{"id":2818,"date":"2020-08-30T11:00:06","date_gmt":"2020-08-30T16:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=2818"},"modified":"2021-02-26T09:55:44","modified_gmt":"2021-02-26T14:55:44","slug":"2818","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2020\/08\/30\/2818\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Matthew\u00a016:21-28<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Change can happen.\u00a0 Real change, for the good, in real time, can come.\u00a0 There is in the human heart, sometimes dormant but always present, the capacity to turn around, to repent, to move again forward, to change.\u00a0 Change can come.\u00a0 Jesus Christ and Him Crucified is at the mysterious heart of All, of Life, and of Change.\u00a0 Jesus the Son of God, the Word of God, the Lamb of God, the Presence of God, can bring change.\u00a0 To you.\u00a0 Simon Peter found his life immeasurably altered by a word or two, fitly spoken.\u00a0 He found a liberal heart. You can too.\u00a0 He found a liberal heart.\u00a0 We can too.\u00a0 He found his own heart opened, and forever remade, by the liberality, grace, freedom, generosity and love of God.\u00a0 We can too.\u00a0 Peter following this change still struggled to appreciate and bring apperception to the Person of Jesus, the Presence of Jesus, the Power of Jesus.\u00a0 But the change was permanent.\u00a0 He was given a liberal heart, a heart of wonder, a heart of vulnerability, a heart of self-abandon.\u00a0 God is calling you to open your heart today to that kind of change, that scope of change, that force of change. Change can happen.\u00a0 Real change, for the good, in real time, can come.\u00a0 There is in the human heart, sometimes dormant but always present, the capacity to turn around, to repent, to move again forward, to change.\u00a0 Change can come.\u00a0 Let us pray.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Gracious God, Holy and Just<\/em>
\nThou who art loves us into love and frees us into freedom<\/em><\/p>\n

In the mystery of thy presence we pause at the beginning<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>The beginning of a new season, of a new year, of a new adventure<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Thankful for the wise leadership of our University, and for the chance to learn and study together this autumn<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Now at Matriculation 2020 we offer our common prayer<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>We pray for safety, health, and wellness for all<\/em><\/p>\n

We pray to become good stewards of, protectors of, the safety, health and wellness of others, to be our sister\u2019s keeper, our brother\u2019s keeper<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>We pray for the disciplines of courage, and of responsibility, and of compassion that together we shall need, and that together we may find<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>We remember in prayer those who got us here, who raised us, taught us, loved us and supported us, and who yearn to see us through<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Bless Boston University this year we pray, bless those who study and those who teach, those who lead and those who support, bless each and every one of us we pray<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>With a joy in learning, a regard for virtue, and an inclination to piety\u2014a joy in human knowing, a regard for human doing, and an inclination to\u00a0 human being<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Grant us thy peace, grant us thy peace, grant us thy peace.\u00a0 AMEN.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Our Holy Scripture takes flight first this Lord\u2019s Day with Moses\u2019 fear.\u00a0 The prospect and the present potential for change bring a quaking in the boots, a quaking in the heart, a quaking in the very soul.\u00a0 You are right to worry and wonder a little bit about a Matriculation Sunday sermon, and whether it might bruise or cut a little bit.\u00a0 Alma Mater carries the sense of birth, of child birth.\u00a0 The mysterium tremendum<\/em>, all about us, the HOLY HOLY HOLY.\u00a0 And Moses, God love him, first, fears.\u00a0 For the Divine Presence brings change.\u00a0 Real change is real hard, but it comes in real time when real people really work at it: \u00a0\u00a0I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters.\u00a0 I know their sufferings and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.\u00a0 <\/em>But there is no theological exam here, nor any doctrinal requirement.\u00a0 There is just the chance for change.\u00a0 It is a very broad brush, a big canvass, a wide and wild painting, big enough for cameo appearances by fearful humans, including Moses, and you, and me.<\/p>\n

Our Holy Scripture sails and soars second this Lord\u2019s Day with Paul\u2019s wisdom.\u00a0 These verses you need to memorize. Romans 12: 9ff.\u00a0 They are neither heavily theological nor pointedly doctrinal.\u00a0 They are existential.\u00a0 They include. They involve many, and various, and different and all.\u00a0\u00a0 The church survived and grew for 150 years before it had a Bible, from 30ad to 170ad, at least a Bible of the sort we have today.\u00a0 It had the Law, Prophets and Writings, but no Gospels shared, no Letters agreed upon, no Apocalypses acclaimed.\u00a0 The Holy Scripture proved itself Holy, over time, in context, with debate, out of friction.\u00a0 The Godfather of the New Testament was a gnostic heretic named Marcion, in opposition to whose Bible of Luke and some Letters of Paul the Church instead accepted in addition the Hebrew Scripture, in addition the other Gospels, in addition the other Letters, and even an Apocalypse or two.\u00a0 Scripture came to life in and through life.\u00a0 So, you would not blithely disparage it.\u00a0 It comes with blisters and sores and cuts.\u00a0 Paul finds change in these 13 very simple, transparent advisements, let love be genuine\u2026practice hospitality.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Our Holy Scripture lands at Peter\u2019s feet, in the call to change, to a change of heart.\u00a0 What will it profit if one gains the whole world yet loses one\u2019s soul?<\/em>\u00a0 Somewhere between world and soul, Peter discovered a liberal heart.\u00a0 What Jesus said in 30ad is written down at last by Matthew in 85ad. There was a long line of listening, hearing, sharing, speaking, long before the writing. In part we know this because the two saying here are at odds, one offering to hearing and faith the paradox of saving and losing life: you only have, only possess, only truly hold what you have the power, grace, freedom and courage to give away. If you do not have it, you cannot give it. If you give it, truly, you then show you have owned it.\u00a0\u00a0 The sayings were written down together in Matthew 16 because they shared a tag word\u2014life. What can you give in exchange for your life? (Here the message is careful: hold on, flee false forfeit, prize life now you have it). Whoever saves his life will lose it, and whoever loses is life will find it. (Here the message is caring: splash around with generosity, give with no thought of return, take up the cross, follow). The two teachings are there to balance each other. Which one for which day on which way will you say? It\u2019s up to you. Over time, you will need them both. \u00a0Just this week, in the tragedies of Kenosha Wisconsin, Jacob Blake\u2019s mother was doing the same, balancing justice and order, the caring and the careful:\u00a0 On Tuesday, Mr. Blake\u2019s mother, Julia Jackson, had told reporters that she opposed the sort of destruction that had been left by protests spurred by her son\u2019s shooting.\u00a0 Ms. Jackson told reporters that she had been praying for the country to heal.\u201cI\u2019ve noticed a lot of damage,\u201d she said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t reflect my son or my family.\u201d (NYT, 8\/26\/20).\u00a0 <\/em>So, Listen. Tune your ear to God.\u00a0\u00a0 Life is short.\u00a0\u00a0 This high peak passage, Peter\u2019s Confession, rightly evokes the deep heart of faith, of gospel, of Scripture, of change.\u00a0 It is the keystone, the lynch pin, the center in some measure of the Gospel we preach, we teach, we depend upon in life, in death and in life beyond death. What will it profit if one gains the whole world yet loses one\u2019s soul?<\/em><\/p>\n

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

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In September of 1976, forty-four years ago, like many of our young colleagues on arrival this week for Matriculation, I had found my way to another great city\u2014New York, along another great river\u2014the Hudson, to the center of another great urban university\u2014Columbia.\u00a0 A sermon that week in James Chapel at Union Seminary was brought uptown from the minister near Greenwich Village at Washington Square.\u00a0 It has stayed with me, because it was true to life, and true to change in life, and especially true to Moses and Paul and Matthew today.\u00a0 He commended wonder, vulnerability and self-mockery.\u00a0\u00a0 Change of a healthy spiritual sort is not primarily theological or doctrinal, though it might become so.\u00a0 It is existential.\u00a0 It is life coming alive.\u00a0 It is a heart become a liberal heart.\u00a0 Call it a liberal art heart.<\/p>\n

A liberal heart radiates wonder.\u00a0 \u00a0Borden Parker Bowne:\u00a0 Philosophy begins in wonder. <\/em>\u00a0G.K. Chesterton: the world does not lack for wonders, but only for a sense of wonder.<\/em>\u00a0 Charles Wesley:\u00a0 changed from glory into glory, \u2018til in heaven we take our place, \u2018til we cast our crowns before Thee, lost in wonder, love and praise.<\/em>\u00a0 Between Matriculation and Commencement there is chance for a change of heart, a chance for the emergence of a liberal heart, a heart open to wonder, charged with wonder, delighting in wonder.\u00a0 What we will lead us in part away from anxiety, depression, ennui, acedia, loneliness and despond is in part this sense of wonder.\u00a0\u00a0 Some ongoing connection with the natural world, a regular walk along the emerald necklace, say, may aid you here.\u00a0 Some chance to see the ocean, close at hand, on a regular basis, may help you here.\u00a0 Some occasional visits to the BU rooftop telescope may help you here.\u00a0 The joy of reading, the thrill of music, the mystery of friendship, all may bring a new rebirth of wonder.\u00a0 Even in a fallow, covid time:\u00a0 we watched one 11 year-old neighbor read 35 books this summer.<\/p>\n

A liberal heart owns vulnerability.\u00a0 Death makes us mortal.\u00a0 Facing death makes us human.\u00a0 We are utterly vulnerable creatures, from birth to the beyond.\u00a0 If nothing else, our current pandemic has indelibly placed such vulnerability before us.\u00a0 The question is whether we will own it.\u00a0 Whether we will wash and wash the hands, whether we will attain, maintain and retain social distance, whether we will take up and take on the hourly masking that will protect others vulnerability, and our own.\u00a0 Our physical vulnerability may also, just may bring a Petrine change to our proclivity to pretend invulnerability.\u00a0\u00a0 Somehow Peter came to see life from a different angle, not from the vantage point of power but from the perspective of love.\u00a0 How?\u00a0 Who can say?\u00a0 But in some measure it may well have been a readiness, a willingness to admit his vulnerability, even as he curses his Master\u2019s.\u00a0 We have a shared vulnerability that should shock us into commitments to communal protections.\u00a0 We will need shared, common behaviors, educational and health investments, global and national planning and spending to get prepared for the next virus, as have not at all been for this one.\u00a0 That will take the liberal heart to admit vulnerability.<\/p>\n

A liberal heart has a measure of self-abandon, of self-awareness, even of self-mockery.\u00a0 Take yourself lightly, so that you can fly, like the angels.\u00a0 Take yourself lightly, so that you can fly, like the angels. <\/em>\u00a0The church has loved Peter for so long because he is so human, so prone to mistake, and yet with such a courage to admit error.\u00a0 Most students will make a mistake or two in their college years.\u00a0 No one recommends it. All work against it.\u00a0 And yet.\u00a0 We learn, to measure we learn most, from our mistakes.\u00a0 When they come, if they do, take some time to learn from them.\u00a0 And then get up, dust yourself off, and be able to live with a little lightness, a little self-mockery.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Change can happen.\u00a0 Real change, for the good, in real time, can come.\u00a0 There is in the human heart, sometimes dormant but always present, the capacity to turn around, to repent, to move again forward, to change.\u00a0 Change can come.\u00a0 Jesus Christ and Him Crucified is at the mysterious heart of All, of Life, and of Change.\u00a0 Jesus the Son of God, the Word of God, the Lamb of God, the Presence of God, can bring change.\u00a0 To you.\u00a0 Simon Peter found his life immeasurably altered by a word or two, fitly spoken.\u00a0 He found a liberal heart. You can too.\u00a0 He found a liberal heart.\u00a0 We can too.\u00a0 He found his own heart opened, and forever remade, by the liberality, grace, freedom, generosity and love of God.\u00a0 We can too.\u00a0 Peter following this change still struggled to appreciate and bring apperception to the Person of Jesus, the Presence of Jesus, the Power of Jesus.\u00a0 But the change was permanent.\u00a0 He was given a liberal heart, a heart of wonder, a heart of vulnerability, a heart of self-abandon.\u00a0 God is calling you to open your heart today to that kind of change, that scope of change, that force of change. Change can happen.\u00a0 Real change, for the good, in real time, can come.\u00a0 There is in the human heart, sometimes dormant but always present, the capacity to turn around, to repent, to move again forward, to change.\u00a0 Change can come.\u00a0 Let us pray.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Gracious God Holy and Just<\/em><\/p>\n

Thou from whom we come and unto whom our spirits return<\/em><\/p>\n

Thou our dwelling place in all generations<\/em><\/p>\n

Rest upon us in the silence of this moment we pray<\/em><\/p>\n

Dry the tears of those moved to emotion in an hour of separation<\/em><\/p>\n

Illumine the skyline of opportunity that lies behind the rain clouds of worry<\/em><\/p>\n

Carry young hearts open to friendship into seas of friendship<\/em><\/p>\n

Help us hear for our time the voice of the Prophet<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly\u2019?<\/em><\/p>\n

Help us we earnestly pray to prefer justice to judgment<\/em><\/p>\n

Help us we earnestly pray to love the merciful more than the material<\/em><\/p>\n

Help us we earnestly pray to walk humbly not haughtily<\/em><\/p>\n

May the degrees we earn turn by degrees the wheel of life from judgment to justice<\/em><\/p>\n

May the courses we choose inspire in choices later a keenness of mind matched by a fullness of heart<\/em><\/p>\n

May the learning we gain afford us the gain of humility, the honest desire to give credit where credit is due, and not to tip the scale<\/em><\/p>\n

May the friendships we make in their turn make us less inclined to judgment and more enamored of justice<\/em><\/p>\n

May the regrets we acquire then incline us to mercy, as we have felt mercy, and not to material measurements alone<\/em><\/p>\n

May the adventures we bravely pursue give us the wisdom to know our condition, mortal, frail, prone to harm others, frail, mortal<\/em><\/p>\n

May all our acquisition of knowledge chase us toward justice, toward mercy, and toward humility<\/em><\/p>\n

And the wisdom to welcome, later, perhaps much later, the recognition that<\/em><\/p>\n

The larger the body of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of mystery\u00a0 that surrounds it<\/em><\/p>\n

The larger the body of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of mystery that surrounds it<\/em><\/p>\n

Amen.<\/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 Matthew\u00a016:21-28 Click here to hear just the sermon Change can happen.\u00a0 Real change, for the good, in real time, can come.\u00a0 There is in the human heart, sometimes dormant but always present, the capacity to turn around, to repent, to move again forward, to change.\u00a0 Change can come.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,52,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2818"}],"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=2818"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2821,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2818\/revisions\/2821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}