00a0 Only where love and need are one, and the work is play for mortal stakes, is the deed ever really done, for heaven and the future\u2019s sakes.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n

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A long time ago, in a borrowed upper room, a gathering of very human beings was fed by One they came\u00a0 to know as Son of God.\u00a0 What they were fed gave them the courage to face the full and the empty, and especially the faith to \u2018fear not the fallow\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
\nDean of Marsh Chapel<\/em> <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear Sermon only Romans 10:5-15 Matthew 14:22-33 Jesus meets us today dressed in summer attire. Water, wind, boats, mountains, crowds, quiet, waves, sea\u2014these are the forms of raiment he wears coming toward us this morning, out of the unforeseen, out of the future. We has sent the crowds away.\u00a0 He has ordered […]<\/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\/14"}],"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=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2689,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/2689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}