{"id":2662,"date":"2020-02-16T11:00:51","date_gmt":"2020-02-16T16:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=2662"},"modified":"2020-02-19T12:38:18","modified_gmt":"2020-02-19T17:38:18","slug":"the-language-of-the-beloved-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2020\/02\/16\/the-language-of-the-beloved-community\/","title":{"rendered":"The Language of the Beloved Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Deuteronomy 30:15-20<\/a><\/p>\n

1 Corinthians 3:1-9<\/a><\/p>\n

Matthew 5:21-26<\/a><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Hear today the good news of the language of the beloved community, Matthew 5: 21-26, in exegesis, explanation, and application.<\/p>\n

First, Exegesis<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Matthew is a teacher.\u00a0 His own gospel is a didactic one.\u00a0 He is teaching about the Person of Christ, and the Proclamation of Christ (as here in chapter 5) and then the Passion of Christ. Matthew is organized around at least five narratives and lectures.\u00a0 Including a long lecture from a mountain.\u00a0 Affirming the jot and tittle of the law.\u00a0 Honoring disciples and discipline.\u00a0 Matthew sees the world and its human inhabitants, as a school room filled with students.\u00a0 He is a teacher, we are his students, and he wants us to learn.<\/p>\n

In our passage today, Matthew\u2019s verses \u2018forbid not only the overt crime, but the disposition behind it\u2019 <\/em>(IB, op. cit.).\u00a0 Killing is a result of anger.\u00a0 Insult is a result of anger.\u00a0 Denigration is a result of anger.\u00a0 It is the soul, what is down deep, the heart, what is at the core and center of being, that is truly at stake, day by day, our Gospel teaches us.\u00a0 Be careful.\u00a0 Be careful.\u00a0 Be very careful that you do not take the pose of what you oppose, that you do not conform to what you criticize, that you do not come to resemble what you resist.\u00a0 It is almost inevitable, to some degree.\u00a0 The person you resist, you come to resemble.\u00a0 The organization you resist, you come to resemble.\u00a0 The point of view you resist, you come to resemble.\u00a0 When you wrestle with an angel you may take on an angelic blessing.\u00a0 But when you grapple with a demon, you may become demonically mis-shapen.<\/p>\n

Memorize the Beatitudes for they are the spiritual charter of the kingdom.\u00a0 Remember that Matthew has two interests, the good news of Jesus and the church of Jesus, and neither is ever very far out of his field of vision.\u00a0 These verses, Matthew 5 and following, carry to us, without much need for interpretation, \u2018warnings against an overinvolvement in worldly goods.\u2019\u00a0 Teresa of Avila will also teach us so, and more so, come Lent.\u00a0 After all, these crucial teachings are given directly to the disciples themselves, and only indirectly to others, near and far, early and late.<\/p>\n

Now you are well aware, Marsh Chapel, you blessed and astute hermeneuts, that at least three options are available to you as you think about how to think about how to think about the teachings of Jesus recorded in Matthew\u2019s\u2014Matthew\u2019s<\/em>\u2014Sermon on the Mount.\u00a0\u00a0 First, you may take these sentences straight, and expect that the Gospel expects us to live them out, fully, through and through. You Methodist perfectionist you! Second, you make take these sentences on the curve, and expect that they, being largely impossible to fulfill, are meant to remind us of our abject need for grace.\u00a0 You Lutheran Protestant you!\u00a0 Third, you may take these sentences as \u2018interim ethic\u2019, meant in full only for those who were expecting to see the end of time in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, and now superannuated by later Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience.\u00a0 You Catholic historian you! \u00a0With some meager attention to the first two, as you know, I think the third is most true.\u00a0 Already, a few verses after our passage, in the teaching on divorce, which in Mark and Luke is a pure prohibition—No–we have the opening of qualifications, even in the interim.\u00a0 There are more reasons for divorce than unchastity, for sure.\u00a0 Abuse, for starters.\u00a0 Divorce is never a good thing but it is sometimes the best thing.\u00a0 Or, as Krister Stendahl said of some such passages, \u2018I believe it is the Word of God, but not the Word of God FOR ME\u2019.<\/p>\n

So, exegesis.<\/p>\n

Second, Explanation<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Some time ago, we hosted a June wedding, here in Marsh Chapel.\u00a0 The bride, from San Antonio Texas, and the groom, from San Diego, had met here at Boston University, just months before graduation.\u00a0 Each needed just a couple of extra credits to graduate in May.\u00a0 So, independently, not yet ever having met, they scoured the course offerings, and, creatively, both settled on a course in ice skating.\u00a0 Neither had every laced up skates, ice being harder to find in San Diego and San Antonio, than, say, Boston.\u00a0 They appeared at the rink, found their skates, laced them, and hobbled onto the rink.\u00a0 And there, quickly, they fell into each others arms.\u00a0 Literally.<\/p>\n

After the gracious, reverent wedding, one of her relatives, a stocky, barrel chested Texan, confronted the minister, asking:\u00a0 What is he doing in here?\u00a0 I mean him.\u00a0 You know.\u00a0 Our 16th<\/sup> President, Mr. Lincoln.\u00a0 Why is he in here?<\/em>\u00a0 Well, this involved some ancient history of Daniel Marsh, and his choices of two windows to go along with the inherited others along the nave, one for Francis Willard, a prohibitionist\u2014a gay, feminist, suffragette, protector of women and children\u2014and the other for Lincoln, who freed the slaves and preserved the union.\u00a0 Our Texas cousin, as it turned out, a really kind and gracious soul, was not dyspeptic to greet Honest Abe, here, just curious.<\/p>\n

The separation of church and state has never meant anything like the separation of a Christian from her politics.\u00a0 The opposite.\u00a0 Francis Willard and Abraham Lincoln are with us every Sunday, listening to the choir, enduring the sermon, observing the congregation, right here, to remind us so.\u00a0 That is, Willard and Lincoln bar the door, here, from those who would enter, or stay, on the supposition that one can practice faith apart from the gnawing claims of justice.\u00a0 It is true:\u00a0 justice is a part of the gospel, not the heart of the gospel.\u00a0 The heart is love, agape<\/em>.\u00a0 But is also true that real religion is never very far from justice.\u00a0 For those who might wish for one or the other\u2014well, Lincoln and Willard might want a word with you. No. Religion, Christianity, Protestantism, Methodism, Marsh Chapel, all affirm a rooted synergy of deep personal faith and active social engagement.\u00a0 Worship, its order and beauty and rhythm and depth and all, concluding with the majestic organ postlude, can and should nourish us, bathe us, and steady us\u2014but can never protect us from our daily round:\u00a0 we will head out again tomorrow to see what we can resurrect from the rubble of the republic Ben Franklin gave us, \u2018if you can keep it\u2019, said he.<\/p>\n

Here in Matthew, it is not just action that gets you into trouble.\u00a0 It is attitude as well.\u00a0 It is anger, when expressed to a faithful sibling\u2014that brings judgment.\u00a0 It is insult, when poured onto a sister or brother\u2014that brings arraignment.\u00a0 It is derogatory rhetoric, when inflicted on one\u2019s fellow\u2014that brings hell fire.\u00a0 You go from accuser to judge to guard to prison, accuser to judge to guard to prison.\u00a0 The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew\u2019s most creative contribution to our Holy Bible, will go on to attack adultery, and lust, and divorce, and perjury, and swearing\u2014adultery, lust, divorce, perjury and swearing\u2014this is not a Presidential Curriculum Vitae, it is just Matthew being Matthew\u2014but before any of that comes, quietly, a gospel word about language, about the beloved community and its language, and about the roots of anger and insult and derogation.<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 Because, according to the Scriptures, we are meant to live in Beloved Community.\u00a0 Because, according to the Wesleys, we are meant to live in Beloved Community.\u00a0 Because, according to Thurman and King, we are meant to live in Beloved Community.\u00a0 Because, according to what we most truly want today in our heart of hearts, we are meant to live in Beloved Community.\u00a0 Because\u2014you were in church last Sunday, right?\u2014the Sermon on the Mount is written out as addressed to YOU PLURAL.\u00a0 These are words for community, in community, to community, by community, addressed to an addressable community.\u00a0 They are the language of the beloved community.\u00a0 We should take an open space here at BU, and devote it to the beloved community, our heritage:\u00a0 Yes, in our time; Yes, with Thurman and King; Yes, with the founding and leadership of BU;\u00a0 Yes, with the preaching and singing Wesley brothers;\u00a0 Yes, across the long expanse of history and religion; Yes, in the Holy Scripture, including Matthew, but most deeply within the Gospel of John.\u00a0 Maybe we could put this in the room where the Howard Thurman Center once was?<\/p>\n

Andrew Bacevich, in his newest book, The Age of Illusions<\/em>, starts with compunction.\u00a0 We suffer from too much hubris and too little hope.\u00a0 Our hubris as a people.\u00a0 And our lack as a people of a common hope.\u00a0 Too much pride to little prospect.\u00a0 As Benjamin Friedman wrote some years ago, in The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth<\/em>, times of plenty, like 2020 we might add, are meant not for hubris but for hope, they are times when the resources are around to take the world and make it young again.<\/p>\n

So, explanation.<\/p>\n

Third, Application<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Now of a certain age, some of us can look back on three impeachment moments, in a lifetime.\u00a0\u00a0 All of them were accompanied by voices out of Matthew 5, sermon on the mount voices, voices trained in the language of the beloved community.<\/p>\n

In 1974, some of us listened to a former Attorney General of the United States, who spoke, at Gray Chapel Ohio Wesleyan University, for more than an hour without notes.\u00a0 Both his daughter and his son, fine people by the way, were students at that small college at the time, and were sitting proudly in the front row.\u00a0 Richard Nixon was in the throes of impending impeachment. It was a bitter time. His former Attorney General, a loyal and staunch conservative, was speaking to us.\u00a0 His theme is as crystalline today as it was almost fifty years ago:\u00a0 This is a country of law and not of men. <\/em>For 70 minutes, with real feeling and keen mind, he traced that theme into our memories.\u00a0 This is a country of law, not of men.<\/em>\u00a0 After the Watergate burglary, he had been asked to pass over the regular rules of policing, to protect his president.\u00a0 He did not.\u00a0 An Arizona native, a Harvard law graduate, an Attorney General, a proud Republican, he would not forsake principle.\u00a0 As a consequence, in part, his party\u2019s President fell to the fear of impeachment.\u00a0 This is Richard Kleindienst, who was later convicted, not regarding Watergate, but regarding an ITT business deal, but whose sentence and fine were annulled, accepting for himself his theme that evening:\u00a0 a country of laws and not of individuals only.<\/em>\u00a0 Nixon retaliated by removing him on the same day as he did Ehrlichman and Haldeman.\u00a0 There is a living tradition, on the right, in this country, a deep and true and thin tradition, of speaking justly against injustice.\u00a0 We on the left should honor that in memory.\u00a0 (By the way, about 5 years ago I was trying remember our graduation speaker two years later, Ohio Wesleyan 1976, about which moment I had exactly no memory:\u00a0 seniors among us, be prepared for May.\u00a0 Bring a notebook.\u00a0 So I explored on the interweb and found out that our speaker was a lawyer whose name was–Robert Bork. \u00a0My, my.)<\/p>\n

In 1998, some of us had called publicly for Mr. Clinton to resign from office, facing impeachment, on the basis of decency, and morality and honor.\u00a0 He did not.\u00a0 (Think by the way of what would have been different had he done so:\u00a0 Gore running as an incumbent.\u00a0 No 2000 defeat by 600 votes from dangling chads in Broward County.\u00a0 No Vice President Cheney.\u00a0 No vehement war mongering after 9\/11.\u00a0 No alchemistic concoction of imaginary weapons of mass destruction.\u00a0 No George Bush.\u00a0 No shadow for Hillary to run under.\u00a0 But no.\u00a0 It was a bitter time.\u00a0 That Labor Day, if memory serves, a centrist Orthodox Jew, and US Senator, came home from a family weekend, and prepared a speech which he delivered the next day in the Senate, demanding accountability from his own party\u2019s President. After much reflection, my feelings of disappointment and anger have not dissipated, except now these feelings have gone beyond my personal dismay to a larger, graver sense of loss for our country, a reckoning of the damage that the president’s conduct has done to the proud legacy of his presidency and, ultimately, an accounting of the impact of his actions on our democracy and its moral foundations. The implications for our country are so serious that I feel a responsibility to my constituents in Connecticut, as well as to my conscience, to voice my concerns forthrightly and publicly. And I can think of no more appropriate place to do that than on this great Senate floor<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It was a courageous, thankless, painful and much needed correction.\u00a0 So many had passed by the long-term consequences of that earlier Presidential misuse of office, with, in retrospect, baleful reasons.\u00a0 But Joe Lieberman spoke, and wrote, not in anger or in insult or in diatribe, but with earnest, sincere, care.\u00a0 His righteousness exceeded that of the scribes and Pharisees.<\/p>\n

Now again in 2020, those within the party in power have been put before the long mirror of the Sermon on the Mount, to see how they would reflect, and be reflected in history.\u00a0 It is a bitter time.\u00a0 Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to perdition and many there be who go therein.\u00a0 But narrow is the gate, and straight is the way, that leads to life, and few there be who find it.\u00a0 That narrowness has everything to do with God, with Scripture, with Faith, with Conscience, and with Courage.\u00a0 In real time.\u00a0 What an Episcopalian did in 1974, and what an Orthodox Jew did in 1998, a Mormon did in 2020.\u00a0 Maybe they all, out of their inherited religious traditions, drew on the memory of being outsiders, of being poor, of being powerless.\u00a0 There is Kleindienst, I can see him sweating and speaking and his kids both proud and crying, 1974.\u00a0 There is Lieberman, I can feel the terse intensity of his prose, virtually alone among his fellow Democrats, willing to call abuse, abuse, in 1998.\u00a0 And now comes a former governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, standing alone in the well of the Senate, emotional, dog tired, red eyed, and firm. \u00a0Knowing there will be costs and consequences. \u00a0Saying things about conscience. Saying things about faith. Saying things about God. \u201cWere I to ignore the evidence that has been presented, and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history\u2019s rebuke and the censure of my own conscience.\u201d<\/em> There is still a lot of good in this country, for all the losses of these years.\u00a0 For those of us who are liberal, we owe it to ourselves, and to the honest truth, to record and recall that conservatives of character remain.\u00a0 I have seen it with my own now dimming eyes.\u00a0 I have heard it with my own now failing ears.\u00a0 I have kept it in my own now flagging memory.\u00a0 Kleindienst, Lieberman, Romney. \u00a0An Episcopalian.\u00a0 An Orthodox Jew.\u00a0 A Mormon. Hm.\u00a0 Quite a trio.\u00a0 Three who knew the grammar, syntax and spelling\u2014the language–fit for the Beloved Community. Three who knew the grammar, syntax and spelling\u2014the language–fit for the Beloved Community.<\/p>\n

So, application.<\/p>\n

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

A Beloved Community, devoted to healing climate change<\/em><\/p>\n

A Beloved Community, devoted to nuclear peace<\/em><\/p>\n

A Beloved Community, devoted to the language of grace<\/em><\/p>\n

A Beloved Community, devoted to equality<\/em><\/p>\n

A Beloved Community, where those with much have not too much, and those with little have not too little<\/em><\/p>\n

A Beloved Community, devoted to learning, virtue and piety<\/em><\/p>\n

A Beloved Community, honoring women, protecting children, embracing the elderly<\/em><\/p>\n

A Beloved Community not of this world only, but of this world as a field of formation for another, not just creation but new creation, not just life but eternal life, not just health but salvation, not just heart but soul, not just earth, but heaven<\/em><\/p>\n

To get there, we will need the voice and faith of James Weldon Johnson:\u00a0 God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who hast blest us thus far along the way.\u00a0 Thou who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path we pray.\u00a0 Lest our feet stray from the places O God where we met thee.\u00a0 Lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world we forget thee.\u00a0 Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand. True to our God, true to our native land.<\/p>\n

Sursum Corda!\u00a0 Lift up your hearts!<\/p>\n

Hear the Gospel of the Language of the Beloved Community!<\/p>\n

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

Click here to hear the full service Deuteronomy 30:15-20 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 Matthew 5:21-26 Click here to hear just the sermon   Hear today the good news of the language of the beloved community, Matthew 5: 21-26, in exegesis, explanation, and application. First, Exegesis Matthew is a teacher.\u00a0 His own gospel is a didactic one.\u00a0 […]<\/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\/2662"}],"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=2662"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2700,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662\/revisions\/2700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}