{"id":3143,"date":"2021-05-02T11:00:13","date_gmt":"2021-05-02T15:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3143"},"modified":"2021-05-02T10:54:08","modified_gmt":"2021-05-02T14:54:08","slug":"responding-to-easter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2021\/05\/02\/responding-to-easter\/","title":{"rendered":"Responding to Easter"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

John 15: 1-8<\/a><\/p>\n

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

May we respond to Easter in worship, in history and in life<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Responding in Worship<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Let us respond to Easter in worship.<\/p>\n

For here we are, just for a moment, in worship.\u00a0 Hearing the hymns of Easter.\u00a0 Hearing the Easter word.\u00a0 We yearn for the day, may it be soon, when we can sing with each other, greet each other face to face, offer each other a Methodist handshake.\u00a0 For now, we rely on daily prayer; we gather outside for morning prayer; we especially listen together, drawn in from around the globe, come Sunday at 11am.\u00a0 Right now.<\/p>\n

Others too have known the yearning of and for worship.\u00a0 The beloved community which gave birth to our Gospel today did so. For a moment, move by the imagination to a borrowed upper room, say in Ephesus, maybe in the year 90ad.\u00a0 Candles burn.\u00a0 A meal has been offered and received.\u00a0 There is among the fifty, say, there present, a gradual settling, a quiet.\u00a0 It may be a long quiet, starting from that late first century numinous circle and ending\u2014hic et nunc,<\/em> here, now.\u00a0\u00a0 Acute pain abides in this circle, the pain of the loss of a beloved leader, the pain of the loss of a venerable religious lineage, the pain of the loss of a prized eschatological hope\u2014love, faith, and hope, lost.\u00a0 Our global radio circle today bears too a shared pain, the global trauma of global pandemic.<\/p>\n

Yet as the circle settles, a prayer and reading and a further silence and a long hymn sung, THE ONE who has held them\u2026SPEAKS.\u00a0 Imagine the early church, small and struggling, in worship, in a borrowed upper room.\u00a0 In the silence and in the singing and in then the antiphonal, mournful and joyful, worship antiphon. \u00a0Were these Gospel words first sung?<\/p>\n

I am\u2026light, life, resurrection, way, truth, Good Shepherd, door, bread, water.<\/em><\/p>\n

I am\u2026the true vine.\u00a0You shall know\u2026\u2019the truth\u2019.\u00a0 That they may know Thee the only \u2018true\u2019 God.<\/em><\/p>\n

Every heart has secret sorrows, especially now, by Covid time.\u00a0 Every land has cavernous grief, especially now, by Covid time.\u00a0 Back then, for the antiphonal, ancient singers of our scripture, the hurts were dislocation, disappointment and departure.\u00a0 And they named them.\u00a0 Can you name yours?\u00a0 Have you named your hurt?<\/p>\n

Hear the Easter antiphon: \u2018Abide in me\u2026As I abide in you\u2019.\u00a0 Stay.\u00a0Remain.\u00a0 Settle.\u00a0 Dig in.\u00a0Locate.\u00a0 Vines take a long time to grow.\u00a0 But so?<\/p>\n

John\u2019s portrait of Jesus arose from his constant awareness, which he shared with members of his community, that they were living in the presence of the Glorified One.\u00a0 So dazzling was this glory, (repeat) that any memory of a less-than-glorious Christ was altogether eclipsed. (J. Ashton)<\/em> (The Gospel of John and Christian Origins). <\/em><\/p>\n

With the ancient beloved community, can you lift a muted alleluia?\u00a0 Every hymn, for all its joy, carries a guttural memory of acute hurt.\u00a0 In worship, today, can you pray with joy without forgetting the brokenness out of which that alleluia comes? \u00a0Let Charles Wesley, let Charles Tindley, let the poor of your own ancestral family\u2019s older past guide you.<\/p>\n

Let us respond to Easter in worship.<\/p>\n

Responding in History<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Let us respond to Easter in history.<\/p>\n

What about our place in history, our communal responsibility in real time?\u00a0 A surface glide across Holy Scripture will not allow, cannot provide gospel insight.\u00a0 You want to sift the Scriptures.\u00a0 You want to know them inside and out, upside and down, through and through and through, and then, it may be, by happenstance or grace or the clumsy luck of a very human preacher, you may hear a steadying, saving word.\u00a0 Look back an Easter month. Not activism alone, but engagement matters most in history.<\/p>\n

Through this Easter season, Easter tide, you have perhaps noticed, noted, or winced to hear the letter of John, 1 John, amending, redacting, muting and amplifying the gospel of John.\u00a0 You are keen listeners, practiced and adroit, so you will have wondered a bit about this.\u00a0Why does 1 John nip at the heels of John?<\/p>\n

The two \u2018books\u2019, John and 1 John, were written by different authors, in different decades, in different circumstances, with different motives.\u00a0 The Gospel acclaims Spirit.\u00a0 The Letter adds in work, ethics, morals, community, tradition, leadership and judgment from on high, rather than judgment by belief and by believer.\u00a0 We may just have, it is important to say, the Gospel as part of the New Testament, with all its radicality, due to its brother named letter, vouching as it were for the sanity of the Gospel.\u00a0 The letter, like James Morrison Witherby George Dupree, takes good care of its Gospel mother, the very cat\u2019s mother, you see.<\/p>\n

On April 11, the Gospel in chapter 20 revealed the Spirit, elsewhere called Paraclete or Advocate, come upon us, received and with it received the forgiveness of sins.\u00a0 But at the heels, nipping, comes along 1 John in chapter 2, which names the Paraclete or Advocate not as Spirit but as Jesus Christ\u2014the righteous\u2014whose commandments all are to keep, on pain of disobedience become lying, and truth taken flight.\u00a0 Both read on the same Sunday, within minutes of each other, even as they face each other, in loving disagreement.<\/p>\n

On April 18, the Gospel Alleluia still lingering with the Lord and God risen, the letter in Chapter 3, on the qui vive<\/em> and on the attack, spells out again in no uncertain terms that the righteous do the right, handsome is as handsome does. Both read on the same Sunday, within minutes of each other, even as they face each other in loving disagreement.<\/p>\n

On April 25, the Gospel in chapter 10 acclaimed the pastoral image of the Good Shepherd, whose one glorification on the cross is meant to obliterate the need of any other such, even as the Letter, worried, worried out in chapter 3, a long and sorry recollection of Cain\u2014Abel\u2019s one-time brother\u2014and the demands of love from one who laid down his life, and with whom and for whom we are then meant to do something of the same.\u00a0 \u2018Let us not love in word and speech but in deed and in truth\u2019, says 1 John 3, when the whole of the Gospel says simply \u2018love\u2019, says that words outlast deeds, and that speech, that of the glorious Risen, ever routs works. Both read on the same Sunday, within minutes of each other, even as they face each other in loving disagreement.<\/p>\n

And now today, May 2, when and where our one Great Gospel, the Spiritual Gospel, counsels \u2018abide\u2019 and \u2018remain\u2019 in chapter 15, just here the letter of 1 John in chapter 4, fearing antinomial abandon, appends to his own most beautiful love poem, the charge again of lying, of lack of love of brother, of schism that surely created this letter, 1 John, as the spiritualists and the traditionalists, the Gnostics and the ethicists, parted company, one toward the free land of Montanus and Marcion, the other toward Rome and the emerging church, victorious, against which the Gospel was born, bred, written and preached. Both read on the same Sunday, within minutes of each other, even as they face each other in loving disagreement.<\/p>\n

Of course, both are right.\u00a0 Or we would not still need or read them, let alone together.\u00a0 But you are right, too, to feel some neck pain, some whiplash, as Gospel soars and Letter deflates.\u00a0 It is as if the Song of Solomon were being sung by Obadiah.<\/p>\n

The blessed Scripture bears incontrovertible, conflicted witness.\u00a0 Easter is a conflicted, and so a muted, Alleluia, and was so already 20 centuries ago, as the resurrection cross of Jesus was raised up, in mournful joy, in a real joy made real by its honesty about sorrow.\u00a0 Real joy becomes real by its honesty about sorrow. For us to move out of Covid time and on into joy, we shall need honesty about what we have lost.\u00a0 And whom.<\/em> (repeat). The Scripture, read hard and deep, can help us.\u00a0 For history is endless contention and intractable difference, including religious history, perhaps especially including religious history.\u00a0 To respond to Easter in history, for you, will mean bearing the cross of endless contention and intractable difference, the daily labor of history and community, where \u2018the best of intentions run afoul of circumstance or chance\u2019.<\/p>\n

And more: there may well come a discreet time, for you, as a person of faith, to say something or do something, a time when some somewhat risky and uncomfortable mode of social involvement, or existential engagement, will beckon you.<\/p>\n

Let us respond to Easter in history.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Let us respond to Easter in life.<\/p>\n

The Gospel prepares us for the lifelong work of responding to Easter.\u00a0 The Gospel tells about resurrection largely on the basis of experience. \u00a0Experience and troubles, troubles that provoked lasting question.<\/p>\n

The Gospels and Letters respond in life to Easter, in a muted alleluia, in a sober acclamation.<\/p>\n

An Empty Tomb<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The church is alive they acclaim.<\/p>\n

Especially when we come to celebrate the life of a dear sister or brother in faith, we have a powerful experience of the church alive across the river of death. The church is the body of Christ. We affirm a bodily, physical resurrection, tasted for a time in church. I give you Emily Dickinson:<\/p>\n

This World is not Conclusion.
\nA Species stands beyond—
\nInvisible as music\u2014 <\/em>
\n<\/em>But positive, as Sound— <\/em>
\n<\/em>It beckons and it baffles\u2014 <\/em>
\n<\/em>Philosophy\u2014don\u2019t know\u2014 <\/em>
\n<\/em>And through a Riddle, at the last\u2014 <\/em>
\n<\/em>Sagacity must go (E Dickinson)<\/em><\/p>\n

Or, as one of our wise beyond years undergraduates said this spring, \u2018I will be careful with any kind of hope that I have\u2019.<\/p>\n

A Trumpet Blast<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The future is open they acclaim.<\/p>\n

There is, that is, a spiritual resurrection in your future.<\/p>\n

Once, we met a psychiatrist who said his work was to offer the possibility that stories might have a different ending. You know that story of your life at its worst, the one that seems to have the same ending no matter how you live and how you tell it? That story can have a different ending, another conclusion. It can.<\/p>\n

Your repeated narrative of inherited addiction can be overcome in sobriety.<\/p>\n

Your national adolescence in forgetting the limits of power can be overcome in a more collegial, humbler, more mature foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Your usurpation can give way to response. Your isolation can give way to community. Your imperialism can give way to justice. We can learn lessons from our experience.<\/p>\n

Your religious amnesia about what is fun in faith\u2014giving and inviting\u2014can be lifted like a fog at dawn, and you can sing out your soul.<\/p>\n

Things can, and will in Christ, be better for you and for us. That repeated tale of employment and unemployment, love and loss, relationship and rejection can change. The cycle can be broken, when what is in place is invaded by what is taking place.<\/p>\n

An Existential Awakening<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Love is real they acclaim. In this way, at least for once, the letter surpasses the Gospel, the child outdoes the parent:<\/p>\n

7\u00a0<\/sup><\/em>Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8\u00a0<\/sup>Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9\u00a0<\/sup>God\u2019s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10\u00a0<\/sup>In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11\u00a0<\/sup>Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12\u00a0<\/sup>No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.<\/em><\/p>\n

Who would or could or should say more?<\/p>\n

Let us respond to Easter in life.<\/p>\n

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

The church is alive. The future is open. Love fills the heart. Foretastes of heaven. If the heavenly banquet has this menu, perhaps we need over these few earthly years to acquire a certain taste for certain things, faith and hope and love.<\/p>\n

May we respond to Easter in worship, in history, and in life?\u00a0 It is an Easter call to the altar.\u00a0 It is your Easter altar call.<\/p>\n

So, dear friends, then 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, 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 and heard, a gathered and thus addressable community, you and I and all together, able to respond to Easter.<\/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 15: 1-8 Click here to hear just the sermon May we respond to Easter in worship, in history and in life Responding in Worship Let us respond to Easter in worship. For here we are, just for a moment, in worship.\u00a0 Hearing the hymns of Easter.\u00a0 Hearing […]<\/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\/3143"}],"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=3143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3144,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3143\/revisions\/3144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}