{"id":3483,"date":"2023-04-16T11:00:14","date_gmt":"2023-04-16T15:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3483"},"modified":"2023-04-19T10:18:33","modified_gmt":"2023-04-19T14:18:33","slug":"after-ten-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2023\/04\/16\/after-ten-years\/","title":{"rendered":"After Ten Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

John 20:19-31<\/a><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Our shared faith provides a particular kind of memory, a powerful kind of prayer, and a persistent kind of love as hallmarks of Easter morning.\u00a0 Do they mark your life?\u00a0 Do memory, prayer and clothe life for you?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>The gospel is resurrection in memory, in prayer, and in love. What empty space, what unoccupied tomb, abides in your life for these three, and the greatest of these\u2014love?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>We set forth to do the work of facing grief with grace, failure with faith, hurt with hope, and death with dignity.\u00a0 And thee?\u00a0 Is that work begun, continued, or completed?\u00a0 The Word brings you life, uplift, a lift for living, even into the teeth of death, so you may face, face down, and live down death.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Death makes us mortal.\u00a0 Facing death makes us human.\u00a0 The last enemy destroyed is death.\u00a0 We all, finally, shuffle off this mortal coil\u2026<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span>God is at work in the world to make and keep human life human. <\/span><\/i>(J Bennett).\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Seek \u2018the Living One\u2019, He who is more alive than all life, whose life is the marrow of being alive.\u00a0 Why do you seek the Living One (<\/span>ton zonta<\/span><\/i>)\u2014a title perhaps, a Person, for sure, an announcement of Christ, crucified and risen.\u00a0 All appearances to the contrary notwithstanding\u2026<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>\u2018The marks of the new age are present hidden in the old age.\u00a0 At the juncture of the ages the marks of the resurrection are hidden and revealed in the cross of the disciple\u2019s daily death, and only there\u2026this is what the turn of the ages means, that life is manifested in death\u2019 (JL Martyn, of blessed memory, in 1967, <\/span><\/i>Epistemology at the Turn of the Ages<\/span><\/i>)<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>We need not over-preach.\u00a0 We still walk by faith not by sight.\u00a0 We still see in a mirror, dimly.\u00a0 We still have this treasure in earthen vessels.\u00a0 We still hope for what we do not see.\u00a0 The resurrection follows, but not replace the cross.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Paul gives no indication that he is familiar with the doctrine of the empty tomb.\u00a0 There is not the remotest reference to it in any of his letters, and his conviction that the resurrection body is not the body of this flesh but a spiritual body waiting for the soul of man in heaven makes it improbable that he would have found it congenial <\/span><\/i>(Gilmour, IB, loc. cit.)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Grace comes with the morning, every morning.\u00a0\u00a0 So walk with the women, walk with me too, let us walk together through the Gospel in sermon.\u00a0 And if you get done with the sermon before the sermon gets done, if you are finished with it before I am, have no fear, do not worry.\u00a0 Just wait a bit, and I will catch up with you!\u00a0\u00a0 Some of you will arise inspired, and some of you will awake refreshed, and both outcomes are worthy outcomes!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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

We do not know what a day will bring.\u00a0 True this is of every day, but truer of some days than others.\u00a0 Focus for a moment on the <\/span>\u2018gravest\u2019<\/span><\/i> of days you have known.\u00a0 Someday I would like to hear of it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Patriots\u2019 Day 2013 was such a day, 10\u00a0years ago.\u00a0 We learned first hand in this neighborhood about the visitation of death, tragically known again in Brussels and around the globe this week.\u00a0 Spelled D\u2026E\u2026A\u2026T\u2026H. Not your imaginary friend, but an equally omni-present invisible enemy\u2026<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>That Monday began with brunch and celebration, and ended with terror, and needless slaughter and (humanly speaking) unforgivable horror.\u202f Our staff opened the chapel later for the throngs walking, T-less, by.\u202f Water, refreshment, prayer, counsel, they gave.\u202f One runner came very cold and was shrouded with a clergy gown, all we had to offer, a shepherd\u2019s outfit.\u202f What a week.\u00a0 Tuesday brought us to the plaza, come evening, in vigil, to honor and reflect.\u202f Wednesday, in this chapel, and also at other hours in other settings, gathered us for ordered worship, prayer, music, liturgy, Eucharist and sermon.\u202f Thursday we heard President Obama, on a familiar theme, \u2018running the race set before us\u2019.\u202f Friday at home we watched televised news.\u202f Saturday we listened for the musical succor of Handel\u2019s beautiful Messiah, right here.\u202f The Monday next we gathered again for a memorial service, for our deceased BU student, Lu Lingzi.\u202f\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Death makes us mortal.\u00a0 Facing death makes us human.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>You remember death.\u00a0 Your neighbor.\u00a0\u00a0 Your hourly companion.\u00a0 You spell his or her name D\u2026E\u2026A\u2026T\u2026H.<\/span> Easter morning is about intimations of life, the Living One outlasting death.\u00a0 Paul:\u00a0 <\/span>As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.\u00a0<\/span><\/i> Behold: a glimmer of light in the dark, a rumor of life in death, an angel reclining in the tomb.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Memory gives us life.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If there has been ever an age that more needed better memory than ours, I know not what it would have been.\u00a0 <\/span>Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.\u00a0 The past is not dead, it is not even past (<\/span><\/i>Faulkner, whom I have been re-reading this year)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During that week journalists from around the globe contacted us, and others, across the university.\u00a0 Many, perhaps most, called or wrote from Asia.\u00a0 Some needed commentary for radio news or other newscasts.\u00a0 The main newspapers across the country also sent reporters.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>On Wednesday, the office took a call from the Philadelphia Enquirer.\u00a0 Could someone meet their man and his photographer at the steps of the chapel, to help convey something of the nightly vigils, services and informal prayers of the week.\u00a0 We picked a mid-afternoon hour.\u00a0\u00a0 In the April sunlight the interview began.\u00a0 Suddenly the photographer dropped his camera and shouted:\u00a0 Bob.\u00a0 Bob.\u00a0 Bob.\u00a0 His name is Clem Murray, a high school classmate and friend.\u00a0 He and his girlfriend Mimi Sinopoli were the \u2018class couple\u2019 because they were the most beautiful couple, a truly stunning twosome.\u00a0 I had seen neither for forty years (1972-2013).\u00a0 I had heard that they married in college.\u00a0 Somehow, he recognized enough of my former self, hidden behind the current condition of my condition, and recognized my name.\u00a0 He let go of the camera for a hug.\u00a0 We finished the interview and photo.\u00a0 I turned then as they were going to ask, \u2018So how is Mimi?\u2019\u00a0 You only know the really awkward moments too late.\u00a0 They come up after you, like alligators out of the Florida swamp.\u00a0 Clem said nothing.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t need to.\u00a0 I could see what he was holding back in his face and eyes.\u00a0\u00a0 He just shook his head and shook.\u00a0 \u201cTwo years ago she died of cancer\u201d. \u00a0In the midst of life we are in death, every moment.\u00a0 All I could see of her was a white graduation gown, a little cap and tassle.\u00a0 Three decades of marriage, three children, all things bright and beautiful, and then a malignancy unto death.\u00a0 Clem waved goodbye.\u00a0 A kairos, not a chronos moment\u2026<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>We held, together, a memory of life, that made life, that gave life, that made alive.\u00a0 In the very presence of death.\u00a0 It was a resurrection memory.\u00a0 A living memory takes you out of the present and into a living past.\u00a0 It was a resurrection memory.\u00a0 And perhaps the most powerful personal conversation I have known.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Marcel Proust with his madeleine moment teaches us best:\u00a0 <\/span>a single minute released from the chronological order of time has re-created in us the human being similarly released\u2026situated outside the scope of time, what could one fear from the future…(these are) resurrections of the past (Proust, RTP, II, 992, 996).\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Memory gives us life.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Prayer gives us life.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A week after the Marathon, you may remember, we memorialized our student, Lu Lingzi.\u00a0 This service was held, as had been the memorial for President John Silber the autumn before, in the George Sherman Union.\u00a0 Two thousand attended, with an unknown number around the globe watching and listening by cyber cast.\u00a0\u00a0 The service proceeded, word and music, after careful attention and planning by musicians and clergy.\u00a0 We heard the Gospel of Mark and the Analects of Confucius.\u00a0 We listened to instrumental and choral music.\u00a0 We grieved, remembered, accepted, and affirmed, together.\u00a0 The family, eighteen or so, and dressed in black, sat in the front row.\u00a0 As the service ended, from the next row, I could see and hear a susurration along the family pew.\u00a0 They then were meant to move to the gathering and greeting room, but no one stood.\u00a0 Further conversation moved up and down the row, in a language I could not of course understand.\u00a0 I feared:\u00a0 have we forgotten a eulogy, or left out a reading, or skipped over an anthem?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 It was something else.\u00a0 After a moment, the family, dressed in black stood as one, moved as one, turned as one, and faced the congregation and the world.\u00a0 A long quiet ensued.\u00a0 Then, as one, they bowed at the waist, and held the bow.\u00a0 To honor the gathering, to honor the moment, to honor the life, to honor Life, they bowed, in silence.\u00a0 It is the most powerful liturgical moment I have ever known.\u00a0 It was a resurrection prayer.\u00a0 And it is perhaps the most powerful liturgical moment I have seen.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Different are the languages of prayer, but the tears are all the same\u2019 (A Heschel).\u00a0 We should repeat this three times a day.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Prayer gives us life.\u00a0 Prayer is a mode of existential gratitude.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Love gives us life.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The next Sunday, April 28, turned out to be a nice, warm early spring day.\u00a0 As the sun came up, we looked forward to a day of rest and worship, a chance for a return to normal.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

About 1 hour before the Sunday service, our chaplain came in to the office to say, \u2018We have another one\u2019.\u00a0 It took me some moment to understand and internalize the fact of another death.\u00a0 She had died tragically in a fire, caught in an upper room.\u00a0 Her mother would be coming up from NYC on the bus later that evening.\u00a0 The police would have informed her of her daughter\u2019s death.\u00a0 Our Dean of Students, Kenn Elmore, and his associate and I planned to meet the bus.\u00a0 That evening we awaited a delayed Greyhound, talking a bit about the week past.\u00a0 We pondered how best to greet the grieving mom.\u00a0 It was decided I would meet the bus, and greet her as she came down the steps, to offer our heart felt condolences, and start the trek over to the hotel.\u00a0 The noise of the terminal, the lateness of the hour, the long weeks of terror and loss, and the approximate presence of death itself settled on us, and gave us that quiet of the soul that sometimes overtakes us.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>In the bus rolled.\u00a0 The mother came down the steps carrying a beautifully decorated box, holding it with both hands.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want to greet you for the University and express our deepest sympathy and heart felt concern\u201d I said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>She replied, \u201cWhere is my daughter?\u00a0 What hospital is she in?\u00a0 Please take me to her, so I can see her and talk with her.\u00a0 I want to go and see her.\u00a0 Where is she?\u00a0 How is she doing?\u00a0 I brought a rice cake.\u00a0 See.\u00a0 In the box.\u00a0 It is her favorite.\u00a0 Rice cake.\u00a0 I know it will make her feel better.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Honestly, at every phrase I tried to say, with honesty and kindness, that her daughter had in fact died the night before, caught in an awful fire.\u00a0 Apparently she did not understand the police, or they did not speak clearly, or someone else in the family took the call.\u00a0 I tried everything.\u00a0\u00a0 But she could not understand, or could not hear, until, at last, she looked up and hard and asked, \u2018You mean\u2026she\u2026is dead?\u2019\u00a0 Yes.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a phrase in the Christmas gospel about Rachel weeping for her children.\u00a0 That Bus Terminal echoed with the chilling, haunting, painful cries of a mother who rightly could not and would not be consoled, as Rachel could not.\u00a0 The reverberation of her sobbing across that urban nighttime cacophony I can hear still.\u00a0 Nothing I said helped.\u00a0 Nothing I did helped.\u00a0 Nothing I could offer her could she receive.\u00a0 We sat on a bench, the wailing stronger still, the cake and box on the floor, the gathered friends lost in grief.\u00a0\u00a0 Then she stiffened, her arm in mine becoming taut and cold.\u00a0 Perhaps she was going into shock.\u00a0 Everything I tried\u2014counsel, prayer, listening, scripture, all\u2014was of no avail.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then from her other side Dean Elmore simply surrounded, enfolded her.\u00a0 He put all of his body and arms all around her, as she wailed and stiffened.\u00a0 He held her.\u00a0 He rocked her.\u00a0 He embraced her.\u00a0 And little by little, sob by sob, she began to relax.\u00a0 And little by little, breath by breath, she began to loosen up.\u00a0 And little by little, held tight, she came through it.\u00a0 Her lament lessened, her limbs loosened. Out up from the tomb she came.\u00a0\u00a0 A physical unspoken compassion brought her through, from death to life.\u00a0 It was a resurrection love, compassion, embrace, grace, freedom, care, acceptance, mercy, pardon, peace, inclusion.\u00a0 It was a resurrection love.\u00a0 And it is perhaps the most powerful very public, pastoral ministry I have witnessed.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Unamuno:\u00a0 <\/span>warmth, warmth, warmth;\u00a0 we are dying of cold not of darkness; it is not the night that kills, it is the frost.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Six years, at the time of our dad\u2019s death, Elie Wiesel sent a note.\u00a0 It was love physical, compassionate and personal, and as with all resurrection love it made a difference.\u00a0 It concluded: <\/span>we have a saying in our tradition, \u2018may you be spared another further hardship\u2019.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Love gives us life.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Memory. Prayer. Love.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The marks of the new age are present hidden in the old age \u2026this is what the turn of the ages means, that life is manifested in death\u2019 (JL Martyn, <\/span><\/i>Epistemology at the Turn of the Ages<\/span><\/i>)<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Easter, this season, is memory, prayer and love, creation, redemption, sanctification, Father, Son, Spirit, life in death.\u00a0 And life in death holds out a promise of something grander still, life after death.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/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 John 20:19-31 Click here to hear just the sermon   Our shared faith provides a particular kind of memory, a powerful kind of prayer, and a persistent kind of love as hallmarks of Easter morning.\u00a0 Do they mark your life?\u00a0 Do memory, prayer and clothe life for you?\u00a0 […]<\/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\/3483"}],"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=3483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3484,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3483\/revisions\/3484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}