{"id":2116,"date":"2018-12-30T11:00:45","date_gmt":"2018-12-30T16:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=2116"},"modified":"2019-09-17T11:43:47","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T15:43:47","slug":"a-call-to-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2018\/12\/30\/a-call-to-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"A Call to Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26<\/a><\/p>\n

Romans 12:9-13<\/a><\/p>\n

Luke 2:41-52<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

The only Scriptural account we have of Jesus\u2019 growth and boyhood is located in today\u2019s reading.\u00a0 Only here does the Gospel allow us a glimpse of Jesus growing up.\u00a0 In this one picture of our Lord\u2019s maturation, we find him engaging the great teachers of his time.\u00a0 After three days they found him the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Later ages, and later writings, did not resist the urge to imagine Jesus in his boyhood, clever, magical, boy deity, able to make birds from stones and animals from the very dirt at his feet.\u00a0 But the Holy Gospel of St. Luke, for which and in which we stand, refrains from wilder speculation.\u00a0 Only here, just for a moment, does the writer relent and, in the reading meant for the Sunday after Christmas, show us the young Jesus, the young man Jesus, Jesus as a young man, which in some measure he would be for the whole of his earthly life.\u00a0 He who was to call disciples, now himself, just this once, is a disciple too.\u00a0 He whose life is the heart of faith, the call to faith, a daily call to faith, for this Christmas moment, is himself so called.<\/p>\n

What good news this is for educators near and far, and for grandparents and parents and teachers and all who labor and are heavy laden in the educational projects of our time!\u00a0 As he blessed weddings in Cana and healers in Bethany, so now Jesus, by his presence and practice, blesses those who teach, who prepare the ground for a lifetime, a lifesaving call to faith.<\/p>\n

Jesus is our Lord and Savior, born in a manger.\u00a0\u00a0 Come Christmas, He is our transforming friend.\u00a0 We have gathered, after already much church this week, to pray and listen for grace, because of Jesus, our transforming friend.\u00a0 We bear witness, today, that Jesus has transformed our life, made us happier and better people than otherwise we would have been without him.\u00a0 How we hope that people, others, especially young people will experience his power and love, in their own way and time!<\/p>\n

E.J. Dionne<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A friend down south sent me a copy of an article by E.J Dionne (WAPO, 12\/23\/18), from a week ago.\u00a0\u00a0 It rightly celebrates those who come to church come Christmas, perhaps only then, or only then and at Easter.\u00a0 Perhaps you have come on Christmas, hoping for\u2014what?, waiting for\u2014what?, ready, it may be to hear a call to faith.\u00a0 Dionne wrote about the difficulties in organized religion, particularly Christianity, today:\u00a0 a decline in religious observance, the rise of the \u2018nones\u2019 (now a quarter of the population in the US, and 40% of those under 30), about unwelcoming attitudes and practices regarding the LGBTQIA portion of the population, about clergy sexual abuse, about the \u2018complicated and compromised structures of churches and denominations\u2019, but went further:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Christmas remains wondrous, but it arrives at a difficult moment for Christianity in the United States\u2026Regular worshipers can be disdainful of the Chreasters. But these twice-a-year visitors deserve our attention and, I would argue, our respect. Their semiannual presence is also testimony to the enduring hunger for the experience of the sacred\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Dionne then went on to name and cite three people whose work and teaching I have personally known, with whom I have taught and studied, and who have meant a great deal to me and others.\u00a0 Theology matters.\u00a0 Dionne\u2019s capacity to call up these three wise persons, for our inspiration, also matters.<\/p>\n

One is Gabriel Vahanian:\u00a0 (Dionne) What the theologian Gabriel Vahanian observed decades ago in his influential book\u00a0<\/em>\u201cThe Death of God\u201d<\/a><\/em>\u00a0explains the larger context: \u201cChristianity has long since ceased to be coextensive with our culture,\u201d he wrote, and \u201cour age is post-Christian both theologically and culturally.\u201d <\/em>I remember Vahanian granting me an interview in his SU Hall of Languages third floor office, one winter day, and his comment, in a beautiful French accent, Ze will of man, it is more inscrutable zan ze vill of God!<\/em><\/p>\n

One is Peter Berger, whom some of you knew here at BU:\u00a0 (Dionne)The great sociologist of religion Peter Berger offers a clue in \u201cA Rumor of Angels,\u201d his 1969 book about the persistence of faith in the face of rapid secularization\u2026the stubborn refusal of human beings to give up on the transcendent. <\/em>I picture Berger at lunch here on Commonwealth Avenue, chastising the Lutheran church he very much loved, and warming to tell a truly funny joke.<\/p>\n

One is N.T. Wright, for whom I was a teaching assistant at McGill over three years: (Dionne)The biblical scholar and former Anglican bishop\u00a0<\/em>N.T. Wright sees<\/a><\/em>\u00a0\u201cthe longing for justice, the quest for spirituality, the hunger for relationships and the delight in beauty\u201d as human aspirations beyond the material that can be heard as \u201cechoes of a voice\u201d pointing toward God (<\/em>from Wright\u2019s book, Simply Christian).<\/em>\u00a0 I picture Wright both curious and frowning as I guest lectured on the Gnostics, and inviting me to dinner in his Montreal home, with four beautiful growing children, and his desk stuffed in tiny closet under the hallway stairs.\u00a0 A few summers ago we lunched across the river, and he thanked me for a sermon title from decades ago, What a Friend We Have in Paul. (<\/em>J<\/em>)<\/em><\/p>\n

Jesus had his teachers, and we our own. Vahanian, Berger and Wright, in very different theological voices, would approve Dionne\u2019s reliance on them.\u00a0 Seeing their books cited was a joyous Christmas gift.\u00a0 You might like to read them!\u00a0 My friend (Mr. Art Jester), in sending the article, brought these teachers back to me, and so gave me back a part of myself.\u00a0 And that is what friends do, they give us back ourselves.<\/em> \u00a0And finally, then, Dionne himself, who preceded us in our room the week before we were at Chautauqua Institution, a summer ago:<\/p>\n

(People) show up twice a year because some part of them is in rebellion against a society defined solely by self-interest and calculation, by the visible, the measurable and the tangible. They have an intimation that the world is made up, in the words of the Nicene Creed, of both the \u201cseen and unseen.\u201d\u2026Christmas sketches \u201c<\/em>a picture of a cosmos capable of love<\/a><\/em>.\u201d (Joseph Bottom). <\/em><\/p>\n

Are we lovers anymore? Christmas comes along with a question:\u00a0 Are we lovers anymore, or are we resigned to a post-agapic, post-agape, \u2018post-love\u2019 world and life? \u00a0(From my point of view the Christmas longing is not only for transcendence, but also and more so for love.) And in the question there is a call.<\/p>\n

Romans 12: 9<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Might we hear in this a call to faith this morning?\u00a0 Following the candles lit and lifted, following the sense of the numinous, the moments, fleeting moments of transcendence at Nativity, might there follow, for one or another, a straightforward call to faith, spoken and heard and heeded?<\/p>\n

Here we may rely on our Epistle, speaking of teaching moments.\u00a0 St. Paul leaves speculative, less practical theology and jarringly tells us how to live, in Romans 12.\u00a0 He outlines a call to faith.\u00a0 He describes what a life of faith might look like, for you, and for me.<\/p>\n

You might not expect such from the author of the rest of the Epistle to the Romans, the one who traced our condition (our sin) from creation through conscience in Romans 1 and 2. Impractical theology there, though most treasured and precious.\u00a0 You would not expect such from the Apostle who poured out the great watershed (our salvation) from Christ to Cross in Romans 3-5.\u00a0 Impractical theology there, though pearls great in price, field hidden.\u00a0 Nor would you expect the 13 lightning bolts of 12: 9 and following from the elliptical, emotional, tent-making, bachelor, spit-fire\u2014what a friend we have in Paul!\u2014who unveiled Spirit, Holy Spirit, in the freedom and grace, in Romans 6-8, \u00a0who wept and conjured and pleaded about his own extended religious family in Romans 9-11.\u00a0 Impractical theology, there and there, though the high water mark of all his writing, a Spirit interceding for weakness, speaking of love and need.\u00a0 Imagine your shock.\u00a0 Not sin, not salvation, not Spirit, not synagogue, come Romans 12: 9.\u00a0 Rather, some utterly practical, applicable theology.\u00a0 Say, a Christmastide call to faith, especially for those who may have come by only at Christmas, just this Christmas.<\/p>\n

Romans 12: 9ff, \u00a0the \u2018Pauline 13\u2019 may be your best threshold, liminal line, front door response to the question, \u2018Can you help me get going on this?\u00a0 What does it mean to hear a call to faith?\u2019<\/p>\n

What does it mean to hear a call to faith? It means to LET LOVE BE GENUINE.\u00a0 All these, note well, are plural imperatives, communal commands.\u00a0\u00a0 The command in Genesis \u2018be fruitful, multiply, fill the whole earth\u2019 is not an individual demand.\u00a0 Your family doesn\u2019t need to do so alone, though Samuel and Susanna Wesley certainly did their best.\u00a0 It is communal.\u00a0 You all.\u00a0 All you all.\u00a0 In fact, given our \u2018limitations\u2019 (being kind here), there is no way for us individually to accomplish such commands.\u00a0 Not all love is genuine.\u00a0 Not all is from the heart, nor true, nor durable, nor real.\u00a0 But it is our call, to be lovers in a post-agape world.<\/p>\n

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?\u00a0 It means to hate what is evil.\u00a0 Notice the firmness in Paul\u2019s flexibility, the vagueness in his certainty.\u00a0 In sin, salvation, Spirit, and synagogue he has now confidence that\u2014for our own time, we shall know the place of hatred and the outline of evil.\u00a0 Implied here:\u00a0 new occasions teach new duties.\u00a0 Not all of life is good and clean.\u00a0 Some is, some is not.\u00a0 We are free, nay called, to hate evil.\u00a0 You overhear Amos:\u00a0 \u2018I hate I despise your feasts\u2019 (5:23).<\/p>\n

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?\u00a0 It means to hold fast to what is good.\u00a0 Hold fast to what is good! Notice again the firmness in Paul\u2019s flexibility, the vagueness in his certainty.\u00a0\u00a0 Of one odd Scriptural admonition, Krister Stendahl said, \u2018I believe it is the Word of God, but not the Word of God\u2026for me.\u2019\u00a0 Time makes ancient good uncouth.<\/p>\n

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?\u00a0 It means to love one another with mutual affection, brotherly affection, a bond that is fraternal, sororial, militant if not military, visceral and reciprocal.\u00a0 Real affection is mutual.\u00a0 Affection wherein one party has all the say and the other does all the work is not affectionate.\u00a0 It is affectionless, affected, not effective.<\/p>\n

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?\u00a0 It means to outdo one another in showing honor.\u00a0 Creative generosity, happy hospitality, courage in counting others better, here is our way.\u00a0 Forebear one another in love.\u00a0 Light, salt, sheep:\u00a0 people need to see you giving honor, taste the spice of your commendation and expect willingness to honor to be shorn, clean cut, readily recognizable.<\/p>\n

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?\u00a0 It means not to lag in zeal, to be ardent in spirit, and to serve the Lord.\u00a0 These three dicta largely place before you the directive to get yourself out of bed, into some clean clothes, over to Marsh Chapel, and be seated in a pew, come Sunday.\u00a0 A walk in the country or on the beach is good. Turning on the radio is good. \u00a0People have so many reasons not to go to church.\u00a0 Some of them are quite good.\u00a0 Others range from the pitiful to the hilarious.\u00a0 Hear a call to faith, and come to worship!\u00a0 Your sister, here, needs the encouraging support of your zealous presence.\u00a0 Your brother, here, needs the example of your ardent spirit.\u00a0 His service is perfect freedom, and this service is one hour.\u00a0 People become so lackadaisical about worship:\u00a0 and I am not only speaking of us academics (J).\u00a0 In a lifetime, you have 4,000 Sundays, 1,000 haircuts, 60 income tax returns. \u00a0And 525,600 minutes ayear.\u00a0 Zeal, spirit, service, Sunday:\u00a0 prize your time now you have it!<\/p>\n

To hear a call to faith, and to heed, is to ride the waves, in community, of shared hope and pain and prayer.\u00a0 Hope carries us beyond pain through prayer.\u00a0 Pain drives us hard back onto hope in prayer.\u00a0 Prayer brings us up, out, forward, and through whether in hope or in pain.\u00a0 When we have hope, we celebrate, as a community.\u00a0 When we have pain, we endure, as a community.\u00a0 Be constant, steady, regular, punctual, reliable, disciplined, in prayer.\u00a0 This is an old saw, but a true one.\u00a0 A man on Fifth Avenue asked, \u00a0How do you get to Carnegie Hall?\u00a0<\/em> The right response: \u00a0Practice, practice, practice.<\/em><\/p>\n

A real call to faith? The Apostle reserves the two toughest communal challenges for last, one about money and one about time.\u00a0 Time and money, money and time.\u00a0 On money: You will take one tithing Christian for every 10 of the born again variety.\u00a0 You will take one tithing Christian who remembers the ministry of the church in her will for every stadium full of political praying Christians.\u00a0 You want to see less hat and more cattle.\u00a0 A Christian vision along our southern border, say, will include a recollection of the Monroe Doctrine teaching us to care especially for our hemispheric neighbors, a recollection of the Marshall Plan, and what can be done to the benefit of all to reconstitute fragmented nations and communities, a recollection of the love poem of Emma Lazarus at our front door. Contribute to the needs, not the irresponsibility but the needs, of the holy community, near and far.\u00a0 Our BU Business School and our BU School of Hospitality serve the same ends:\u00a0 the nature of community.\u00a0 Recent deans of both, we are proud to say, have been active here at Marsh Chapel, with exemplary faithfulness.\u00a0 On time:\u00a0 Hospitality is to time what generosity is to money.\u00a0 Hospitality is how you\u00a0spend your time<\/em>\u00a0(such an odd but choice phrase in American English).\u00a0 Hospitality:\u00a0 the making of the bed of friendship, the cooking of the meal of companionship, the pouring of the bath of empathy, the cleaning of the linens of suffering, the embrace of the journey through life:\u00a0\u00a0welcome home, how was the trip?, let\u2019s see your photographs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Hospitality is to time what generosity is to money.\u00a0 Practice.\u00a0 Practice!<\/em>\u00a0 You will get better at both with time.<\/p>\n

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

Here is your Christmas call to faith.\u00a0 If this were a Methodist revival, we would line this out<\/em> like a hymn for us to sing.\u00a0 If this were a black church we would call you to response in call and response.\u00a0 If this were Fenway Park we would start the wave or sing Sweet Caroline.\u00a0 But this is Marsh Chapel, so we will just ask you, encouraging your memory, to remember together, entering 2019:\u00a0\u00a0Romans 12: 9-13.<\/em><\/p>\n

Let love be genuine<\/em><\/p>\n

Hate what is evil<\/em><\/p>\n

Hold fast to what is good<\/em><\/p>\n

Love one another with mutual affection<\/em><\/p>\n

Outdo one another in showing honor<\/em><\/p>\n

Never lag in zeal<\/em><\/p>\n

Be ardent in spirit<\/em><\/p>\n

Serve the Lord<\/em><\/p>\n

Rejoice in your hope <\/em><\/p>\n

Be patient in tribulation<\/em><\/p>\n

Be constant in prayer<\/em><\/p>\n

Contribute to the needs of the saints<\/em><\/p>\n

Practice hospitality<\/em><\/p>\n

– The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the entire service 1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26 Romans 12:9-13 Luke 2:41-52 Click here to listen to the sermon\u00a0only Frontispiece The only Scriptural account we have of Jesus\u2019 growth and boyhood is located in today\u2019s reading.\u00a0 Only here does the Gospel allow us a glimpse of Jesus growing up.\u00a0 In this […]<\/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\/2116"}],"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=2116"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2215,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116\/revisions\/2215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}