{"id":3341,"date":"2022-04-17T11:00:38","date_gmt":"2022-04-17T15:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3341"},"modified":"2022-04-25T11:34:39","modified_gmt":"2022-04-25T15:34:39","slug":"easter-presence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2022\/04\/17\/easter-presence\/","title":{"rendered":"Easter Presence"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Luke 24:1-12<\/a><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.<\/p>\n

He went home, amazed\u2026 (Gk: thaumazon) \u2026He marveled, he wondered, he was rocked by amazement.\u00a0 <\/em>Peter, the rock on which the church, and the faith of the church, are built, here, in this verse added by a later scribe, went home\u2026amazed.\u00a0 There is no God language here.\u00a0 No G-O-D.\u00a0 There is no theological language, no God-talk here.\u00a0 On Easter.\u00a0 On Easter!\u00a0 No.\u00a0 If such God-talk makes you skittish, uncomfortable, makes you question whether you have a place at the Easter table, hear today\u2019s Gospel: Easter sings Presence. Easter sings presence!<\/em><\/p>\n

One summer some years ago our family made a three-day trip to Maine.\u00a0 We stopped in Kennebunkport and swam in the ocean.\u00a0 That day the newspaper carried a little book review of a short book called On Presence<\/em>.\u00a0 The review noted that the book had been written by Ralph Harper, an unknown Episcopal priest in Maryland, who also taught a religion course at the local college.\u00a0 The book won a prestigious prize.\u00a0 The author was quoted as saying, among other things, \u2018After preaching almost every Sunday for the past 31 years, I know how hard it is to say anything honest\u2019.\u00a0 I stuffed the review in my shirt pocket.\u00a0 I finally bought the book (though nine months later).\u00a0 The book is about presence, sense of presence and practice of the presence of God.\u00a0 It is about being amazed, amazed as was Peter.<\/p>\n

Harper writes, we have too short a time on this earth to pass up any chance to find words and images to live by.\u00a0 I believe almost everyone is capable of being moved by some person, place, (part of) nature, or individual work of art.\u00a0 Of course, there is instability and incoherence in and about us all the time.\u00a0 There is also the inexhaustible store of Being to keep us permanently in awe.<\/em><\/p>\n

Harper writes, “Not everything can be said easily, except claims of absolute affirmation or denial. In time, most things can be said clearly, at least. And some of these things are so important that we should do everything we can to make them clear. Presence is one of those things. It is not a word that we should allow anyone to rule out of our vocabulary.<\/em>” (120)<\/p>\n

This is our first Easter together since 2019.\u00a0 It is good to see you.\u00a0 Here is the Easter Gospel after two years in the Covid cave:\u00a0 Easter Presence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Howard Thurman, the Dean of Marsh Chapel, Boston University, 1953-1965, found God through poetry, through psalms, and through paintings.\u00a0 Last week, Samuel Wells, formerly of Duke Chapel, and now in the pulpit of St. Martin the Fields, began his sober sermon, \u2018Preaching in Perilous Times\u2019, a meditation on the 23 Psalm, with, yes, Howard Thurman.\u00a0 Presence, say in a poem.\u00a0 A sense of presence, say in a psalm.\u00a0 The practice of presence, say in a painting.<\/p>\n

That is, our beloved former dean, Howard Thurman, was a poetic theologian, a theological poet.\u00a0 Presence, his sense of presence, his practice of presence, intimate to the natural world, made him so.\u00a0 He was 100 years ahead of his time 50 years ago, so he is still 50 years ahead of me!\u00a0 Late at night, along his beloved Daytona Beach, he remembered walking alone and with his feet in the sand.<\/p>\n

He wrote, \u2018the ocean and the night surrounded my little life with a reassurance that could not be affronted by any human behavior.\u00a0 The ocean at night gave me a sense of timelessness, of existing beyond the ebb and flow of consciousness.\u00a0 Death would be a small thing I felt in the sweep of that natural embrace.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Presence.\u00a0 Presence of mind. (A great phrase).\u00a0 It happened that a wonderful, beloved professor died in mid-lecture.\u00a0 Later, the fifteen students from the class were gathered.\u00a0 After initial awkwardness, there was a full presence in the room as they spoke.\u00a0 One spoke a soliloquy on trauma and grief.\u00a0 One gave a soliloquy on connection in hardship. One spoke a soliloquy on pride and love.\u00a0 One gave a soliloquy on how others, his faculty friends, who had known him so much longer, might be hurting so much more.\u00a0 \u2018Let\u2019s go visit them and offer our condolences\u2019<\/em>, one said.\u00a0 And they did.\u00a0 It was a powerful, poetic moment.\u00a0 Where did we ever get the idea that 20-year-olds cannot say and do great things?<\/p>\n

Presence.\u00a0 Presence of mind. Last week Gerda Weissmann Klein, died at age 97, a survivor of the holocaust.\u00a0 Before he was taken from her in 1942, her father implored her, if she was taken, to wear her ski boots, which she protested because it was summer.\u00a0 But she did so.\u00a0 By 1945 she was being marched 350 miles.\u00a0 She survived, \u2018in part she said because while many others wore sandals, she had her ski boots\u2026and her imagination\u2019 (NYT 4\/9\/22). <\/em><\/p>\n

Today, Easter, 2022, may you discover or be discovered by such poetry, such presence of mind.<\/p>\n

Dean Thurman was a lover of the Psalms.\u00a0 Presence, his sense of presence, his practice of presence, intimate to the natural world, led him so. You cannot find, or know, Thurman without worship, sacrament, prayer, singing, spirituals, preaching\u2014without religion.\u00a0 And particularly the Psalms.\u00a0 He had a favorite, or two.\u00a0 Perhaps you do as well.\u00a0 Pick two and learn them by heart this year.<\/p>\n

7\u00a0<\/sup><\/em>Where can I go from your spirit?
\nOr where can I flee from your presence?
\n8\u00a0<\/sup>If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
\nif I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
\n9\u00a0<\/sup>If I take the wings of the morning
\nand settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
\n10\u00a0<\/sup>even there your hand shall lead me,
\nand your right hand shall hold me fast.
\n11\u00a0<\/sup>If I say, \u201cSurely the darkness shall cover me,
\nand the light around me become night,\u201d
\n12\u00a0<\/sup>even the darkness is not dark to you;
\nthe night is as bright as the day,
\nfor darkness is as light to you.<\/em><\/p>\n

A sense of presence.\u00a0 Samuel Terrien taught us:\u00a0 Presence\u2026.does not alter nature, but changes history\u2026through the character and lives of women and men\u2026.The elusive presence of\u2026a walking not a sitting God, a God nomadic, hidden, elusive and free\u2026a God of tent not temple, of ear not eye, of name not glory\u2026a God who creates and calls out a spiritual interiority, a commission by command\u2026a God of time not space, of grace not place\u2026whose faith allows one to translate love for God into actual behavior in society\u2026(393)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Yet for some, perhaps for you, come Easter, the three letters, G-O-D, may be more fence than doorway.\u00a0 Not only the agnostics and apophatics, but also, and more-so, the average person, the \u2018reasonable man\u2019 of insurance law, often stumbles on those three letters.\u00a0 And here in part is why:\u00a0 if God is God, he is not good, and if God is good he is not God.\u00a0 That is, it is a hard to square the concentric circles of love and power, power and love.\u00a0 20,000 innocent civilians have been slaughtered this month in Mariupol alone, according to recent estimates. We are tuned in because they lived in homes like those in Boston.\u00a0 They shopped in stores resembling our own.\u00a0 They used social media and the internet as do you.\u00a0 They rode transit, owned cars, vacationed in Barcelona, spoke multiple languages and were part of the new or renewed Russian appetite for slaughter.\u00a0 If God could stop that and didn\u2019t, he is not good.\u00a0 If God would stop it and couldn\u2019t, he is not God.\u00a0 For some, hence, the three letters, G-O-D, are more fence than doorway.\u00a0 Nor does it help that our halting, partial overtures to a sound, liberal, biblical theology have left us shorn of vocabulary. Sin. We hardly name it.\u00a0 Death.\u00a0 We rarely face it.\u00a0 The daily threat of meaningless.\u00a0 We barely conceive it.\u00a0 And then along comes a five-year political crisis for American democracy.\u00a0 And then along comes a two- year hibernation in the COVID cave.\u00a0 And then along comes Ukraine, with a whiff of nuclear bombast, nuclear bomblast, in the air.\u00a0 January 6. 1 million dead. A corpse with hands tied behind the back. Creation, we see.\u00a0 Salvation, we assume.\u00a0 But fall?\u00a0 The fallenness of creation?\u00a0 The abject, dire, need, one beggar telling another where both can find bread, the impossible possibility in fallenness of salvation?\u00a0 We were absent that day, or took another course, not that there is any.\u00a0 Or we thought we had bigger fish to fry.\u00a0 We in five years, in two years, in five weeks and two days, have had a refresher course in the need for liberal biblical theology.\u00a0 Sin is the absence of God.\u00a0 Death is the absence of God.\u00a0 Meaninglessness is the absence of God.\u00a0 But you, it may well be, are not at ease with those three letters.\u00a0 They seem a fancy, a fiction, an antique mistake.<\/p>\n

Sometimes they seem so to me, too\u2014though in fact and full I hold fast to the ancient traditions and language\u2014yet sometimes they seem so to me, too, at least given our current cultural, linguistic incapacity, our cultural, linguistic exclusion of the three letters, GOD. So, the Gospel offers an Easter gift, a saving one, <\/em>another word, that means GOD, but may say so better, at least for some, for a time, in our time.\u00a0 The word is PRESENCE.\u00a0\u00a0 A back porch entry, not a front porch one.\u00a0 \u00a0With Thurman, and with Peter today, you may find wonder, marvel, and amazement, in presence.\u00a0 Peter was amazed\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Today, Easter, 2022, may you discover or be discovered by such a sense of presence, perhaps this season a doorway for you to faith, rather than a fence.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Thurman was a painter.\u00a0 He did paint with brush and canvass, and loved to depict penguins, among other figures.\u00a0 Presence, his sense of presence, his practice of presence, intimate to the natural world, led him so.\u00a0 But they were the verbal paintings, the metaphors in speech, that were his greatest gifts.\u00a0 One favorite was \u2018a crown to grow into\u2019.\u00a0 A crown is placed over our heads the for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes, as Ralph Harper wrote, we need the height of presence: \u201cWhen I am moved by a painting or by music, by clouds passing in a clear night sky, by the soughing of pines in the early spring, I feel the distance between me and art and nature dissolve to some degree, and I feel at ease. I feel that what I know makes me more myself than I knew before. This is how the saints felt about God, and I see in my own experience elements that I share with the saints and prophets, the <\/em>philosophers and priests.\u201d <\/em>(6)<\/p>\n

Our grandmother loved Brother Lawrence, and his book, The Practice of the Presence of God<\/em>.\u00a0 (John Wesley also loved the book).\u00a0 Brother Lawrence was a 17th<\/sup> century Carmelite lay brother, who was injured in battle, and became a household servant, a valet, a cook, a dishwasher.\u00a0 My grandmother grew up near Cooperstown, driving a horse and buggy to the milk station, skating on the Hudson, once all the way to Poughkeepsie, later on driving a car like she drove a horse and buggy, side to side, born 25 years before suffrage, posting little notes on her kitchen door like, \u2018do one thing:\u00a0 there, you\u2019ve done one thing\u2019, and, \u2018do you know who I like to cook a big meal for? ANYBODY\u2019, teaching the Sunday school class no one else wanted, for 6th<\/sup> grade boys, wearing out the Jehovah Witnesses when they came to call (\u2018can\u2019t you stay a little bit longer\u2019?), with her detailed, exacting knowledge of the Old Testament, and in all and with all, living day by day to ask respectful questions, and then listen intently to the responses.\u00a0 She loved the dishwasher of the 17th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

He was all about presence.<\/p>\n

Brother Lawrence: \u2018the time of business does not differ with me from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were on my knees.<\/p>\n

Brother Lawrence: \u2018do not be discouraged\u2026often, in the beginning, you will think that you are wasting time, but you must go on, be determined and persevere in it until death, despite all the difficulties.<\/p>\n

Today, Easter 2022, may you discover or be discovered by such a rhetorical portrait, a word painting, a new favorite or an old one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Presence.\u00a0 A sense of presence.\u00a0 The practice of presence. The faithfulness of Marsh Chapel, its fine lay leadership past and present, the beauty of its sanctuary, and its gifts of friendship for those near and far, are a lasting grace and help us.\u00a0 In a world in which there is so much wrong, we need one another to help us hold fast to what is good\u2014a poem, a psalm, a painting. Even today.<\/p>\n

But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.<\/p>\n

He went home, amazed\u2026(Gk: thaumazon)\u2026He marveled, he wondered, he was rocked by amazement.<\/em>\u00a0 In Easter Presence, may we too marvel, wonder and be rocked by amazement.\u00a0 It is Easter!\u00a0 Can you allow a bit of presence to touch your heart?<\/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 24:1-12 Click here to hear just the sermon   But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened. He went home, amazed\u2026 (Gk: thaumazon) \u2026He marveled, he […]<\/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\/3341"}],"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=3341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3342,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions\/3342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}