{"id":3548,"date":"2023-09-17T11:00:37","date_gmt":"2023-09-17T15:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3548"},"modified":"2023-09-25T14:57:26","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T18:57:26","slug":"conscience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2023\/09\/17\/conscience\/","title":{"rendered":"Conscience"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

Matthew 18:21\u201335<\/a><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

I have been one acquainted with the night.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have walked out in rain\u2014and back in rain.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have outwalked the furthest city light.\u202f<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have looked down the saddest city lane.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have passed by the watchman on his beat<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(Robert Frost)<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018Let everyone be convinced in (their) own mind\u2019<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You owe it to yourself to be honest with yourself.\u00a0 Even, if you can be, apart from repression, from the mind\u2019s way of sheltering us from lasting hurt in memory.\u00a0 You owe it to yourself to be able to look in the mirror.\u00a0 This is what conscience, the work of conscience, brings.\u00a0 Faith is the mysterious power to withstand what we cannot understand.\u00a0 Faith is the power to get up, stand up, start up, to take the promise of Sunday morning into every other day.\u00a0 One of the steps of faith, on the trail of faith, is awareness of conscience, the quickening of the conscience.\u00a0 Faith awakens conscience, and conscience guides faith, even when the walk is a walk in the dark.\u00a0 Luther: <\/span>Faith is a walk in the dark.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We too are acquainted with the night, and walk, together, in the rain.\u202f Hear Gospel this Lord\u2019s Day, the good news of faith.\u00a0 The path, the sawdust trail of faith involves steps toward the mirror, toward what the wonderful old prayer names as the chance to serve God \u2018with a quiet mind\u2019.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You owe it to yourself to be honest with yourself.\u00a0 Even, if you can be, apart from repression, from the mind\u2019s way of sheltering us from lasting hurt in memory.\u00a0 You owe it to yourself to be able to look in the mirror.\u00a0 This is what conscience, the work of conscience, brings.\u00a0 Faith is the mysterious power to withstand what we cannot understand.\u00a0 Faith is the power to get up, stand up, start up, to take the promise of Sunday morning into every other day.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is such a step of faith, a growth in conscience, in the exercise of study, of sacred study, of exegesis, the careful study of Holy Scripture. The historical and critical study of Holy Writ, as practiced from this pulpit over 70 years, is a pathway to insight, interpretation, application\u2013and sermon.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Samuel Terrien taught many the adventure of this labor, years ago, the search for the divine, for God: <\/span>an elusive but real presence\u2026not in nature but in history, and in history through human beings\u2026a presence that does not alter nature but changes history through the character of women and men\u2026a walking God not a sitting God, a walking God not a sitting God\u2026nomadic, hidden, free\u2026known in tent not temple, by ear not eye, in name not glory, <\/span><\/i>in a spiritual interiority<\/span><\/i> (we might say conscience)\u2026that translates the love of God into behavior in society\u2026demythologizing space for the sake of time\u2026(phrases from The Elusive Presence: The Heart of Biblical Theology.) <\/span><\/i>\u202f\u202fSamuel Terrien.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We are left to wonder in conscience about things, to plumb the depths of Scripture. What are they?\u202f We are on our own. There is no live interview from the heavenly conference room.\u202f There is no point-by-point bulletin, with details promised at 11pm.\u202f There is no footnote, or explanatory second conversation.\u202f We are left on our own, by our Lord to wonder and study, relying on conscience. We are given a fair and good amount of freedom in doing so.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In conscience, do you wonder about things, as darkness falls, as the rain falls?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Through the year, from this pulpit, we have tried continuously to trace the moves Matthew makes in 85ad away from what Mark, his source, had written in 70ad.\u202f Mostly, we want to be crystal clear about the way the announcement of the gospel changes, with the setting, changes with the occasion, changes, with the time and season and year.\u202f\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

New occasions teach new duties. Time makes ancient good uncouth.\u202f One must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTwo things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe\u2026the starry heavens above and the moral law within,\u201d wrote the German philosopher Immanuel Kant at the end of his\u202fCritique of Practical Reason\u202f(1788), and these words were inscribed on his tombstone.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Of one conscience stirring sermon, Oliver Wendell Holmes did say, in five words, <\/span>I applied it to myself.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We are left to wonder in conscience about \u2018the things that are God\u2019s\u2019.\u202f What are they?\u202f\u202f Are they wonder and conscience\u2014the starry heavens above and the moral law within?\u202f Wonder and conscience?\u202f Wonder and conscience, spirit and soul?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our colleague offered a marvelous devotional to being our faculty meeting.\u00a0 Biblical, Johannine, exegetical and resting in a single Greek verb, the devotional implored us to abide, through difference, to remain, through disagreement, to wait and watch, through difficulty.\u00a0 It restored faith, it restored my faith\u2014including my faith in the necessity, power and beauty\u2014of devotions.\u00a0 It was a devotion that restored faith in devotions.\u00a0 It stirred the conscience.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is such a step of faith in the exercise of study.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a step of faith, growth in conscience, in institutions, for the love of God and country both.\u00a0 Let your conscience be your guide.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, today, Matthew, being Matthew. He is looking at institutional life, political and religious, governmental and ecclesiastical, all 2000 years before our own similar challenges <\/span>today.<\/span><\/i>\u202f In Matthew we hear what we perhaps most need to hear in America, in October, in 2023, in the midst of political contest, even political mayhem.\u202f Institutions matter.\u202f <\/span>Institutions matter. <\/span><\/i>We are broadly or dimly aware, year by year, that institutions matter, but see so most sharply when they collapse.\u00a0 The collapse of shared truth.\u00a0 The loss of acute memory.\u00a0 When the my US Marine friend\u2019s slogan, \u2018leadership is example, period\u2019, is discarded and disregarded. Covid took more than a million lives, in our country alone.\u00a0 But not only that.\u00a0 Covid removed the benefit of the doubt for inherited structures of civil society, including gathering, assembly, community, presence, religion<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As we mortally and tragically are today.\u202f <\/span>Institutions, particularly those of civil society, really matter.\u202f <\/span><\/i>Volunteerism in a free society is not a luxury, but a necessity.\u202f For the Christian, for the citizen in a free republic, faith involves \u2018intelligent and conscientious participation in politics so that God\u2019s will may be done as fully as possible\u2019 (IB, loc. cit.).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Just in time, Marilyn Robinson reminds us: <\/span>This country would do itself a world of good by restoring a sense of the dignity, even the beauty, of individual ethicalism, of self-restraint, of courtesy (NYT, 10\/11\/20)<\/span><\/i>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One pastor delivered a powerful sermon on dreams, last week, relying on Jacob and his ladder, from centuries before. He invited the congregation to dream, to dream of new things for a bright future. The sermon cut through the wariness and distrust we have come to practice regarding religion, with the fine blade of honesty, love and truth.\u00a0 <\/span>It stirred the conscience.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Midweek this week, one recalled our 2008 decision to hire a gay pastor to work directly with our BU gay community, out of our religious commitment to the full humanity of gay people.\u00a0 She did so for nine years with grace and faith.\u00a0 (It may be time again to refit and refill that part time position.). The memory brought encouragement. <\/span>It stirred the conscience.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a step of faith, in participation in institutions, for the love of God and country both.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a step of faith, a growth in conscience, in respect of and for community, given through these institutions that shape community.\u202f Community matters.\u202f So.\u202f Give of your life and breath. Till gardens you will never harvest.\u202f Build schools in which you will never study.\u202f Construct churches in which you will never worship.\u202f And listen, listen to the voices that emerge in communal conversation, particularly those tart and salty.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Listen to lives that speak,<\/span><\/i> for so the faithful gift of community abides, and guides us.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Over some years now, one of the treasures and delights of living in Boston is the grace, and care, with which lives are remembered in our Boston Globe.\u202f No other paper, to our memory and experience, does so well, so consistently and so personally.\u202f Our community is one of memory, as well as of hope.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We lost many friends and congregants to Covid.\u00a0 Those who were front line COVID workers and victims have had right, ample remembrance, here, on our behalf.\u202f As have those once among us who now rest from their labors.\u00a0 Our first loss, in March of 2020, was C F Richardson, whose husband Neil, an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, taught Hebrew Bible first at Syracuse University and then here at Boston University.\u00a0 She, Faith, was for decades the secretary to the local bishop.\u00a0 It was rumored he would make a decision about who to appoint to what pulpit, and then reverse the decision after talking to Faith.\u00a0\u00a0 She was a grand soul, a person of faith, whose conscience was her guide.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Greeting our new class of students in the school of theology, our new faculty member concluded his welcome sermon by telling students not only to study the high ranges of theology, but also to make space for the touch, for the tactile, for the physical, for photographs, for pets, for plants.\u00a0 By gracious accident, as the doors opened, his hearers were greeted by our chaplains, passing out\u2014plants!\u00a0 There was a gardened altar call, unplanned but so timely<\/span>!\u00a0 It stirred the conscience.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a gift of faith, in respect of, and for, community.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a step of faith, a growth in conscience, in the joy of discourse, of conversation.\u202f Of all our losses in the last several years, this has been the greatest.\u202f John Wesley even named conversation a means of grace.\u202f All need warm, personal, true, glad hearted, genuine dialogue.\u202f Especially, leadership needs dialogue, leaders need dialogue.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Leadership, said my friend, \u2018is disappointing people at a rate they can accept, or survive, or endure. At a rate they can <\/span>handle<\/span><\/i>.\u2019 Justice is a part but not the heart of the Gospel\u2014<\/span>justice is a part but not the heart of the gospel<\/span><\/i>; equality and justice are not the same thing; public safety on the streets matters to all; poor children <\/span>of every hue<\/span><\/i> need and deserve our care in health, in education, in protection, in nurture, and in respect.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We will pause and ask questions like: Why is there so much distance between theology and ministry, theory and practice, when there is not such in medicine, dentistry, public health, hospitality, education, engineering, arts, social work and communications? Why?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In September of 1995, newly installed as the senior minister of a very large church, I hurried out for a breakfast meeting to meet and get to know with our church\u2019s investment advisor.\u00a0 My earlier church had also an endowment, small and stowed away in card board boxes, or at least in impregnable savings accounts and CD\u2019s.\u00a0 Now I had some responsibility for a real, or a large, endowment, and more detailed strategies for investment.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Over breakfast, a bright well-dressed fellow explained the current funds, their places of investment, risks and rewards.\u00a0 About half way through the fine talk, I noticed that his lapel button was not buttoned.\u00a0 This produced a moment of conscience.\u00a0 I did not know the man, I did not want to offend him, and I did not thereby point out his sartorial error.\u00a0 We parted to go on to the rest of the day.\u00a0 I wondered how someone so well dressed and spoken could come out the door unbuttoned.\u00a0 Who dresses you, I mused.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But you know, life is funny, and will teach us, if we let it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Returning to my office, I stopped in front of a mirror there.\u00a0 Here is what I saw: my own lapel button was unbuttoned.\u00a0 His and mine, both.\u00a0 He had gone on to his day thinking what I had before\u2014why this otherwise well-appointed person going about with his shirt unbuttoned?\u00a0 Conscience would have leaned over in both directions and righted the wrong.\u00a0 <\/span>The look in the mirror stirred the conscience.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You owe it to yourself to be honest with yourself, to look in the mirror. There is a step of faith in the joy of discourse, of conversation. Our friends give us back ourselves.\u00a0 And a look in the mirror can move us along.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Study, institution, community, conversation\u2014steps along the walk of faith that quicken the conscience, steps of faith that quicken the conscience, steps of faith that quicken the conscience.\u202f <\/span>Sursum Corda.<\/span><\/i>\u202f Hear Gospel this Lord\u2019s Day.\u202fGod walks with us, in the rain, in the dark, in sadness\u2014at night, at night, at night.\u202f <\/span>A walking not a sitting God. God walks with us in the rain.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Let everyone be convinced in (their) own mind\u2019<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have been one acquainted with the night.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have walked out in rain\u2014and back in rain.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have outwalked the furthest city light.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have looked down the saddest city lane.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have passed by the watchman on his beat<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service Click here to watch the full service Matthew 18:21\u201335 Click here to hear just the sermon   I have been one acquainted with the night.\u00a0 I have walked out in rain\u2014and back in rain.\u00a0 I have outwalked the furthest city light.\u202f\u00a0 I have looked down the saddest city […]<\/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\/3548"}],"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=3548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3549,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548\/revisions\/3549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}