{"id":1676,"date":"2017-10-22T11:00:04","date_gmt":"2017-10-22T15:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1676"},"modified":"2019-09-22T13:38:10","modified_gmt":"2019-09-22T17:38:10","slug":"what-a-friend-we-have-in-paul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2017\/10\/22\/what-a-friend-we-have-in-paul\/","title":{"rendered":"What A Friend We Have in Paul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the full\u00a0<\/a>service<\/a><\/p>\n

I Thessalonians 1:1-10<\/a><\/p>\n

Matthew 22:15-22<\/a><\/p>\n

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

What a friend we have in Paul!<\/p>\n

Paul\u2014Apostle<\/p>\n

Whose mighty voice has rolled down through the ages bringing us the good news in all its stark simplicity:\u00a0 Christ the Lord is Risen!<\/p>\n

Paul\u2014Apostle<\/p>\n

Raised in Tarsus, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, of the Tribe of Benjamin, as to the law a Pharisee, a defender of the traditions of the elders\u2014and so a persecutor of the church.<\/p>\n

Paul\u2014Apostle<\/p>\n

Who rode to Damascus and on the way was blinded and there heard a voice saying: \u201cSaul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul\u2014Apostle<\/p>\n

Who in that blinding encounter with the Risen Lord, gave himself up, pronounced a sort of death sentence over himself, and so died with Christ and walked henceforth in newness of life.<\/p>\n

Paul\u2014Apostle<\/p>\n

Who believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead and so lived moment by moment thinking, \u201cWho knows what will happen next?\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul\u2014Apostle<\/p>\n

Who cared for those first few Christians, and worried about them, and grew angry with them, for they so easily lost this vision:\u00a0 that since God had raised Jesus from the dead, who knew what would happen next?<\/p>\n

Paul\u2014Apostle<\/p>\n

Who challenged the Thessalonians: \u201cThis is the will of God, your sanctification\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 He taught them about death.<\/p>\n

Who challenged the Galatians: \u201cBe not deceived, God is not mocked.\u201d\u00a0 He taught them about circumcision.<\/p>\n

Who challenged the Philippians: \u201cLet your manner of life be worthy of the gospel\u201d.\u00a0 He taught them about service.<\/p>\n

Who challenged the Romans: \u201cBe ye not conformed but be ye transformed by the renewal of your minds.\u201d\u00a0 He taught them about the law.<\/p>\n

Who challenged the Corinthians: \u201cBe reconciled.\u00a0 The form of this world is passing away\u201d.\u00a0 He taught them about culture.<\/p>\n

Who challenged Philemon: \u201cMay your goodness not be by compulsion but of your own free will\u201d.\u00a0 He taught him about power.<\/p>\n

Paul\u2014Apostle<\/p>\n

Whose mighty voice speaks to us today, in these verses from 1 Thessalonians 1 (the oldest chapter in the New Testament, from 50ad) ever answering the question of what we should do by saying something, first, about what God has done.\u00a0 Our faith springs not from ourselves but from God, the Giver of both life and faith.<\/p>\n

Paul reminds us that \u201cthe form of this world is passing away\u201d (1 Cor. 7).\u00a0 What else can we expect from a God who raises crucified Messiahs?\u00a0 Who knows what will happen next?<\/p>\n

The future is as open as we, in faith, will allow it to be.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We may recognize in Paul a form of thought that differs utterly from our own.\u00a0 If Paul did retain some of his formative Jewish worldview, the part he closely retained here was his inherited apocalyptic eschatology.\u00a0\u00a0 The resurrection must be, he reasoned, the beginning of the end.\u00a0 Hence, preaches Paul, the form of this world is passing away.<\/p>\n

Paul\u2019s worldview, his apocalyptic eschatology, is not our worldview.\u00a0 Paul\u2019s world, though, is very much ours too.<\/em>\u00a0 So, this morning, we shall need to imagine, to dream, and to interpret these verses in a new way, for a new time, as did Martin Luther, Elie Wiesel, Thomas Merton, and Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/p>\n

No, we may not share Paul\u2019s worldview, but we share his world.\u00a0 So, we may benefit from his friendship, and practice his faith.\u00a0\u00a0 What a friend we have in Paul!\u00a0 He befriends us by bequeathing us two kinds of hope.\u00a0 And hope we do need, in a time of humiliation.\u00a0 And what a time it is, this decade of diminishment. Let us survey our humiliation and let us convey our hope.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the Gospel of Matthew 22, Jesus meets us between Caesar and God.\u00a0 He is ensnared, or nearly so, in a trap set between conservative Herodians and liberal Zealots.\u00a0 In good rabbinic fashion, he responds to a question with a question.\u00a0 Render to Caesar what is Caesar\u2019s, this little bitty coin, and render to God what is God\u2019s, your very life.<\/p>\n

We are not alone in history to have suffered civic or cultural humiliation. As Christian people, trying by day and week to walk by faith not by sight, in an era of daily outrage and regular civic humiliation, we know something of the difficulty here, and something more perhaps than we knew a year ago today. \u00a0Sometimes you just have to learn things the hard way. \u00a0The preacher is not free to read the Bible and not the newspaper, nor free to preach without reference to civil society, culture, and the social conditions of life which have pervasive, profound impact and influence on the baptized and unbaptized alike.<\/p>\n

Let us hold and finger the coin of Caesar as we are touched by the finger of God.\u00a0 Let us take stock.<\/p>\n

This past summer, at the Chautauqua Institution, we had the pleasure of learning from, dining with, and speaking to Stella Rimington, the former head of British Intelligence, MI 5 (1992-1996).\u00a0 She was the first woman to lead that agency.\u00a0 A television drama was produced about her, starring Judi Dench.\u00a0 She was bristling and candid regarding current global perils.\u00a0 She proferred no immediate or ready recommendation for resolution to the dangers posed by North Korea.\u00a0 She affirmed no optimism about the current US President.\u00a0 She frankly, bluntly admitted the US and British intelligence failures that led to the tragedy of Iraq, the mistaken misinformation about weapons of mass destruction.\u00a0 She suggested that Theresa May should \u2018warm up a little\u2019.\u00a0 In particular, she worried extensively in rumination about the internet, about the technology controlling so much about us.\u00a0 That is, she offered no encouragement, no bright forecast for the near term global future.\u00a0 To conclude, she said, as you would expect, \u2018that nonetheless the best we can do is to \u2018keep calm and carry on\u2019.<\/p>\n

Well might we cherish that reminder.\u00a0 For we have entered a decade, at least, of freighted difficulty from which there is no rapid escape, no ready, present remedy.\u00a0 In local, personal, idiosyncratic and individual ways, we each and we all can but soldier on.\u00a0 The fruit of the spirit, upomone<\/em>, patience, longsuffering, will need to be our daily manna, our daily cloud, our night fire, our nourishment that is more than bread alone.\u00a0 There is no quick fix for the regrettable condition upon us, enveloping us, now, with a full year of evident humiliation heaped upon culture, nation, and globe, and our shared need to consider the opportunity to recant, to say in prayer, what we meant by that is not\u2014a year\u2019s evidence now in\u2014what it means. We are judged not by intentions but by consequences.\u00a0 What it means is what it did–to others and to all.<\/em>\u00a0 By the numbers, now, here is one quantification, one calculation of the decadal humiliation that is our current condition, 11 lines parsimoniously cut from four full pages of similar lines:<\/p>\n

7\u2014Muslim Nations\u2019 Immigrants Initially Banned in January<\/em><\/p>\n

54–B$ increase in military spending in February (10%)<\/em><\/p>\n

2000–legal US citizens seeking Canadian refugee status in Montreal, in March<\/em><\/p>\n

59\u2014Tomahawk missiles that killed 10 Syrians in April<\/em><\/p>\n

1\u2014the number of FBI directors fired in May<\/em><\/p>\n

10,000\u2014the number of transgender soldiers serving in June<\/em><\/p>\n

40,000\u2014the number of Boy Scouts in Jamboree \u2018addressed\u2019 in July<\/em><\/p>\n

1\u2014the number killed \u00a0(Heather Heyer) amid \u2018good people on all sides\u2019 in Charlottesville in August<\/em><\/p>\n

50\u2014the percent of proposed tax cuts accruing to the top 1% in September<\/em><\/p>\n

11\u2014the number of paper towel rolls tossed at poor Puerto Ricans in October<\/em><\/p>\n

0\u2014the number of Planned Parenthood centers open in Iowa today<\/em><\/p>\n

24M\u2014the number under threat to lose health care every day<\/em><\/p>\n

You now need to keep your own list.\u00a0 An honest calculation, by the numbers or in some other fashion most effective for you, is a requirement for faithful living today.\u00a0 You owe it to your future to record, collate, compile, journalize, narrate and describe what you see, and what you hear.<\/p>\n

It seems that we have temporarily sold our birthright as a country for a mess of white racist, ethnic nationalist pottage.\u00a0 And there are no guarantees.\u00a0 No guarantee that civility and custom once shredded can somehow be restored, somehow survive daily outrage and humiliation.\u00a0 No guarantee that the one person uniquely so empowered will not push the nuclear button at 5am.\u00a0 No guarantee that having as a nation chosen this shared humiliation we will come to seek and find recantation and forgiveness.\u00a0 No guarantee that many, especially and tragically those most vulnerable (the young, the brown, the foreign, the different and the poor) will not just give up on institutions and slide into the mire of anarchy.\u00a0 No guarantee.\u00a0 No guarantee at all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

No, we may not share Paul\u2019s worldview, but we share his world.\u00a0\u00a0 So, we may benefit from his friendship, and practice his faith.\u00a0\u00a0 What a friend we have in Paul!\u00a0 He befriends us by bequeathing us two kinds of hope.\u00a0 And hope we do need, in a time of humiliation.\u00a0 Let us survey our humiliation but let us also convey our hope. Let us lift a word of faith in a pastoral voice toward a common hope.<\/p>\n

Two shades of hope abide.\u00a0 \u201cHope has two beautiful daughters: anger and courage\u201d (Augustine).\u00a0 One realized.\u00a0 One unrealized.\u00a0 One of John and one of Mark.\u00a0 One for today and one for tomorrow.\u00a0 One from Bultmann, and one from Niebuhr.<\/p>\n

Here is one shade of hope.<\/em><\/p>\n

You can in faith \u2018face the world free from the world\u2019, with a righteous and realized indignation, tempered with full humility. Even a kind of anger, if tempered with humility. That daily form of hope is yours by decision, by choice, through a commitment to live by the faith of Christ. \u00a0This is your invitation:\u00a0 a word of faith in a pastoral voice toward a common hope.<\/p>\n

We may rely not on ourselves alone, but upon God who raises the dead.<\/p>\n

We may face the world, free from the world.<\/p>\n

\u00a0We may lean into the future, free of the burden of past worry.<\/p>\n

We can live on tip toe.<\/p>\n

We can compose every day with brilliance as if it were our last, which, in a way, each one is.<\/p>\n

The person of faith, who overhears the distress down deep in this world, so deep that others don\u2019t hear it, does not rely on himself to sooth it. \u00a0He knows there is one Savior and he isn\u2019t Him.<\/p>\n

What a friend we have in Paul, who preaches Jesus Christ, and Him crucified!<\/p>\n

Why does Paul teach this way?<\/p>\n

Because Paul expects that \u201cthe form of this world is passing away\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 God has raised Jesus from the dead.\u00a0 Who knows what will happen next?<\/p>\n

For Paul, this meant a daily, excited, imminent expectation of the turn of the ages, a new heaven and earth, the end of time and the beginning of a new era.\u00a0 For our sake, it is a blessing that Paul\u2019s own timeline was a little fuzzy.\u00a0 Otherwise we would not be here.\u00a0 But the spiritual truth which lives in this passage, its existential reality, is the same.\u00a0 Every day is our last.\u00a0 Paul so reminds us, and so shakes us out of our stupor.\u00a0 THIS is the day the Lord has made.\u00a0 We shall rejoice and be glad in it!<\/p>\n

In all of life, in the fullness of faith there lies this strange, new potential.\u00a0 Potential.\u00a0 Potential for something new.<\/p>\n

We face the world, free from the world.<\/p>\n

When things go south, let us live not in the form of this world (in despair and doubt and dread), but in the form of the coming world (hope and freedom and a sense of God\u2019s awesome potential).<\/p>\n

Bultmann: \u201cOnly Christ can give the kerygmatic character to everything which is \u2018taught\u2019 as Christian. Therefore, Christ is correctly preached not where something is said about <\/em>him, but only where he himself becomes the proclaimer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The resurrection is, simply, the preaching of the gospel.\u00a0 But preaching in a way that is heard. Bultmann helped us see the present hope in Paul, facing the world free from the world.<\/p>\n

Here is a second shade of hope.<\/em><\/p>\n

Niebuhr, the great Lutheran liberal, liberal<\/em> (still a great tradition, affirmed from this pulpit, if not elsewhere, sore oppressed by both nationalism on the right and anarchy on the farther left), who helped us see the future hope in Paul.\u00a0 Both shades of hope require a translation from apocalyptic expectation into insights for living today, both individual and collective, present and future, Bultmannian and Niebuhrian.\u00a0 Niebuhr gradually left behind the optimistic and utopian tones of the social gospel.\u00a0 He also gradually left behind the narrow and prideful tones of a strict socialism.\u00a0 Gradually he found his way, as we will need to do again in this painful decade ahead, toward a faithful Christian realism.\u00a0 He found a realistic way toward hope.\u00a0 That is our work today as well.\u00a0 We too need to beware \u2018the sentimental optimism about the essential goodness of men without realizing how evil good men can be\u2019.\u00a0 We too need \u2018a check not on policies but on pride, to guide men in a mood of dialectical humility\u2019.\u00a0 We too need to realize that \u2018all justice rests on a balance of power\u2019.<\/p>\n

You can in love \u2018love one another\u2019 as Christ loves you, toward an unseen horizon, a far-off land, a land flowing with milk and honey.\u00a0 You can hope against hope.<\/p>\n

Let those who rejoice do so as if they were not rejoicing.\u00a0 Let them rejoice not in the form of this world but in the form of the world to come.<\/p>\n

We meet each day with courage. We touch and are touched in the presence of Divine Potential, the raw possibility of a new day. We live on tip toe.\u00a0 We live each day as if it were our last, which it is.\u00a0 We greet the hour and its struggle, from a certain distance, and over every loud booming statement there is a misty question mark.<\/p>\n

You know, it is not always clear what is bad news, or good.\u00a0 What can seem cause for the greatest rejoicing also can carry hurt, and vice-versa.\u00a0 God\u2019s time is not our time.\u00a0 God\u2019s purpose is not equivalent to any one of ours.\u00a0 God\u2019s justice is not the same as our own.\u00a0 God\u2019s freedom far surpasses yours and mine.\u00a0 A crushing defeat can, in God\u2019s time, and with patience, become the source, the medium of great victory.\u00a0 I think of Franklin Roosevelt.\u00a0 Where would our country be today, without his life\u2019s strange mixture of rejoicing and suffering and struggle and perseverance?\u00a0 Is it not odd that the one President who appeared to be the least vigorous, was in fact the most? \u2018To lead you have to love, to save you have to serve\u2019.<\/p>\n

Let those who buy and sell, do so as if they had no goods.\u00a0 Not in the form of this world, but in the form of the world to come.\u00a0 Augustine said it so well:\u00a0 we use what we should love and we love what we should use.\u00a0 We use people and love things, when we are meant to love people and use things.<\/p>\n

Yes, use the things of this world and buy and sell.\u00a0 Let us do so, though, not in the form of this world, but in the form of the world to come.\u00a0 Not in grasping selfishness, not in anxious pursuit, not in such strangely intense attention.\u00a0 Rather:\u00a0 with aplomb, with a certain disregard, with an inner freedom.<\/p>\n

About your car, your house, your wardrobe, your bank account, your things\u2014ask this:\u00a0 Do you own it or does it own you?\u00a0 Do you own it or does it own you?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

What a friend we have in Paul!<\/p>\n

Paul who in hope wrote to the Thessalonians so long ago:<\/p>\n

We give thanks to God always for you all, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thess. 1: 1-10).<\/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\u00a0service I Thessalonians 1:1-10 Matthew 22:15-22 Click here to listen to the meditations\u00a0only What a friend we have in Paul! Paul\u2014Apostle Whose mighty voice has rolled down through the ages bringing us the good news in all its stark simplicity:\u00a0 Christ the Lord is Risen! Paul\u2014Apostle Raised in Tarsus, […]<\/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\/1676"}],"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=1676"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1837,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676\/revisions\/1837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}