{"id":3477,"date":"2023-03-26T11:00:24","date_gmt":"2023-03-26T15:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3477"},"modified":"2023-04-04T16:23:05","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T20:23:05","slug":"augustine-city-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2023\/03\/26\/augustine-city-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Augustine: City of God"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

John 11:17\u201345<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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Recently, it may have happened, that one friend stopped another on Marsh Plaza, Lent 2023, just in front of the sermon sign board.\u00a0 To his friend he said, <\/span>Have you heard Hill\u2019s last sermon on Augustine?\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Not pausing for more than split second, the friend replied, <\/span>I sure hope so!\u00a0 I really do hope so!<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 With gladness, let us report you have only 19 minutes before that hope is fulfilled.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding hope, as it happens, Augustine himself, in his <\/span>magnum opus, <\/span><\/i>The City of <\/span><\/i>God, <\/span><\/i>had much to say: <\/span>\u201cAs, therefore, we are saved, so we are made happy by hope. And as we do not as yet possess a present, but look for a future salvation, so is it with our happiness, and this \u201cwith patience;\u201d for we are encompassed with evils, which we ought patiently to endure, until we come to the ineffable enjoyment of unmixed good; for there shall be no longer anything to endure.\u201d (Bk 19, Ch 4).\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>As the Visigoths finished the sacking of Rome in 410ce, and then moved on to the rest of the Empire, Augustine wrote (413-422) this magisterial teaching about the future, about history, about good and evil, about the city of God, the heavenly city, in contest with the city of \u2018man\u2019, the earthly city.\u00a0 As Augustine moved on from his earlier interests in Plato (<\/span>\u2018the individual teacher does not make the truth, he finds it) <\/span><\/i>in Aristotle, Cicero, in the Manicheans, in the Neoplatonists, on conversion he began to immerse himself in the Holy Scripture, under the preaching of Ambrose, and his thought took on steadily and continuously the shape of a full biblical theology. (In our time, we sorely lack a full throated, liberal biblical theology:\u00a0 its lack is among other things at the very root of the fracturing, right now, of my beloved United Methodist Church). Our last Lenten sermon in conversation with Augustine is thus in conversation with his last work, lengthy work, work of a lifetime, <\/span>The City of God: <\/span><\/i>\u201c<\/span>Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.\u201d<\/span><\/i> (Bk 14, Ch 28)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In Augustinian fashion, we come toward him, and with fervent desire we trust to the saving Gospel itself, this morning, through the blessed land of Holy Scripture, and Augustine\u2019s prized favorite, the Gospel of John.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For the Gospel of John, allowed a meager few weeks interjection into our lectionary this month, by interruption of Matthew, is centrally, even solely, an announcement of presence<\/span>, divine presence, the presence of God. <\/span><\/i>Really only this theological, interpretative insight will make sense for you and me of John 11.\u00a0 In 90ad, 60 years after the cross, some in the Johannine community <\/span>spoke in the voice of Jesus<\/span><\/i>. Especially this is so in the \u2018I Am\u2019 sayings. If Jesus on earth did not say these things\u2013who did? Answer: the Johannine prophet (s). The preacher in John 11 announces presence<\/span>. I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.<\/span><\/i> You are a person of faith? Practice that presence.\u00a0 You are a Christian? Practice that presence. You are a Christian yearning for a faith amenable to culture and culture amenable to faith? Are you? Yes? Practice that presence. The ancient, troubled, community of the beloved disciple, that of John, has your back. Even\u2014especially\u2014in a virulent epoch, or even, as today, for us, in a post-virulent one, where the virus has not, yet, let go.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Remember, what carries Jesus to the cross, in the Gospel of John, is the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Not the cleansing of the temple, but the resurrection to life of Lazarus, in the Johannine narrative, brings the advent of the cross. Jesus is crucified, here, because he claims divinity, and embodies divinity, in this Gospel. This makes a bit of sense of the placement of this reading just before Holy Week, rather than just after. \u2018No good deed goes unpunished\u2019 does not capture the gravity and eternity of the moment, but it does give the average hearer a point of orientation to John 11. John Ashton wrote fiercely of this Gospel:\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Conscious as they were of the continuing presence in their midst of the Glorified One, no wonder the community, or rather the evangelist who was its chief spokesman, smoothed out the rough edges of the traditions of the historical Jesus\u2026(His portrait of Jesus) arose from his constant awareness, which he shared with members of his community, that they were living in the presence of the Glorified One. So dazzling was this glory that any memory of a less-than-glorious Christ was altogether eclipsed\u2026(They) realized that the truth that they prized as the source of their new life was to be identified not (only) with the Jesus of history but with the risen and glorious Christ, and that this was a Christ free from all human weakness. The claims they made for him were at the heart of the new religion that soon came to be called Christianity<\/span><\/i> (199) <\/span>The Gospel of John and Christian Origins<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 The new religion that soon came to be called Christianity\u2026\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ashton: <\/span>The difference between John\u2019s portrait of Christ and that of the Synoptists is best accounted for by the experience of the glorious Christ constantly present to him and his community<\/span><\/i> (204) (<\/span>The Gospel of John and Christian Origins)<\/span><\/i>. For the two basic historical problems of the New Testament are ancient cousins, first cousins to our two fundamental issues of salvation today. The first historical problem behind our 27 books, and pre-eminently embedded in John, is a form of dislocation\u2014our shared condition March 2020\u2014March 2023, dislocation\u2013for John the movement away from his mother, his motherland, Judaism. How did a religious movement, founded by a Jew, born in Judea, embraced by 12 and 500 within Judaism, expanded by a Jewish Christian missionary become, within 100 years, entirely Greek? The books of the New Testament record in excruciating detail the development of this second identity, this coming of age, that came with the separation from mother religion.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The second historical problem underneath the Newer Testament is disappointment, the despair that gradually accompanied the delay, finally the cancellation, of Christ\u2019s return, the delay of the parousia. Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. Paul expected to be alive to see the advent of Christ. Gradually, though, the church confessed disappointment in its greatest immediate hope, the sudden cataclysm of the end.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These two problems, historical and fascinating, create our New Testament: the separation from Judaism and the delay of Christ\u2019s return. In the fourth Gospel the two come together with great ferocity. What makes this matter so urgent for us is that these very two existential dilemmas\u2014one of identity and one of imagination\u2014are before every generation, including and especially our own. March, Lent 2023: how shall we live in faith? How do I become a real person? How do we weather lasting disappointment? How do I grow up? How do we become mature? What insight do I need, amid the truly harrowing struggles over identity, to become the woman or man I was meant to become? What imagination\u2014what hope molded by courage\u2014do we need to face down oour ennui, our sloth in imagination. More than any other document in ancient Christianity, John explored the first. More than any other document in Christianity, John faced the second. Both mean choice. Both bring us to the summit of freedom. Once every three years, interrupting Matthew, we hear the great passages\u2014Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman, the Blind Man, and, today Lazarus. Hear the Gospel, John 11: We\u2026YOU!…have the freedom, a bit in contest with Augustine, to choose\u2026and to move:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n