{"id":2186,"date":"2019-05-05T11:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-05-05T15:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=2186"},"modified":"2019-09-17T11:03:48","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T15:03:48","slug":"this-holy-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2019\/05\/05\/this-holy-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"This Holy Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

John 21: 1-19<\/a><\/p>\n

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

In the Morning<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/b>The sermon begins with a recitation of Psalm 110, in gender neutral language.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Habits lead us forward. \u00a0Come Easter. Death makes us mortal. \u00a0Facing death makes us human. At the tomb. \u00a0Come Resurrection. This is a Holy Mystery.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jan and I have grave plots in the local cemetery of Eaton, NY. \u00a0Where is Eaton? Exactly. It is nowhere. We bought them for $400 each, which is a real estate bargain. \u00a0Especially when you amortize the amount over eternity! All need to plan ahead, one way or another. In addition to burial or equivalent, you will want to employ the Robert Allan Hill planning for post-retirement system: \u00a0OOPS. O O P S. My mom always remembers the OOPS but then asks, what do they stand for? Order of worship. Obituary. Photo. Special papers (DNR, will).<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the Hill from the fancy Hill post-retirement real estate there is a little town, Oriskany Falls, dating, like the graves in Eaton, from just after the American Revolution. \u00a0Our friend\u2019s dad, Russell Clark, a Colgate and BU graduate, loved life as a pastor there. One winter a farmer, his lay leader died, and the widow was not in church for a long time. \u00a0The pastor tried to console and help, but she didn\u2019t want company. Grief is a slippery dragon. If I had another two lifetimes I would spend half of one really studying, trying to understand grief. \u00a0It is a dark stranger, an opaque mystery, individual to each. For Russell\u2019s Oriskany Falls widow it was too. Then one day she called to say that she would like a pastoral visit. She told him something, when he asked how she was doing. \u00a0She began: <\/span>Don\u2019t take this the wrong way, Rev. \u00a0(<\/span><\/i>You know you are already in trouble with that prelude<\/span>.) \u00a0It has been so unutterably hard for me. \u00a0There were days when I could not get out of bed. \u00a0But I did. And do know why? It wasn\u2019t the resurrection sermons I have heard. No. \u00a0What got me going, got me out of bed was\u2026the chickens. Every morning at dawn they would fuss, and rustle around and cluck, waiting to be fed. \u00a0They were hungry and they needed feeding. So I got up and put on my robe and went out and fed them. By then the sun was up, by then the mist was lifted, by then I was awake, and by then I could stand the thought of breakfast, and after that, well the day opened up. \u00a0So don\u2019t take this the wrong way, Rev. (<\/span><\/i>you know you are in trouble when\u2026),<\/span> don\u2019t take this the wrong way, but the clucking of those hens meant more to me in my grief than all the hymns of Easter. \u00a0The clucking of those chickens meant more to me than all the hymns of Easter.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

You see? \u00a0The rhythms of life, evening and morning one day, detailed disciplined attention to the routine can by grace admit illumination, the light in which we see light. \u00a0Including religious practice. Joanna, the newcomer, found it so. So can you, especially if you on Easter are a newcomer, looking for a first helping, an initial course in faith, a church family to love and church home to enjoy. \u00a0Particularly in grief. It is one thing to attend to religious practice, and another to do so, to visit the body, when you have loved the person. As some of you have done so this year. <\/span><\/p>\n

A Later Addition<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Here are some notes about the unusual chapter John 21, our Gospel today. \u00a0R Brown: *An added account of a post-resurrectional appearance of Jesus in Galilee, which is used to show how Jesus provided for the needs of the church. \u00a0*1-14; 15-23; 24-25\u2026 *\u2018The gospel never circulated without 21\u2019\u2026. *Appendix, supplement, or epilogue?… *Stylistic differences\u2026. *We shall work on the hypothesis of composition by a redactor\u2026 *Material drawn from the same \u2018general reservoir of Johannine tradition\u2019\u2026 *Completion or correction? (RAH)\u2026 \u00a0*Other miraculous catches of fish (Lk 5)… *Ecclesiastical and Eucharistic and Eschatology, symbolism of the chapter\u2026 *\u2018There are good reasons for finding Eucharistic symbolism in the meal\u2019\u2026*15-17 \u2018Peter\u2019s rehabilitation\u2019 (!)\u2026 *\u2018As shepherd, Peter\u2019s authority is not absolute\u2019. *Did the community think the BD would not die?* Dodd: \u00a0\u2018The na\u00efve conception of Christ\u2019s second advent in 21: 22 is unlike anything else in the Fourth Gospel\u2019\u2026*Thus, while the differences are not significant enough on their own to suggest that the original author did not write the 21<\/span>st<\/span> chapter, it does texture its continuity: *it is not immediately apparent why the original author, \u201cwishing to add to his own book, would add [to] it in so clumsy a manner\u201d (577)\u2026 *This chapter occurs after a strong conclusion (ch. 20:30). It is rhetorically weak to have material after a strong conclusion. *The chronological introduction of the narrative (\u201cAfter these things Jesus showed himself again\u201d) is strikingly less precise than other temporally-concerned introductions (ch. 20:1: \u201cEarly on the first day of the week;\u201d v19: \u201cWhen it was evening on that day, the first day of the week;\u201d and v26: \u201cA week later.\u201d)\u2026* From these comments, Barrett suggests that chapter 21 be read as if it were a metaphorical account of the birth of the early Christian church *for the purpose of explicating the different, yet equally important, roles of Peter and the beloved disciple, penned by a second author (577). Read this way, we are to see the disciples as \u201ccatching men\u201d (579)\u2026 *\u201cpastoral ministry and historical-theological testimony\u201d (587).<\/span><\/p>\n

Lessons For Us<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Our Gospel today offers us three lessons.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first is that change, amendment, development, becoming are not only a part of life and life in faith, but also and earlier so, found right in the heart of the Bible. \u00a0The Fourth Gospel, twenty chapters long, written in the years leading toward 90 a.d., was composed out of sermons stitched together: a wedding in Cana, Nicodemus at night, the woman at the well, healings of body, feeding 5,000, debates with opponents, sight given to the blind, the raising of Lazarus, Jesus in farewell, passion and resurrection. \u00a0But then, a decade later, another chapter was added, because another chapter was needed. And all the things left out of the Gospel\u2014so beautiful the Gospel\u2014now have their time to appear or re-appear: the importance of the church, the centrality of leadership, the holy mystery of communion, the inherited tradition of the eschaton, the rehabilitation of Peter, the importance of pastoral care, the significance of evangelism. \u00a0The Bible has a story, too, and it is a story of becoming, not of static changelessness, but of adaptation, flexibility, formation\u2014evolution. The Gospel ends in chapter 20, and is re-started in 21. If you find that you are changing, learning, growing\u2014GRADUATING, well, you have some hints about how that happens, in the Holy Scripture. <\/span>New occasions teach new duties.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The second is that institutions matter a whole lot, including the church. \u00a0If you eliminate ethics and pollute politics and contaminate culture, then you are left to go all the way upstream, from ethics and politics and culture, into the higher ground, the colder waters of religion. \u00a0The thing about institutions is that they don\u2019t go away, they just either get better or worse. Love is finding a way to use time, even to waste some time, in the advancement of institutional health, in learning virtue and piety, in knowing, doing and being. \u00a0In leadership. Leading by example.<\/span><\/p>\n

(<\/span>The Methodist church hit an iceberg in February, for instance, and we are a long way from beginning to fathom the cost, damage, impact and consequence that crash. \u00a0It was an institutional failure of colossal proportion, and a spiritual defeat of colossal dimension. There is enough blame and responsibility to go all around. The question now is how to care for him who has borne the battle and his widow and his orphan and do all we can to attain a just and lasting peace, for ourselves, and for all. \u00a0Start with ten facts:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

St Louis was decided by 27 votes.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

42 votes were neither cast nor counted.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

2\/3 of US votes were liberal.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Of $400M spent outside the US by the UMC in 2017 $398M came out of US collection plates. (Funds 1,4,7).<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In Finding Our Way 2014 the African UMC general superintendent referred to gay people as \u2018beasts of the field\u2019.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In 1972 mainline Christians were 33% of the US population; today 11%.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In 1972 \u2018nones\u2019 were 4% of the population; today 24%.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

All but 6 UMC general superintendents finally supported the One Church plan, but they did not say so clearly and early with signatures.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Baldwin Wallace University in April 26, 2019 severed its 174 year old affiliation with the UMC by unanimous vote of the University Trustees.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Marsh Chapel marries gay people and employs and deploys gay clergy on a regular basis.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The third is that personal concern, and pastoral care, <\/span>feed feed feed<\/span><\/i>, have no substitute in the peculiar holy mystery of the church. \u00a0We are present for each other come Sunday. We are present for each other in Sacrament. \u00a0We are present for each other in fellowship. We are present for each other in education. \u00a0We are present for each other in visitation. We are present for each other in spoken prayer. \u00a0We are present for each other in care. In the ministry, stay close to your people. In the church, stay close to your neighbors in town and in the pew. \u00a0Love one another, as Christ has loved you.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Friday, after senior breakfast, I met a new friend, who said, with some poise and calm, \u2018well, I guess people gathering once a week to be together and remind each other to be good people and become better people, I guess that\u2019s not such a bad thing\u2019. \u00a0I guess not.<\/span><\/p>\n

The sermon concludes with a recitation of the Canadian Creed.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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

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