{"id":1456,"date":"2016-10-16T11:00:08","date_gmt":"2016-10-16T15:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1456"},"modified":"2019-09-24T14:21:27","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T18:21:27","slug":"persistence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2016\/10\/16\/persistence\/","title":{"rendered":"Persistence"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Luke 18:1-8<\/a><\/p>\n

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

\u2018Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart\u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Persistence amid Confusion and Timidity<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Tuesday you may have been driving mid-day out over the BU bridge, and into Cambridge.\u00a0 If so, on that bright crisp autumn day, you would have run into a delay.<\/p>\n

Along the river, remember, there are swans, many white swans, encamped alongside and under the bridge.\u00a0\u00a0 But they do not exclusively sojourn riverside.\u00a0 Sometimes, by the by, they saunter out, due north and west, themselves headed for Cambridge, or at least a little part of Cambridge.\u00a0 Ah, the allure of the other side of the river, and all its Cambridge delights\u2014colleges, students, green grass, bicycle lanes and endowments.\u00a0 Sweet.<\/p>\n

The River Charles is deep and wide, Alleluia.\u00a0 Thirty-eight billion on the other side, Alleluia. (<\/em>J<\/em>)<\/em><\/p>\n

Tuesday, which was a BU Monday by the way, but still a Tuesday, you perhaps came to rest awaiting the green light.\u00a0 In the head of the car queue there was an elderly couple, somewhat timid, surely nice, perhaps kindly Midwestern folks, and the light turned.\u00a0 But the swans had made their way into the intersection, and the kindly couple was loath to disturb them.\u00a0 The car, and so the subaltern many cars behind, waited for another light change.\u00a0\u00a0 A dozen or two confused birds crossed, and then, just as the light changed again, they turned and walked back, solemn in waddling procession, one by one, \u2018beginning with the eldest\u2019 as in John 8.\u00a0 Again, our dear Midwestern guests made no honking, threatening, aggressive moves, and waited, and again the light changed.<\/p>\n

You might want to imagine what sorts of reactions to all of this were then occasioned and vigorously offered by the line-up of cars eager to leave Boston and enter the Shangri La of Cambridge.\u00a0 We Bostonians are such a patient, calm, irenic crew, especially when behind the wheel, don\u2019t you know\u2026<\/p>\n

It was not pretty.<\/p>\n

After another light change or three, somehow, by grace, the swans elected to return home to their nests and spots and cribs along the River Charles.\u00a0\u00a0 Driving, say, then, along Memorial Drive, perhaps headed to visit a friend and parishioner in a nursing home in Watertown, you may have mused, bemused, about what you saw, swan and car, light and traffic, intersection and interruption, and mainly, in equal balance, the timidity of the lead drivers and the confusion of the birds in procession.\u00a0 One part timidity, one part confusion, or one part confusion and one part timidity, in largely equal measure.\u00a0 Confusion and timidity.<\/p>\n

You may have been reminded of many church meetings, where the two, confusion and timidity are also often found in equal measure.<\/p>\n

You may have been reminded, in our season, of the choices made in cable network so-called journalism, where the two, confusion and timidity, have been found in full this year, in equal measure.<\/p>\n

You may have been reminded of the cultural demise all around us, to the shame of us all, the acceptance of bullying and demagoguery, the normalization of vulgarity and sexism, the accommodation of buffoonery and megalomania, our willingness to have our children and grandchildren so surrounded in a culture careening into a nihilistic abyss.\u00a0 \u2018Yes, I really got him.\u00a0 Low energy.\u00a0 That was a one day kill. Words are beautiful things.\u2019\u00a0 <\/em>Can you hear that?<\/p>\n

Institutions are far more fragile than we sometimes think, especially the bigger ones.\u00a0 They all require trust, commitment, integrity, self-sacrifice, and humility on the part of their leaders, or over time they disintegrate.\u00a0 It is not just the processes, the systems, the organizations and structures that matter, it is the people.\u00a0 No amount of systemic adjustment can ever replace the fundamental need, across a culture, for good people. No wise process has any chance against unwise people. Do not assume that institutions that have been healthy will always be so. Do not presume that free speech in newspapers, that due process in political parties, that honest regard for electoral results simply exist.\u00a0 They do or they don\u2019t.\u00a0 It depends on the people who inhabit, support, and lead them.\u00a0 Beware a time like ours when the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity (Yeats).<\/em><\/p>\n

Giving ultimate loyalty to penultimate reality is sin at its depth.\u00a0 To support an organization at the cost of honor, of integrity, of honesty is to give ultimate loyalty to penultimate reality.\u00a0 That is, to support a political party at the cost of honor, integrity and honesty is to give ultimate loyalty to penultimate reality.\u00a0 This is sin at its depth.\u00a0 That is, to support a denomination at the cost of honor, integrity and honesty is to give ultimate loyalty to penultimate reality.\u00a0 In the hour of judgment, the organization\u2014party or church or other\u2014depends on the courage and integrity of individuals to resist idolatrous loyalty to penultimate reality and to respond with courage and integrity to ultimate authority.\u00a0 You cannot serve God and Mammon. Giving ultimate loyalty to penultimate reality is sin at its depth.<\/p>\n

Persistence in Jeremiah<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>In 1980 with 12 Cornell students, and for a full year, we studied Jeremiah.\u00a0 Two of those then young graduate students are now teaching at Brown University, and are part of the extended Marsh Chapel family.\u00a0 Last year they reminded me that the group had asked to study Jeremiah, high above Cayuga\u2019s waters, and I had wondered \u2018whether they were ready for him\u2019.\u00a0 They said they were, and they were.\u00a0 In all these intervening years, with student and campus groups from Cornell, McGill, North Country Community, Syracuse, Lemoyne, Colgate Rochester, the University of Rochester, United Seminary and, now, Boston University, we have returned in group study to Jeremiah.\u00a0 Never, though, have I been more grateful for Jeremiah\u2019s evocation of the stark suffering divine love of God, for Jeremiah\u2019s unswerving realism, than this fall.\u00a0 In the autumn of demagoguery and its partial acceptance by America, I kneel and kiss the ground, thankful for Jeremiah and his divine human realism.<\/p>\n

I am eternally thankful for Jeremiah\u2019s realism about what horrors can befall people and a people when they forget their identity.<\/p>\n

I am eternally thankful for Jeremiah\u2019s realism about what happens to a people whose leaders have and live values diametrically opposed to the nation\u2019s own values.<\/p>\n

I am eternally thankful, painful as it is to hear the words, for Jeremiah\u2019s realism about how na\u00efve in selfishness a people can become, and how earth shattering that foolishness can be.<\/p>\n

I am eternally thankful for Jeremiah\u2019s realism about the crucial importance of diplomacy rather than violence, and about what happens when megalomaniacal leaders mock diplomacy.<\/p>\n

I am eternally thankful, if such can be said, for Jeremiah\u2019s own wretched suffering as he watched his beloved country exchange their birthright of justice for a mess of material pottage.<\/p>\n

I am eternally thankful for the clarity, not confusion, for the courage, not timidity, of his voice ringing out across 25 centuries to say to you in a way you cannot avoid:\u00a0 if you follow leadership that is immoral, unjust, unloving, unwise, you will get what you deserve, and the desserts will be disastrous.\u00a0 In real time.<\/p>\n

I am eternally thankful for Jeremiah\u2019s pitiless reproach for people whose own religion bluntly teaches them to tell truth, honor others, seek justice, protect the poor, who then select leaders who say they have done and will do the opposite, and then are proven to have done.\u00a0 We have been warned.<\/p>\n

I am eternally thankful for Jeremiah\u2019s realism which\u2014did you hear?\u2014includes at the end, encompasses at twilight, for all the suffering the divine love endures, including Jeremiah\u2019s own slave death and unmarked grave in Egypt, a grace note, a ringing bell, a song sung, a word spoken, a hope, that one day \u2018says the Lord, \u00a0I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah\u2026 No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, \u201cKnow the Lord,\u201d for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Persistence in Luke<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>So we arrive today in the confusion and timidity of our time, at the town court of Nazareth, the honorable UnJ Judge presiding.\u00a0\u00a0 Hear ye, hear ye.\u00a0 Hizzoner awaits.\u00a0 And Behold the Lord Jesus Christ dressed today in the apparel of a poor woman.\u00a0 For those who, rightly, feel anxiety or despair or depression at the rampant sexism now latent and palpable, revealed by the events of this year and autumn across our decaying culture, take heart:\u00a0 behold the Lord Jesus Christ dressed today in the raiment of an importunate, a persistent poor widow.<\/p>\n

Yes, in our autumn of anxiety, we can readily appreciate the Scripture\u2019s utter realism.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Luke too needed to remember that Jesus told them about \u201closing heart\u201d.\u00a0 This phrase communicates, in a time like ours. Greater souls in easier times have felt such ennui.\u00a0 So we are not surprised today to hear reports of increased therapy, medication and consumption of comfort food.\u00a0 We can feel the depression.<\/p>\n

Jesus pointed to the Town Court of Nazareth and therein to the simple figure of a persistent woman.\u00a0 See her at the bench.\u00a0 Watch her in the aisle.\u00a0 Listen to her steady voice.\u00a0 Feel her stolid forbearance.\u00a0 Says she:\u00a0 \u201cGrant me justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The widow\u2019s untiring pursuit of justice is translated into the \u2018faith\u2019 that should mark the church\u2019s welcome of the awaited Son of Man\u2019 (Ringe)<\/p>\n

In Nazareth town court, all rise hear ye hear ye the honorable U J Judge presiding, a persistent woman employs time and voice.\u00a0 You have time and you have voice.\u00a0 Like Christ himself, she implores the implacable world to grant justice.\u00a0 Like Christ himself, she comes on a donkey of tongue and patience.\u00a0 Like Christ himself, she continues to plead, to intercede.\u00a0 Like Christ himself, she importunes the enduring injustice of this world.\u00a0 Like Christ himself she prays without ceasing.\u00a0 Like Christ himself she persists.\u00a0 She is an example to us of how we should use whatever time we have and whatever breath remains–to pray.\u00a0 It is prayer that is the most realistic and wisest repose of the anxious of this autumn of exasperation.\u00a0 By prayer we mean formal prayer, yes (more here next week). But by prayer we mean, too, the persistent daily leaning toward justice, the continuous pressure in history from the voice of the voiceless and the time of the time bound.<\/p>\n

Notice, waiting with us, this poor widow.\u00a0 She lacks power, authority, status, position, wealth.\u00a0 She has her voice and all the time in the world.\u00a0 Like Jesus Christ, whose faith comes by hearing and hearing by the preaching of the word.<\/p>\n

If we are not to lose heart, in the seemingly unending search for justice, we shall need to pray always, to \u201crelax into the truth\u201d, and to give ourselves over to the divine presence in our midst.\u00a0 To give ourselves over to a real, common hope, and to be clear, not confused, courageous not timid about our hope:<\/p>\n

Persistence in Hope<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>We await a common hope, a hope that our warming globe, caught in climate change, will be cooled by cooler heads and calmer hearts and careful minds.<\/p>\n

We await a common hope, a hope that our dangerous world, armed to the teeth with nuclear proliferation, will find peace through deft leadership toward nuclear d\u00e9tente.<\/p>\n

We await a common hope, a hope that our culture, awash in part in hooliganism, will find again the language and the song and the spirit of the better angels of our nature.<\/p>\n

We await a common hope, a hope that our country, fractured by massive inequality between rich children and poor children, will rise up and make education, free education, available to all children, poor and rich.<\/p>\n

We await a common hope, a hope that our nation, fractured by flagrant unjust inequality between rich and poor children, will stand up and make health care, free health care, available to all children, poor and rich.<\/p>\n

We await a common hope, a hope that our schools, colleges and universities, will balance a love of learning with a sense of meaning, a pride in knowledge with a respect for goodness, a drive for discovery with a regard for recovery.<\/p>\n

We await a common hope, a hope that our families, torn apart by abuse and distrust and anger and jealousy and unkindness, will sit at a long Thanksgiving table, this autumn, and share the turkey and pass the potatoes, and slice the pie, and, if grudgingly, show kindness and pity to one another.<\/p>\n

We await a common hope, a hope that our decisions in life about our callings, how we are to use our time and spend our money, how we make a life not just a living, will be illumined by grace and generosity.<\/p>\n

We await a common hope, a hope that our grandfathers and mothers, in their age and infirmity, will receive care and kindness that accords with the warning to honor father and mother that you own days be long upon the earth.<\/p>\n

We await a common hope, finally a hope not of this world, but of this world as a field of formation for another, not just creation but new creation, not just life but eternal life, not just health but salvation, not just heart but soul, not just earth, but heaven.<\/p>\n

Persistence Today<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>We hear the call to persist today.\u00a0 It is a daily practice, a daily discipline.<\/p>\n

An example of persistence, in the figure of an importunate widow.<\/p>\n

By the by, that drive on Tuesday, amid confusion and timidity, you recall, ended in the presence of a poor widow, now 100, one of your dear sisters, residing across the river in a nursing home.\u00a0 100 years of growth, and travel from the west to the east coast, and faculty spouse leadership in fresh and salt water schools, and administrative guidance and correction of several General Conferences, church meetings, Bishops and the writing of the 1988 Book of Discipline, and motherhood and sisterhood and discipleship\u2026and, through it all, persistence. \u2018For what should we pray?\u2019 she was asked.\u00a0 \u2018Pray for all those who are hurting\u2019, she replied.<\/p>\n

\u2018Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart\u2019 <\/em><\/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 18:1-8 Click here to listen to the meditations\u00a0only \u2018Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart\u2019 \u00a0Persistence amid Confusion and Timidity \u00a0Tuesday you may have been driving mid-day out over the BU bridge, and into Cambridge.\u00a0 If so, […]<\/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\/1456"}],"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=1456"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1927,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions\/1927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}