{"id":3746,"date":"2025-02-02T11:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-02-02T16:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3746"},"modified":"2025-02-06T10:50:30","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T15:50:30","slug":"communion-meditation-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2025\/02\/02\/communion-meditation-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Communion Meditation"},"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 4: 21-30<\/em><\/strong><\/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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Communion Meditation <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Luke 4: 21-30<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ground Hog Day 2025<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sin\u2026<\/p>\n

For the fruit of spirit is love\u2026<\/p>\n

We believe in God who has created and is creating\u2026.<\/p>\n

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

Lead a new life\u2026<\/p>\n

Ten Commandments\u2026<\/p>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s 66\u2026<\/p>\n

Tir’d with all these, for restful death I cry,<\/em><\/p>\n

As, to behold desert a beggar born,<\/em><\/p>\n

And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,<\/em><\/p>\n

And purest faith unhappily forsworn,<\/em><\/p>\n

And gilded honour shamefully misplac’d,<\/em><\/p>\n

And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,<\/em><\/p>\n

And right perfection wrongfully disgrac’d,<\/em><\/p>\n

And strength by limping sway disabled,<\/em><\/p>\n

And art made tongue-tied by authority,<\/em><\/p>\n

And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,<\/em><\/p>\n

And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,<\/em><\/p>\n

And captive good attending captain ill.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tir’d with all these, from these would I be gone,<\/em><\/p>\n

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Ground Hog Day 5:\u00a0 <\/span>prayer, worship, journal, tithing, you.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

RAH: conversations, center left and center right<\/p>\n

Sacrament:\u00a0 <\/span>mystery.\u00a0 <\/span>The daily, the quotidian asperity and simplicity of the sacraments, baptism and communion, a bath and a meal, are not to adorned needlessly, but reverently, discreetly and in the fear of God.<\/p>\n

Our parents taught us:\u00a0 <\/span>the wise man built his house upon the rock\u2026<\/p>\n

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

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  1. Again, the strange world of the Bible beckons us. \u00a0St. Luke, you see, stands every day, every Sunday, before us, here in the nave of Marsh Chapel. \u00a0Here is Jesus in all his Dominical Authority. \u00a0Here too is Luke. \u00a0The Scripture\u2014mighty, ancient, holy\u2014calls to us, today out of Gospel According to Luke. <\/span>Luke evokes the uncanny.<\/em>One day you awake, early, and are able to recall the contours of dream. \u00a0Strange. \u00a0One day, walking, your mind and memory are visited by a feeling gone fore years. \u00a0One day, frightful this, news comes of a loved one\u2019s death. \u00a0One day you come to worship to worship. \u00a0Behold the numinous, the uncanny, the mysterious, the strange, here, now, the strange world of the Bible.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    *2. Today\u2013Luke. (He is east of, stage left of Jesus.<\/em> \u00a0Matthew and Mark are west of, to the stage right of Jesus. \u00a0Luke and John are to the stage left of Jesus. \u00a0And you can hear that truth in more than one way (☺)).Those at the dawn of life\u2026in the twilight of life\u2026in the shadows of life\u2026You too were strangers in the land of Egypt\u2026as you have done it to the littlest of these you have done it also to me\u2026<\/em>Our Holy Scripture today places us, at first, in a thicket of problems and questions: The Scripture is fulfilled in its hearing. \u00a0A \u00a0\u00a0prophet is not honored at home. \u00a0Elijah and Elisha go to Sidon and Syria. \u00a0The crowd is outraged and poises to attack. \u00a0Jesus eases on down the road. What is going on here, in this strange world of the Bible, which beckons to us to leave behind our mercantile mediocrity?<\/em><\/p>\n

    *3. The Scripture is fulfilled, not in a perfectly just world, in a perfected justice, like that, frankly acclaimed in Isaiah, but in the Reader and the Voice. \u00a0Isaiah\u2019s literal prophecy was not fulfilled, and to date has yet been fulfilled. \u00a0\u00a0Another fulfillment Jesus acclaims: The resurrection is the preaching of the gospel. \u00a0The gospel is more than justice. \u00a0Now real religion, for sure, is never very far from justice. \u00a0But justice, alone, the prophetic, alone, is not the gospel, some of the last fifty years of quasi-theological education to the contrary not with-standing.<\/em> \u00a0The gospel is bigger, truer, deeper\u2013and more personal than that. \u00a0 The prophetic is a part but not the heart of the gospel. \u00a0The prophetic tradition is a just part but not the full heart of the gospel\u2026as Luke tartly reminds us today.<\/em><\/p>\n

    *4. That is, Elijah and Elisha here are remembered for a very particular reason, one at odds with justice. \u00a0They have gone outside of Israel, outside of the community of faith, outside of the expected audience, and outside of their own prophetic tradition. \u00a0With Israel hungry in famine, the chosen people awaiting rain water, Elijah comforts them not<\/em>, not at all, but goes instead to a foreign land, that of Tyre and Sidon, to alone woman, a lone widow, a lone gentile. \u00a0With Israel halt and lame and leprous, in need of healing and health care, Elisha comforts them not,<\/em> and goes away into a foreign land and heals a Syrian, a lone gentile. \u00a0Jesus\u2019 sermon at home, where, as with every prophet, he faces a tough home crowd, explodes the minor, limited appeal of justice\u2026to universalize, to preach, the gospel. \u00a0The gospel is not justice\u2026but love. \u00a0No wonder the crowd is so angry. \u00a0The gospel moves away from the interior to the exterior, from the expected to the unexpected, from the just to the loving, from the familiar\u2026to the strange. <\/em>In our passage, Luke has given us the whole of his mysterious gospel in miniature. \u00a0He has given us a prototypical text: \u00a0Isaiah, 61,<\/em> with its theme of deliverance to those who are hurting. \u00a0He has given us, next, a reminder that God works in God\u2019s own ways, as he did in the days of Elijah and Elisha<\/em>, when those outside of the faith community were helped first. \u00a0He has given us a warning,<\/em> through the threat of the crowd to throw Jesus to death, of what awaits Him at the end of the road from Nazareth to Jerusalem. \u00a0He has further given us a fragrant scent of promise, as Jesus escapes, the same sense we are given at Easter\u2014death cannot hold him, even death cannot hold him, not even death can hold him. \u00a0He is the Lily of the Valley\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

    *<\/em>5. God is at work, at work in the world, at work in the world to make and keep human life human, often to the consternation and surprise of God\u2019s very own people.<\/em> (J Bennett).<\/p>\n

    (Strange, Luke, Prophetic, Elijah\\Elisha, Bennett)<\/p>\n

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

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

    We believe in God the Father Almighty\u2026<\/p>\n

    I lift up mine eyes to the hills\u2026<\/p>\n

    Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sin\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Click here to hear the full service Click here to watch the full service Luke 4: 21-30 Click here to hear just the sermon   Communion Meditation Luke 4: 21-30 Ground Hog Day 2025 Marsh Chapel Robert Allan Hill \u00a0 \u00a0 Opening \u00a0 Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sin\u2026 For 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\/3746"}],"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=3746"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3748,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746\/revisions\/3748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}