{"id":3415,"date":"2022-10-02T11:00:59","date_gmt":"2022-10-02T15:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3415"},"modified":"2022-10-22T20:02:37","modified_gmt":"2022-10-23T00:02:37","slug":"a-communion-meditation-for-world-communion-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2022\/10\/02\/a-communion-meditation-for-world-communion-sunday\/","title":{"rendered":"A Communion Meditation for World Communion Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Luke 17: 1-<\/span>10<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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

Our field work is no substitute for our domestic duties.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Your outside, outdoor application of mind and body, in profession or employment or work, is not a replacement for the hearth, the home, the heart, the power of the dinner table, the beloved, the family\u2014<\/span>kinder, kuche, kirche, <\/span><\/i>as Luther might have put it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>You cannot claim reference to bank account, degrees and honorifics, achievements and merit badges, when faced with a required response to the dominical claim upon relational duties.\u00a0 It will not help me in the long run when I affirm a full bank account or a long list of peer reviewed articles or a world championship of whatever sort, if they are meant to cover over what matters, counts, lasts and has meaning, if they are meant to avoid grace, care, kindness and\u2026well\u2026love.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My dear one, your field work is no substitute for your domestic duties.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Says our Lord Jesus Christ, both to an ancient struggling church, and to you and me on World Communion Sunday: <\/span>Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, \u201cCome here at once and take your place at the table\u201d? Would you not rather say to him, \u201cPrepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink\u201d? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, \u201cWe are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The dinner table and all its conversations and claims make no allowance for a borrowing from the day\u2019s own trouble.\u00a0 A prayer is said, the dishes are passed, a conversation\u2014glorious, golden, rhythmic, improvisational, personal, intimate, perilous, demanding, real, and so utterly human\u2014a conversation emerges.\u00a0 Something is said.\u00a0 Something is heard.\u00a0 The table has its own realm and kingdom, its own royalty and citizenry, its own claim and call.\u00a0 Call it the power of the dinner table.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Three years on into the twilight\u2014perhaps\u2014of Covid, we have missed a step or two, lost or forgotten our dinner table habits.\u00a0 We have grown cold to the clink and charm of fork and glass.\u00a0 We have become rusty, out of shape, flabby both in the form of <\/span>host<\/span><\/i> and of <\/span>guest<\/span><\/i>\u2014so interesting in older English, the two are almost the same word.\u00a0 We have been rightly busy with our field work, ploughing and shepherding, works and day jobs and zoom screens and all.\u00a0 So, we have not been prepared to\u2026be prepared.\u00a0 To be ready to\u2026<\/span>prepare supper\u2026put on our apron\u2026serve the service of eating and drinking.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 After all, we still try to assert, in the teeth of the hurricane gale\u2014an image we have in mind as in prayer we remember those suffering now in Florida– of this deceptively minimal saying of the Lord, that, well, we had a good day at the screen\u2014didn\u2019t we?, on the zoom\u2014didn\u2019t we? by the click click-ometer of the internet\u2014didn\u2019t we?, in our day job\u2014didn\u2019t we? Didn\u2019t we?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Not so fast, Jesus says, not so fast.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Not so fast, says Mr. Wesley, not so fast.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Not so fast, says our own true and hard experience, not so fast.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Not so fast says life, presence, freedom, experience.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Not so fast, says God, not so fast.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Do what is commanded, says Jesus.\u00a0 Conversation is a means of grace, says John Wesley (as real and powerful as sacrament, as prayer, as Scripture, as fasting)\u2014a conveyance of grace.\u00a0 Our late Covid experience is a hunger and thirst for–what satisfies hunger and slakes thirst.\u00a0 The real hunger.\u00a0 <\/span>One does not live by bread alone, but by every word\u2026<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is an orb of reality, a realm of being, a place unto itself, around the common table, after the day\u2019s own trouble, the power of the table, that will not be supplanted, outsourced, erased, minimized, or disregarded.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And here we are.\u00a0 At table, a table as big as all outdoors, and a table that spans the globe, and a table that serves a World Communion, a world communion.\u00a0 And here we are.\u00a0 Morning has come, the board is spread, thanks be to God who gives us bread, thank God for bread.\u00a0 And the power of the table, the dining table, is just here\u2014conversation–a saving, intervening power, especially for us, we who are coming in from the field work of 3 Covid years, without it.\u00a0 And here we are.\u00a0 Conversation is where imagination and memory dance.\u00a0 Conversation is where one feels and says \u2018I love you\u2019.\u00a0 Conversation is where the strict arts of listening are raised from the dead.\u00a0 Conversation on the street, at home, along the park bench, before church, after church, outside church.\u00a0 There is nothing more human, nor more healthy, nor more saving than a good conversation, which by nature begins in the unexpected and ends in the unforeseen and trails along in the mind for days to come.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>A conversation starts, somehow.\u00a0 A conversation travels, somewhere.\u00a0 A conversation ends, sometime.\u00a0 After three years of screen, of zoom, of facetime, of text, of email, of distance, of attention to quasi-spaces, electronic spaces–to which nuance, humor, personality, humanity, and connection go to die–we have been returned to the land of conversation.\u00a0 Praise God from whom all blessings flow.\u00a0 There is a robust magic in conversation, whereby John Wesley named conversation a means of grace, alongside prayer, Scripture, sacraments, and fasting.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>In conversation, there abides, or lurks, the lasting possibility of heart to heart communication, heart by heart communion.\u00a0 That potential seizes you, not the other way around.\u00a0\u00a0 You are longways into a talk with an old dear friend, and of a sudden, you realize, you intuit, just how much that friendship means, a friendship planted and grown in conversation.\u00a0 You are gathered before dinner, and the children, coaxed, begin to sing the songs of memory, of history, of Zion, of nation, of upgrowing.\u00a0 The folksongs, the hymns, the partner songs, the spirituals, the camp fire rounds, multiple rounds, give off an invisible glow, a kind of verbal hearth.\u00a0 You sit with two colleagues who are also combatants.\u00a0 There is an opening, and a joust, and of a sudden\u2014unplanned, unexpected, unforeseen\u2014one shatters the other with a truth spoken and heard.\u00a0 The shattering is not in the end a mendable one.\u00a0 Some things, like some malignancies, you can never cure, but you can manage.\u00a0 They are manageable but not curable.\u00a0 They can be managed, managed to ground, even though, unseen, the malignancy remains.\u00a0 In conversation, in the magic of conversation, such hard and dark and difficult truth can surface.\u00a0 Be careful with the shattering, in the moment and in the meantime and in the memory and in the future.\u00a0 You realize afterward, that one loved one, in one seemingly innocuous conversation, was trying to say something, something like, <\/span>I am worried about this medical procedure, and I think I may, well, I think I may not make it…<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 But the clues and hues and dues and schmooze are too indirect, too subtle, and you miss the marrow and meaning of the talk, only to recall it, only to <\/span>get it<\/span><\/i>, later, much later, too late.\u00a0 You are in a meeting, and all of sudden the temperature shifts, and sunlight and warmth become cave darks, stalactites and stalagmites.\u00a0 And the conversation flickers, withers, and dies.\u00a0 Something is in there.\u00a0 It would be utterly invisible and inaudible by zoom.\u00a0 But in conversation, in presence, with embodied silence, and incarnate body language, you see and hear:<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0 She is really hurting.\u00a0 He is really angry.\u00a0 I am really in over my head.\u00a0 They want something they really can never have.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>There is a saving power, a saving grace in conversation.\u00a0 It costs nothing to listen, except time and risk.\u00a0 And it costs nothing to speak, except time and risk.\u00a0 <\/span>Could you say that in another way?\u00a0 What I hear you to have said is just this.\u00a0 Do you really mean that, or do you mean half or double that?\u00a0 It sounds to me like you are wandering around Robin Hood\u2019s barn, and that makes me wonder why you are wandering like that.\u00a0 When you say that, who do you have in mind?\u00a0 Why do I have the feeling that you have a feeling about this?\u00a0 Let\u2019s talk about this again someday.<\/span><\/i> There is a healing power, a healing grace in conversation.\u00a0 Most people can in time solve their own problems, if they just have someone to talk to about them, who will really listen to them ( said Dr. John Hertel, Cornell University, 1979).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Pastoral ministry, cut to the chase, is the pursuit of an excellent 20-minute sermon a week, a twenty-hour task, alongside 25 genuine conversations a week.\u00a0 The rest, all other ground, is sinking sand.\u00a0 Most current schools of theology have still some faculty left who know pastoral conversation in person.\u00a0 They are not ordained.\u00a0 They have no ministerial experience to speak of.\u00a0 They have not invested the time in listening to become adept at listening because their work and future depend on speaking and writing.\u00a0 (They are largely introverts, usually extreme introverts, for whom human presence and engagement are profoundly enervating and exhausting.\u00a0 Far better the buffers of libraries, books, papers, lectures, classes and grades, than the direct encounter with another heart.\u00a0 <\/span>I and Thou.<\/span><\/i>) But through it all, they remember the grace of conversation, the saving intervening grace of conversation.\u00a0 Likewise, most denominations and churches have at least some leadership left, a few circles of ministerial wisdom shared in conversation about\u2026conversation.\u00a0 Seward Hiltner, Homer Jerdigan, Henri Nouwen, Ann Belford Ulanov are not with us any longer, and not with us to remind us that the most the important things in ministry are the one on one things (said Bishop Joseph Yeakel, 1982).\u00a0 Pastoral ministry is visiting and preaching.\u00a0 Ministry is preaching. (It\u2019s easy, as a generation ago Mike Royko said of his job to write a weekly newspaper column, \u2018it\u2019s easy, just sit down at the typewriter–and slit your wrists\u2019.)\u00a0 Pastoral ministry is conversation.\u00a0 Ministry is conversation.\u00a0 (It\u2019s easy, just sit down and listen until the cows come home.)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>The minister, <\/span>the baptized Christian<\/span><\/i>, for ministry is born in every baptism, and is emphatically not confined to ordination, the minister is part bull fighter, part heavy weight boxer, part private detective, part spy.\u00a0 At stake, for all, is lasting health, personal salvation, individual growth, spiritual integrity, and the chance, the fleeting chance, to experience being alive before we die.\u00a0 The cape ripples and the saber rattles.\u00a0 The prize fighter dodges, weaves, ducks, swings, retreats, advances.\u00a0 The PI looks through the back window, checks the mail in the mail box, notices the water still dripping from the faucet, puts two and two together.\u00a0 The one disguised behind enemy lines smiles, demurs, nods, remembers, and then will try to bring home a truth, the truth in hand, without getting caught.\u00a0 But these arts are practiced, sharpened, conveyed, by one pastor and another\u2026in conversation.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Every hour spent on a machine is an hour spent apart from conversation, and so apart from full real life itself.\u00a0 Your field work is no substitute for your domestic duties. Walk with a friend.\u00a0 Sit for intercessory prayer.\u00a0 Call somebody on the phone.\u00a0 Set a lunch date.\u00a0 Offer a coffee.\u00a0 Receive with happiness the unannounced visitor to your office.\u00a0 Steer the conversation, when you can, away from doing and out onto the broad meadow of being.\u00a0 Keep a journal.\u00a0 Write a sermon.\u00a0 Craft a poem.\u00a0 Design and experiment.\u00a0 Take on some painting, some gardening, some creative craft, a piano lesson, beginning French or Swahili.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>My grandmother grew up on a dairy farm near Cooperstown. Some of you have heard me mention her before. She graduated from Smith College in 1914.\u00a0 She taught school and married later in life, raising three daughters.\u00a0 She spent her later life in a modest Syracuse home, surrounded by piles of books, mounds of newspapers, and letters written or to be written and received, often long ago.\u00a0 She and her college roommate wrote each other a letter once a week from graduation until death.\u00a0 She feared no conversation, and celebrated all conversation, no matter how middling or shallow or tiresome.\u00a0 Famously, she was thrilled, overjoyed, to have the Jehovah Witnesses come into her Methodist living room, on their mission.\u00a0 She loved to talk with them about the intricacies of Leviticus.\u00a0 She always wanted them to stay longer than they could stand to stay.\u00a0 They left worn out, bedraggled, dog tired, exhausted, and utterly defeated.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

People do not always know what they think and feel until they say it, until they say it to someone they know is listening, someone who really cares. <\/span>People do not always know what they think and feel until they say it, until they say it to someone they know is listening, someone who really cares.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 This is not psychiatry, not psychotherapy, not formal counseling, nor any other of the\u2014very wonderful and endlessly helpful and so much needed\u2014forms of care.\u00a0 This is conversation, a means of grace.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>A conversation starts, somehow.\u00a0 A conversation travels, somewhere.\u00a0 A conversation ends, sometime.\u00a0 After a year or three of screen, of zoom, of facetime, of text, of email, of distance, of attention to spaces, electronic spaces to which much goes to die—nuance, humor, personality, humanity, and connection go to die–we have been returned to the land of conversation.\u00a0 It is World Communion Sunday!\u00a0 Praise God from whom all blessings flow!\u00a0 There is a robust magic in conversation, a means of grace, alongside prayer, Scripture, sacraments, and fasting.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, \u201cCome here at once and take your place at the table\u201d? Would you not rather say to him, \u201cPrepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink\u201d? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, \u201cWe are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service Luke 17: 1-10\u00a0 Click here to hear just the sermon Our field work is no substitute for our domestic duties.\u00a0 Your outside, outdoor application of mind and body, in profession or employment or work, is not a replacement for the hearth, the home, the heart, the power of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415"}],"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=3415"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3417,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3415\/revisions\/3417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}