{"id":3126,"date":"2021-04-04T11:00:57","date_gmt":"2021-04-04T15:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3126"},"modified":"2021-04-03T10:18:01","modified_gmt":"2021-04-03T14:18:01","slug":"love-and-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2021\/04\/04\/love-and-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Love and Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

John 20: 1-18<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

Truth and Love are resurrection words.\u00a0 Synonyms of resurrection.<\/p>\n

Charles Wesley sang them:\u00a0 Unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety, learning and holiness combine, truth and love let all men see.<\/em><\/p>\n

Notice how our Boston University seal is here embedded:\u00a0 learning, virtue, piety.\u00a0 Truth and love, for all to see.<\/p>\n

The Lord is risen!\u00a0 He is risen indeed.<\/p>\n

This year, on the heels of twelve months of hibernation, loneliness, worry, and death, may we hear the Easter good news, at is clearest, at its fullest, at its\u2026simplest.<\/p>\n

Truth and Love are resurrection words.\u00a0 Synonyms of resurrection.<\/p>\n

More so:\u00a0 may we, may you, decide, from this day forward, to walk in resurrection light, to look for truth and to lean toward love.\u00a0\u00a0 The Easter sermon comes with a stark, personal call to you, a challenge for you, to walk in the light as He is in the light, to walk in truth and love.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

I share with you a sentence of my own.\u00a0 The wording is my own, though of course as with all and all, it draws on centuries and Scripture and others.<\/p>\n

Here it is:\u00a0 There is a self-correcting spirit of truth loose in the universe.\u00a0 There is a self-correcting spirit of truth loose in the universe.<\/em><\/p>\n

This truth, this spirit of truth, is the power of resurrection in daily life.\u00a0 Truth is what Easter means.<\/p>\n

In 1995 we were sent to serve a wonderful church, in a new city, one more corporate and less academic, more formal and less familiar, richer but less communal than our own home city.\u00a0 What a privilege.\u00a0 What a privilege it is to be in ministry, in any case, to be present as the baby is born, to be present as the vows are taken, to be present as the losses and gains and defeats and victories of life cascade, to be present in the final hours and at the grave, reciting, Jesus said I am the resurrection and the life.<\/em><\/p>\n

That Christmas one of the nine Sunday school classes in that church, each with up to 150 members, hosted a downtown black-tie Christmas party, in the lights and splendor of that then muscular urban setting, to hale the season, but also formally to welcome the new minister and his wife.\u00a0 What an honor.\u00a0 An older couple, a retired guidance counselor and lovely wife, came, as you would, to provide the newcomers a ride.\u00a0 It was a little grace inside in their case of a lifetime of grace.\u00a0 Some years later, as we saw our own children through high school, and drawing on forty years of experience, he said, speaking of teenagers, Yes, they will take you for a ride.<\/em>\u00a0 It would be good to have another lifetime to try to become as true and loving a couple as were David and Joan Closson.\u00a0\u00a0 After the dinner and dancing and festivities, we were again driven back, deposited at home, by grace.<\/p>\n

This winter, January 20, 2021, I had a note from their daughter.\u00a0 The apple and the tree, as so often, not being very far apart.\u00a0 Here is what she wrote:<\/p>\n

Hi Dr. Hill. My name is Judy Cama. My parents were Dave and Joan Closson, faithful members of Asbury for so many years.\u00a0\u00a0I even knew your wife when she was the music director at Onondaga Valley Presbyterian Church, as I lived in Syracuse for 8 years and we were members there.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

I remember attending church services with my parents at Asbury during your Village Green series, I believe you called it. One sermon really resonated with me when you talked about the \u201cself-correcting power of truth loose in the universe.\u201d I really believe that and I remember taking copious notes in church that day.\u00a0\u00a0Since then I have related those words to many instances in my life and life in general and have shared the quote with many others.\u00a0\u00a0I have always wanted to let you know how impactful your words were.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today as I watched Joe Biden become our new president your words resonated the loudest and prompted this email.\u00a0\u00a0I just wanted you to know that that particular sermon had tremendous staying power and I thank you for it.\u00a0\u00a0I hope you and your family members are doing well.”<\/em><\/p>\n

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.\u00a0 Before we get too far down the road into Eastertide and summer, and too tripped up in detail and complexity and variety and vagary, let us announce and trust the Easter gospel. Before we get too wrapped up in the petty narcissism of small religious differences, and the petty narcissisms of acute philosophical details, let us announce and trust the Easter gospel.\u00a0 Truth is stronger than death.\u00a0\u00a0 Now most of the people and family who modeled us the gospel are dead, including Dave and Joan and ten thousand others.\u00a0 But their truth, the truth in which they lived, and more so still the truth in which and for which they died lives on.\u00a0 Soon you and I will also be dead, resting in God\u2019s presence.\u00a0 That is the point, the existential reminder of Holy Week, as if we needed it in April of 2021.\u00a0 But truth lives on.<\/p>\n

I am a perennialist.\u00a0 That means that I see and hear truth across many differences including and especially religious ones.\u00a0 That means I am more inclined to unity than sometimes seems popular today, more inclined to mutuality than sometimes seems politic today, more inclined to liberality than sometimes seems prevalent today, more inclined to judge that education is about what is old rather than what is new than sometimes makes the grade today, more inclined to that old perennialist creed:\u00a0 new occasions teach new duties, times makes ancient good uncouth, one must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here is a hard-edged question for you.\u00a0 Will you live in truth?\u00a0 Will you?<\/p>\n

On the third day he rose again.<\/em>\u00a0 Truth is the resurrection of the dead.<\/p>\n

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

I share with you another sentence of my own.\u00a0 As with first, you have heard me say it before.\u00a0 The wording is my own, though of course as with all and all, it draws on centuries and Scripture and others.<\/p>\n

Here it is:\u00a0 There is a self-revealing presence of love loose in the universe.\u00a0 There is a self-revealing presence of love loose in the universe.<\/em><\/p>\n

This love, this spirit of love, is the power of resurrection in daily life.\u00a0 Love is what Easter means.<\/p>\n

In 1981 we were sent and posted to two little churches on the Canadian border.\u00a0 Our daughter Emily at age 3 could see the St. Lawrence river, down north in Canada, from her bedroom window.\u00a0 We were sent to serve two rural churches, graced by gracious, loving women and men, who had less education and more wisdom, less money and more sense, than all the other churches combined.\u00a0 This appointment allowed the initiation, and later the completion, of a PhD in Montreal.\u00a0 What a privilege.\u00a0 What a privilege it is to be in ministry, in any case, to be present as the baby is born, to be present as the vows are taken, to be present as the losses and gains and defeats and victories of life cascade, to be present in the final hours and at the grave, reciting,\u00a0 Jesus said I am the resurrection and the life.<\/em><\/p>\n

A few days earlier, soon to be on the way north to that border town, and now with two little children under two, and a rented moving van soon to be packed, I drove from Ithaca to Syracuse to be interviewed for ordination.\u00a0 I stood outside a classroom at the University, wherein 300 or so clergy from the area were gathered, awaiting my time of questioning.\u00a0 Outside was the SU quadrangle where we had relaxed as high school students in the neighborhood some years earlier, and outside too were the steps of Hendricks Chapel where I would be ordained later that spring, if the clergy approved.\u00a0 In the church, you are who you ordain.\u00a0 In the faculty, you are who you tenure.\u00a0 In the University, you are what you endow (more on that at another time).\u00a0 So, yes, I was nervous, my stipend, housing, education and future depending on the next hour or so.<\/p>\n

Many of the clergy I knew, having been the life guard at their summer camp the years before.\u00a0 They were bright, committed, adventurous, and a bit wild.\u00a0 On the whole, as a group, they were, their example was, what commended the ministry to me.\u00a0 They were alive in ways that others were not.\u00a0 Others of the clergy I knew through family and upbringing.\u00a0 These were both mixed blessings, as some did not appreciate the life guard\u2019s whistle and some did not appreciate the candidate\u2019s family.\u00a0 So, I was on edge.\u00a0 After a while I also was alone, at which point an older fellow, perhaps a professor, shorter, bearded and bespectacled, wearing jeans and sandals, came over to me.\u00a0 He asked who I was.\u00a0 He inquired about my presence.\u00a0 He sensed and asked after my anxiety.\u00a0 He nodded and smiled.\u00a0 Then\u2014I realized then he was going into the meeting\u2014he took my shoulder and said, Bob, you are going to do fine.\u00a0 I just know you will.\u00a0 And you have my vote for sure.\u00a0 <\/em>A clean breeze blew through me.\u00a0 As he departed, I thought belatedly to ask, What is your name?<\/em>\u00a0 He replied, Smith.\u00a0 Huston Smith.\u00a0 <\/em>Oh my.\u00a0 Oh\u2026 my goodness!\u00a0 HUSTON SMITH! But I read your book, <\/em>THE RELIGIONS OF MAN, I fumblingly responded.\u00a0 He smiled, and off he went, to join his fellow clergy.<\/p>\n

I am perennialist.\u00a0 And I am personalist, too.\u00a0 That means that I see and hear the divine in the human person, in accord with a fine, long tradition at Boston University.\u00a0 While the philosophical underpinnings of that tradition have long been withered, the heart of the matter, the heart of personal experience of love remains, as in that perennialist professor\u2019s kindness, overlooking a college campus, the friendly help of Huston Smith.\u00a0 We are a generation of women and men who have not yet fully heard the difference between knowing about someone and knowing someone.\u00a0 You can know about somebody by zoom.\u00a0 But to know somebody takes presence, takes voice, takes body, takes talk, takes personhood, take\u2026love.\u00a0 Love is stronger than death. We are long way down the trail of I and It,<\/em> and only at the trailhead of I and Thou<\/em>.\u00a0 So, in one sense, I am still a personalist, a bit more inclined to conversation than is currently fashionable, to visitation than is currently ministerial, to presence than is currently possible.<\/p>\n

Here is a hard-edged question for you.\u00a0 Will you live in love, lean toward love?\u00a0 Will you?<\/p>\n

On the third day he rose again.<\/em>\u00a0 Love is the resurrection of the dead.<\/p>\n

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

Truth and Love are resurrection words.\u00a0 Synonyms of resurrection.<\/p>\n

Charles Wesley sang them:\u00a0 Unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety, learning and holiness combine, truth and love let all men see.<\/em><\/p>\n

Notice how our Boston University seal is here embedded:\u00a0 learning, virtue, piety.<\/p>\n

Truth and love, for all to see.<\/p>\n

The Lord is risen!\u00a0 He is risen indeed.<\/p>\n

This year, on the heels of twelve months of death, hibernation, loneliness and worry, may we hear the Easter good news, at is clearest, at its fullest, at its\u2026simplest.<\/p>\n

Truth and Love are resurrection words.\u00a0 Synonyms of resurrection.<\/p>\n

More so:\u00a0 may we, may you, decide, from this day forward, to walk in resurrection light, to look for truth and to lean toward love.\u00a0\u00a0 The Easter sermon comes with a stark, personal call to you, a challenge for you, to walk in the light as He is in the light, to walk in truth and love.<\/em><\/p>\n

In a moment we will hear again the ancient liturgy for eucharist.\u00a0 We are not together to receive together the bread and cup.\u00a0 But we are together in relationship, by memory, in hope, through prayer.\u00a0 And with a little imagination, with eyes closed and hearts open, we might allow the familiar, ancient prayers of communion, to bring us into communion.<\/p>\n

So, travel with a little imagination\u2026Imagine Eucharist at Marsh Chapel.\u00a0 Stand to sing\u2026 Pause to reflect\u2026 Step out into the aisle\u2026 Look at and look past Abraham Lincoln and Francis Willard\u2026Receive cup and bread, bread and cup\u2026 Kneel at the altar to pray\u2026 Stand in communion with the communion of saints\u2026Here is the bread and cup of friendship\u2026Imagine, if you are willing, a baptism, a wedding, a funeral, say right here, and a congregation reciting together a creed, a psalm, a hymn, a poem.\u00a0 Imagine, if you are willing, a congregation currently in diaspora, but just now, by the word spoken, a gathered and thus addressable community, you and I and all together.<\/p>\n

Sursum Corda!\u00a0 Lift up your hearts\u2026<\/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 20: 1-18 Click here to hear just the sermon Preface Truth and Love are resurrection words.\u00a0 Synonyms of resurrection. Charles Wesley sang them:\u00a0 Unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety, learning and holiness combine, truth and love let all men see. Notice how our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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\/3126"}],"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=3126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3127,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3126\/revisions\/3127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}