{"id":376,"date":"2011-12-04T11:00:15","date_gmt":"2011-12-04T16:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=376"},"modified":"2020-01-28T18:26:37","modified_gmt":"2020-01-28T23:26:37","slug":"grace-upon-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2011\/12\/04\/grace-upon-grace\/","title":{"rendered":"Grace Upon Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the entire service.
\n<\/a>Click here to hear the sermon only.
\n<\/a>John 1: 6-8, 19-28<\/a><\/p>\n

Park Ridge<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2005 we went to visit our oldest child and husband in their first house.\u00a0\u00a0 They lived in a nice cottage like home, in the heart of Park Ridge Illinois.\u00a0 The church they served owned the home, which had a guest room on the second floor.<\/p>\n

Park Ridge straddles the train line which brings people out from Chicago, following days of labor and study and loss and gain.\u00a0\u00a0 Theirs was the main church in town, the Community church, whose Senior Minister, Rev Dr Brett McCleneghan, is currently a member of the Marsh Chapel and Religious Life Advisory Board.\u00a0 His daughter, Bromily, now a minister herself, is a BU alumna, who worshipped in these pews during her student years.\u00a0 The town is a gem, a rich blend of history and activity, of urban and suburban, of prayer and work.\u00a0 Our first grandchild was born there, in a hospital on Dempster Street, named for the same John Dempster who planted the seed in 1839 that became Boston University.\u00a0 He planted another that became Northwestern University.<\/p>\n

From the first, those visits, and the carrying of the suitcase up to the guest room, were delicious with grace.\u00a0 To lie down and rest, to sleep, now under the roof of those who have for so long been the sole reason for your own roof, brings a soulful lightness of being.\u00a0 You are in the embrace of the next generation, the future.\u00a0 As John concludes: Truly, truly I say to you, when you were young you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go (John 21:18).<\/em> The torch is about to be passed to a new generation, and the weightlessness such a premonition brings is the peace of God, passing understanding.\u00a0 It is a grace to sing, \u2018O won\u2019t come with me to my father\u2019s house?\u2019\u00a0 It is grace upon grace to whisper, \u2018O wont you come with me to my daughter\u2019s house\u2026where there is peace, peace, peace.\u2019<\/p>\n

On a walk one day in Park Ridge we came upon the Methodist church, a few blocks away, smaller, simpler, leaner.\u00a0 Many of our churches seem to have been built one block away from success.\u00a0 I pictured that church a month ago, on November 2, 2011.\u00a0\u00a0 I was thinking of their MYF, and of a famous alumna of the Park Ridge UMC MYF.\u00a0\u00a0 The day\u2019s paper (NYT, 11\/2\/11, R McFadden) carried an obituary of a woman named Dorothy Rodham.\u00a0 At middle age in the 1940\u2019s, Dorothy joined that church.\u00a0 They found a welcome, a peace, a place to grow in faith\u2014a church family to love, a church home to enjoy.\u00a0 They found there a grace to replace the grace that had brought them, a second generation kind of peace, after an earlier generation of grace under pressure.\u00a0 Moses needed one kind of grace.\u00a0 Joshua needed another.<\/p>\n

Born in 1919, Dorothy\u00a0 Howell had a life that the paper called Dickensyian.\u00a0 Abandoned by divorced, dysfunctional parents.\u00a0\u00a0 Sent off alone by train to California to be raised by unwelcoming grandparents.\u00a0 Her grandmother was strict woman who wore black dresses, and confined her to her room for a year, as punishment for Halloween trick or treating. Working by age 14 for $3 a week as a nanny.\u00a0\u00a0 She joined the scholarship club and Spanish club. Then back to Chicago on the bungled, mistaken assumption that her parents wanted her back.\u00a0\u00a0 Her mother in Chicago promised Dorothy a college education if she came home. \u2018I had hoped so hard that my mother would love me that I had to take the chance and find out. \u2018She put herself through high school and became a secretary.\u00a0 Enough rain had fallen in Dorothy\u2019s life to fill a dozen others, before she even married.\u00a0 She married Mr Rodham, and they moved to Park Ridge.<\/p>\n

They entered a second kind of grace.\u00a0 Sometimes the grace of one era, epoch or season, gives way to another sort of grace, a grace upon grace.<\/p>\n

The Rodhams raised their three children in Park Ridge, in eyeshot of where that second generation grace of slumber in the arms of the daughter Morpheus would so enchant me some years later.\u00a0 They worshipped, served, enjoyed fellowship, and learned in the Methodist church, there.\u00a0 Her two sons and her daughter survive her, with four grandchildren.\u00a0 I think she knew the feeling of sleeping soundly under your grown children\u2019s sturdy roof.<\/p>\n

Now here is the gospel.\u00a0 What she learned from the wounds of California, the grace to survive in a harsh setting, she taught as healing in Chicago.\u00a0 One grace, the grace of endurance became another grace, the grace of persistence.\u00a0 She taught her kids to defend themselves in the Park Ridge streets and ballfields.\u00a0 She taught them to work, to sacrifice, to study, to prepare, to persist.<\/p>\n

Later, her daughter decided to come to Boston for college.\u00a0 This is where the country comes to study.\u00a0\u00a0 When the daughter struggled in the first fall term, and wanted to come home from Wellesley, Dorothy said no:\u00a0 \u2018You can\u2019t quit.\u00a0 You\u2019ve got to see through what you have started\u2019.<\/p>\n

You may have wondered how Hillary Rodham Clinton found the grace to endure all that she publicly has endured over the last 30 years.\u00a0 Reading her mother Dorothy\u2019s obituary told me:\u00a0 one grace gave birth to another.<\/p>\n

Weeping may tarry for the night of one generation, and still joy will come with the morning of the next.\u00a0 It makes you want to stretch out and take a nice long nap, under the sturdy roof of your daughter\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

Faith, when you ask people to describe its origins, comes from trouble.<\/p>\n

Grace changes, morphs, and becomes a second grace.<\/p>\n

Grace instead of Grace<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Our gospel lesson is the John version of the Mark lesson last week about the Baptist.\u00a0 Our lectionary gives only occasional place to John, the three year cycle highlighting Matthew, Mark and Luke.\u00a0 Bits of John are sprinkled about, as here in Advent.\u00a0 Further, not all of John 1 is read continuously, here, just the Baptist story, so you miss a crucial verse, 16, which we have added under the sermon title, \u2018grace upon grace\u2019.\u00a0 This verse is a central one for the whole of the chapter.\u00a0 To make matters more calamitously tangled, the translation of this verse, especially of its key preposition, \u2018upon\u2019, is fiercely contested.\u00a0 Does this read, \u2018grace added to grace\u2019 or \u2018grace instead of grace\u2019 or \u2018grace replacing grace\u2019 or \u2018grace upon grace\u2019?\u00a0 What is upon?\u00a0 Added to or higher than?<\/p>\n

A critical moderate would say the former, a moderate critic the latter.\u00a0 I believe it is the latter.\u00a0 That is, there is startling invitation here, for you, to sense the movement of movement, the change of change, the grace of grace.\u00a0 Grace is not always the same.\u00a0 It looks like one thing in California, and another in Chicago, one thing when you need to hang on for dear life and another when you are storing up the chestnuts of nourishment for the next generation\u2019s coming winter of discontent.<\/p>\n

Grace moves.\u00a0 So should we.<\/p>\n

We are not always nimble enough to do so.\u00a0 We do not easily pivot, from grace to grace.\u00a0 We do not always rightly judge what time it is.\u00a0 We do not awake to the gift of grace upon grace, always and easily in good time.<\/p>\n

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

We are on the journey of faith, in the season of Advent.\u00a0 We are called to plan, to prepare, to practice patience, to know penitence.<\/p>\n

To see grace moving, moving before us, grace beyond grace, we shall need every resource to our disposal.\u00a0 Look hard at the daily, weekly points where you open yourself to grace.\u00a0 Do you worship, come Sunday?\u00a0 Do you listen in the morning and walk in the evening?\u00a0 Do you read something ancient, and true, as life comes toward you?\u00a0 Is there a smile on your lips and a song in your heart?\u00a0 Are you giving your soul a chance to breath?<\/p>\n

I see signs among us that this is so.<\/p>\n

This week moments of prayer arose at hospital bedsides.\u00a0 This week the bread of salvation and the cup of mercy were shared, outside and inside, at noon and at dusk.\u00a0 This week the balm of personal conversation, pastoral conversation, was offered, in the thick of daily difficulties.\u00a0 We shall return this morning, and soon, to the table of grace.<\/p>\n

Midweek, this week, we celebrated the faithfulness of a fine man who saw his children grow and marry, who saw a grandchild born.\u00a0 A most gracious, welcoming man, for whom the chance to meet and greet and listen and speak, to embrace and enjoy were the heart of life.\u00a0 In eulogy, his son remembered going with Dad to Fenway Park, to see the game, on summer evenings.\u00a0 He would be dropped at the office, and then would have to wait, cap on head and glove on hand, wait with anxious impatience, as his Dad answered the last phone calls, talked with every office worker, moved slowly out to the car, pausing for luxurious conversation with those above him, below him, beside him, all, in equal measure.\u00a0 The boy stifled the desire to tug his Dad faster, but as a young man, remembering, he honored the welcoming gift of the his father\u2019s life.\u00a0 \u201cHe was such a welcoming man\u201d<\/p>\n

Later this week, in worship and memorial, we reckoned with another life, clergy woman similarly taken after six short decades.\u00a0 With many of you she exemplified gladness and conscience and presence:\u00a0 a deep gladness in the engagements of love and care, a hard and true sense of conscience as a built in radar which calls us to heel and to heal, a profound sense of presence, reflecting that Presence in whose Presence there is fullness of joy.\u00a0 Like all clergy she was a wounded healer, as her teacher Henry Nouwen, reminded an earlier generation.\u00a0 One\u2019s capacity to help depends one\u2019s candor about personal hurt.\u00a0 She had something to say because she had been somewhere and seen something herself.\u00a0 She could see in the dark and bring light to the dim places, because she had been acquainted herself with the dark.<\/p>\n

I have been one acquainted with the night
\nI have walked out in rain and back in rain
\nI have out walked the furthest city light<\/em><\/p>\n

I looked down the saddest city lane
\nI have passed by the watchman on his beat
\nAnd dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain<\/p>\n

I have been one acquainted with the night
\n(Robert Frost)<\/p>\n

This afternoon we shall gather again, to reach for and remember \u2018grace for grace\u2019.\u00a0 We will sing, pray and listen, in particular, as those who know this loss and lack, even in the seasons of joy and light.\u00a0 We will sing an unfamiliar, hauntingly beautiful carol.\u00a0 The poem sings of grace which moves, grace with morphs,\u00a0 grace which meets the different moments of history and life.<\/p>\n

God of the Ages, by whose hand
\nThrough years long past our lives were led
\nGive us new courage now to stand
\nNew faith to find the paths ahead<\/em><\/p>\n

Thou art the thought beyond all thought
\nThe gift beyond our utmost prayer
\nNo farthest reach where thou art not
\nNo height but we may find thee there<\/p>\n

Forgive our wavering trust in thee
\nOur wild alarms, our trembling fears
\nIn thy strong hand eternally
\nRests the unfolding of the years<\/p>\n

Though there be dark uncharted space
\nWith worlds on worlds beyond our sight
\nStill may we trust they love and grace
\nAnd wait thy word:\u00a0 Let there be light.<\/p>\n

(Elisabeth Burrowes)<\/p>\n

~The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill,
\nDean of Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the entire service. Click here to hear the sermon only. John 1: 6-8, 19-28 Park Ridge In 2005 we went to visit our oldest child and husband in their first house.\u00a0\u00a0 They lived in a nice cottage like home, in the heart of Park Ridge Illinois.\u00a0 The church they served owned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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\/376"}],"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=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2640,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions\/2640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}