{"id":1582,"date":"2017-06-04T11:00:42","date_gmt":"2017-06-04T15:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1582"},"modified":"2019-09-24T13:22:40","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T17:22:40","slug":"gift-on-the-altar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2017\/06\/04\/gift-on-the-altar\/","title":{"rendered":"Gift on the Altar"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

John 17: 1-10<\/a><\/p>\n

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

A gift on the altar.\u00a0 Your life is a gift on the altar.\u00a0 What gift in what way on what altar?<\/em><\/p>\n

The month of June each year provides a space and time for various gifts shared and received:<\/p>\n

A Community Luncheon today (Marsh Room):<\/p>\n

Featuring a presentation on planned giving by Sharon Wheeler, Associate Director of Planned Giving at Boston University. Then\u2026a wedding of two members of our community, to which all are cordially invited.<\/em><\/p>\n

June 11 a Summer Reading Discussion Group, convened by Ray Bouchard, at 9:45am.<\/p>\n

On June 18 our Annual Father\u2019s Day Brunch, 9:30 to 11:00am, meant for ALL.<\/p>\n

Then on June 25, from noon to 1:30pm Vacation Bible School: \u201cPizza and Psalms\u201d For children, youth, and the young at heart.\u00a0 Led by Bob and Jan Hill. <\/em>\u00a0Come and join us.\u00a0 Jan says everyone can sing.\u00a0 And she actually knows something about teaching.<\/p>\n

You and you all who have chosen to bear witness to faith, here on a University Campus, live out gifts on altars.\u00a0 You welcome freshmen, as they arrive, eager and sometimes lonely.\u00a0 You bid farewell to them four years later, after they have both warmed and stolen your hearts, and the good bye hurts because it so good.\u00a0 You take up your place in the heart of an academic enterprise, to recall with joy that learning and meaning are both important, that head and heart are both utterly human, that all of us are better when we are loved, even if we don\u2019t get an A.\u00a0 Some graduate Summa, some Magna, some Cum, and some of us just graduate THANK YOU LAUDE (LORDY)!\u00a0 You have to be willing to say hello, and to say good bye, here, and you are, and you do.\u00a0 What a gift on the altar of life!<\/p>\n

A gift on the altar.\u00a0 Your life is a gift on the altar.\u00a0 What gift in what way on what altar?<\/em><\/p>\n

In a few minutes we will bring our ordered hour of worship to a climactic close.\u00a0 Ushers will come forward out of the gathered people of God.\u00a0 A hymn of praise will be sung.\u00a0 Two of our fellows, a man and a woman, maybe a couple, a mother and daughter, two old friends, perhaps two youth, will stand before the altar, collection plates in hand.\u00a0 A gift will be placed upon a beautiful altar.\u00a0 We will offer a prayer.\u00a0 Almost every week, as we conclude our one hour of common prayer, we do this together.<\/p>\n

Why do we do this?<\/p>\n

Our physical statement, a regular occurrence in most worship services, particularly adorned and beautified in the habits of this congregation, is meant to be a ringing affirmation, in this moment of a gift upon the altar.<\/p>\n

Pentecost causes us to consider this, as does today\u2019s Gospel, John 17:1-10<\/p>\n

More than we regularly acknowledge, issues of life and action that may not seem theological at first, at depth really are.\u00a0 How shall we offer our time, energy, and money?\u00a0\u00a0 What is the Christian understanding of warfare?\u00a0 Is personal possession, ownership of property, a proper feature of a good life?\u00a0 What is the status of those at the start, children?\u00a0 What value do we ascribe to frail, mature life?\u00a0 How are women and men to relate?\u00a0 What are faithful uses of money?<\/p>\n

At length, or depth, all of these questions, on which our daily lives founder or are founded or both, require a theological horizon, demand a theological response, deserve a theological assessment.<\/p>\n

The great strength of our now passing post-modern, or even post-Christian era, has been a sense of limits, a sense of humility, even ignorance before the question of truth.\u00a0 Our time more than any other has honored the biblical and human perception that truth is very difficult to determine, nearly impossible to ascertain, as Solzenhitzyn better than most did remind us.\u00a0 In life there is much gray.\u00a0 The great weakness of our now passing post-modern, or even post-Christian era, has been this same sense of limits, sense of humility and ignorance before questions of ultimate reality.\u00a0 Too readily we have let the sense that truth is difficult to ascertain become a despondent acceptance of the impossibility of affirming truth.\u00a0 Too readily we have let the sense that truth seems nearly impossible to ascertain become a fatalistic denial that any truth at all is preferable to any other.\u00a0 The truth of relativity has given way to the falsehood of relativism.<\/p>\n

To this the word of truth responds.<\/p>\n

A gift on the altar.\u00a0 Your life is a gift on the altar.\u00a0 What gift in what way on what altar?<\/em><\/p>\n

Listen again to the strange, stark mystery of today\u2019s Gospel, come Pentecost, come the day of spirit, come the presence of the Comforter, the Advocate, the Paraclete.<\/p>\n

\u2018The hour has come, glorify your Son\u2019.\u00a0 In John, glory means the cross.\u00a0 Jesus\u2019 glorification is the completion of his life in death, ad gloriam dei.<\/p>\n

\u2018Eternal Life\u2019.\u00a0 This is eternal life that they may know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.\u00a0 Notice how different in five ways this simple verse is from Matthew, Mark and Luke.<\/p>\n

\u2018I glorified you by finishing the work\u2019.\u00a0 The word is the same, the last upon the lips of Jesus in this gospel, \u2018finished, it is finished\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018Before the world existed\u2019.\u00a0 Eternal life precedes created life.\u00a0 God is not in time, time is in God.\u00a0 Eternal life, love, resurrection are both prelude and postlude.\u00a0 Love is God\u2019s first name.\u00a0 Or, Resurrection is God\u2019s first name, Creation God\u2019s middle name, and\u2026Surname\u2026Inspiration.\u00a0 In this Gospel at any rate.<\/p>\n

\u2018They have kept thy word\u2019.\u00a0 In our time, an emerging time of the famine of the word, words to speak and hear are hard to find.\u00a0 The Risen Jesus whose voice emanates from 2000 years ago, out of the imagination of a dear soul beloved community preacher calls out a word and for a word kept.<\/p>\n

\u2018All mine are yours and yours are mind and I have been glorified in them\u2019.\u00a0 He speaks from beyond.\u00a0 The words of glory come before the moment of glory, the cross, in which all is finished.\u00a0 Eternal life.\u00a0 Life, Love, Light.<\/p>\n

A gift on the altar.\u00a0 Your life is a gift on the altar.\u00a0 What gift in what way on what altar?<\/em><\/p>\n

Someone recently proposed that we resist alienation by way and by means of participation.\u00a0 Resist alienation through participation.<\/p>\n

We are 6 months into a decade of humiliation.\u00a0 The path ahead requires steady participation, personal discipline, the service of God with gladness, a sure hold on a common hope.\u00a0 For this, we shall need each other, and the regular engagements of worship.<\/p>\n

Each of us oversees a mental parking lot, over which we have no control for entry and exit.\u00a0\u00a0 Worries come and go, parking and leaving.\u00a0 Fretful cares come and go, parking and leaving.\u00a0 Anxieties come and go, parking and leaving.\u00a0 Just when you think the lot has emptied out for a bit, another jalopy, hooptie, pulls in.\u00a0 Though the parking lot is imaginary, and the worries are invisible, these cars are real, real metal, vinyl and rubber.\u00a0\u00a0 In quiet, come Sunday, we can simply watch, as the traffic pulls in and out.\u00a0 Automobiles of anxieties global, national, cultural, denominational, vocational, personal, all.\u00a0 Some days the lot is filled.\u00a0 Others, closer to empty.\u00a0 You have little to no control over these parking patterns.\u00a0 That may be good news.\u00a0 Just let the traffic flow.<\/p>\n

You do have a life, a gift on the altar, in faith, to offer, in the song of the Apostle, Have no anxiety about anything but in all things in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving lift your needs to God.<\/em><\/p>\n

A gift on the altar.\u00a0 Your life is a gift on the altar.\u00a0 What gift in what way on what altar?<\/em><\/p>\n

Our community has become a generous, giving one, over many years.\u00a0 The Lord loves a cheerful giver, and the Lord loves you.\u00a0 You Marsh Chapel folks are known as giving, generous, tithing people.\u00a0 You are not alone in this, but you are exemplary in this. \u00a0This past week many of us spent in our Annual Conferences, doing various Methodist things like singing lustily, and like eating endlessly, and like arguing vociferously, and like finding ways to hug one another and pray for one another, even after our words have stung.\u00a0\u00a0 There was a woman, now a minister in the Adirondacks, who as a child, with her parents, in a very modest home in the Finger Lakes fed a simple dinner to an untrained and uneducated and unprepared young preacher, 1976.\u00a0\u00a0 It both bothers and moves me to remember that the \u2018table\u2019 was a cardboard box, upended and covered with a white cloth.\u00a0 A gift on the altar.\u00a0 One retiree recalled her first church of 21 people, whom she asked, \u2018Do you use the lectionary\u2019?\u00a0 The lay leader said, \u2018Sure, you can use either pulpit or the lectionary to speak from\u2019.\u00a0 She was telling others to translate the tradition, not to serve it raw.\u00a0 And there were bitter differences, growing more painful by the years, largely over the fundamental gospel issue of the full humanity of gay people.\u00a0 But as the proceedings wandered along, and now not as 21 year old preacher in name only, but as an aging, rookie, grandfather in training (\u2018dad, you are just another old white guy with a comb over\u2019), my mind could not help but wander across the landscape of love in the churches in that room.\u00a0 It does not take long to go from being a young turk to becoming an old turkey.<\/p>\n

I remember a widow with four teenagers who somehow still found the time to run a Wednesday dinner for all the neighborhood kids.<\/p>\n

I remember a recovering alcoholic, living alone in a trailer, who took on the job of raising $4000 for preachers\u2019 retirements, out along the blue highways of the North Country.<\/p>\n

I remember a couple who decided to run an old car two more years, so that they could help to build a new church, out along the blue highways of urban upstate New York.<\/p>\n

I remember two retired teachers, loving housemates forever, who singlehandedly started an endowment fund, out along the blue highways of the Finger Lakes.<\/p>\n

I remember the story of a janitor at the University of Pennsylvania who the left the school $2 million dollars in his will, along the Quaker state blue highways.<\/p>\n

I remember reading about a maid in Mississippi who never graduated even from elementary school, who cleaned student rooms for 40 years, and left this world heavily endowing a scholarship fund for minority students at Ole Miss, out along the blue highways of the sweltering south.<\/p>\n

I remember a Colgate graduate who put the church\u2019s endowment into his will, and so put his estate into the endowment.\u00a0 Someone here could do that, Colgate graduate or not.<\/p>\n

And now, coming home to Marsh Chapel, I remember Daniel Marsh.\u00a0 I tell you, without the tithing of other generations, we would be worshipping in a pup tent.\u00a0 But they gave us something, a beautiful, reverent, charming Chapel.\u00a0 They made it their gift.\u00a0 So much so that Daniel and his wife are buried right here, their ashes right in the shadow of the altar, right before the pulpit.<\/p>\n

A gift on the altar.\u00a0 Your life is a gift on the altar.\u00a0 What gift in what way on what altar?<\/em><\/p>\n

My friend Doug Mullins told me once about another gift on the altar, with which to end:<\/p>\n

Belinda was a single parent, trying to take care of herself and raise a five year old Ryan.\u00a0 She was a single parent because when her husband learned that the requisite surgery for her cancer would leave her disfigured, he left.\u00a0 One evening Belinda tucked Ryan into bed and was reading a book to him.\u00a0 He interrupted her to ask if she had bought that book for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n

He then inquired if she had also bought the bed in which he slept.<\/p>\n

Again the answer was \u201cYes\u201d.<\/p>\n

Had she bought the house they called home?<\/p>\n

Yes, she said.<\/p>\n

And what about the new sweater he liked so much?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes\u201d, she said, she had bought that too.<\/p>\n

He thought about how good she had been to him, supplying all his needs, and finally he said, \u201cMommy, get my piggy bank.\u00a0 There are seven pennies in it.\u00a0 Take them and get something you really want for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

You know, everything we have is a gift from God.\u00a0 Life, breath, faith, forgiveness, and hope of eternal life.\u00a0 Cross, altar, gift.\u00a0 Life, light, love.<\/p>\n

This summer think, again, about tithing.<\/p>\n

A gift on the altar.\u00a0 Your life is a gift on the altar.\u00a0 What gift in what way on what altar?<\/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 John 17: 1-10 Click here to listen to the meditations only A gift on the altar.\u00a0 Your life is a gift on the altar.\u00a0 What gift in what way on what altar? The month of June each year provides a space and time for various gifts shared […]<\/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\/1582"}],"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=1582"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1872,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582\/revisions\/1872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}