{"id":3427,"date":"2022-11-06T11:00:38","date_gmt":"2022-11-06T16:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3427"},"modified":"2022-11-08T12:19:26","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T17:19:26","slug":"a-communion-meditation-for-all-saints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2022\/11\/06\/a-communion-meditation-for-all-saints\/","title":{"rendered":"A Communion Meditation for All Saints"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Luke 6:20-31<\/a><\/p>\n

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

My goodness, you certainly have come to know some colorful characters, some new friends, this autumn.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of these folks said to Jesus, \u2018I will follow you wherever you go\u2019.\u00a0 But Jesus warned him, \u2018foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head\u2019.\u00a0 I wonder whether he followed or not, don\u2019t you?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then there was the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.\u00a0 He fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and left him half-dead.\u00a0 You remember that neither the priest nor the Levite stopped to help, but a foreigner, a Samaritan did, and brought him to an inn and paid for his expenses.\u00a0 I wonder whether they became friends, wounded and healer, don\u2019t you?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Martha and Mary, worker and prayer, both, met you as they meet their Lord, in the pages of Holy Writ.\u00a0 One thing is needful they learned.\u00a0 I wonder whether that one thing is faith, don\u2019t you?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then there was that woman who had been sick for 18 years, whom Jesus healed\u2014on the sabbath\u2014with a flick of the wrist.\u00a0 I wish we had heard more about her, don\u2019t you?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Remember later that man who had two sons, and one went off to a foreign land and failed?\u00a0 He came back having to climb the hill of defeat and seek help again, where \u2018when you have to go there they have to take you in\u2019, that is–home.\u00a0 A best robe, a ring on his finger, a calf killed and cooked, and an older brother stewing out in the field.\u00a0 Did they ever reconcile, don\u2019t you wonder whether they did?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And that fellow, that dishonest steward, he was a character for sure.\u00a0 Yet he had something we can use too, a way to manage risk, a capacity not only to generalize and not only to specialize but also\u2014to improvise.\u00a0 How did he come up with that, I wonder?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then you met up with a rich man dressed in purple whose name was hidden, a poor man with sores and hunger, who had the name Lazarus.\u00a0 There was a misty haze of judgment in the air, wasn\u2019t there?\u00a0 There was a recognition that there does come a time when it is too late, wasn\u2019t there?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Later you came into another place and found a persistent woman battling with an unjust Judge, who feared neither God nor man.\u00a0 She wore him out, wore him out, with a blessed endurance.\u00a0 Where did that long suffering come from, don\u2019t you wonder?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Or that tax collector, who said only one thing, and all around him could hear his cry, \u2018God\u2026be merciful to me, a sinner!\u2019\u00a0 A spirited kind of humility he had did he not?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then there is the wee little man sitting in the Sycamore tree\u2014you remember him, I know, from just a few days ago.\u00a0 He came down a notch or two.\u00a0 What was that all about, don\u2019t you wonder?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My goodness, you certainly have come to know some colorful characters, some new friends, this autumn and this year.\u00a0 You have Luke to thank.\u00a0 Luke has assembled this chorus of life-long friends for you and me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dime con quien andas, y te dire quien eres<\/span><\/i>, say the Spaniards:\u00a0 tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.\u00a0 The saints of God include all of the church visible and invisible.\u00a0 But then there are those close saints who have formed you.\u00a0 Luke in his remembrance of Jesus teaching has given us these.\u00a0 What a gift.\u00a0 A particular, personal gift.\u00a0 Your summer preachers brought others of these home to you last July and August.\u00a0 Read through some of those homilies again when you have a chance.\u00a0 I am so thankful for the new Lukan friends you have made together this autumn.\u00a0 They are saints of God, Scriptural saints of God.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What would your new Lukan friends say to you, to interpret these beatitudes?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0For that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Would they say to all, would they say a single word like, well, VOTE!!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Would they say to all, a challenging word whether you have thought about what you did and sought a kind of contrition, compunction, lament for what those choices in retrospect have come to mean.\u00a0 What you meant is not what it has come to mean, is it?\u00a0 What you meant is not what it means.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Would they say to all to watch for the failures and errors of our own perspective, like false equivalences, like the churchly willingness to supplant the great with the good, like the foolishness of some slogans?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Would they say to all, what on earth are leaving on earth in respect of a healthy hopeful country, a healthy hopeful democracy, for your grandchildren?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Vote, lament, critique, hope.\u00a0 Seek the good.\u00a0 What was good yesterday is good today, by the main.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That is one of the hard things about making new friends.\u00a0 They draw you out in new ways, which is truly wonderful but can be challenging.\u00a0 Let them teach you, speak to you, converse, converse, converse with you.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Luke teaches us by example, does he not?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He is showing us, in his own biblical way, that we have every right and much reason to canonize our own guiding lights, our own formative figures, our own saints, come All Saints Sunday.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, let me ask you:\u00a0 Who is the patron Saint of your life?\u00a0 Who are the saints of God whom you would like to emulate, to be one too?\u00a0 We have patron saints of entire countries, patron saints of schools and movements, patron saints of days and holidays.\u00a0 Perhaps we should begin to add the patron saints of the faithful, of you and your neighbor and your sister and your brother.\u00a0 What saints led the way, for you?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In a jarring, jolting way, this question settled in during the past week.\u00a0 A preacher of renown, of the first water, a little older but not much, who hallowed the halls of Union Theological Seminary in the 1970\u2019s and then the crowded streets of New York City for the next fifty years as the Senior Minister of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem\u2014the pulpit of Adam Clayton Powell junior and senior before\u2014died at age 73.\u00a0 His voice carries still, carries us forward, one of the great, leading African American preachers and teachers of our era, the Rev. Dr. Calvin Butts.\u00a0 He was also, at the same time, for decades, the President of a NYC College, SUNY College of Old Westbury on Long Island.\u00a0 That is, he was an academic preacher, a University pastor, a person committed to unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety.\u00a0 Our fellow classmate sent an early morning email to let me know.\u00a0 He showed many of us the way, the way of University ministry.\u00a0 In mourning Dr. Butts, and then in thinking about All Saints Sunday, an avalanche of a world of memory, and maybe even understanding cascaded down.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You are sitting alongside one of the historic, leading University pulpits anywhere, with six deans since its dedication in 1950.\u00a0 How does one end up here?\u00a0 Saints preserve us and prepare us, who toiled and fought and lived and died the whole of their good lives long.\u00a0 You see it if you see it at all in hindsight, over long time.\u00a0 By age 6, the Sunday morning preacher at Colgate University\u2014Adam Clayton Powell\u2019s alma mater\u2014the gruff and growling Robert V. Smith was a known shadow presence in our Hamilton NY home.\u00a0 He hosted Julian Bond, a young African American vice-presidential candidate in 1968, to preach in the Colgate pulpit, where many of us heard him for the first time.\u00a0 By age 16, the Sunday morning preacher at Hendricks Chapel in Syracuse NY, the Rev. Dr. John Knight, who brought the first Mosque to SU and the city itself, was known shadow presence in our Syracuse home.\u00a0 By age 21, the weekly preacher at Gray Chapel, Ohio Wesleyan University, the Rev. Dr. James Leslie, whose own father taught my father Old Testament here at BU, was a campus presence, and when asked where one should go to Seminary, replied in a quiet wise voice, \u2018Yale, Union, or BU\u2019.\u00a0 The long time anti-war preacher on Sunday mornings from Bechtel Chapel at Yale, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, shepherded us from the high pulpit of Riverside Church in the heart of the Columbia University campus through age 25.\u00a0 His successor, an academic preacher with a Pentecostal flair, and our own homiletics professor, the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes, guided us by precept and example from afar for 20 years.\u00a0 Rev. Dr. N. T Wright filled the Henry Birks Chapel at McGill University over many years, including the 10\u2014yes 10!\u2014years, to age 45, of our doctoral study there.\u00a0 Peter Gomes and Will Willimon, Harvard and Duke, drew us on, close competitors and rivals to the voice of Marsh Chapel, before and during our time here, who gave choral echo, retort and compliment to the deans of this Chapel, Franklin Littell, Howard Thurman, Robert Hamill, Robert Thornburg, Robert Neville, and Robert Hill.\u00a0 Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor left church\u2014see her book of that title\u2014for the campus nearby, preaching all the while and everywhere and all the time.\u00a0 Who could see, whether at Colgate in 1968, or coming to Marsh Chapel in 2006, who could see the weaving and interweaving of all these voices, Calvin Butts included, what somehow subliminally, in holy, ghostly way, prepared the way for the present work, the current and ongoing work, in his pulpit?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In chorus, on this first Sunday of November, they would say especially to young adults, present this morning and listening, a single word:\u00a0 Vote.\u00a0 Lament. Critique. Hope.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But two saints unnamed yet, a father and father in law, Irving Hill and Robert Pennock, who both and equally both loved both the church and the college, and showed it and lived it, along with but more personally than the others, could nudge and affirm and smile to say, when the chips were down, \u2018yes, a University pulpit, the pulpit of Marsh Chapel would be a great place for ministry\u2019.\u00a0 You see?\u00a0 We don\u2019t see until we see in retrospect.\u00a0 So all that was going on, wrote Thornton Wilder in Our Town, and we hardly noticed.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Asked Carlyle Marney, \u2018who told you who you was?\u2019\u00a0 When the chips were down?Who are the patron saints not of Ireland or Scotland or Boston or Boston University, but the patron saints of your life, your living, your calling, your vocation, your self, your soul, <\/span>your very soul?<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 The pattern may not yet have formed for you, or may not have been visible, until this very hour.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Luke had his.\u00a0 We have ours.\u00a0 You have yours.\u00a0 Sing a song today, a song of the saints of God!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For all the saints, who from their labors rest<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Who Thee by faith before the world confessed<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thy name O Jesus be forever blessed!<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Alleluia!\u00a0 Alleluia!<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\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 6:20-31 Click here to hear just the sermon My goodness, you certainly have come to know some colorful characters, some new friends, this autumn.\u00a0\u00a0 One of these folks said to Jesus, \u2018I will follow you wherever you go\u2019.\u00a0 But Jesus warned him, \u2018foxes have holes, and birds […]<\/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\/3427"}],"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=3427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3428,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3427\/revisions\/3428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}