{"id":3742,"date":"2025-01-12T11:00:21","date_gmt":"2025-01-12T16:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3742"},"modified":"2025-01-15T14:49:57","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T19:49:57","slug":"winter-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2025\/01\/12\/winter-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

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Luke 3: 15-17<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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

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Winter Light<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Luke 3: 15-17<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

January 12, 2025<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Robert Allan Hill<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

We shall take hold this Lord\u2019s Day of what matters, lasts and counts, of the things that will see us through, this hour, this day, this week, this month, this year and this decade.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Three of these are Scripture, memory and example.<\/p>\n

Scripture and Mysterious Presence<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Scripture sees us through, by taking, and proclaiming the long view, including today in Luke.<\/p>\n

Let us recall the mystery of Christ, the Stranger in our midst.\u00a0 We can announce his presence today, again today, at his Baptism. He is among us:\u00a0 dealing with issues we dismiss\u2026speaking with people whom we dislike\u2026considering options we disdain\u2026selecting vocations that do not yet fully exist\u2026expanding spaces that we constrict\u2026accepting lifestyles that we reject\u2026attending to possibilities that we ignore\u2026approaching horizons that we avoid\u2026healing wounds that we disguise\u2026questioning assumptions that we enjoy\u2026protecting persons whom we mistreat\u2026making allowances that we distrust.\u00a0 So, strangely, is He among us.<\/p>\n

Strangely his voice addresses us.<\/p>\n

For the mystery of Jesus Christ falls upon us, approaches us, and enchants us, when and where we least expect Him.\u00a0 In the strange world of the Bible.\u00a0 In the midst of the community of strangers that is the Church.\u00a0 Hidden in the brutal estrangement of our personal life.\u00a0 Here, behold, the Lord Christ Jesus, \u201cL\u2019Etranger\u201d, \u201cThe Stranger\u201d.<\/p>\n

His presence is neither simple, nor surface, nor easy, nor fundamental, nor shallow, nor ideological, nor one dimensional, nor ahistorical, nor primarily political.\u00a0 He draws us<\/p>\n

For St. Luke has captured a collage of portraits of Jesus, \u201cOn the Road\u201d, beginning today in baptism.\u00a0 We are on a journey, as Luke reminds the church.\u00a0 We are making a trip to the promised land.\u00a0 We are headed in a certain direction.\u00a0 With our spiritual forebears, we are traveling, on a journey.\u00a0 Israel left Canaan to go to Egypt to find bread.\u00a0 There they became the slaves of Pharaoh.\u00a0 But Moses led them out, parted the Red Sea, and guided them through the wilderness.\u00a0 He brought them the ten commandments.\u00a0 At last, he sent them forth, with Joshua, to inhabit the land flowing with milk and honey.\u00a0 In such a glorious land, they hunted and farmed.\u00a0 They even built a temple, and chose a King.\u00a0 Samuel, Saul, David, and Solomon reigned, but were followed by others less wise and less strong.\u00a0 Although the prophets did warn them, the children of Israel left their covenant and their covenant God, and at last suffered the greatest of defeats, the destruction of Jerusalem and the return to slavery in Babylon, 587bc.\u00a0 On these hundreds of years of history depends the cry of Jeremiah, \u201cO that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep, night and day, for the slain of my poor people.\u201d (9:1)\u00a0 Like Israel marching in chains to Babylon, and then trudging home again two generations later, we people of faith are on a journey, from slavery to freedom.\u00a0 Faith heals, manages, handles the hardest of change.<\/p>\n

Come Sunday, our shared role is to announce the gospel in interpretation of and accord with the Scriptures. Scripture gives us the chance for the long view.\u00a0 Scripture gives us a deep grounding, with heaven a little higher and earth a little wider. Which we direly need today.\u00a0 <\/span>Thank goodness we have the Holy Scripture to which to turn, from which to\u00a0learn, with which to listen, pray and prepare.\u00a0 Silver and gold have I none, but that which I have I give thee. (Acts 3:6).\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Luke\u2019s mysterious baptized Christ meets us today, hidden in the maelstrom of wild, unexpected change and even in the midst of political crisis.<\/p>\n

Memory in the Face of Adversity<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Memory sees us through, by rooting us in our own lived experience, and its careful memory, over time.\u00a0 <\/span>Memory of four years ago this week, surrounded the sermon for this day.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

I think back on this week four years ago.\u00a0 <\/span>I remember the headlines. \u2018TRUMP INCITES MOB\u2019.<\/em>\u00a0 4 dead, not in Ohio this time, but in the nation\u2019s capital city, and inside the nation\u2019s capitol building.\u00a0 Insurrection with presidential incitement.<\/p>\n

I remember four years ago this week, including January 6, 2021. We were away for a few days, or so we thought, when I walked by a group of men in earnest conversation about 2:30pm that day.\u00a0 <\/span>I could not quite understand. So I went and turned on a television at about 3pm, and quickly realized I would need to return early to Boston for the weekly service to be recorded on the next day, Thursday, as we did in those COVID months, and was on a plane at 7:30m, in order to spare a guest preacher from addressing the moment.\u00a0 <\/span>What was true then, and said then, is true today:\u00a0 <\/span>For the rest of history, for the rest of our lives, we shall have to live with, and attempt by faith to live down, both to live with and to live down, such utter calumny, such tragic, needless, heedless yet revelatory disaster.\u00a0 It is an apocalyptic\u2014a revelatory\u2014moment, hundreds wrecking the capitol, encouraged by a wantonly graceless leader, and with 6 Senators, 6 Senators (Cruz, Hawley, Hyde-Smith, Marshall, Kennedy, Tuberville), and much other congressional cattle (Jonah 4:11), continuing to feed its root cause. We cannot be at all sure what further difficulty and distress may visit us.\u00a0 One said, \u2018this is like 9\/11, except we did this to ourselves\u2019. (RAH, 1\/10\/21)<\/em><\/p>\n

But at some preconscious level, somewhere down in the declivities of the country\u2019s psyche, we had a sense that this was coming.\u00a0 We did not want to admit it.\u00a0 We hoped against hope to be wrong in that premonition.\u00a0 We hoped to whistle past the graveyard for another few days.\u00a0 Yet we remembered, dimly, our upbringing, \u2018don\u2019t play with fire if you don\u2019t want to get burned\u2019. We had years of warning, advisement, signs along the pathway of this premonition.\u00a0 (RAH, 1\/10\/21)<\/em><\/p>\n

So, the community of faith gathered virtually come Sunday, January 10, 2021, to listen, pray, and prepare.\u00a0 And we have gathered here again, in person, this Sunday January 12, 2025. You have come this morning, or joined us by phone line or internet, to watch and listen, \u00a0<\/span>to wonder.\u00a0 And to remember.<\/p>\n

The Gospel of Luke was written for memory.\u00a0 It emerged over long time, with the earliest Christians reciting and recalling their Lord, his love, and their shared shaping by that love, in faith, beginning in baptism.\u00a0 They listened, morning and evening, Sunday by Sunday, and over time, in direct response to weeks both empty and full, they began to write down for future generations what they had heard.\u00a0 Today we have such an account, that of Jesus\u2019 baptized.\u00a0 Today we have such a lesson, the hearing of a voice.\u00a0 Today we start again into an unknown future, within earshot of that same divine voice.\u00a0 For all our failure, for all manner of sin and death and meaninglessness, for all that is wrong, and there is much, especially just now, there is a voice, ringing out and calling to us. Yet for generations women and men have found this particularity strikingly universal, and lastingly, eternally real. \u00a0Especially in weeks when good news is scarce.\u00a0 And in our time, into dimensions of common ground that may cause us work and make us uncertain, we will want to learn to listen, and listen again.<\/p>\n

What a tremendous spiritual gift to Marsh Chapel is our weekly \u00a0<\/span>Psalter, and its resounding echoes in our memory.\u00a0 Remember Samuel Terrien teaching us: Here are 700 years of psalms, 1000-400bce.\u00a0 For the psalmists, Yahweh\u2019s presence was not only made manifest in Zion.\u00a0 It reached men and women over the entire earth.\u00a0 The sense of Yahweh\u2019s presence survived the annihilation of the temple and the fall of the state 587bc.\u00a0 Elusive but real, it feared no geographical uprooting and no historical disruption.\u00a0 Having faced the void in history and in their personal lives, they knew the absence of God even within the temple.\u00a0 The inwardness of their spirituality, bred by the temple, rendered the temple superfluous. (279)<\/em><\/p>\n

In other words, they knew how to live through and out through godless weeks.\u00a0 As we remembered four years ago: Our psalm today, Psalm 29, ancient and redolent with glory, recalls for us how to pray.\u00a0 From your youth you have known.\u00a0 Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication.\u00a0 The ACTS forms of prayer.\u00a0 Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication.\u00a0 One is a word of glory, echoing the glory of God that thunders.\u00a0 Glorify God and enjoy him forever.\u00a0 A word of glory. One is a word of contrition, by which we begin every service at Marsh Chapel. \u00a0Prayer is not only a matter of individual or even personal attention, a certain sitting silent before God.\u00a0 Prayer is also the voice, the responsive voice, of the people of God, echoing in antiphonal chorus, the call, the bowing before glory.\u00a0 GLORY!\u00a0 \u00a0All have sinned, all have fallen short of that primordial glory.\u00a0 All.\u00a0 A prayer of contrition. One is a word of gratitude.\u00a0 In such a week, it may simply be a prayer of gratitude that things are not yet any worse. A word of gratitude. One is a word of longing, desire, incantation, supplication.\u00a0 Dear God, guide us through these murky moments, like those we have seen in the past, let us pray, and let our learning now make us stronger later.\u00a0 A word of supplication. Prayer takes some set aside time, some quiet, some intentional focus.\u00a0 Prayer is the nursery of memory. \u00a0<\/span>Prayer is the nursery of memory in the nursery school of worship (RAH. 1\/10\/21)<\/em><\/p>\n

Exemplum Docet: \u00a0<\/span>Example Teaches<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As with Scripture and memory, example also sees us through.\u00a0 <\/span>Every day brings new beginnings and open possibilities, known best in example.<\/p>\n

The whole of Scripture begins with the divine preparation, in creation, and in speech.\u00a0 \u2018Let there be\u2026\u2019\u00a0 And what might that be, let there be?\u00a0 <\/em>Light.<\/em>\u00a0 Watch for the rays of light in the dark.\u00a0 Watch for the rays of light in the dark. <\/em>Even in Boston where it seems dusk arrives just after lunch. \u00a0<\/span>Four years ago, that Wednesday morning, before all, well, chaos, broke loose, a newly elected Senator from Georgia was interviewed.\u00a0In the same day and near same hour of utter chaos, an example was given, was rising. He was raised in public housing, one of 12 children.\u00a0 Whatever the day, his dad had them all up before dawn.\u00a0 There is a kind of light in winter, even in winter, as was Rafael Warnock\u2019s election that week. <\/em>Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning<\/em>, he was reminded.\u00a0 <\/em>Yes, but that\u2019s the thing about the morning<\/em>, he responded, <\/em>it begins in the full dark, it begins at dawn, before daybreak. <\/em>\u00a0 Dean Carter of Morehouse reminded me in conversation Wednesday morning, that when his parents dropped him off at Morehouse, Rafael Warnock had not a dime to his name.\u00a0 His parents could give him only what they had, their powerful, limitless, ceaseless love, pride and belief in him.\u00a0 <\/em>Their powerful, limitless, ceaseless love, pride and belief in him.<\/em>\u00a0 THEIR EXAMPLE. Not much?\u00a0 Well.\u00a0 It seems to have been enough, just enough.\u00a0 That\u2019s the thing about the morning.\u00a0And winter. \u00a0<\/span>It begins in the dark, in preparation, awaiting the word\u2026 LET THERE BE LIGHT.\u00a0 (RAH, 1\/10\/21)<\/em><\/p>\n

In like fashion to four years ago, this very week has given us the punctuation of the gospel, in example, in living presidential example.\u00a0 <\/span>The living sermon in the life of our 39th<\/sup> President, buried with rightful ceremony this past week, reminds us.\u00a0 <\/span>He lived a life of simple decency, in the face of the great challenges of his time.\u00a0 <\/span>After office, he went on to minister to the needs of others, and to use his voice and influence for leverage to that end.\u00a0 <\/span>He found time to teach Sunday school each week, and, notable, to mow the church lawn when needed.\u00a0 <\/span>In the best of the Baptist tradition he lived his baptism, not in word only or mainly, but in life, in service, and by example.\u00a0 <\/span>By example.\u00a0 <\/span>Our folks told us it not what you have so much as what you do with what you have.\u00a0 <\/span>\u2018Let those who have much not have too much, and those who have little not have too little (2 Cor. 8)\u2019<\/p>\n

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Said President Carter: I have one life and one chance to make it count for something\u2026My faith demands that I do whatever I can wherever I can whenever I can for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

That sounds like John Wesley to me!<\/p>\n

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Hear good news:\u00a0 <\/span>Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, as a dove, and a voice came from heaven, \u2018Thou art my beloved Son; with Thee I am well pleased\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service Click here to watch the full service Luke 3: 15-17 Click here to hear just the sermon     Winter Light Luke 3: 15-17 Marsh Chapel January 12, 2025 Robert Allan Hill \u00a0 We shall take hold this Lord\u2019s Day of what matters, lasts and counts, of the […]<\/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\/3742"}],"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=3742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3743,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3742\/revisions\/3743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}