{"id":3205,"date":"2021-08-29T11:00:38","date_gmt":"2021-08-29T15:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3205"},"modified":"2021-08-31T16:53:01","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T20:53:01","slug":"beginning-a-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2021\/08\/29\/beginning-a-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Beginning A Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Mark 7:1<\/span>\u2013<\/span>8<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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

We in worship today at Marsh Chapel, Matriculation Sunday, August 29, anno domini 2021, have the privilege of worshipping alongside a new class of first year students, the class of 2025.\u00a0 We bow and we tip our invisible hats to them.\u00a0 For they are beginning a conversation.\u00a0 It matters how a conversation begins.\u00a0 We with the women and men of 2025 also are beginning a conversation, an\u2026 autumn \u2026postcovid \u2026 thoughnotyetreallypostcovid \u2026s\u00e9ance\u2026 tertulia\u2026 conversation.<\/em><\/p>\n

How shall we begin?<\/p>\n

*Beginning a Conversation: Includes Questions<\/em><\/p>\n

Two friends have moved north of the border, to teach and work in Canada.\u00a0 As they cross back and forth, crossing the border, they will receive and respond to questions, questions at the border (4):\u00a0 What is your name? Where are you from?\u00a0 Where are you headed?\u00a0 Do you have anything to declare?\u00a0 The border between strangers headed toward friendship in the freshman year involves just those questions, with which a conversation begins: What is your name? Where are you from?\u00a0 Where are you headed?\u00a0 Do you have anything to declare?\u00a0 Let us learn in these years the power of questions, and the prudence of listening to the answers.\u00a0 As the Letter of James reminds us: let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God<\/em><\/p>\n

*Beginning a Conversation:\u00a0 Means to Read<\/em><\/p>\n

The advantage of an education is the freedom not to dwell only in the 21st<\/sup> century, or only on shores of your own home lake, or only in the dreams with which you arrive, that may need editing, or only in America, Boston or even this hallowed university.\u00a0 You begin here again a conversation with antiquity and with novelty.\u00a0 Is education about what is old or what is new?\u00a0\u00a0 Well, however you land on that one, the conversation opens with reading.\u00a0 Here is a matriculation account. \u00a0One young man who would later become a significant African American leader went due north to Depauw, a small Methodist school in Indiana, led by various BU graduates.\u00a0 His dad, mom, and younger siblings drove him up and dropped him off there in Greencastle, \u201cup south\u201d, Martin King might have said, from their home in Louisiana.\u00a0 Weeping, his father said, \u201cSon, we are not coming back until four years from now.\u00a0 We just can\u2019t do it.\u00a0 You are here where your future opens.\u00a0 At graduation we will be here, sitting in the front row.\u00a0 This is your time.\u00a0 I have one word of advice.\u00a0 Read.\u00a0 When others are playing, you read.\u00a0 When others are sleeping, you read.\u00a0 When others are drinking, you read.\u00a0 When others are partying, you read.\u00a0 When others are wasting precious time and encouraging you to do the same, you read.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 He did.\u00a0 Read, that is.<\/p>\n

Speaking of Presidents, Boston University\u2019s third President, Lemuel Merlin, left Boston for Greencastle Indiana, to become the President of Depauw, nearly 100 years ago.\u00a0 All of our Presidents\u2014Warren, Huntington, Merlin, Marsh, Case, Christ-Janer, Silber, Westling, Chobanian, and Brown\u2014would salute this Augustinian slogan, tole lege, <\/em>\u2018take and read\u2019.<\/p>\n

For like our gospel lesson today, they and this University, have been interested in what makes a person human, in what makes a human be human, in what lies not outside, but inside, not in measurement but in meaning, not in the visible but in the soulful, not in making a living, only, but in making a life, fully. \u00a0Matters of the heart matter, as the Gospel warns today: \u00a0This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.<\/em><\/p>\n

*Beginning a Conversation:\u00a0 Is about Gaining an awareness of Soul<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Your challenge in these fours years is not only to earn a BA.\u00a0 Your challenge is to do so without losing your soul, to do so while gaining soul.\u00a0 Your challenge is to do so gaining your soul, tending to the inside, walking in the light, becoming your own best self, finding the place where your heart, \u2018the inside\u2019 comes alive, uniting the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety, and uniting vocation with avocation, \u2018as two eyes make one in sight\u2019.\u00a0 So, Frost:<\/p>\n

Yield who will to their separation<\/em><\/p>\n

My object in living is to unite<\/em><\/p>\n

My vocation with my avocation<\/em><\/p>\n

As my two eyes make one in sight<\/em><\/p>\n

Only where love and need are one<\/em><\/p>\n

And the work is play for mortal stakes<\/em><\/p>\n

Is the deed ever really done<\/em><\/p>\n

For heaven and the future\u2019s sakes.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the New Testament, each Synoptic passage is like a choral piece, including four voices.\u00a0 There is the soprano voice of Jesus of Nazareth, embedded somewhere in the full harmonic mix.\u00a0 In Mark 7, Jesus conflicts with the Pharisaic attention to cleanliness.\u00a0 There is the alto voice of the primitive church, arguably always the most important of the four voices, that which carries the forming of the passage in the needs of the community.\u00a0 Here the community is reminded about the priority of the \u2018inside\u2019.\u00a0 The tenor line is that of the evangelist, St. Mark here, marking his own appearance in the record.\u00a0\u00a0 The baritone is borne by later interpretation, beginning soon with Irenaeus, Against Heresies:<\/em>\u00a0 \u201cWhat doctor, when wishing to cure a sick man, would act in accordance with the desires of the patient, and not in accordance with the requirements of medicine?\u201d (in Richardson, ECF, 377) If our church music carried only one line, we might be tempted to interpret our Scripture with only one voice, and miss the SATB harmonies therein, to our detriment.\u00a0 Hence not only the beauty but the spiritual, soulful work of choral music heals, hymns and choir and organ and all.\u00a0 As the Song of Songs sings: the time of singing has come<\/em>.\u00a0 And as the psalm directs: come into God\u2019s presence with singing.<\/em><\/p>\n

*Beginning a Conversation:\u00a0 Means to Face Mortality<\/em><\/p>\n

Death makes us mortal.\u00a0 Facing death makes us human.\u00a0 Speaking of reading, pick up sometime My Name is Asher Lev.<\/em>\u00a0 As a boy walking with his dad\u2014one thinks of Martin Buber imploring us in living to eschew relations that are \u2018I and It\u2019 and to celebrate those that are \u2018I and Thou\u2019\u2014Asher at a young age wonders about a fallen bird.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it dead, Papa?\u201d\u00a0 I was six and could not bring myself to look at it.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYes\u201d, I heard him say in a sad and distant way.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did it die?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cEverything that lives must die\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cEverything?\u201d
\n\u201cYes\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou, too, Papa? And Mama?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYes\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd me?
\n\u201cYes.\u201d, he said.\u00a0 But then he added in Yiddish, \u201cBut may it be only after you live a long and happy life, my Asher.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t grasp it.\u00a0 I forced myself to look at the bird.\u00a0 Everything alive would one day be as still as that bird?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy\u201d, I asked.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the way the Ribbono Shel Olom made this world, Asher.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSo life would be precious, Asher.\u00a0 Something that is yours forever is never precious.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Death makes us mortal.\u00a0 Facing death makes us human.<\/p>\n

*Beginning a Conversation: Spies Pied Beauty<\/em><\/p>\n

Not only the true and the good, not only learning and virtue, not only the true and the good, but beauty, beauty, beauty opens a conversation, learning and virtue and piety.\u00a0 Our cousin of blessed memory\u2019s favorite poem, Gerard Manley Hopkins:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
GLORY be to God for dappled things\u2014<\/em><\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;<\/em><\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;<\/em><\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches\u2019 wings;<\/em><\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Landscape plotted and pieced\u2014fold, fallow, and plough;<\/em><\/td>\n
\n<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
And \u00e1ll tr\u00e1des, their gear and tackle and trim.<\/em><\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u00a0<\/em><\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
All things counter, original, spare, strange;<\/em><\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)<\/em><\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;<\/em><\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:<\/em><\/td>\n\u00a0<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Praise him.<\/em><\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

*<\/em>Beginning a Conversation: Recognizes Virtue, too, as does the BU motto<\/em><\/p>\n

Speaking of virtue, wrote David Brooks a bit ago: \u201cRecently I\u2019ve been thinking about the difference between the resume virtues and the eulogy virtues.\u00a0 The resume virtues are the ones you list on your resume, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success.\u00a0 The eulogy virtues are deeper.\u00a0 They\u2019re the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being\u2014whether you are kind, brave, honest, or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed (p. xi).\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

As he would agree, not all things end well.\u00a0 Sometimes things end well, as Ecclesiastes hoped: Better is the end of a thing than its beginning; the patient in spirit are better than the proud in spirit.\u00a0 <\/em>Yet sometimes, sometimes things end badly.\u00a0 We are thinking about this, this fortnight, about Afghanistan, and praying for as much safety, as much peace, as much protection, as much survival, as much healing as possible.\u00a0 But also, we recognize an ending, when we see one.\u00a0 And sometimes things end badly.\u00a0 That\u2019s why they end.<\/em>\u00a0 Sometimes in life, in work, in relationship, in commerce, in academia, in government, in politics, things end badly.\u00a0 The very fact that they end badly is proof positive that they badly needed to end.\u00a0 They end badly because they badly needed to end.<\/p>\n

*Beginning a Conversation:\u00a0 Opens Scripture<\/em><\/p>\n

To conclude\u2014ah, that blessed sound in a sermon or lecture\u2026in conclusion, as I take my seat, and finally\u2026<\/em>It is Sunday.\u00a0 We are in Marsh Chapel.\u00a0 Part of the conversation we begin here, alongside the class of 2025, starts by opening the Holy Scripture, at least every seven days if not more often.\u00a0 Augustine of Hippo did so in the late fourth century, and his heart changed, his life changed, his spirit changed, he began a truly and fully new conversation, as he remembered in his Confessions:<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when suddenly I heard the voice of a boy or a girl I know not which\u2013coming from the neighboring house, chanting over and over again, \u201cPick it up, read it; pick it up, read it.\u201d [\u201dtole lege, tole lege\u201d] Immediately I ceased weeping and began most earnestly to think whether it was usual for children in some kind of game to sing such a song, but I could not remember ever having heard the like. So, damming the torrent of my tears, I got to my feet, for I could not but think that this was a divine command to open the Bible and read the first passage I should light upon. For I had heard how Anthony, accidentally coming into church while the gospel was being read, received the admonition as if what was read had been addressed to him: \u201cGo and sell what you have and give it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me.\u201d By such an oracle he was forthwith converted to thee.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So, I quickly returned to the bench where Alypius was sitting, for there I had put down the apostle\u2019s book when I had left there. I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell: \u201cNot in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.\u201d I wanted to read no further, nor did I need to. For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Hear the Matriculation Gospel!\u00a0 Beginning a new conversation includes questions, means to read, gains soul, faces mortality, spies beauty, recognizes virtue, and opens Scripture.<\/p>\n

    Class of 2025:\u00a0 we are here with you because we are here for you (repeat).\u00a0 We have come from many regions of the world and many ranges of your past experience in order to be present here, to share your presence, and our presence with you.\u00a0 Here with you, we are here for you.<\/p>\n

    May you sense daily the warm breeze, the sunlit horizon, the abiding grace of God\u2019s Presence God\u2019s love abides in us and is made whole in us, through conversations well begun\u2014well begun is half done–these footprints, these touches of grace.<\/p>\n

    Boston University, proud with mission sure<\/em><\/p>\n

    Keeping the light of knowledge high, long to endure<\/em><\/p>\n

    Treasuring the best of all that\u2019s old, searching out the new<\/em><\/p>\n

    Our Alma Mater Evermore, Hail BU!<\/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 Mark 7:1\u20138 Click here to hear just the sermon We in worship today at Marsh Chapel, Matriculation Sunday, August 29, anno domini 2021, have the privilege of worshipping alongside a new class of first year students, the class of 2025.\u00a0 We bow and we tip our invisible hats […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[52,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205"}],"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=3205"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3208,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions\/3208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}