{"id":1753,"date":"2018-03-18T11:00:30","date_gmt":"2018-03-18T16:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1753"},"modified":"2021-02-22T15:19:43","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T20:19:43","slug":"merton-and-vocation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2018\/03\/18\/merton-and-vocation\/","title":{"rendered":"Merton and Vocation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to\u00a0listen to\u00a0the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

John 12:20-33<\/a><\/p>\n

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

\u2018If anyone serve me, he must follow me, and where I am there my servant shall be also\u2019. (John 12: 26)<\/p>\n

Graham<\/strong><\/p>\n

One\u2019s sense of calling develops over a lifetime.\u00a0 Vocation can emerge apart from religious distinctions, often outside inherited personal or spiritual boundaries.\u00a0 In that way, as Thomas Merton reminds us, vocation is the essential and quintessential ecumenical gift, or charism, or grace.\u00a0 This Lent reminds us of courage, gratitude, spirit and gladness\u2014the nourishment you will need to survive and prevail into the next decade.<\/p>\n

To begin, though, this season of March, not Marsh, madness recalls that in 1987 our Rotary Club in Syracuse, which doubled as a cheering section for the college basketball squad, was in misery.\u00a0 By just a single point, a last second basket, Syracuse had lost the NCAA championship to Indiana, a day that will live in infamy.\u00a0 We began the next Monday\u2019s Rotary meeting as usual with a prayer, memorably offered that day by Judge Schultz: We know Lord that we learn most from our troubles, and from our defeats.\u00a0 We accept this and will try to hold fast to your presence, even in the face of (now here the prayer began to turn sideways\u2014it happens in sermons too!) of unfairness, in the face of bad officiating, in the face of the unspeakable behavior of a chair throwing coach of the opposite team whom I will not mention Lord in prayer by name, in short, we bow before you and accept what has happened.\u00a0 We don\u2019t always have to win\u2026BUY WE DO DEMAND JUSTICE. Oh, and, uh, AMEN.<\/p>\n

A couple of springs later, in 1989, the Rev. Billy Graham spoke at our club, its fiftieth anniversary, following a Graham revival in the Carrier Dome.\u00a0 I offered the prayer that day, and he said (and I should have noted this in my journal to save this memory for preaching at Marsh Chapel in March of 2018), \u2018that was a fine prayer, Rev.Hill.\u2019\u00a0 He was about 3 or 4 inches taller than I, quiet, gracious and a kindly presence.\u00a0 And he sure knew what he was talking about regarding prayer.\u00a0 Of course, in that club we had a well-established tradition of pious and heartfelt prayer already, as Judge Schultz\u2019s prayer did attest: WE DO DEMAND JUSTICE.\u00a0 My sister, then Vice President and Corporation Counsel at Oneida Silver, gave him a beautiful silver tea tray (which unfortunately was overshadowed by the wife of the owner of Stickley Furniture who gave him a sofa).\u00a0 These will BOTH go nicely in our home, he graciously responded.<\/p>\n

The congregation was of two minds about whether to support the Graham crusade.\u00a0\u00a0 I still see the hurt in the eyes of those who felt deeply and strongly that doing so validated Graham\u2019s support of the war in Vietnam, his support of Richard Nixon, his particular form of Calvinism (his conservatism, his audio-taped anti-Semitic remarks (for which he did apologize) and his Unitarianism of the second person of the Trinity.\u00a0 A few left that vibrant growing church when we decided to support the cause.<\/p>\n

Anyway, we chose to participate.\u00a0 As a theological liberal and a Methodist, to me Graham\u2019s theology made little sense.\u00a0 But right down the street, right across from the parsonage, on a cold winter night, 80,000 people would be singing hymns, some of our favorites:\u00a0 In the Garden; Just as I am; Great is Thy Faithfulness; How Great Thou Art.\u00a0 Catholics, Orthodox, Protestant and Free Church people would work together to bring a little revival, a little salt, to the salt city of Syracuse. \u00a0There would be a call to decision to lead a Christian life.\u00a0 Some would respond visibly and some not, some invisibly and some not, and some would regret the one and some the other, and some not.\u00a0 And there would be a 500-voice choir (I comment not at all on the notes sung).\u00a0 It was right in our neighborhood.\u00a0 Walking distance.\u00a0 You know what?\u00a0 It was great and great fun.\u00a0 I would sooner work with that organization than with most of the denominational boards and agencies I have known.\u00a0 The Graham people were honest and kind.\u00a0 They said a thousand times:\u00a0 go to church on Sunday.\u00a0 Plus, as much as I love basketball, a Dome full of simple hymns sung from the heart by 80,000 (and a 500-voice choir) made me really smile.<\/p>\n

So, when the Boston Globe called last month to ask for a Billy Graham memory, I told them this: \u00a0In 1989 the Graham committee promised city pastors that the names of those people who came forward in the crusade, would be given, for follow up and follow through, to the churches in the city, neighborhood by neighborhood.\u00a0 I am not sure I fully trusted this.\u00a0 But a week later a big box of names came to the church office.\u00a0 They were not from the campus and faculty side of our neighborhood, in the main; they were not from the student and bohemian side of our neighborhood, in the main; they were not from the corporate and civic leadership side of our neighborhood, in the main.\u00a0 They were from down the hill, in the projects, the 1960\u2019s urban housing that we had tried for five years in vain to engage.\u00a0 And now we had name after name, and an expected standing invitation, and a way to visit on the sixth floor, and an entr\u00e9e for meals on wheels, and an invitation list for Vacation Bible School, and a way to set up midnight basketball, and get to know some new friends, some of whom joined in for worship, because, on that cold winter night in the full Carrier Dome, they heard the word:\u00a0 Go to church on Sunday.\u00a0 (And I couldn\u2019t help add: About his son I make no comment(:).<\/p>\n

That is.\u00a0 We listen and learn with a Roman Catholic monk named Thomas Merton, during Lent 2018.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because.\u00a0 You can learn a great deal from other traditions. Love your ecumenical neighbor as yourself. There are many ways of keeping faith.\u00a0 Love your religious neighbor as yourself.\u00a0 You may learn something in with and under the teaching of a neighboring denomination or pastor or congregation.\u00a0 In my Father\u2019s house, there are many rooms.\u00a0 If you want a friend, be one; if you want ecumenicity, live it.\u00a0 You may be ready for the soteriology next door.\u00a0 Especially students, and young adults.\u00a0 As this morning\u2019s (how is that for timing!) New York Times, in an article on a Trappist Monastery, did put it: \u00a0Young adults may be drawn to (their) culture of mindfulness, stillness, and inward experience. Here is the way, in brief, Thomas Merton spoke of vocation:<\/p>\n

Merton<\/strong><\/p>\n

Saints\u2026(are) sanctified by leading ordinary lives in a completely supernatural manner. 62<\/p>\n

Souls are like athletes that need opponents worthy of them. 92<\/p>\n

The quietness and hiddenness and placidity of the truly good people in the world all proclaim the glory of God.\u00a0 142.<\/p>\n

The only way to live was to live in a world that was charged with the presence and the reality of God. 208.<\/p>\n

That happiness which makes upper New York state seem in my memory to be so beautiful. 219<\/p>\n

Virtue\u2014without which there can be no happiness. 223.<\/p>\n

The intellect is only theoretically independent of desire and appetite in ordinary, actual practice. 225<\/p>\n

While we were sitting there on the floor playing records and eating this breakfast the idea came to me: \u2018I am going to be a priest\u2019. 277 (But: I had a kind of conviction:\u00a0 I was going to be a Trappist).\u00a0 366.<\/p>\n

What was the difference between one place and another, one habit and another, if your life belonged to God, and if you placed yourself completely in his hands? 406<\/p>\n

Thomas Merton this Lent has given us courage for the wilderness, gratitude for the Sacrament, the Spirit for contemplation, and, today, at the last, a gladness in vocation.<\/p>\n

North Country<\/strong><\/p>\n

That same courage, gratitude, spirit and gladness we knew for decades in rural, agricultural, small town, country living, the people and voices and communion of which we cherish by heart.\u00a0 Some of our graduates this May will themselves go and live for a while in the woods.\u00a0 As did Thoreau.\u00a0 Those fine seminarians with us this morning, finishing their three years of study, and about to be assigned to a pulpit on July 1, take with them our heartfelt love and encouragement, and our reminder that all vocational searching, and all astute theological reflection, is not confined to urban schools of theology.\u00a0 We left our friend, last week, remember, riding her horse away from church in August of 1982.\u00a0 She left a letter, acutely and rightly critical of the Methodism she was learning.\u00a0 She was a premier wood carver, making light beautiful wood crosses for all families who suffered a loss.\u00a0 Her spiritual, vocational, and theological reflection\u2014out in the woods\u2014compares her love of wood carving with her difficulty with religion.\u00a0 The corrects, here, a mistaken, though well-intentioned, overemphasis in Methodism.\u00a0 All the celebration in my own tradition of experience of God\u2019s presence, if not tended, drown out the genuine and regular experience of God\u2019s absence: doubt and faith are twin daughters of the divine.\u00a0 Listen to this wood carving Native American lay woman, and astute theologian in her own right, from years ago, comparing wood carving and religion:<\/p>\n

And as I was thus discovering why I liked working with wood, I thought why I do not like working with religion.\u00a0 I would gladly give it up if it were not for this bothersome and rather uncontrollable compulsion to try jus at little longer, just one more time, just one more approach.\u00a0 I have found with most things, given the proper tools, I can, with dogged patience and perseverance, attain a state near enough to perfection to be at least satisfying.<\/p>\n

But religion, worst of all, because I cannot determine where to lay the blame.\u00a0 Worst of all, because I do not know if I am striving for something that is unattainable for me, because of basic lack or insufficiency or incompleteness.\u00a0 Or is my technique wrong\u2014my approach\u2014my tools\u2014my plans\u2014my information? As I work on a piece of wood, progress is made, I can see it, I can feel it, taking shape, and if I must begin again, I do, because I know in the end that piece of would will become what I want it to become\u2014I will be satisfied, even with the nick of shame it will surely carry\u2014it will be good enough.<\/p>\n

But religion\u2014unattainable faith\u2014unfathomable understanding\u2014untouchable God.\u00a0 Even if he knocks, I feel, I have come to wonder if it is that my door has not been furnished with the normal and necessary attachment\u2014a door knob.\u00a0 For if I try\u2014really try\u2014it should get better\u2014but it doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 If I begin again, determination will see it take shape, but it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I read just last week something in the small book, \u201cUnderstanding the United Methodist Church\u201d which I found disheartening.\u00a0 But it said, in reference to \u2018The Witness of the Spirit\u2019:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt means that the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer and does give him a first-hand assurance that he is a child of God\u201d\u2026and again\u2026\u201dUnited Methodists rejoice in the knowledge that God does certify unmistakably to each believer when his salvation is sure\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

Not hope.\u00a0 Or think.\u00a0 But know. \u00a0That is the perfection.\u00a0 And I am not satisfied with less, nor am I able to make any progress toward that goal.\u00a0 Nor can I throw it all away like a chunk of wood.\u00a0 For it worries me like a dog worries a bare and useless bone, unwilling to spit it out and let it go.\u00a0 Perhaps there is yet some marrow in it worth digging out.<\/p>\n

I would, had I the choice, stick with the wood.<\/p>\n

All of our traditions, including the perfectionism of Methodism, have some things that need, as this carpenter saw, to be sanded away. Paul Tillich had her answer:\u00a0 doubt is a part of faith, and faith with no doubt is no faith at all but false faith.\u00a0 I hope I was able to preach or teach or say that, so many years ago.\u00a0\u00a0 Seminarians will take their first pulpits July 1 of this year.\u00a0 Maybe they think that real, true, hard, theological work, interpretative work, will not be needed or required in those small, rural, poor, less formally educated, agricultural, multiple appointments.\u00a0 Maybe they think for all that they will need an urban pulpit, or a college community, or a smooth suburban lawn-scape, or an advanced degree.\u00a0 Maybe they think there is no real ammunition in the verbal and spiritual rifles of first appointments or second appointments or poor churches that cannot pay their apportionments.\u00a0 Maybe they think it won\u2019t matter whether they read their Tillich or not, read their Ecclesiastes or not, read their Galatians or not, read their Merton or not.\u00a0 It will.\u00a0 Big league.\u00a0 In the rough and tumble of pastoral life, the sturdiest vocation will be tested.\u00a0 And should be.<\/p>\n

Coda<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a sermon with a question for you.\u00a0 What is the color of your parachute, the shape of your sail, the grain of your wood, the you that is not what another says of you, the self at your own most self?\u00a0 What is your vocation, your calling, your life as it most fully can become?\u00a0 A little Lenten reflection, alongside a bright young Roman Catholic fellow who had to climb up a seven storey mountain to find his answer, may be a bit of help to each and all of us.<\/p>\n

\u2018If anyone serve me, he must follow me, and where I am there my servant shall be also\u2019. (John 12: 26)<\/p>\n

–\u00a0The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to\u00a0listen to\u00a0the full service John 12:20-33 Click here to listen to the meditations\u00a0only \u2018If anyone serve me, he must follow me, and where I am there my servant shall be also\u2019. (John 12: 26) Graham One\u2019s sense of calling develops over a lifetime.\u00a0 Vocation can emerge apart from religious distinctions, often outside inherited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[43,22],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753"}],"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=1753"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1822,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753\/revisions\/1822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}