{"id":2149,"date":"2019-03-03T11:00:50","date_gmt":"2019-03-03T16:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=2149"},"modified":"2019-09-17T11:19:24","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T15:19:24","slug":"2149","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2019\/03\/03\/2149\/","title":{"rendered":"Communion Meditation"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Luke 9: 28-36<\/a><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

The single striking word in our passage from the Holy Scripture, Luke 9, is \u2018departure\u2019.\u00a0 To be sure, Luke has more broadly added to what he took from Mark 9, written 25 years earlier.\u00a0\u00a0 He adds that Jesus went up to pray<\/em>, giving to the wild scene a liturgically human focus.\u00a0 He adds that Moses and Elijah spoke together of him, perhaps out of earshot, or in muffled tones, another human touch in what is otherwise a resurrection scene.\u00a0 Luke adds that Peter and others were sleepy, human beings they, for all the \u2018glory\u2019 of the Transfiguration.\u00a0 He adds a word about their human fear.\u00a0 He renames, changes, Jesus appellation from Beloved to Chosen, a slight demotion.\u00a0\u00a0 Luke particularly adds that they told no one about this, perhaps by way of late first century explanation as to why there were no memories of this.\u00a0 In all the narrative is utterly human in that we have a tendency to \u2019mark the places and preserve the moments where we has encountered God\u2019 (S Ringe, loc. cit.).<\/p>\n

But \u2018departure\u2019, Jesus\u2019 departure, is the striking gospel word in Luke today.\u00a0 Whether the reference to the coming Jerusalem event, of which his late first century readers would be well aware, was to crucifixion, in Jerusalem, or to ascenscion, in Jerusalem, or to both, or less probably to something other, we are not told.\u00a0 Luke\u2019s story comes down the mountain faster than Mark\u2019s or for that matter Matthew\u2019s.\u00a0 The cross is upheld in the chill of glory.\u00a0\u00a0 The Gospel of Jesus Christ, and him crucified, announces freedom right in the teeth of disappointment, love right in the pain of dislocation, and, today, grace in the hour of departure.\u00a0 Grace meets us in departure.\u00a0 Whether personal or communal, departure opens the way to grace.<\/p>\n

First: Personal Departure<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

You know this from experience when your loved ones die.\u00a0 Today at 2pm we face the departure of a loved one, at 2pm, Dr. Horace Allen.\u00a0 We gathered two weeks ago to celebrate the life and faith of my father in law, Jan\u2019s dad, Robert E. Pennock, age 92, whose mind, heart, and soul we honored that day in love.\u00a0\u00a0 In light of the painful outcome of the Methodist conference in St. Louis this week, it may be particularly important to recall the best of Methodism by remembering him today.\u00a0 As the Romans, and my Latin teacher mother would say, exemplum docet<\/em>, the example teaches.<\/p>\n

Bob carried many titles over the years, including Mr., Rev., Dr., Professor, Dean and others, but cherished most closely the titles of Father, Grandfather, Great Grandfather, Husband, and Friend.\u00a0 We who had known him so, with anguish and hope, gave him over to God.<\/p>\n

Bob loved the Lord with his mind.\u00a0\u00a0 What an acute, imaginative mind he did possess.\u00a0 Raised in Syracuse, a graduate of Nottingham High School where he was captain and quarterback of the football team, a further graduate\u2014following service to his country in the navy, 1944\u2014of Syracuse University with a master\u2019s degree in electrical engineering, he then went to Iliff School of Theology and over time earned the equivalent of today\u2019s Master of Divinity, and a PhD focused on the theology, actually the ontology, of Paul Tillich.\u00a0 He said he saw an article in Life Magazine, \u2018They are educating a new kind of preacher at Iliff\u2019, and promptly chose to go off to Denver. He was a natural teacher and a life-long learner, curious, honest, and sharp.<\/p>\n

One summer night, years ago, we were hiking back over the sand hill from lake Ontario to the cottage which he so loved, under a bejeweled canopy of stars in the clear night sky.\u00a0 He stopped and looked long heavenward, saying, \u2018So many questions, so many unanswered questions.\u2019\u00a0 His study of Tillich was thus no accident, for Tillich always began with the questions, bringing the tradition of faith to bear in faithful answers to existential questions.\u00a0 Into his nineties, Bob was able to preach with head as well as heart.\u00a0 His ministry, which included pastorates in Onega, Kansas, in Denver, Colorado, in Mexico NY, and in Oswego NY (there also the leadership of the Wesley Foundation He was the best NNY preacher of his generation.\u00a0 His preaching combined intellectual height with emotional depth, and met the moment, Sunday by Sunday, including November 25, 1963, following JFK\u2019s assassination, with a necessarily re-written sermon that began, \u2018We are a nation drenched in sorrow\u2019.\u00a0 Earl Ledden, who was later Bob\u2019s Bishop in Syracuse, would play the piano for singing when the ministers came together for conference, a humble, gracious man.\u00a0 \u2018That is ministry, to play the accompaniment to people\u2019s lives\u2019, Ledden would say.\u00a0 You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind.<\/p>\n

Bob also loved the Lord with his heart.\u00a0 He was a positive, optimistic person, most naturally himself when setting sail, running with the wind.\u00a0 During an earlier illness, this some many years ago but still a perilous malady, it was striking to hear him say, \u2018I will be all right.\u00a0 I will pray.\u00a0 I believe in the power of prayer.\u00a0 I believe in the power of prayer\u2019. \u00a0At the heart of his heart were his children, and their children, and their children, too.\u00a0 He could easily give way to tears when the moment arose and allowed, and was unafraid of emotion, public or otherwise.\u00a0 Anger did not worry him, neither his own nor that of others, as those of us who occasionally disagreed with him can attest.\u00a0 He would have agreed with my own dad, who, when such emotion overtook another would say, \u2018That\u2019s fine.\u00a0 It\u2019s worth the price of admission to see him (or her) so worked up.\u2019\u00a0 It was in his preaching that his heart, too, came through.\u00a0 In 1980 he preached in the little Forest Home Chapel in Ithaca, and told a story about a boy who wanted his dad to play in the annual father and son baseball game.\u00a0 But Dad was a terrible ball player, with coke bottle glasses, a big paunch, and couldn\u2019t hit the broad side of a barn.\u00a0 Still, Son persisted and so, in terror, Dad stood at the plate and easily made two quick strikes.\u00a0 Then he heard a voice from right field calling out, \u2018Come on Dad, you can hit it, I just know you can\u2019.\u00a0 And wouldn\u2019t you know, by some miraculous somehow, Dad swung and hit a little Texas leaguer, a short single into center field. Standing proudly at first base, he heard that same voice from right field, \u2018I knew it Dad.\u00a0 I just knew you could\u2019.\u00a0 I can hear him telling that as if it were yesterday, rather than forty years ago.\u00a0 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.<\/p>\n

Bob loved the Lord with his soul.\u00a0 He was a Methodist of the veteran liberal variety, who combined, in John Wesley\u2019s way, a deep personal faith with an active social involvement, a weekly Sunday worship hour with a weekday engagement of faith in culture, in society, and in politics.\u00a0 The full humanity of gay people was affirmed.\u00a0 The dangers of authoritarian, mendacious Presidential leadership was a given.\u00a0 The care of the migrant, the poor, those in bitter need, was the first order of business on the Christian agenda, the lifted lamp beside the golden door.\u00a0 \u201cThese are things we have to keep before us, always before us\u201d, he would say, and did preach.\u00a0\u00a0 He lived the freedom of the Christian, and could, and did, acknowledge failure, defeat, and mistake, and pray, not with the Pharisee, but with the publican, \u2018God be merciful to me, a sinner\u2019.\u00a0 On his last day he could mouth a greeting by name and whisper \u2018I love you too\u2019.\u00a0 Would that we all could be so alive when we die.\u00a0 About eight years ago, on a Boston visit, we talked about death and burial.\u00a0 He said he would be buried in Richland, far up in the Tug Hill plateau of Northern New York State, and then added, \u2018That is so comforting to me, to think of being buried there, under those deep winter snows, lying at peace and quiet under those North Country drifts, under that bright white blanket.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In that Methodist faith Bob was born and baptized, and in that Methodist faith he is now dead and soon buried.\u00a0 You shall love the Lord your God with all your soul.<\/p>\n

With mind, and with heart, and with soul, we shall love the Lord our God.<\/p>\n

One perceives grace in the hour of personal departure.<\/p>\n

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

Second: Communal Departure<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Bob\u2019s church, and mine, this last week endured a communal departure, a parting of ways.\u00a0 In light of his life and minisltry, it may be particularly important today to face directly the collapse this week. Methodists of mind, heart and soulf today face fully the defeat of St. Louis and what Methodism has become.<\/p>\n

The death of my father in law preceded by a fortnight the death of his and my church.\u00a0 The Rev. Mr. Mark Feldmier of Highlands Ranch, Colorado, put it this way:<\/p>\n

Late Tuesday afternoon in St. Louis, the United Methodist Church betrayed its most essential and enduring standard for Christian faith and practice: \u201cdo no harm.\u201d\u00a0The events and outcomes of the Special Session of the General Conference have done irreparable harm to the LGBTQ family, as well as to the majority of United Methodists who live in the US and represent a more centrist and generous orthodoxy.\u00a0It is a sad day as we confront the dark reality of what has taken place. <\/em><\/p>\n

As I am sure you know, delegates to General Conference voted to retain and reinforce policies prohibiting LGBTQ clergy and same-gender weddings.\u00a0These policies, and the new consequences for violating them, are barbaric, shameful, and intolerable\u2026The United Methodist Church, as we have known it, died on Tuesday,<\/em> he concluded.<\/p>\n

We gather, come Sunday, with regularity to receive the Lord in bread and cup, and to listen for His Word, a word of faith, in a pastoral voice, toward a common hope.<\/p>\n

In that spirit, here are some few, specific, pastoral comments about the conference, offered to the Marsh Chapel community present this morning, and to our global listenership around the world:<\/p>\n

With many others, I supported the defeated One Church plan, which would have allowed freedom for local churches with regard to marriage, and for annual conferences with regard to ordination.<\/p>\n

Marsh Chapel, with historical ties to Methodism but now an ecumenical University chapel, has and will continue to solemnize marriages for gay people, and has and will continue to employ and deploy gay clergy.\u00a0 We had another such wedding submission for next year, which we will happily honor, on the day \u00a0conference ended. Our full embrace and affirmation of the LGBTQIA community will not change at all, except\u00a0 that we will strive even further to energize our inclusive ministry here.\u00a0\u00a0 Marsh Chapel, as you are doing, do so more and more!<\/p>\n

Today, the United Methodist Church is split.\u00a0 About two thirds of the delegates from the United States supported the One Church plan, and thus supported openness to gay people in marriage and ordination, as determined in churches and conferences.\u00a0 Opposition came heavily from abroad, especially Africa and the Philippines (NYTimes, 2\/25\/19) and also significantly from a fundamentalist minority in the USA.\u00a0 As Dr. Stephen Cady, one of the leading young liberal voices in Methodism today, the senior minister of the largest UMC in the Northeast Jurisdiction, Asbury First UMC, Rochester NY put it: \u2018Some in our denomination wish to maintain our current stance but others, like me, desperately wish to change it\u2026Unfortunately our global nature, with roughly half of our denomination residing outside of the US, also means that it takes us longer to progress on social issues like these\u2019.<\/p>\n

Whether there will be an actual institutional split, and if so how so, I cannot yet say, but I would not fear it.<\/p>\n

As to the fuller significance and effects of this I refer you to the Marsh Chapel sermon, 2\/17, (http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chapel\/worship\/sunday\/sermons\/<\/a><\/span>).\u00a0 It may be that local churches will begin to look more carefully at what they support in global giving, especially general apportionment funds 1,4,and 7 (world service fund, episcopal fund, Africa University fund).<\/p>\n

For those concerned and curious about the process of the conference, here are a few concluding unscientific postscripts:<\/p>\n

*43% of votes were from overseas, 30% from Africa alone.<\/p>\n

*a 25 vote shift would have changed the outcome; forty potential votes were not even cast (the total vote was 824 out of 864 delegates);<\/p>\n

*the 2019 delegates were elected in 2015, but over time\u00a0 another younger group is coming;<\/p>\n

*some progressives may not have supported the One Church plan, preferring to hold out for the perfect rather than supporting an imperfect improvement\u2014you might want to think about that another time;<\/p>\n

*bluntly, this is painful, disappointing and disheartening, for all, but especially for those just emerging in life and leadership.\u00a0 Several students from Marsh Chapel attended the conference in St. Louis, and I am proud of their vocal leadership and faithful embrace of the LGBTQIA community issues.<\/p>\n

*United Methodist lay and clergy conference members will want to make a point of attending annual conference this year.\u00a0 The annual conference, remember, is the basic body of our church. United Methodist elections of delegates to the April 2020 General Conference (only 14 months away) will be held this spring 2019, and it will be crucial, for instance, that some retired clergy who do not always attend conference (but have a vote) do choose to attend, and so hopefully help to move the balance of US votes closer to 100% for acceptance, affirmation, and inclusion.\u00a0 We can expect no help, support or mercy neither from overseas nor from the fundamentalists.<\/p>\n

50 years ago, Methodism was actively engaged in merger discussions with the Episcopal Church: it may be time for moderate Methodism to start there again.<\/p>\n

*Last month we visited our oldest parishioner, C. Faith Richardson.\u00a0 Faith, like Marsh Chapel is rooted in Methodist history, but her branches are the whole oikumene,<\/em> historically Methodist, functionally ecumenical.\u00a0 How does it feel to be 103?, <\/em>I asked. About the same as it feels to be 101<\/em>, she answered.\u00a0 Then we discussed the conference in St. Louis.\u00a0 Faith was the secretary of the 1984 conference, and retyped the Book of Discipline repeatedly on Smith Corona typewriter.\u00a0 Haven\u2019t they finished opening up the church to gay people yet?<\/em>, she said.<\/p>\n

Hear the broken Gospel: The leaven of grace is obscurely present, in departure, affirms St. Luke.\u00a0 The leaven of grace is obscurely present, in communal departure, acclaims our St. Luke today.<\/p>\n

As in humility we approach the Lord\u2019s table, perhaps the voice of Dietrich Bonhoeffer may guide us: \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u201cThe question is how the reality in Christ\u2014which has long embraced us and our world within itself\u2014works here and now or, in other words, how life is to be lived in it. What matters is participating in the reality of God and the world in Jesus Christ today, and doing so in such a way that I never experience the reality of God without the reality of the world, nor the reality of the world without the reality of God. As we travel further along this road, a large part of traditional Christian ethical thought stands like a Colossus obstructing our way.\u201d (Ethics)<\/em><\/p>\n

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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