{"id":2720,"date":"2020-03-08T11:00:02","date_gmt":"2020-03-08T16:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=2720"},"modified":"2021-02-25T15:07:36","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T20:07:36","slug":"the-life-of-santa-teresa-of-avila","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2020\/03\/08\/the-life-of-santa-teresa-of-avila\/","title":{"rendered":"The Life of Santa Teresa of Avila"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

John 3:1-17<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

Hear the Gospel: The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes. \u00a0So it is with every one who is born of the spirit.<\/em><\/p>\n

Our Lenten Sermon Series, beginning today, will engage in conversation with St. Teresa of Avila.\u00a0 From 2007-2016, Lent by Lent, we identified a theological conversation partner for the Lenten sermons, broadly speaking, out of the Calvinist tradition.\u00a0 In this decade, we turn to the Catholic tradition.\u00a0\u00a0 With Calvin we encountered the chief resource for others we engaged over ten years\u2014voices <\/em>like those of Jonathan Edwards (2015), Paul of Tarsus (2014), Marilyn Robinson (2013), Jacques Ellul (2012), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a Lutheran cousin, (2011), Karl Barth (2010), and Gabriel Vahanian (2007), and themes<\/em> like Atonement (2009) and Decision (2008).\u00a0 In this decade, beginning with Lent 2017, the Marsh pulpit, a traditionally Methodist one, turns left, not right, toward Rome not Geneva, and we will preach with, and learn from the Roman Catholic tradition, so important in the last 200 years in New England, and some of its great divines including Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, John of the Cross, Ignatius of Loyola, Erasmus, Hans Kung, Karl Rahner, and others, one per year.\u00a0 Perhaps you will suggest a name or two, not from Geneva, but from Rome?\u00a0 For those who recall, even if dimly, the vigor and excitement of Vatican II, there may well be other names to add to the list.\u00a0 We began with Henri Nouwen in 2017, and continued with Thomas Merton in 2018, turning last year 2019 to St. John of the Cross.\u00a0 Now, Lent 2020, we listen in prayer for grace in the life, voice, heart, poetry and spirit of Santa Teresa of Avila.<\/p>\n

Thomas Merton sets the beat and the course of travel, year by year: \u201c(Lent) is for people who know what it means for their soul to be logged with these icy waters: all of us are such people, if only we can realize it. \u00a0There is confidence everywhere in (Lent), yet that does not mean unmixed and untroubled security. \u00a0The confidence of the Christian is always a confidence despite darkness and risk, in the presence of peril, with every evidence of possible disaster\u2026\u00a0 Once again, Lent is not just a time for squaring conscious accounts: but\u00a0for realizing what we had perhaps not seen before. \u00a0The light of Lent is given us to help us with this realization.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the liturgy of (Lent) is not focused on the sinfulness of the penitent but on the mercy of God. \u00a0The question of sinfulness is raised precisely because this is a day of mercy\u2026<\/p>\n

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

Scripture and tradition depend on reason and experience. \u00a0Spirit involves reason and experience. \u00a0A question for you, day by day as mortality approaches, is whether you can find the courage to trust your own experience and whether you can find the capacity to rely on your own reason. \u00a0Opportunities to subcontract both are amply available. \u00a0But in order to live a life that is yours not almost yours, Spirit is needed.<\/p>\n

John had the courage to face the awful disappointment behind the New Testament: \u00a0Jesus did not return, not on schedule, not as expected, not soon and very soon, not maranatha, not yet. \u00a0But John looked at his own experience, and in biblical measure, with traditional tools, reasoned. \u00a0\u00a0In place of apocalypse, he celebrated the artistry of the everyday, and in place of the speculation about the end, he celebrated the Spirit of truth, and in place of parousia, the coming of the Lord, he nominated Paraclete, the presence of the Lord. \u00a0He sang: You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. \u00a0\u00a0One way to solve problems is to face them, to name them, to admit them. \u00a0No parousia. \u00a0Paraclete. Spirit!<\/p>\n

The stark strangeness, the utter difference of John from the rest of the Bible we have yet fully to admit. \u00a0My beloved advisor, perhaps the greatest John scholar of our era, Fr. Raymond Brown, got only as far as saying that John is best understood as \u2018an embraceable variant\u2019, emphasis on embraceable less emphasis on variant. \u00a0But when we get to John 3, we see chiseled there in ice and covered fully with wind and snow, an enigmatic, mysterious riddle: \u00a0Spirit, sweet Spirit, Paraclete. \u00a0The endless enemy of conformity. \u00a0The lasting foe of the nearly lived life. \u00a0The champion of the quixotic. \u00a0The standard bearer of liberty. \u00a0The one true spirit of spirited truth. \u00a0Yet we cannot even give the history of the term, nor fully define its meaning, nor aptly place it in context, nor finally determine its translation. \u00a0Paraclete eludes us. \u00a0Paraclete evades us. \u00a0Paraclete outpaces us. \u00a0Paraclete escapes us.<\/p>\n

Notice that in John, starting with Nicodemus, the Spirit is given to all, not just to a few or to the twelve, definitely not. \u00a0Notice that it is Spirit not structure on which John relies. \u00a0Notice it is Spirit not memory which we shall trust (good news for those whose memory may slip a little). \u00a0Notice that Spirit stands over against what John calls \u2018world\u2019 –another dark mystery in meaning. \u00a0Notice that the community around John\u2019s Jesus is amply conveyed a powerful trust in Spirit.<\/p>\n

Other parts of the New Testament take another trail. \u00a0The Book of Acts offers confidence by way of hagiographical memories of Peter and Paul, and of false but loving assertions of the utter agreement of Peter and Paul. \u00a0Trust your memory and when you cannot create a new memory. \u00a0The Pastoral Epistles\u2014and to some degree 1 John in opposition to his gospel namesake\u2014rely not on memory or memories and not on Spirit, but on structure: \u00a0presbyters, faith once delivered to saints, deacons, codes of conduct, stylized memories of orderly transmission of tradition. \u00a0\u00a0We need memory. \u00a0We need structure. \u00a0Neither can hold a candle though to Spirit. \u00a0That is, for John, what Moses, the Law, the historical Jesus, the Sacraments or anything else cannot ever fully offer, Paraclete SPIRIT provides. \u00a0By Spirit we hear the word God. \u00a0God reveals by Spirit. \u00a0God self-reveals by Spirit. \u00a0Here the stakes are very high.<\/p>\n

Again, Raymond Brown: \u00a0This is the ultimate self-revelation of how the word of God gets translated as God. \u00a0To a community living in time and space, the Spirit of Jesus is proving the world wrong. \u00a0People who live by the spirit is the only way others will be convinced of the victory of Jesus (<\/em>Hill, Courageous, 82).<\/p>\n

The world does not lack for wonders but only for a sense of wonder (Chesterton).\u00a0 Your life does not lack for mystery but only for a sense of mystery.\u00a0 Your week does not lack for worth but only for an hour of worship.\u00a0 \u201cI love the silent church, before there is any speaking\u201d (Emerson).\u00a0 Pause just a moment in prayer.<\/p>\n

When you come to worship you place yourself in prayerful sight of beauty.\u00a0 When you come to worship you stand and sit in the company of real courage, heroines and heroes of old.\u00a0 When you come to worship you at last find a way\u2014language, imagery, symbol, all\u2014to express an ultimate concern for ultimate reality. When you come to worship you see the whole horizon, the whole ocean, from birth through love to death…and beyond.\u00a0 When you come to worship you place all the rest of your life in the loving embrace of Love, capital L.\u00a0 When you come to worship you are reminded that you are a child of God, no matter what else or other your boss, co-workers, neighbors, family, friends or roommates have said or intimated.\u00a0 When you come to worship you enter the space of Grace.\u00a0 People have such ragged reasons for skipping worship.\u00a0 Make it your plan, as you walk along, to find a church family to love and church home to enjoy and a church service to attend at least one hour a week.\u00a0 In prayer, at least now, at least here, at least here and now.<\/p>\n

Yet sometimes worship goes wrong.\u00a0 When it does, for you, say so, to whomever.\u00a0 If it does so regularly or spectacularly, go elsewhere, pronto.\u00a0 Life is short.\u00a0 We need make no excuses for prizing our time.<\/p>\n

St Teresa<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Speaking of time, Saint Teresa of Avila was born March 28, 1515 and died at age 67 on October 4, 1582.\u00a0\u00a0 She was one of the greatest women in Christian history, and one of the greatest mystics and teachers in the Roman Catholic tradition.\u00a0 It may be that her most lasting influence came with her call to Juan de Yepes, our Saint John of the Cross, to join her in the work of renewal within the Carmelite order.\u00a0 She worked with the women; he with the men.\u00a0 You will remember him from last year\u2019s Lenten sermon series.\u00a0 We hope!\u00a0 That is, we listen today, especially and appropriately, to an international woman\u2019s voice, and devote this month of March to her, her voice, even as we embedded our preaching and worship in the last month or so to hues, tones and voices like those of James Weldon Johnson, and of Elijah\u2019s Sweet Chariot, and of Abraham Lincoln, and of remarkable organ postludes for the season, and most powerfully of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/p>\n

Teresa\u2019s mother died in 1529.\u00a0 Although her father opposed it, Teresa joined the Carmelite Convent in Avila, a lovely Castilian town in 1535.\u00a0 She promptly fell ill, nearly dying, but recovered slowly.\u00a0 On recovery she gave up daily prayer for the next 15 years.\u00a0 Then she went through a religious awakening in 1555.\u00a0 The nature of this awakening is not fully understood, but stands at the heart of her future life and work.\u00a0 We shall want this Lent to think about awakening, or awakenings, about prayer as awakening, and particularly about that which impelled the mature ministry of Santa Teresa de Avila.<\/p>\n

Her reform called on the Carmelites to return to their origins in austerity, simplicity, poverty and prayer.\u00a0 Especially prayer\u2026Their vocation, she repeated, was one of \u2018reparation\u2019 for the sins of the world.\u00a0 They refused all regular support and refused endowment, depending only on daily and weekly alms, to emphasize the centrality of poverty in the life and work of the order.\u00a0 Over the rest of her life she established 16 convents throughout Spain.<\/p>\n

In 1575 a major dispute emerged in Seville, which again you may remember from last Lent, and the work of St.\u00a0 John of the Cross.\u00a0 We hope!\u00a0 The argument pitted the Discalced (\u2018unhsod\u2019) against the Calced (\u2018shod\u2019), the no shoes versus the shoes.\u00a0 As so often in life, she could foresee the emerging conflict; she could militate against it; she could work to avoid it; but she could not stop it. (repeat).\u00a0 Don\u2019t we know about that\u2026 In the aftermath of this religious conflict\u2014and conflict is not foreign to any religion\u2014she was ordered home to Castile in the north, and told to stop founding convents.\u00a0 St.\u00a0 John of the Cross too was disciplined, imprisoned, you may recall, in Toledo.<\/p>\n

It took the king\u2019s intervention to set St. Teresa back on the road.\u00a0 King Philip II of Spain, who knew her, and held her in high esteem, solved the conflict by giving independence to the Unshod, the Discalced, the no shoe crew, with Teresa its head.\u00a0 In 1580 she took up the work again, traveling hundreds of miles.\u00a0 On the way from Avila to Burgos, she fell ill and died.<\/p>\n

After her death, several of her works were published, the primary ones being two historical texts, The Life of \u00a0Mother Teresa of Jesus (1611), The Book of the Foundations (1610), and four spiritual ones, The Way of Perfection ((1583), The Interior Castle (1588), Spiritual Relations, Exclamations of the Soul to God (1588), and Conceptions on the Love of God (1588).\u00a0 She left behind 31 poems and 458 letters.\u00a0 The mystical, spiritual works are essays in contemplation, in prayer, in depiction of the contemplative life as an approach to God.\u00a0 You can hear in her titles, even, the emphases in the works:\u00a0 way, wholeness, relationships, ecstasy, love\u2026.God.<\/p>\n

Application: Conversation<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The incarnational mysticism of St. Teresa is, among so many other glorious things, just utterly\u2026Spanish.<\/p>\n

We sat on Las Ramblas a couple of summers ago. Barcelona Blue\u2026I had forgotten\u2026How blue the sky<\/em>\u2026How gentle the sea<\/em>\u2026How sweet the breeze<\/em>\u2026How happy the people<\/em>\u2026How young the city<\/em>\u2026How luxurious the conversation<\/em>\u2026How smooth the coffee<\/em>\u2026How clean the sand<\/em>\u2026How fine the trains<\/em>\u2026How old the culture\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Barcelona looks today so very much smaller to me than it did in 1974.\u00a0 The view from a hotel\u2019s 26th<\/sup> floor, and the view from 40 plus years later, and the view from the other side of so many hurts, deaths, illnesses, betrayals, defeats, sins and worries, made it so, smaller, much smaller than 40 years ago.\u00a0 And Jan saw La Sagrada Familia, for the first time, and said \u2018what a mess, but what a beautiful mess\u2019. (J)<\/p>\n

Sitting on Las Ramblas, watching, literally, the whole world walk on by:\u00a0 rich and poor, women in burqas by the dozens, a girl with colorful clothing, skinny 80 year old men who drink tankards of beer in minutes, couples of every stream and color and type, Germans known by their excellent English and Americans known by their mediocre English, people with selfie sticks, 20 year-olds holding hands, jovial African kids, an occasional Texan with cowboy boots and hat, Asians wearing cowboy hats, short and long haired Hispanic women, mothers and daughters, holding hands, white men in black with black women in white,\u00a0 the steroid children\u2019s strollers of a new age, gay men and women\u2014the world at pause, together, in conversation, call it common prayer.\u00a0 Call it conversational, Las Ramblas prayer.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Spanish\u2026talk.\u00a0 They give the art, beauty, craft and joyful surprise of conversation the time it needs, the refreshments it needs, the spaces it needs, the vocabulary it needs, the cigar smoke it needs, the spirit it needs, the respect it needs.\u00a0 This is why one loves Spain so much.\u00a0 Walk and talk.\u00a0 Walk as long as you can.\u00a0 Talk as long as you can. August in Barcelona is to be alive.\u00a0 The glory of God is a person in Barcelona in August.\u00a0 Like Boston, Barcelona is a pedestrian city.\u00a0 No houses, apartments.\u00a0 No cars, trains.\u00a0 No poor, taxes.\u00a0 And conversation, conversation, conversation\u2026<\/p>\n

We are in conversation about prayer this Lent, alongside our conversation partner, St. Teresa of Avila.\u00a0 Someone you know far better, from our own time, Mother Teresa, took her name and gave us the prayer with which we end, today:<\/em><\/p>\n

P<\/em>eople are often unreasonable, irrational, and\u00a0self-centered. \u00a0Forgive them anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n

I<\/em><\/em>f you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. \u00a0Be kind anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n

I<\/em>f you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.\u00a0<\/em> Succeed anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n

I<\/em>f you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.\u00a0 Be honest and sincere anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n

W<\/em>hat you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.\u00a0 Create anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n

I<\/em>f you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.\u00a0 Be happy anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n

T<\/em>he good you do today, will often be forgotten.\u00a0 Do good anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n

G<\/em>ive the best you have, and it will never be enough.\u00a0 Give your best anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n

I<\/em>n the final analysis, it is between you and God.\u00a0 It was never between you and them anyway.<\/em> I<\/em>n the final analysis, it is between you and God.<\/em><\/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 John 3:1-17 Click here to hear just the sermon Introduction Hear the Gospel: The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes. \u00a0So it is with every one who is born of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[40,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720"}],"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=2720"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3042,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720\/revisions\/3042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}