{"id":3453,"date":"2023-01-29T11:00:20","date_gmt":"2023-01-29T16:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3453"},"modified":"2023-02-07T11:35:15","modified_gmt":"2023-02-07T16:35:15","slug":"the-bach-experience-january-29-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2023\/01\/29\/the-bach-experience-january-29-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bach Experience- January 29, 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Matthew 5:1-12<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

For the text and translation of the cantata, please open the January 29, 2023 bulletin<\/a> in a new tab. A portion of the sermon is available below.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dean Hill:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

By grace, with the encouragement of truth in Scripture, of goodness in the women and men of this faithful congregation, and of beauty in the highest reaches of musical splendor in Bach this morning, we are gathered and addressed.\u00a0 There is much about us that occludes, that shadows, the lastingly true, the sturdily good, and the elegantly beautiful.\u00a0 Our culture is awash, sometimes overcome, with these shadows.\u00a0 We see photos of young widows in Ukraine.\u00a0 We watch reports of gruesome gun violence in California.\u00a0 We mourn a racist, heedless, needless death in Memphis.\u00a0 Sometimes it threatens to become enough to take away our confidence, our courage, our willingness to lift another foot, to take another step forward.<\/p>\n

So, Sunday. Sunday comes to bring encouragement, including this morning.\u00a0 Matthew adorns our shared life with beatitudes, inverted blessings, which invert the expected blessings, finding makarios, happiness, blessing,<\/em> on the underside, weakened, distaff side of life. So, worship of God on the Lord\u2019s day is not a matter of indifference, not at all.<\/p>\n

For we have left St. Luke, now to follow the trail of Jesus\u2019 life, death and destiny, this year, 2023, in the Gospel of Matthew.\u00a0\u00a0 Matthew relies on Mark, and then also on a teaching document called Q, along with Matthew\u2019s own particular material, of which our reading today is an example.\u00a0 He has divided his Gospel into five sequential parts, a careful pedagogical rendering, befitting his traditional role as teacher, in contrast to Luke \u2018the physician\u2019, whose interest was history.\u00a0\u00a0 We have moved from history to religion, from narrative to doctrine.\u00a0 Matthew is ordering the meaning of the history of the Gospel, while Luke is ordering the history of the meaning of the Gospel.\u00a0<\/em> You have moved from the History Department to the Religion Department.\u00a0 Matthew has his own perspective.<\/p>\n

Every word is meant for a particular time, but not for all time. \u00a0For all time, and for our time, we have the staggering responsibility to fit the teaching to a new era, another epoch. \u00a0Whether or not ethics is situational, it is certainly epochal. \u00a0Our response and resistance to a megalomaniacal regime can be guided by but not directed by these precious verses of Holy Scripture. \u00a0Their application is, to use a marvelous American idiom, \u2018up to you\u2019. \u00a0\u00a0And this will be inevitably be difficult. \u00a0Experience, freedom, presence\u2014the invisible divine in life\u2014are demanding and difficult.<\/p>\n

Matthew has his own perspective.\u00a0 Remember: \u2018A literary work or a fragment of tradition is a primary source for the historical situation out of which it arose, and is only a secondary source for the historical details for which it gives information\u2019 <\/em>(45). \u00a0(Wellhausen.)<\/p>\n

Some of that perspective involves a developing and developed Christology, an understanding of Christ.\u00a0 Matthew is apparently fighting on two fronts, both against the fundamental conservatives to the right, and against the spiritual radicals to the left.\u00a0 In Matthew, Gospel continues to trump tradition, as in Paul, but tradition itself is a bulwark to defend the Gospel, as in Timothy.\u00a0 Matthew is trying to guide his part of the early church, between the Scylla of the tightly tethered and the Charybdis of the tether-less. Our forebears taught us so.\u00a0 That is, with Matthew, they wanted to order the meaning of the history of the gospel.\u00a0 They aspired to do so by opposition to indecency and indifference.\u00a0 They attempted to do so by attention both to conscience and to compassion.\u00a0 That is, they lived daily with a yearning to transform the culture around them in the spirit and into the form and face of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

For example: \u00a0we today hear a reading and rendering of the Sermon on the Mount, perhaps the most beloved and best remembered of Jesus\u2019 teachings. \u00a0\u00a0At the outset, we face a raging river to cross. \u00a0For when were these teachings meant? \u00a0For all time, for Jesus\u2019 time, for Matthew\u2019s time, for our time\u2014for the time being?<\/p>\n

Let us let the beauty of the moment bathe us for a moment.\u00a0 How today Dr. Jarrett shall we hear Bach?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dr. Scott Jarrett’s portion is not available at this time.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dean Hill:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Gracious God, loving and holy and just,<\/em><\/p>\n

We lift our hearts in thanks and praise this morning.<\/em><\/p>\n

We come to this sanctuary ready again to live as glad hearted women and men.<\/em><\/p>\n

With glad hearts, curious minds, and eager spirits we offer ourselves in worship.\u00a0 Bless us, we pray, by thy presence, which we invoke in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. <\/em><\/p>\n

Are we as ready to receive the gifts of grace as we should be?<\/em><\/p>\n

Have we been prepared, in these days, to notice the bountiful goodness by which Divine Love has touched us?<\/em><\/p>\n

Do we need to confess a little slowness, a little occasional lack of perception, shortness of spiritual breath, a slight or not so slight disregard for what we have been given?<\/em><\/p>\n

O Lord, as a people of glad heart, we confess that we have not always been fully a people of open hands.\u00a0 Open us in these moments of silence, to a new rebirth of wonder.<\/em><\/p>\n

Great art thou, O Lord our God, and fully to be praised, morning by morning.<\/em><\/p>\n

We pray for thy blessing in this hour, thy gifts of confidence, certainty and sureness for the days to come.<\/em><\/p>\n

Help us to receive, with confidence, the many surprising gifts embedded in our personal lives.\u00a0 Help us to notice the unexpected possibility, the new friend, the unusual word, the strange connection.\u00a0 Help us to see more than we plan to see, to receive more than we expect to receive, with the confidence born of obedience.<\/em><\/p>\n

Teach us to claim some certainty in the midst of uncertainty, as a church and and as a congregation.\u00a0 Teach us we pray the path we best should trod into the unforeseeable future.\u00a0 Teach us rightly to connect yesterday with tomorrow, in the light of thy certain love.<\/em><\/p>\n

Shower with cool saving rain and moist power the leaders of this world, with sureness to seek justice and peace.\u00a0 Help those in the torn out conflicts of our day to continue daily, surely, to seek the promise of the Prince of peace.\u00a0 Kindle daily in the hearts of great leaders an even greater desire for peace, with a sense that surely goodness and mercy shall follow.<\/em><\/p>\n

Through Jesus Christ our Lord,\u00a0 Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

-Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service Matthew 5:1-12 Click here to hear just the sermon and cantata   For the text and translation of the cantata, please open the January 29, 2023 bulletin in a new tab. A portion of the sermon is available below.   Dean Hill: By grace, with the encouragement of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25,36,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453"}],"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=3453"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3456,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453\/revisions\/3456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}