{"id":2261,"date":"2019-08-11T11:00:36","date_gmt":"2019-08-11T15:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=2261"},"modified":"2019-09-08T13:10:03","modified_gmt":"2019-09-08T17:10:03","slug":"alive-to-possibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2019\/08\/11\/alive-to-possibility\/","title":{"rendered":"Alive To Possibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Luke 12:32-40<\/a><\/p>\n

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

A Word of Faith<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In faith, you are alive to possibility.<\/p>\n

The haunting portrait of Hebrews 11, as much as any other passage of Scripture, calls out and calls up to us, to you:\u00a0 in faith, you are alive to possibility.\u00a0\u00a0 In the imagination of the Biblical Writer of Hebrews, unknown to us, himself anonymous, there is the pantheon of those who came before us, alive to possibility.\u00a0 They waited, and did not see.\u00a0 They expected, and did not receive.\u00a0 They looked forward, but were not satisfied.\u00a0 But.\u00a0 They were alive to possibility, which is faith, being alive to possibility, and which is daunting, haunting, searing and wearing.\u00a0 Faith closed the door to apathy and ignorance as choices for living.\u00a0\u00a0 Faith commands the road forward, a road of heavy heart, and daily dismay, and earthly ennui\u2014awaiting like those figures of old, a better world, a better day, a better life.\u00a0 They died without seeing it, in full.\u00a0 But from a distance, waiting, they saw and greeted.\u00a0 On those days when you are tempted to throw in the towel, to retreat, to shuffle off the mantel of possibility, look back for a moment, and remember all those who lived in faith, alive to possibility, even and especially when that love was at least temporarily unrequited.\u00a0\u00a0 The promise and the task of our life in community, of your life at its best is just this:\u00a0 in faith, you are alive to possibility.<\/p>\n

My father, dead now 9 years, had a salty way of speaking truth.\u00a0 One year he graciously came to play in a golf tournament our church had set up as a fund raiser for mission and children\u2019s work.\u00a0 About 50 men spent the day riding around plunking balls into the woods, or beyond, hoping against hope that our proven ineptitude for the game would somehow be momentarily overcome by unearned prowess.\u00a0 This did not happen, not any year.\u00a0 Late in the day, with a 25 foot put looming, I said, \u2018Dad I could sink this.\u2019\u00a0 He answered, \u2018Yes, son, you could.\u00a0 But you won\u2019t.\u00a0 He was right in the second phrase, and also right in the first.\u00a0 You could.\u00a0 In faith, we are alive to possibility, even when we cannot see it, and do not calculate its immediate arrival.\u00a0 Perhaps especially then.\u00a0 Faith is painful, for it includes living with endless contention, intractable difference, and seemingly incurable illness, all under the lasting horizon of the possibility of something different, better, good and right.\u00a0 Yet, as yet, unseen.\u00a0 Today, across this great country, one might say, we feel this keenly.\u00a0 Faith\u2014things hoped for, not seen.<\/p>\n

The strange world of the Bible, in the large much stranger than we usually account it, come Sunday, opens us again to this same ringing affirmation in Luke 12.\u00a0 Be alert.\u00a0 Be prepared. Live on the Qui Vive.\u00a0 For you never know.\u00a0 The earliest rendering of this may have been in the apocalyptic teaching of Jesus, awaiting the coming of the Son of Man himself.\u00a0 But the clearest rendering comes from decades later, as the church prepares itself in the face of, shall we say simply, difficulty.\u00a0 The waning but not yet absent expectation of the Messiah\u2019s return, and soon and very soon, prompts commands about discipleship, about heavenly hope, about impending judgment, about the middle of the night.\u00a0 And the later still and abiding rendering, ours too today, on top of what Jesus may have said, and on top of what Luke clearly wrote, say 85ad, is just this.\u00a0 To live as a community in faith, to live in faith is to bear the cross of possibility:\u00a0 in faith\u2014and you have no choice having been captured by the confession of the church, and the gift of faith, for faith is always and ever and only a gift\u2014in faith you are alive, painfully, to possibility.\u00a0 It is true.\u00a0 Things could be a whole lot better.\u00a0\u00a0 Isaiah once foretold it.\u00a0 Wash yourselves.\u00a0 Make yourselves clean.\u00a0 Remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes.\u00a0 Cease to do evil.\u00a0 Learn to do good.\u00a0 Seek justice.\u00a0 Rescue the oppressed.\u00a0 Defend the orphan.\u00a0 Plead for the widow.\u00a0 The Biblical command to do justice is as plain as the nose on my face.\u00a0 And underneath it is the abiding great deep roiling sea of possibility.\u00a0 Yes, you could.\u00a0 You may not.\u00a0 But you could.\u00a0 Are you sure you want to live with the daunting, haunting reality, in faith, of possibility?\u00a0 Much easier to live without it, Ecclesiastes not Isaiah, Calvin not Wesley, depravity not possibility.\u00a0 Yet here you are, alive in the pew, listening on the radio, wondering again about faith.<\/p>\n

In faith, you are alive to possibility.\u00a0 A word of faith.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A Pastoral Voice<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For those here or listening, for those in the orbit of ministry of Marsh Chapel, these things are even a little bit harder.\u00a0 For we are not, from this pulpit and in this faith community, interested in rigid orthodoxy on the one hand, even newer forms of righteously indignant and progressive orthodoxies, nor in secular humanism, or post religious humanism alone, on the other.\u00a0 We baptize.\u00a0 But here we hope that the baptized in holy<\/em> water will one day be swimming in a cultural sea of clean <\/em>water.\u00a0 Why the cleansing of baptism, only to throw the faithful out into a sewer?\u00a0 No, we are of the liberal perspective here, the now largely attenuated desire to place tradition and experience in dialectic, in dialogue, to affirm a faith amenable to culture and a culture amenable to faith.\u00a0 Or at least the possibility thereof.\u00a0\u00a0 Faith sets you free, but not loose, here.\u00a0 Here faith sets you free, but not loose.<\/p>\n

As so many other Sundays over the last many years, we gather today in the shadow of violence, unnecessary and curbable violence, violence abetted by violent speech, cascading from national leadership for sure, but tragically finding a home and hearing, or least a guest room, in the heart of the heartland.\u00a0\u00a0 In the liberal tradition, it is not enough to announce faith, pray and move on.\u00a0 Nor in the liberal tradition, is it enough to pronounce judgment, curse, and move on.\u00a0 Though both are more than tempting.\u00a0 No, our work, here, affirms a word of faith, yes, in pastoral voice, too, toward a common hope, afar.\u00a0 A word of faith in a pastoral voice toward a common hope.\u00a0 Those who hope for no pastoral application of the Biblical perspective to our shared dilemmas will find little warmth here.\u00a0 Those who hope for no religious reflection on the depths of our secular wanderings will find little warmth here.\u00a0 There are other pulpits.<\/p>\n

Ours is, then, by necessity a pastoral voice.\u00a0 We are thinking of parents in Dayton Ohio trying to explain to their elementary age children why neighboring children and others are maimed, when assault weaponry or at least its ammunition could be outlawed.\u00a0 Some pastor is this week visiting there, you could imagine, about this, with a mom and dad raising kids.\u00a0 We are thinking of grandparents in El Paso, a city that is 84% Hispanic, worried sick about what may await their grandkids, given the deadly combinations of rhetorical hatreds and endlessly available weaponry.\u00a0 Some pastor is this week out making one of the two dozen weekly visits necessary for competent pastoral ministry, and praying with grandads and moms, in El Paso.\u00a0 Will it always be this way, it may be, that the parents in Dayton and grandparents in El Paso ask?\u00a0 Easier to shake your head, pray and move on, with shrug, saying, \u2018I guess so\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 Truer to tell the gospel.\u00a0 No, these things need not be, and one day there may be a better day, but many in faith have grown old and died awaiting that horizon. Tragically, these tragic horrors are not inevitable, they are communal choices with horrific consequences.\u00a0 We have chosen across the land to prefer it this way.\u00a0 But faith, hear the harsh gospel, at least faith preached in a pastoral voice, does not allow for this.\u00a0 In faith, you are, tragically, alive to possibility, including the possibility of something far better and far different.<\/p>\n

Having enjoyed a pastoral conversation this week with her, I bring you greetings from El Paso, from Elizabeth Fomby Hall and her fine family, she who did so much a few years ago, to grow this Marsh community of faith as our director of hospitality.\u00a0 She and three boys are safe.\u00a0 The community there, as you did here in Boston, April 2013, is pulling together, giving blood, weeping with those who weep.\u00a0 She says hello to you and all and all y\u2019all.\u00a0 And she and they are safe.\u00a0 For now.<\/p>\n

In faith, you are alive to possibility.\u00a0 \u00a0A pastoral voice.<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This summer our national preacher series has conjoured a witness to faith in community.\u00a0 It takes a common hope to undergird a common faith, a faith in community and through community.\u00a0 Your stained glass window here on the west wall of this breezy nave pictures St. Francis.\u00a0 Why do you single him out here, Marsh Chapel, to greet you every week, this Francis of peace?\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 It would be easier not to have his chafing voice of reminder so close to hand.\u00a0 It would be easier not to have to see him, alive to possibility, alive to life, working to make and keep human life human, there he is, with the birds in the beauty of the stained glass.\u00a0 He puts a demand, a hand, on me.\u00a0 He bluntly scolds me that I am not free to walk past 30 dead bodies in El Paso and Dayton and California, and order a caf\u00e9 latte, and with a shrug muse that nothing can be done, and that I am not involved.\u00a0 No, that is the hard news of Luke 12.\u00a0 In faith, you and I are ever alive to possibility.\u00a0 God bless us.<\/p>\n

L<\/em><\/span>ord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

where there is hatred, let me sow love;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

where there is injury, pardon;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

where there is doubt, faith;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

where there is despair, hope;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

where there is darkness, light;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

and where there is sadness, joy.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

O Divine Master,<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

to be understood, as to understand;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

to be loved, as to love;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

for it is in giving that we receive,<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Toni Morrison took her last breath this week.\u00a0 Maybe her writing did not move you, as it did so many of us, though it seems hard to imagine that.\u00a0 She spent some lonely, cold dark winters early on Syracuse.\u00a0 As one wrote this week, \u2018she also comprehended that\u2026being nice is not the same as being good\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 She wrote in part about \u2018what it is like to be actually hated\u2014hated for things we have no conrolt over\u2019.\u00a0 She also celebrated laughter and humor, \u2018a way of taking the reins in your own hands\u2019. (D Garner, NYT, 8\/7\/19).\u00a0 She placed her characters, often, in small Midwestern towns.\u00a0 Like Dayton. Or like El Paso. \u00a0She could be ruthless in her rendering of the truth.\u00a0 But not hopeless.\u00a0 For all the unspeakably unnecessary slaughter of the day, of her day, and now alas once more of our own, \u00a0her voice did ring out again and again.\u00a0 Get up.\u00a0 Start over. Tomorrow is another day.<\/p>\n

In 1974, my summer boss, my first real boss, for whom I ran a waterfront with one profound rule, \u2018no drowning allowed\u2019, was tragically killed in a hunting accident.\u00a0 I grew up with deer hunting all around, dad, uncle, neighbors.\u00a0 He was running the deer above Owasco Lake and his close friend mistook him for one.\u00a0 Koert Foster.\u00a0 I was studying in Spain. My mother sent a hand written\u2014she has excellent penmanship\u2014aerogram, carefully composed.\u00a0 \u201cBob, I am so awfully sorry to have to tell you this.\u00a0 Your dear boss, Koert, died yesterday.\u00a0 We know how much you loved him.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Every evening Koert took us water skiing, a kindness meant to divert our attention from what he could not pay us.\u00a0 And Koert gathered us every morning for breakfast.\u00a0 Every summer breakfast, a huge meal and necessarily so by the way, began with his table grace prayer, offered as his Springer Spaniel rustled and dreamed under foot, under the table.\u00a0 \u201cLord, we thank you for this another day.\u00a0 We thank you for this another morning. We thank you for this another day.\u201d\u00a0 After Koert\u2019s death, I realized that my then trajectory toward teaching Spanish Literature, and a graduate degree at Tulane, was not enough. \u00a0Unamuno, Ortega and Calderon de la Barca wwere a good response, perhaps, but not my best response to God. \u00a0Much as wanted to avoid the ministry, in some ways, his death compelled me, at age 20, impelled me, as a college senior, to think twice, to think again.\u00a0 His death made me alive to possibility.\u00a0 You never know.\u00a0 It may be that someone, here, or someone, listening, will be nudged by tragedy into ministry, awakened by tragedy to a new dawn of service.\u00a0 Nudged by Jesus, with Jesus, to bear the cross, the daily cross of possibility.<\/p>\n

You never know.\u00a0 May these deaths make us alive to possibility, too.\u00a0 For this is another day.\u00a0 And Lord we thank you for this another day.<\/p>\n

In faith, you are alive to possibility.\u00a0 Toward a common hope.<\/p>\n

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks\u2026You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” <\/em><\/p>\n

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

Click here to hear the full service Luke 12:32-40 Click here to hear the sermon only A Word of Faith \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In faith, you are alive to possibility. The haunting portrait of Hebrews 11, as much as any other passage of Scripture, calls out and calls up to us, to you:\u00a0 in faith, you are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261"}],"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=2261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2263,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261\/revisions\/2263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}