{"id":2760,"date":"2020-05-03T11:00:08","date_gmt":"2020-05-03T15:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=2760"},"modified":"2021-01-19T11:29:34","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T16:29:34","slug":"2760","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2020\/05\/03\/2760\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shepherd"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

1 Peter 2:19-25<\/a><\/p>\n

John 10:1-10<\/a><\/p>\n

Acts 2:42-43<\/a><\/p>\n

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

To begin, our colleague the Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman I have asked to give us a few verses from Robert Frost:<\/span><\/p>\n

What now is inland shall be ocean isle,<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i>Then eddies playing round a sunken reef<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i>Like the curl at the corner of a smile;<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i>And I could share Time\u2019s lack of joy or grief<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i>At such a planetary change of style.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

I could give all to Time except \u2013 except<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i>What I myself have held. But why declare<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i>The things forbidden that while the Customs slept<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i>I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span>And what I would not part with I have kept.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Last Sunday, April 26, given the new and different schedule of Sunday during the pandemic, I happened to tune in to a television show, one new to me.\u00a0 Before of course tuning in to WBUR for virtual worship of course.\u00a0 Well, all Sunday morning TV is pretty much new to me, at least any such from the last forty some years or so.\u00a0 I peddled along on my little stationary bike, sipped a coffee, and listened.\u00a0 A familiar person\u2014it took me a while to settle up on the memory of her name, not Katie Couric, not Meredith Vieira \u2014with grace and a happy smile gave an overview of what the program would include.\u00a0 Her name\u2014ah yes, Jane Pauley.\u00a0 She proposed to tell us about Julie Andrews.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now most people of a certain age, and in fact many of any age, can begin singing, just at the introduction of her name.\u00a0 <\/span>Doe, a deer\u2026 Edelweiss\u2026Chim chiminee\u2026My favorite things<\/span><\/i>\u2026It was all very satisfactory, along with lazy exercise and coffee, and a kind of mental freedom somewhat or entirely new to me, Come Sunday.\u00a0 In fact, it made you wonder how people leave this sort of thing behind and get going out the door to church at all.\u00a0 Julie Andrews, she, of unmatchable voice, a four- octave voice as the music teacher in our home recalled, she lost her voice a few years ago in a medical operation. Did you know that?\u00a0 She lost her voice.\u00a0 Such a voice to lose.\u00a0 Something pierced the heart, in a corona swept country, to be reminded amid our own immediate loss, of such a loss.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now something happened.\u00a0 In a whirl, a great whoosh, there appeared a combination of modes and media in the televised telling of this tale.\u00a0 You had the guide speaking, the afore-remembered Ms. Pauley.\u00a0 You had the grace and voice of the British star, Julie Andrews.\u00a0 You had clips of scenes and songs from long ago, spliced and splashed into the moment.\u00a0 You had soon enough the appearance of Ms. Andrews talented daughter, an author of children\u2019s books.\u00a0 You had footage of Ms. Andrews as a child in London during World War II.\u00a0 Hm\u2026You then had mother and daughter, across the miles from Long Island to Southern California, or as we like to call that area from our snow perch here in Boston, \u2018heaven\u2019.\u00a0 They agreed that Ms. Andrews had found another sort of voice, in the work with her daughter on children\u2019s books.<\/p>\n

It was the mixture of media, <\/span>to which we are a bit more attuned here,<\/span><\/i> now on Sunday, now last Sunday and now this Sunday that mesmerized, for a moment at least.\u00a0 Splicing.\u00a0 The old.\u00a0 The new.\u00a0 The Voice.\u00a0 The music. An empty home, really, a kind of empty church.\u00a0 All you needed was a sermon.\u00a0 And it came.\u00a0 The guide, the afore remembered Ms. Pauley asked the daughter, \u2018what did your mother teach you that stands out in memory?\u2019\u00a0 Now that is a daunting question to answer in front of God and the whole televisioned world.\u00a0 But she did neither falter nor quail at all.\u00a0 \u2018My mother taught me, \u2018When in doubt, stand still.\u00a0 When in doubt, stop, stand still\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now that is in some fashion what happens for us on Sunday morning.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 We come to church, or in this remarkable season, virtual worship, dressed in our doubts.\u00a0 And we are asked, for just an hour, just one hour, to stand still.\u00a0 To bring our doubts to the full emptiness of a silent church.\u00a0 To bring our doubts to the fullness, the fullness of an empty church.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 <\/span>Ah, an empty church.\u00a0 An empty church has a strange potent power to touch our hearts.\u00a0 One church organist confessed that after practicing for a while, alone in the nave, he would sit, still, and \u201clet the power of the place fill me\u201d.\u00a0 A woman told of entering an empty church after, by phone, she learned that her father had suffered a stroke: \u201cthe power of the place filled me\u201d.\u00a0 One young husband went late into a large old church when his wife went under the surgeon\u2019s knife: \u201cI let the power of that place help me\u201d, he said of the empty nave.\u00a0 Even a boy and girl in youth group once groped into a dark sanctuary to talk and touch and taste tender love: \u201cthe place, empty, was full\u201d.\u00a0 A Bishop, adrift in a sea of paper, prayed in a fully empty big sanctuary:\u00a0 \u201cit was powerful to be there\u201d.\u00a0 An empty church has a strange potent power to touch our hearts. Emerson:\u00a0 <\/span>I love the silent church, before any speaking.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Augustine in Hippo there awaited the vandals.\u00a0 St Aquinas there realized what he had written\u2014a life work\u2014was \u201cso much straw\u201d.\u00a0 Thomas More there prayed before death.\u00a0 Luther, Calvin and Wesley there awaited Christ.\u00a0 Oscar Romero there died, in the prayer of humble access.\u00a0 Though he had no elements, alone each morning Terry Waite in prison for four years had communion\u2014by imagination\u2014in all the great British Cathedrals:\u00a0 Monday in Salisbury, Tuesday in Durham, Wednesday at Coventry\u2026.<\/p>\n

With you, I try to read the news and listen to the events of the day.\u00a0 As you do, I try to overhear behind the immediate din of sounds and bites, something of the heart of people and of our people.\u00a0 This spring, sometimes, I overhear a pained and painful sense of doubt about the possibilities in life.\u00a0 A doubt that things can change very much.\u00a0 A doubt that anything new could ever emerge.\u00a0 A doubt that people can repent and turn around.\u00a0 A doubt that systems, so entrenched and contentious, can ever be made orderly.\u00a0 A doubt that any of the older differences among us can ever be bridged.\u00a0 A doubt that any common expression of faith can be trusted.\u00a0 A doubt that any common faith or common ground or common hope can ever, with authenticity, emerge and survive.\u00a0 A doubt in which the radical postmodern apotheosis of difference has silenced the liberal late modern openness to shared experience, to promise and future, to common faith, common ground, common hope. A doubt that minimizing one\u2019s own visibility or audibility, for the sake of something bigger and someone else, could ever be faithful or reasonable.\u00a0 A doubt that the general public could be trusted to shoulder significant sacrifice.\u00a0 A doubt that anything I do or you do would ever make a difference.\u00a0 A doubt that this virus will ever let us go\u2026A viral doubt.<\/p>\n

When this cloud of doubt gets so thick that it eclipses both the sun and the moon, it is time to hear again the gospel.\u00a0 <\/span>When in doubt, stand still.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

John 10 today shows us the fullness of emptiness, presence in absence. John has always more than one opponent or contestant. He is fighting always on two fronts. So much for tradition, so much for culture. So much for depth, so much for breadth. So much for Hebrew, so much for Greek. So much for church and so much for community. So much for memory, so much for experience. John contrasts the freedom of Christ with fragile, formulaic faith. Things do not always fit into little boxes. The Hurricane winds of change, the reaches of pandemic, say, rearrange every manner of dwelling.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>The Gospel of John, more than any other ancient Christian writing, and in odd contrast to its prevalent misunderstanding abroad today, knew the necessity of nimble engagement of current experience, and the saving capacity to change, in the face of new circumstances.\u00a0\u00a0 The community of this Gospel could do so because they had experienced the Shepherd, present, \u2018here\u2019, here and now.\u00a0 In distress,\u00a0we hold onto divine presence, we hold onto the Shepherd\u2013<\/span> hic et nunc. <\/span><\/i>Speaking, and hearing.\u00a0 They found that in speaking of the Shepherd: \u2018he is here\u2019.\u00a0 \u2018I am\u2026\u2019\u00a0 That is all, still, we have, the voice.\u00a0 Utterance.\u00a0 \u2018I am\u2026\u2019\u00a0 The \u2018here\u2019 is in the hearing.\u00a0 Can you hear that?\u00a0 It begs to be heard, here.\u00a0 <\/span>I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Others over time have heard the same.\u00a0 At this time of year, I often think of Churchill and Wesley.<\/p>\n

These two Englishmen have something for us, in any spring time, and perhaps most especially this corona spring time.\u00a0 Think of England in May 1940.\u00a0 Think of London in May 1738.<\/p>\n

At the right moment, in May of 1940, Winston Churchill faced down the more polished, better heeled, more popular and more experienced old Britons of his newly formed war cabinet, and steadily led his country away from their desire to compromise with Adolf Hitler.\u00a0 With Belgium defeated, Churchill clung to a love of freedom.\u00a0 With France cut in two, Churchill clung to a love of freedom.\u00a0 With 400,000 men stranded at Dunkirk and escape virtually impossible, Churchill clung to a love of freedom.\u00a0 With the whole German air force poised to incinerate England\u2019s green and pleasant land, Churchill clung to a love of freedom.\u00a0 With Lord Halifax ready to seek terms, and Lord Chamberlain ready to let him, Churchill clung to a love of freedom. \u00a0 Re-read this summer John Lukacs\u2019 <\/span>Five Days in London, May 1940. <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0He concludes: \u201cChurchill and Britain could not have won the Second World War.\u00a0 In the end, America and Russian did.\u00a0 But in May 1940 Churchill (alone) was the one who did not lose it.\u201d\u00a0 Easter faith is about <\/span>love of freedom. <\/span><\/i>In his presence we find the courage for our own assent.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the same London, at midlife, one enchanting night in May of 1738, John Wesley heard something said in church that warmed his heart for good. \u00a0 He had been on Aldersgate street that Sunday evening, going to chapel service more from duty than from passion, when he heard a preacher read Romans 8 and also Martin Luther\u2019s commentary on that passage.\u00a0 There is something so fragrant and so full about damp London in the springtime.\u00a0 As he left church, Wesley felt something new, a <\/span>freeing love<\/span><\/i> in the heart, which is the creation and work of the Holy Spirit, which blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it. \u00a0 Easter faith is about <\/span>freeing love.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>In his presence we find the courage for our own assent.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are for sure a lot of things wrong.\u00a0 But there are also, <\/span>and more surely still,<\/span><\/i> a lot of things right.\u00a0 Hear the good news.\u00a0 You are witnesses of the goodness of God, witnesses who come from a long line of people who joyfully bless, and routinely give great thanks.\u00a0 \u201cFaith is an event expressing the conviction that the things not yet seen are more real than those that can be seen\u201d (L Keck).\u00a0 As you, as I, as we together walk toward our last adventure, our mortality, our own look over Jordan, it is this freeing love, which carries us.<\/span><\/p>\n

John 10 is an altar call for you.\u00a0 Come Sunday, I propose that you come to an imagined communion, as did Terry Waite, ready to accept the gift of faith, to give assent in the hour of the divine presence, of the Sheperd:\u00a0 <\/span>I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

So come, to experience <\/span>freeing love.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>So come, to receive a <\/span>love of freedom.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>So come, to give thanks for <\/span>the freedom to love.<\/span><\/i> \u00a0 Such is the gift of the Gospel, upon this Lord\u2019s day.\u00a0 So come, on a feast day of the Lord\u2019s ready and willing, joyful and happy to assent to a new life of faith, hope and love.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wherever two or three are gathered, there I am with you.<\/p>\n

There is a fullness to an empty church, right here and just now.\u00a0 I don\u2019t see you.\u00a0 I don\u2019t hear you.\u00a0 I don\u2019t touch or taste or sense you present.\u00a0 But I know you are out there, listening and praying and worshipping.\u00a0 But I can\u2019t see you.\u00a0 That is something like faith, faith in God, in love, in meaning.\u00a0 I don\u2019t see it or hear it or measure it our touch it or scent it.\u00a0 But I know it\u2019s there.\u00a0 So, alongside you, touched by the fullness of an empty church, I may just be able to go forward, as of old the apostles did too.<\/p>\n

To conclude, our colleague the Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman I have asked to give us our lectionary verses from Acts 2:<\/p>\n

42\u00a0<\/span><\/i>They devoted themselves to the apostles\u2019 teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

43\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. <\/span><\/i>44\u00a0<\/span><\/i>All who believed were together and had all things in common; <\/span><\/i>45\u00a0<\/span><\/i>they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds<\/span><\/i>\u00a0to all, as any had need. <\/span><\/i>46\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home<\/span><\/i>\u00a0and ate their food with glad and generous<\/span><\/i>\u00a0hearts, <\/span><\/i>47\u00a0<\/span><\/i>praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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

Click here to hear the full service 1 Peter 2:19-25 John 10:1-10 Acts 2:42-43 Click here to hear just the sermon To begin, our colleague the Rev. Dr. Karen Coleman I have asked to give us a few verses from Robert Frost: What now is inland shall be ocean isle, Then eddies playing round a […]<\/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\/2760"}],"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=2760"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2912,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2760\/revisions\/2912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}