{"id":3305,"date":"2022-02-13T11:00:52","date_gmt":"2022-02-13T16:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3305"},"modified":"2022-02-14T12:33:19","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T17:33:19","slug":"an-invitation-to-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2022\/02\/13\/an-invitation-to-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"An Invitation to Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Luke 6:\u00a017-26<\/a><\/p>\n

Romans 12:1-13<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Might we hear a call, an invitation, to faith this morning?\u00a0 Following the sense of the numinous, the moments, moments of transcendence throughout this Epiphany, a season of light and revelation, might there follow, for one or another, a straightforward invitation to faith, spoken and heard and heeded?<\/p>\n

For we are nigh on to two years of COVID: two years of days with limitations and with fears laced into the very simplest of moments\u2014a trip to the store, a decision to meet a friend, a first meal outside or inside, a worried report of a colleague ill.\u00a0 And other strains have come alongside as well:\u00a0 planet, pandemic, politics, prejudice, pocketbook.\u00a0 Our planet will need our attention, our care, well into the future.\u00a0 The pandemic may become endemic but will not by a moment disappear.\u00a0 Our raging political discourse, downstream from the losses in culture just when we needed them over these 24 months\u2014gathering, symphony, travel, family, tertulia, worship and assembly and prayer together\u2014will require attentive, disciplined, curative investment of time and mind, not just a quick vote on a November morning.\u00a0 Our lasting measures of racial prejudice, much on our minds especially this month, continue and cost.\u00a0 And speaking of cost, gasoline is up 40%.\u00a0 With all this about us, we may be ready for, and ready to hear in full this Lord\u2019s Day, a robust call to faith, an invitation to faith.\u00a0 Ours may be a profoundly preachable moment.<\/p>\n

Here we may rely on our Epistle, speaking of such moments.\u00a0 St. Paul leaves speculative, less practical theology and jarringly tells us how to live, in Romans 12.\u00a0 He outlines a call to faith.\u00a0 He describes what a life of faith might look like, for you, and for me.<\/p>\n

You might not expect such from the author of the rest of the Epistle to the Romans, the one who traced our condition (our sin) from creation through conscience in Romans 1 and 2. Impractical theology there, though most treasured and precious.\u00a0 You would not expect such from the Apostle who poured out the great watershed (our salvation) from Christ to Cross in Romans 3-5.\u00a0 Impractical theology there, though pearls great in price, field hidden.\u00a0 Nor would you expect the 13 lightning bolts of 12: 9 and following from the elliptical, emotional, tent-making, bachelor, spit-fire\u2014what a friend we have in Paul!\u2014who unveiled Spirit, Holy Spirit, in freedom and grace, in Romans 6-8, \u00a0who wept and conjured and pleaded about his own extended religious family in Romans 9-11.\u00a0 Impractical theology, there and there, though the high-water mark of all his writing, a Spirit interceding for weakness, speaking of love and need.\u00a0 Imagine our shock.\u00a0 Not sin, not salvation, not Spirit, not synagogue come Romans 12: 9.\u00a0 Rather, some utterly practical, pastoral, applicable theology.\u00a0 Say, an Epiphany call to faith, especially for those who may be just a bit ragged, just now.<\/p>\n

Romans 12: 9ff, the \u2018Pauline 13\u2019 may be your best threshold, liminal line, front door response to the question, \u2018Can you help me get going on this?\u00a0 What does it mean to hear a call to faith? \u00a0I mean I would like to think about faith, and the gift of faith, and growth in faith. But how am I to do so?\u2019\u00a0 We ask:\u00a0 what does it mean to hear a call to faith?\u00a0 And the Holy Scripture, in the voice of the Apostle to the Gentiles, responds.<\/p>\n

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?\u00a0 It means to let love be genuine<\/em>.\u00a0 All these verses, note well, are plural imperatives, communal commands.\u00a0\u00a0 The command in Genesis \u2018be fruitful, multiply, fill the whole earth\u2019 is not an individual demand.\u00a0 Your family doesn\u2019t need to do so alone, though Samuel and Susanna Wesley certainly did their best.\u00a0 It is communal.\u00a0 You all.\u00a0 All you all.\u00a0 In fact, given our \u2018limitations\u2019 (being kind here), there is no way for us individually to accomplish such commands.\u00a0 Not all love is genuine.\u00a0 Not all is from the heart, nor true, nor durable, nor real.\u00a0 But it is our call, together, to be lovers in a post-agape world, and to make that love genuine.<\/p>\n

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?\u00a0 It means to hate what is evil.\u00a0 Notice the firmness in Paul\u2019s flexibility, the vagueness in his certainty.\u00a0 In sin, salvation, Spirit, and synagogue he has now confidence that\u2014for our own time, we shall know the place of hatred and the outline of evil.\u00a0 Implied here:\u00a0 new occasions teach new duties, as James Russell Lowell wrote, and this month in repetition we note.\u00a0 Not all of life is good and clean.\u00a0 Some is, some is not.\u00a0 We are free, nay called, to hate evil.\u00a0 You overhear Amos: \u2018I hate I despise your feasts\u2019 (5:23). When someone says or does something you hate, something that is wrong, hurtful, damaging, and lasting, not something mild or minor but something real and permanent, then the door closes on that event or act or word, and you are left with disappointment and anger, disappointment that does not dissipate and anger that does not abate.\u00a0 It is a permanent wound, a lasting, permanent scar, perhaps by grace forgivable and forgiven over long time and disciplined prayer, but not forgettable or forgotten.\u00a0 It is as if that deed or word or word\\deed or deed\\word is now locked behind a great oak door, an oak door with heavy iron hinges and a great lock, locked without a key.\u00a0 You may howl at the door.\u00a0 Please do.\u00a0 You may pound on the door until your fingers bleed.\u00a0 Have at it.\u00a0 You may knock your nose and forehead against the door until you bleed with profusion.\u00a0 Go ahead.\u00a0 It will do you nothing of good.\u00a0 It is done.\u00a0 It is said.\u00a0 It is awful and it is irremediable.\u00a0 It has only one true first cousin in life and that cousin is death.\u00a0 Here, just here, right here, is where you need faith.<\/em><\/p>\n

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?\u00a0 It means to hold fast to what is good.\u00a0 Hold fast to what is good! Notice again the firmness in Paul\u2019s flexibility, the vagueness in his certainty.\u00a0\u00a0 Of one odd Scriptural admonition, Krister Stendahl said, \u2018I believe it is the Word of God, but not the Word of God\u2026for me.\u2019\u00a0 Time makes ancient good uncouth\u2014again, Lowell.<\/p>\n

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?\u00a0 It means to love one another with mutual affection, brotherly affection, a bond that is fraternal, sororial, militant if not military, visceral and reciprocal.\u00a0 Real affection is mutual.\u00a0 Affection wherein one party has all the say and the other does all the work is not affectionate.\u00a0 It is affectionless, affected, not effective.<\/p>\n

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?\u00a0 It means to outdo one another in showing honor.\u00a0 Creative generosity, happy hospitality, courage in counting others better, here is our way.\u00a0 Forebear one another in love.\u00a0 Light, salt, sheep:\u00a0 people need to see you giving honor, taste the spice of your commendation and expect willingness to honor to be shorn, clean cut, readily recognizable\u2014not just an afterthought.<\/p>\n

What does it mean to hear a call to faith?\u00a0 It means not to lag in zeal, to be ardent in spirit, and to serve the Lord.\u00a0 These three dicta largely place before you the directive to get out of bed, into some comfortable clothes, into a prayerfully cleansed mindset, and seated by the radio dial, come Sunday, or to get yourself out of bed, into some clean clothes, over to Marsh Chapel, and be seated in a pew, come Sunday. \u00a0A walk in the country or on the beach is good. \u00a0 Yet the public worship of Almighty God is not a matter of indifference.\u00a0 Hear a call to faith, and come to worship!\u00a0 Your sister, here, needs the encouraging support of your zealous presence.\u00a0 Your brother, here, needs the example of your ardent spirit.\u00a0 God\u2019s service is perfect freedom, and this worship service is just one hour.\u00a0 We can become so lackadaisical about worship:\u00a0 and I am not only speaking of us academics (J).\u00a0 In a lifetime, you have 4,000 Sundays, 1,000 haircuts, 60 income tax returns. \u00a0And 525,600 minutes a year.\u00a0 Zeal, spirit, service, Sunday:\u00a0 prize your time now you have it!<\/p>\n

Howard Thurman was and still is not only the past Dean of Marsh Chapel, but the Dean of Black preaching, teaching and devotion, 100 years ahead of his time 50 years ago.\u00a0 My friend Phil Amerson remembers Thurman\u2019s words: \u00a0\u201cI say that creeds, dogmas, and theologies are inventions of the mind. It is the nature of the mind to make sense out of experience, to reduce the conglomerates of experience to units of comprehension which we call principles, or ideologies, or concepts. Religious experience is dynamic, fluid, effervescent, yeasty. But the mind can’t handle these, so it has to imprison religious experience in some way, get it bottled up. Then, when the experience quiets down, the mind draws a bead on it and extracts concepts, notions, dogmas, so that religious experience can make sense to the mind. Meanwhile, religious experience goes on experiencing, so that by the time I get my dogma stated so that I can think about it, the religious experience becomes an object of thought<\/em>. (From \u201cAn Interview with Howard Thurman and Ronald Eyre, Theology Today<\/em>, Volume 38, Issue 2 (July 1981)). \u201d)\u201d Deeper and Wider: Beyond the Two Revivals, <\/em>Philip Amerson, February 2022 p. 8<\/p>\n

To hear a call to faith, and to heed, is to ride the waves, in community, of shared hope and pain and prayer.\u00a0 Hope carries us beyond pain through prayer.\u00a0 Pain drives us hard back onto hope in prayer.\u00a0 Prayer brings us up, out, forward, and through whether in hope or in pain.\u00a0 When we have hope, we celebrate, as a community.\u00a0 When we have pain, we endure, as a community.\u00a0 Be constant, steady, regular, punctual, reliable, disciplined, in prayer.\u00a0 This is an old saw, but a true one.\u00a0 A man on Fifth Avenue is asked, How do you get to Carnegie Hall?\u00a0<\/em> The right response: \u00a0Practice, practice, practice. <\/em>And that requires community, a common ground, social holiness as well as personal, and habits:\u00a0 a prayer a day, a worship service a week, Holy Communion once a month.<\/p>\n

(Again Phil Amerson reminds me): \u201cSpeaking of the suggestion that individual mysticism was the highest good, John Wesley wrote (in contradiction): Solitary religion is not to be found there. \u201cHoly Solitaries\u201d is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than Holy Adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness. Faith working by love, is the length and breadth and depth and height of Christian perfection. “(<\/em>John Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems <\/em>(1739), Preface, page viii.)” (\u201cA Call for Social Holiness | The United Church of Canada\u201d)\u201d Deeper and Wider: Beyond the Two Revivals <\/em>Philip Amerson, February 2022 p. 8<\/p>\n

And sometimes for those trying to live out that social holiness there is high cost.\u00a0 I keep a quotation from former Republican Senator Jeff Flake in my desk, from almost five years ago, November 2017: \u00a0\u2018I will no longer be complicit or silent in the face of the president\u2019s reckless, outrageous, undignified behavior\u2026I deplore the casual undermining of our democratic ideals, the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedom and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency\u2026We must stop pretending that the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal.\u00a0 They are not normal.\u00a0 Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified.\u00a0 And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else.\u00a0 It is dangerous to a democracy\u2026It is often said that children are watching.\u00a0 Well, they are.\u00a0 And what are we going to do about that?\u00a0 When the next generation asks us, why didn\u2019t you do something?\u00a0 Why didn\u2019t you speak up?\u00a0 What are we going to say?…There are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles.\u00a0 Now is such a time.\u2019 (NYT, 10\/24\/17). \u00a0That is, better to lose your job than your soul.<\/p>\n

What does it mean to hear a call to faith? The Apostle reserves the two toughest communal challenges for last, one about money and one about time.\u00a0 Time and money, money and time.\u00a0 On money: \u00a0Rightly, you will take one tithing Christian for every 10 of the born-again variety.\u00a0 Rightly, you will take one tithing Christian who remembers the ministry of the church in her will for every stadium full of political praying Christians.\u00a0 You want to see less hat and more cattle.\u00a0 A Christian vision along our southern border, and we do need borders, say, will include a recollection of the Monroe Doctrine teaching us to care especially for our hemispheric neighbors, a recollection of the Marshall Plan, and what can be done to the benefit of all to reconstitute fragmented nations and communities, a recollection of the love poem of Emma Lazarus at our front door. Contribute to the needs, not the irresponsibility but the needs, of the holy community, near and far.\u00a0 On time:\u00a0 Hospitality is to time what generosity is to money.\u00a0 Hospitality is how you\u00a0spend your time<\/em>\u00a0(such an odd but choice phrase in American English).\u00a0 Hospitality:\u00a0 the making of the bed of friendship, the cooking of the meal of companionship, the pouring of the bath of empathy, the cleaning of the linens of suffering, the embrace of the journey through life:\u00a0\u00a0welcome home, how was the trip?, \u00a0let\u2019s see your photographs.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>Hospitality is to time what generosity is to money.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Practice.\u00a0Practice!<\/em>\u00a0 You will get better at both with time. I would put money on it.\u00a0 Practice.\u00a0Practice!<\/em>\u00a0 You will get better at both with time. I would put money on it (J).<\/p>\n

Here is your Epiphany call to faith, offered with a Methodist handshake.\u00a0 If this were a Wesleyan revival, we would line this out<\/em> like a hymn for us to sing.\u00a0 If this were a Pentecostal church we would call you to response in call and response.\u00a0 If this were Fenway Park, we would start the wave or sing Sweet Caroline.\u00a0 But this is Marsh Chapel, so we will just ask you, encouraging your memory, to remember together, entering 2022:\u00a0\u00a0Romans 12: 9-13.<\/em><\/p>\n

Let love be genuine<\/em><\/p>\n

Hate what is evil<\/em><\/p>\n

Hold fast to what is good<\/em><\/p>\n

Love one another with mutual affection<\/em><\/p>\n

Outdo one another in showing honor<\/em><\/p>\n

Never lag in zeal<\/em><\/p>\n

Be ardent in spirit<\/em><\/p>\n

Serve the Lord<\/em><\/p>\n

Rejoice in your hope <\/em><\/p>\n

Be patient in tribulation<\/em><\/p>\n

Be constant in prayer<\/em><\/p>\n

Contribute to the needs of the saints<\/em><\/p>\n

Practice hospitality<\/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 Luke 6:\u00a017-26 Romans 12:1-13 Click here to hear just the sermon Might we hear a call, an invitation, to faith this morning?\u00a0 Following the sense of the numinous, the moments, moments of transcendence throughout this Epiphany, a season of light and revelation, might there follow, for one or […]<\/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\/3305"}],"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=3305"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3307,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305\/revisions\/3307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}