{"id":3242,"date":"2021-11-07T11:00:35","date_gmt":"2021-11-07T16:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3242"},"modified":"2021-11-07T11:59:50","modified_gmt":"2021-11-07T16:59:50","slug":"for-all-the-saints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2021\/11\/07\/for-all-the-saints\/","title":{"rendered":"For All the Saints"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Mark 12: 38-44<\/a><\/p>\n

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

All Saints Sunday<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

After more than a year and a half of disembodied worship, worshipping in diaspora, we have now had this autumn twelve Sundays of personal, embodied assembly, and gathering, in worship.\u00a0 We have also by grace and the work of WBUR and many others continued to broadcast our service around the globe, come 11am on Sunday.\u00a0 For the sustained efforts of those at every turn who make this service possible and available, we are endlessly grateful.\u00a0 Today we turn our minds and hearts to those who have died in these twenty months, near and far, more than 750,000 across the country, and, especially, to their loved ones, perhaps including you, who bear the losses to this day.\u00a0 If you have lost someone in this COVID time, our sermon and litany today here are meant especially for you.<\/p>\n

One of the great challenges and difficulties of the last two years is found here.\u00a0 Across the country and indeed around the world, we have not been able fully to gather, to assemble, to worship in person, at the hour of death.\u00a0 We have lost loved ones without the ability or capacity to face the losses in full in the full company of the church, the church militant, even as we give over our loved ones to God and to the church triumphant.\u00a0 We should be frank, candid with one another, and with ourselves, that this particular labor of love is an unfinished labor, just now.\u00a0 An unfinished labor of love, to which we attend in part today.\u00a0\u00a0 Faith comes in small steps, for most of us.\u00a0 One of those steps, one to take again today, is to learn the rhythms of grief.<\/p>\n

And it is work, good and honest work.\u00a0 Mourning is work.\u00a0 Grieving is work.\u00a0 It takes time, energy, attention, focus, investment, prayer and love.\u00a0 Conclusively, to mourn means for you to need to do something in mourning.\u00a0 Faith is found in such a step.\u00a0 Jesus looks upon the single widow, offering her simple gift, and smiles, and commends to us her step, one step in faith.<\/p>\n

As a daughter, you may have buried my mother.\u00a0 As a sister, you may have remembered and eulogized your siblings\u2019 mother.\u00a0 As a pastor, you may have given over parishioners, sisters and brothers in Christ, one by one.\u00a0 In a university community, you may have faced and mourned the losses of students, faculty, staff, alumni, relatives and others of the University community.\u00a0 As an itinerant Methodist preacher, you may have had to sing alone \u2018Blessed be the Tie that binds\u2019, rather than, by custom, gathering around the casket of a fellow preacher, to sing the hymn with others in ministry.\u00a0 As an American, you may have wept at the stories of those taken, young and old, rich and poor, black and white, conservative and liberal.\u00a0 And, as a child of God, you may have lamented without ever fully grasping the depth or breadth of such lament, the deaths of others, other children of the living God.<\/p>\n

Wherever you are, whoever you are, in your time of loss, in your twenty months or more of mourning, this morning as we face our mourning, we feel for you, we are sorry for your bereavement, we reach out with invisible hands to hold you in an invisible embrace, and listen with invisible ears as you utter your prayers of lament.\u00a0 Whatever else may be, at least hear this, you are not alone, you are not alone, you are not alone.\u00a0 Together we take a step, in grief.\u00a0 For all the saints we give thanks.<\/p>\n

We call you forward to remember.\u00a0\u00a0 We recall, here in Marsh Chapel, five of our own Marsh Chapel saints, among the dozens lost, as witnesses, as a few and particular examples, exemplars of faith, as was the widow in the dominical teaching.<\/p>\n

We remember C Faith Richardson.\u00a0 She died in March of 2020.\u00a0 On December 11th<\/sup> of 2019 she turned 104.\u00a0\u00a0 She had led a 600 person Sunday School at Erwin Methodist Church in Syracuse, in the early 1960\u2019s while her husband Neil taught Hebrew Scripture at the University there, before they moved here to Boston.\u00a0 We went to serve that very Syracuse church in 1984, and twenty years later that giant Sunday school still cast its warm shadow.\u00a0\u00a0 One who had been a ten year old back then remembered, \u2018I just don\u2019t know how to put it.\u00a0 There was, there was, so much love there.\u2019\u00a0 We asked Faith in December 2019 how it felt to be 104.\u00a0 She answered, with her playful wit, \u2018about the same as it felt to be 103\u2019.\u00a0 For all the saints we give thanks.\u00a0 Let us remember C. Faith Richardson. \u00a0(BELL)<\/p>\n

We remember Dr. Gaylen Kelly.\u00a0 Gaylen was an honored, revered professor in the School of Education.\u00a0 He and his beloved wife were married for 66 years, starting with their wedding on a bitterly cold Christmas Eve in New Sweden, Maine.\u00a0 We remember his easy manner, his inclination to laughter, and his love of students.\u00a0 Especially his love of students.\u00a0 He supervised 200\u2014200!\u2014dissertations in the School of Education.\u00a0 Gaylen died in early February 2021, at home, and surrounded by the love of his children and family.\u00a0 For all the saints we give thanks.\u00a0 Let us remember Dr. Gaylen Kelly.\u00a0 (BELL)<\/p>\n

We too remember his beloved bride Glenice Kelly.\u00a0 Who could forget her warm Sunday morning smile, her happy, glad hearted greeting in the covenant of faith, her exuberant hug, and her enjoyment of conversation?\u00a0 Married to Gaylen in the northern snows 66 years earlier, they died within hours of each other early February 2021.\u00a0 As a pioneer in health and sex education, she paved the way, in days we can imagine when the trail had to be cut, to be hewn out, for such important teaching.\u00a0 Her indomitable spirit was more than a match for the calling. You can see her in the third pew, pulpit side, there is Glenice, smiling and laughing and hugging and listening following worship.\u00a0 For all the saints, we give thanks.\u00a0 Let us remember Glenice Kelly. (BELL)<\/p>\n

We remember Harvey Greenburg, a blind man who road to worship on the T by taking the subway to the BU central stop in front of Marsh Chapel.\u00a0 A graduate of Perkins School, he repaired Steinway pianos.\u00a0 Each winter, he brought piano accompaniment to a Sunday afternoon hymn singing party, graciously hosted by dear friends in Lynn MA.\u00a0 Every so often the sacred melodies of Charles Wesley would receive a little rock and role riff, as Harvey extemporized.\u00a0 who graciously accompanied our mid-winter afternoon hymn singing on the piano, with an occasional rock and role riff.\u00a0 His love of music abides, here and now.\u00a0 For all the saints we give thanks.\u00a0 Let us remember Harvey Greenburg.\u00a0 (BELL)<\/p>\n

We remember Ed Mann, and his faith, his love of worship at Marsh Chapel, and his ready response to all manner of statement:\u00a0 I understand. I understand.\u00a0 I understand. <\/em>\u00a0And you knew and felt he did.\u00a0 A Math professor with a strong personal and family connection to Eastern Nazarene college, Ed came to worship early and engaged in intercessory prayer, with help toward the end from his loving children.\u00a0 He came to us many years ago, and brought the stories of his own ministry in mission in Romania.\u00a0 Ed lived his faith, and his faith was lived for others, a man for others.\u00a0 He lived as he was raised.\u00a0 Wrote Jonathan Edwards: \u201cIt is no small matter whether one habit or the other is inculcated in us from early childhood; on the contrary, it makes a considerable difference, or, rather, all the difference.\u201d For all the saints we give thanks.\u00a0 Let us remember Ed Mann.\u00a0 (BELL)<\/p>\n

Let us sing the song of these saints of God.\u00a0 And let us act as well.\u00a0 In grieving let us reach out by visit or voice to another who knows grief.\u00a0 In remembering let us write out for another generation some central memories of our lost loved ones. In accepting, let us take the silent time of silence we need, in prayer, let us carry out the quiet.\u00a0 In affirmation, let us invite another to the faith of Christ through fellowship with His people, attendance in worship at his church, and the commitments of tithing and service that are His salt and light.<\/p>\n

As we come to the Lord\u2019s table, our Marsh Chapel Membership secretary Ms. Sandra Cole has graciously agreed to lead us in our Litany of Remembrance.<\/p>\n

Litany in Remembrance of Lives Lost in COVID (Led by Ms. Sandra Cole, Marsh Chapel Membership Secretary)<\/em><\/p>\n

Leader(L):\u00a0 Gracious God in whom we are all interrelated, interdependent and one in humanity<\/p>\n

People(P):\u00a0 Thou whose grace embraces all, and in whom violence to our brothers and sisters is violence unto each of us<\/em><\/p>\n

L:\u00a0 We grieve for, remember and honor those whose lives were lost last year in COVID<\/p>\n

P:\u00a0 Especially we pray for the poor, for first responders, for the public health community here and across the country, and around the globe<\/em><\/p>\n

L:\u00a0 In these troubling and tumultuous times when injustice and prejudice breed inhumanity to one another<\/p>\n

P:\u00a0 In this time of challenge and struggle, of tumult and loss<\/em><\/p>\n

L:\u00a0 May we find our way, Your Way, amid conflict, unrest and violence<\/p>\n

P:\u00a0 Teach us your ways, God of refuge and strength, the ways of love and peace<\/em><\/p>\n

L:\u00a0 Make us tender hearted and loving toward one another as your mercy rests upon those whose lives have been deeply altered by death or loss<\/p>\n

P: Though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea, You are our God of refuge and strength, a present help in time of trouble<\/em><\/p>\n

L: Gracious God, remind us that we are interrelated, interdependent and one in humanity so violence to our brothers and sisters is violence unto each of us.<\/p>\n

P: May we find our way, Your way, in this world of conflict, unrest and violence. Teach us Your ways,\u00a0oh God of refuge and strength, the ways of love and peace. <\/em><\/p>\n

L: Make us tender hearted and loving toward one another as your mercy rest upon those whose lives have been deeply altered by death or loss.<\/p>\n

P: You are our God of refuge and strength a present help in time of trouble.”<\/em><\/p>\n

L: In these troubling and tumultuous times when inhumanity towards another brings tumult\u00a0and destruction to our living,<\/p>\n

P: Grant us thy peace.\u00a0 Grant us thy peace.\u00a0 Grant us thy peace.<\/em><\/p>\n

L: We gather today in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection, to give thanks to God, to receive the comfort of the Holy Spirit,
\nand to proclaim the good news of eternal life in Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

P: For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. In his baptism these were clothed with Christ; in the day of Christ\u2019s coming, he shall be clothed in glory. <\/em><\/p>\n

L:\u00a0 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.<\/p>\n

P:\u00a0 Therefor we will not fear. <\/em><\/p>\n

L: Our help is in the name of the Lord.<\/p>\n

P: The maker of heaven and earth. <\/em><\/p>\n

L:\u00a0 Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord.
\nP: Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, <\/em><\/p>\n

and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. <\/em><\/p>\n

L:\u00a0 Let us pray together:<\/p>\n

O God, who gave us birth,
\nYou are ever more ready to hear than we are to pray.
\nYou know our needs before we ask,
\nand our ignorance in asking.
\nShow us now your grace,
\nthat as we face the mystery of death
\nwe may see the light of eternity.
\nSpeak to us once more your solemn message of life and of death. Help us to live as those who are prepared to die.
\nAnd when our days here are ended,
\nenable us to die as those who go forth to live,
\nso that living or dying,
\nour life may be in Jesus Christ our risen Lord.
\nAmen.<\/em><\/p>\n

(BELL 5x)<\/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 12: 38-44 Click here to hear just the sermon All Saints Sunday After more than a year and a half of disembodied worship, worshipping in diaspora, we have now had this autumn twelve Sundays of personal, embodied assembly, and gathering, in worship.\u00a0 We have also by grace […]<\/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\/3242"}],"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=3242"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3245,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3242\/revisions\/3245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}