{"id":3566,"date":"2023-10-22T11:00:01","date_gmt":"2023-10-22T15:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3566"},"modified":"2023-10-30T09:45:40","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T13:45:40","slug":"the-promise-of-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2023\/10\/22\/the-promise-of-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"The Promise of Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

Matthew 22:15\u201322<\/a><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

What a friend we have in Paul!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Whose mighty voice has rolled down through the ages bringing us the good news in all its stark simplicity:\u202f Christ the Lord is Risen!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Raised in Tarsus, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, of the Tribe of Benjamin, as to the law a Pharisee, a defender of the traditions of the elders\u2014and so a persecutor of the church.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Who rode to Damascus and on the way was blinded and there heard a voice saying: \u201cSaul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Who in that blinding encounter with the Risen Lord, gave himself up, pronounced a sort of death sentence over himself, and so died with Christ and walked henceforth in newness of life.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Who believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead and so lived moment by moment thinking, \u201cWho knows what will happen next?\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Who cared for those first few Christians, and worried about them, and grew angry with them, for they so easily lost this vision:\u202f that since God had raised Jesus from the dead, who knew what would happen next?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Who challenged the Thessalonians: \u201cThis is the will of God, your sanctification\u201d.\u202f\u202f He taught them about death.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Who challenged the Galatians: \u201cBe not deceived, God is not mocked.\u201d\u202f He taught them about the law.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Who challenged the Philippians: \u201cLet your manner of life be worthy of the gospel\u201d.\u202f He taught them about service.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Who challenged the Romans: \u201cBe ye not conformed but be ye transformed by the renewal of your minds.\u201d\u202f He taught them about the spirit.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Who challenged the Corinthians: \u201cBe reconciled.\u202f The form of this world is passing away\u201d.\u202f He taught them about culture.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Who challenged Philemon: \u201cMay your goodness not be by compulsion but of your own free will\u201d.\u202f He taught him about power.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Whose mighty voice speaks to us today, in these verses from 1 Thessalonians 1 (the oldest chapter in the New Testament, from 50ad) ever answering the question of what we should do by saying something, first, about what God has done.\u202f Our faith springs not from ourselves but from God, the Giver of both life and faith.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Paul reminds us that \u201cthe form of this world is passing away\u201d (1 Cor. 7).\u202f What else can we expect from a God who raises crucified Messiahs?\u202f Who knows what will happen next? The future is as open as we, in faith, will allow it to be.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We may recognize in Paul a form of thought that differs utterly from our own.\u202f If Paul did retain some of his formative religious worldview, the part he closely retained here was his inherited apocalyptic eschatology.\u202f\u202f The resurrection must be, he reasoned, the beginning of the end.\u202f Hence, preaches Paul, the form of this world is passing away.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Paul\u2019s worldview, his apocalyptic eschatology, is not our worldview.\u202f <\/span>Paul\u2019s world, though, is very much ours too.<\/span><\/i>\u202f So, this morning, we shall need to imagine, to dream, and to interpret these verses in a new way, for a new time, as did our forebears like Martin Luther, Elie Wiesel, Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King, Jr., as have 6 Marsh Chapel Deans, as did 10 Boston University Presidents plus our current interim President, as did those of us in pulpits, not so long ago, in the winter of 1991, and in the spring of 2003.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

No, we may not share Paul\u2019s worldview, but we share his world.\u202f So, we may benefit from his friendship, and practice his faith.\u202f\u202f What a friend we have in Paul!\u202f He befriends us by bequeathing us two kinds of hope.\u202f And hope we do need, in a time like ours, in an autumn like ours, of strife, warfare, and of fear.\u202f Today, that is, today.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the Gospel of Matthew 22, Jesus meets us between Caesar and God.\u202f He is ensnared, or nearly so, in a trap set between conservative Herodians and liberal Zealots.\u202fBetween conservatives and liberals.\u00a0 Hmm. In good rabbinic fashion, he responds to a question with a question.\u202f Render to Caesar what is Caesar\u2019s, this little bitty coin, and render to God what is God\u2019s, your very life.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We are not alone in history to have suffered strife. As Christian people, trying by day and week to walk by faith not by sight, we know something of the difficulty here, and something more perhaps than we knew a month ago today. \u202fSometimes you just have to learn things the hard way. \u202fThe preacher is not free just to read the Bible and not the newspaper, nor free to preach without reference to civil society, culture, and the social conditions of life which have pervasive, profound impact and influence on the baptized and unbaptized alike.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let us hold and finger the coin of Caesar as we are touched by the finger of God.\u202f Let us take stock.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I saw this again midweek in our student union, as undergraduates undertook to underwrite \u2018trick or treat for UNICEF, that creative confluence of culture and care, of politics and religion, given birth decades ago, when some of us first set out, costumed and eager, a bag for candy in hand and a box for coins in another.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In this time of middle eastern mayhem, not unlike, by this preacher\u2019s memory, the winter of 1991 and following, or the spring of 2003 and following, we may want to pause and take stock.\u00a0 For the Matthean dilemma, liberal and conservative, and its questions, we may want to pause.\u00a0 For those more on the left, a question today, and be careful how you answer, will be, first, and last, do you believe and affirm that Israel (in the Middle East, as a Jewish democracy) has and must have a right to exist.\u00a0 Then follow self-defense, proportionate response, \u2018meeting violence with patient justice\u2019. For those more on the right, the question, and be careful how you answer, will be first, and last, do you believe God is Lord of all life, all human life, not narrowly divine only to one perspective, one tradition, one religion, one sacred book?\u00a0 Then it follows that the killing of innocent children from one tradition will do nothing to avenge the slaughter of innocent children from another. From answers to both questions, there flow manifold consequences.\u00a0 With President Biden, personally, I answer yes to both.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let us remember lessons from the past. In summer 2017, at the Chautauqua Institution, we had the pleasure of learning from, dining with, and speaking to Stella Rimington, the former head of British Intelligence, MI 5 (1992-1996).\u202f She was the first woman to lead that agency.\u202f A television drama was produced about her, starring Judi Dench.\u202f She was bristling and candid regarding then current global perils.\u202f She proffered no immediate or ready recommendation for resolution to then current dangers. She affirmed no optimism about the US President, at the time. Sharply, frankly, and bluntly she admitted the US and British intelligence failures that led to the tragedy of Iraq, the mistaken misinformation about weapons of mass destruction.\u202f She worried extensively in rumination about the internet, about the technology controlling so much about us.\u202f That is, she offered no encouragement, no bright forecast for the near-term global future.\u202f To conclude, she said, as you would expect, \u2018that nonetheless the best we can do is to \u2018keep calm and carry on\u2019.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let us hold and finger the coin of Caesar as we are touched by the finger of God.\u202f Let us take stock.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

No, we may not share Paul\u2019s worldview, but we share his world.\u202f\u202f So, we may benefit from his friendship, and practice his faith.\u202f\u202f What a friend we have in Paul!\u202f He befriends us by bequeathing us two kinds of hope.\u202f And hope we do need, in a time of terror and tragedy.\u202f Let us survey our current tragedy, but let us also convey our lasting hope.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Two shades of hope abide.\u202f \u201cHope has two beautiful daughters: anger and courage\u201d (Augustine).\u202f One realized.\u202f One unrealized.\u202f One for today and one for tomorrow.\u202f One from Bultmann, and one from Niebuhr.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is one shade of hope\u2026<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You can in faith \u2018face the world free from the world\u2019, with a righteous and realized indignation, tempered with full humility. Even a kind of anger, if tempered with humility. That daily form of hope is yours by decision, by choice, through a commitment to live by the faith of Christ.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We may rely not on ourselves alone, but upon God who raises the dead.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We may face the world, free from the world.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We may lean into the future, free of the burden of past worry.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We can live on tip toe.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We can compose every day with brilliance as if it were our last, which, in a way, each one is.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The person of faith, who overhears the distress down deep in this world, so deep that others don\u2019t hear it, does not rely on himself to sooth it. \u202fHe knows there is one Savior and he isn\u2019t Him.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What a friend we have in Paul, who preaches Jesus Christ, and Him crucified!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why does Paul teach this way?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Because Paul expects that \u201cthe form of this world is passing away\u201d.\u202f\u202f God has raised Jesus from the dead.\u202f Who knows what will happen next?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For Paul, this meant a daily, excited, imminent expectation of the turn of the ages, a new heaven and earth, the end of time and the beginning of a new era.\u202f For our sake, it is a blessing that Paul\u2019s own timeline was a little fuzzy.\u202f Otherwise, we would not be here.\u202f But the spiritual truth which lives in this passage, its existential reality, is the same.\u202f Every day is our last.\u202f Paul so reminds us, and so shakes us out of our stupor.\u202f THIS is the day the Lord has made.\u202f We shall rejoice and be glad in it!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In all of life, in the fullness of faith there lies this strange, new potential.\u202f Potential.\u202f Potential for something new.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We face the world, free from the world.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When things go south, let us live not in the form of this world (in despair and doubt and dread), but in the form of the coming world (hope and freedom and a sense of God\u2019s uncanny potential).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bultmann: \u201cOnly Christ can give the kerygmatic character to everything which is \u2018taught\u2019 as Christian. Therefore, Christ is correctly preached not where something is said <\/span>about <\/span><\/i>him, but only where he himself becomes the proclaimer.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The resurrection is, simply, the preaching of the gospel.\u202f But preaching in a way that is heard. Bultmann helped us see the present hope in Paul, facing the world free from the world.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is a second shade of hope\u2026<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Niebuhr, the great <\/span>liberal <\/span><\/i>(still a great tradition, affirmed from this pulpit0 who helped us see the future hope in Paul.\u202f Both shades of hope require a translation from apocalyptic expectation into insights for living today, both individual and collective, present and future, Bultmannian and Niebuhrian.\u202f Niebuhr gradually left behind some of his younger optimism. He also gradually left behind the narrow and prideful tones of a strict socialism.\u202f Gradually he found his way, as we will need to do again in this painful decade ahead, toward a faithful Christian realism.\u202f He found a realistic way toward hope.\u202f That is our work today as well.\u202f Recalling his phrases, we too need to beware \u2018the sentimental optimism about the essential goodness of men without realizing how evil good men can be\u2019.\u202f Learning, but critically, from Niebuhr we too need \u2018a check not only on policies but on pride, to guide men in a mood of dialectical humility\u2019.\u202f We too need to realize that \u2018all justice rests on a balance of power\u2019.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You can in love \u2018love one another\u2019 as Christ loves you, toward an unseen horizon, a far-off land, a land flowing with milk and honey.\u202f You can hope against hope.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let those who rejoice do so as if they were not rejoicing.\u202f Let them rejoice not in the form of this world but in the form of the world to come.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We meet each day with courage. We touch and are touched in the presence of Divine Potential, the raw possibility of a new day. We live on tip toe.\u202f We live each day as if it were our last, which it is.\u202f We greet the hour and its struggle, from a certain distance, and over every loud booming statement there is a misty question mark.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You know, it is not always clear what is bad news, or good.\u202f What can seem cause for the greatest rejoicing also can carry hurt, and vice-versa.\u202f God\u2019s time is not our time.\u202f God\u2019s purpose is not equivalent to any one of ours.\u202f God\u2019s justice is not the same as our own.\u202f God\u2019s freedom far surpasses yours and mine.\u202f A crushing defeat can, in God\u2019s time, and with patience, become the source, the medium of great victory.\u202f I think of Franklin Roosevelt.\u202f Where would our country be today, without his life\u2019s strange mixture of rejoicing and suffering and struggle and perseverance?\u202f Is it not odd that the one President who appeared to be the least vigorous, was in fact the most? \u2018To lead you have to love, to save you have to serve\u2019.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let those who buy and sell, do so as if they had no goods.\u202f Not in the form of this world, but in the form of the world to come.\u202f Augustine said it so well:\u202f we use what we should love and we love what we should use.\u202f We use people and love things, when we are meant to love people and use things. About your car, your house, your wardrobe, your bank account, your things\u2014ask this:\u202f Do you own it or does it own you?\u202f Do you own it or does it own you?<\/span>\u202f<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, use the things of this world and buy and sell.\u202f Let us do so, though, not in the form of this world, but in the form of the world to come.\u202f Not in grasping selfishness, not in anxious pursuit, not in such strangely intense attention.\u202f Rather:\u202f with aplomb, with a certain disregard, with an inner freedom, the freedom to saunter in spirit, to saunter, <\/span>flaneur dans les rue.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What a <\/span>hopeful <\/span><\/i>friend we have in Paul!\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Paul who wrote to the Thessalonians, of hope for the present and hope for the future, so long ago:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We give thanks to God always for you all, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thess. 1: 1-10).<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the full service Click here to watch the full service Matthew 22:15\u201322 Click here to hear just the sermon   What a friend we have in Paul!\u00a0 Whose mighty voice has rolled down through the ages bringing us the good news in all its stark simplicity:\u202f Christ the Lord is Risen!\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\/3566"}],"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=3566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3567,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3566\/revisions\/3567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}