{"id":3765,"date":"2025-03-09T11:00:35","date_gmt":"2025-03-09T15:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3765"},"modified":"2025-03-26T16:22:33","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T20:22:33","slug":"lent-2025-migeul-de-unamuno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2025\/03\/09\/lent-2025-migeul-de-unamuno\/","title":{"rendered":"Lent 2025: Miguel de Unamuno"},"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 4:1\u201313<\/span><\/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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Lent 2025: Miguel De Unamuno<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Luke 4: 1-13<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

2025 Marsh Lenten Series<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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

March 9, 2025<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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

The Marsh Lenten Sermon Series 2007-2025<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In this Marsh Chapel pulpit, from 2007-2016, Lent by Lent, we identified a theological conversation partner for the Lenten sermons, broadly speaking, out of the Calvinist tradition, so important to the first 200 years in New England.\u00a0 With Calvin we encountered the chief resource for others we engaged over ten years\u2014voices <\/em>like those of Jonathan Edwards (2015), John Calvin himself, (2014), Marilyn Robinson (2013) (whom with gladness we greeted in the flesh here at Boston University April 11, 2023), Jacques Ellul (2012), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a Lutheran cousin) (2011), Karl Barth (2010), and Gabriel Vahanian (2007), and themes<\/em> like Atonement (2009) and Decision (2008), summarized with the help of Paul of Tarsus (2016).<\/p>\n

For the next decade, we have turned to the Catholic tradition, so important in the last 200 years in New England.\u00a0 <\/span>That is, in this decade, beginning with Lent 2017, the Marsh pulpit, a traditionally Methodist one, turned left, not right, toward Rome not Geneva, and we have preached with, and learned from the Roman Catholic tradition, and some of its great divines including Henri Nouwen (2017) Thomas Merton (2018) John of the Cross (2019), Teresa of Avila (2020),\u00a0 <\/span>St Patrick of Assisi(2021), Dorothy Day (2022), Augustine of Hippo (2023), and Raymond Brown (2024).\u00a0 <\/span>Next year will be our last in this Catholic series, before we turn in the next decade to figures from other world religions.\u00a0 You may have a thought or two, a suggestion about with whom we should converse in 2026.\u00a0 <\/span>For now, we turn this Lent 2025 to Miguel De Unamuno.<\/p>\n

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

First, Luke<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Luke prepares the way for us on toward Unamuno.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to mark the places and preserve the moments where we have encountered God\u2019 (Ringe, loc cit).<\/p>\n

You are following Luke well this year. Notice how roundly he changes Mark, here, too.<\/p>\n

The other alternative is Matthew, who copies Mark nearly word for word. No, Luke has gone his own way, and given us the Lukan view, later than that of Mark, different from that of Mark, fuller than that of Mark. What do Luke\u2019s additions amount to?<\/p>\n

What others have seen and heard is meant to inspire us to see and hear, in prayer. Luke regularly and steadily supplements the narrative with additional moments of prayer. The most activist of the gospels is also the most passive, the most prayerful. Likewise, the whole ethos of exodus is emphasized in Luke. Yes, life is a journey. Yes, the journey of faith includes risk, distress, and pain. Yes, the sojourn in the wilderness is a cost of leaving the fleshpots of any Egypt, just as winter is the cost for summer. Luke is setting things right for the long haul. Prayer to nourish for the long haul. Journey as a metaphor for struggle over the long haul. Lordship, a higher and hierarchical Savior, to strengthen weakened knees and souls for the long haul. The presence of the divine will, soon for Luke to emerge in the body of the Church, to guide all for the long haul. Luke advises us to be \u2018in it for the long haul\u2019 whatever \u2018it\u2019 is. Luke gives Divine confirmation of Jesus\u2019 Messiahship. It places into the history of Jesus what the later church believed, believes, knew, and preached. See: even during his life a few people knew and saw<\/em><\/p>\n

We want to bear that mystery in our present, in our person, do we not? Tittle: \u2018as he faced the possibility of suffering and death his mind reverted to the great figures of Israel\u2019s past\u2026let us place ourselves under the influence of Christ and even we will be transfigured\u2026something of his glory will shine in our hearts and appear in our faces and show forth in our lives\u2019.<\/p>\n

Second, Unamuno<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The voice of Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1864-1936) is singular for its frenzied call to consciousness, and to consciousness of man\u2019s need of immortality.\u00a0 <\/span>Hear just a snippet:<\/p>\n

You ask me my good friend if I know how to incite delirium, vertigo, any madness whatsoever, among these orderly and placid masses that are born, eat, sleep, reproduce themselves and die.\u00a0 <\/span>Is there no way to introduce a new epidemic of flagellants, or of Convulsionaries?\u00a0 <\/span>And you speak of the millennium. (Nuestro Senor Don Quijote).\u00a0 <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

These words should be read aloud, as they have just been, for clearly the written words pin down and cramp the intended message more effectively than they help its communication.\u00a0 <\/span>Oral presentation also occasions the dips and swells of the lector\u2019s voice, the anxious movements of his limbs and torso, and the knowing or questioning glances of his eyes.\u00a0 <\/span>It is easy to imagine Unamuno reading aloud most of his work; indeed, we are left with the thought that Unamuno\u2019s most exciting creations may have been those spun out and lost in the afternoon \u2018tertulias\u2019.\u00a0 <\/span>Only the most vibrant exposition would suit Unamuno\u2019s expression of his total concern for one question:\u00a0 <\/span>that of his own immortality.\u00a0 <\/span>His craving of an after-life and his concomitant absolute fear of the possible disappearance of his own soul fuel all the myriad Unamunian works.<\/p>\n

This gangling, bearded, Basque professor of Greek at the University of Salamanca, so often likened in appearance to an owl, indeed shared that animal\u2019s nocturnal vision as he wrote from the heart of Castille, in the midst of the gathering noon darkness of the early twentieth century.\u00a0 <\/span>His lived experience, in a time of political tumult, mirrors ours in America this Lent. Although primarily a teacher and writer, Unamuno\u2019s political life was nearly as tumultuous as his writing.\u00a0 <\/span>Appointed to the rectorship at Salamanca in 1900, Unamuno came to be well known before the fall of the monarchy.\u00a0 <\/span>Alfonso XIII, while outwardly respecting Unamuno\u2019s nascent world-wide audience, quietly had him removed as rector in 1914. In 1924 Primo de Rivera exiled him to the island of Fuerteventura.\u00a0 <\/span>After six weeks of life as a \u2018desterrado\u2019 on the island, near the Canaries, Unamuno was permitted to return to Spain.\u00a0 <\/span>Instead, he lived out the remaining six years of the dictatorship in Paris and Hendaye, writing little, reading little, in somewhat of a coma.\u00a0 <\/span>With the fall of the dicatatorship, Unamuno was free to return to Spain. It is sufficient to say that while Don Miguel made his name in the literary world, he at the same time was deeply involved in the political evolution of his country. When Primo de Rivera\u2019s dictatorship fell, Unamuno returned to the University of Salamanca and was reelected rector of the university in 1931, but in October 1936 he denounced General Francisco Franco\u2019s falangists, was removed once again as rector, and was placed under house arrest.\u00a0 <\/span>He died of a heart attack two months later.\u00a0 <\/span>This Lent we shall converse with Unamuno, and learn with him, about life, about death, about faith, about immortality.<\/p>\n

Third, Life<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Five days ago here at Marsh Chapel about 1,100 students and others presented themselves for ashes, Ash Wednesday.\u00a0 Our hard-working Marsh Chaplains and team served many. The Chapel also hosted three Catholic services and the weekly contemporary Theological School service, wherein ashes were given.\u00a0 Hence, about 1,100.\u00a0 In the last few years, Ash Wednesday has begun to catch up with Easter and Christmas in active young adult participation.\u00a0 <\/span>Why?<\/p>\n

My middle name of late is \u2018I don\u2019t know\u2019, which I don\u2019t.\u00a0 One of our team preaches an Ash Wednesday sermon every year. \u00a0<\/span>\u2018The ashes are not magic ashes\u2019.\u00a0 But they draw.\u00a0 The touch draws.\u00a0 The solemnity, too. The whisper of mortality at the fountain of youth.\u00a0 The strange, numinous, yet public pause.\u00a0 The flesh of it all. On said, \u2018it has become a moment for reset\u2019.\u00a0 <\/span>Yes, reset.<\/p>\n

There is perhaps another cause or reason.\u00a0 Here, mid-winter, is an encounter with antiquity.\u00a0 For two millennia women and men have been preparing for a holy Lent.\u00a0 For two millennia women and men have stopped to remember, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.\u00a0 As our English chorister read it some years ago, Thou art DUST and to DUST though shalt return.<\/em>\u00a0 Is this not subliminally why, in part, we are here this morning, too?\u00a0 For two millennia women and men have listened to readings from Holy Writ.\u00a0 For two millennia women and men have received Jesus in cup and bread.\u00a0 For two millennia, come Sunday, there have been choirs and preachers and prayers and candles and quiet.\u00a0 The architecture of our gothic nave, with an origin nearly a millennium ago, speaks to us so.\u00a0 Our long, tall, yes traditioned, stained glass captures places and people from longer ago.\u00a0 Our habits of liturgy, stand and sit, our habits of liturgy, sing and give, our habits of liturgy, bow and kneel, our habits of liturgy, our body language, give us a jarring encounter with antiquity.\u00a0 For once, every seven days, we are not jailed and stuck in the shallow shallows of the twenty first century.\u00a0 We are liberated to time travel, to get out and see the past, and perhaps, now and then, to hear something good and learn something new.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Here, in Luke, as in our other gospels, the Lord faces and masters the various challenges which we also know.\u00a0 They include a kind of will to power, and a sort of pride, and a type of avarice.\u00a0 We come to church with some experience of temptation and resistance.\u00a0 As the song writer says, \u2018good experience comes from seasoned judgment\u2013which comes from bad experience\u2019.<\/p>\n

In many communities, including our own, the sun rises this morning, this Lenten morning, on experience of loss and hurt.\u00a0Across this country, in varying perspectives, we feel this. \u00a0<\/span>This morning there are homes and families who have suddenly known unexpected loss.\u00a0 This morning there are friends and groups of friends who have been faced with mortal danger.\u00a0 At one breakfast table, a wife now sits alone, for the first time on a Sunday in 60 years.\u00a0 At another breakfast table, a family gathers for the first time, in a long time, and missing a member.\u00a0 It would help us to remember just how short our words do fall in trying to describe the depth of these moments.\u00a0 Our words arrive only at the shoreline, at the margin of things.\u00a0 Beyond this we practice prayer, a kind of sitting silent before God.<\/p>\n

We do not know why these things happen. We hurt and grieve.\u00a0 In the bones.\u00a0 At the deeper levels, we just do not know, and for an academic <\/em>community committed to knowing, and knowing more, and more, this means wandering in a serious wilderness.\u00a0 Give us an equation to solve.\u00a0 Show us a biography that needs writing.\u00a0 Provide us with an experiment.\u00a0 Happily, we would organize a committee, or develop a proposal, or phone a list of donors.\u00a0 But loss, unexpected and unfair, is tragic.\u00a0 The tragic sense of life, el sentimiento trajico de la vida, <\/em>as Unamuno put it, <\/em>takes us out into wilderness, where we learn, with Jesus, to resist.\u00a0 Faith is resistance. Faith is the power to withstand what we cannot understand.\u00a0 <\/span>Our friend, congregant, faithful minister in the Lone Star State, Milton Jordan, writes<\/p>\n

Steadily slicing the edges off structures<\/em><\/p>\n

of public wellbeing and the common good<\/em><\/p>\n

on behalf of the masters of massed wealth,<\/em><\/p>\n

legislative lackeys and their cultural<\/em><\/p>\n

co-conspirators depend on distraction<\/em><\/p>\n

to draw our attention away from plans
\nthat obstruct continuing resistance<\/em><\/p>\n

to their destruction of institutions<\/em><\/p>\n

and practices that enable us to see<\/em><\/p>\n

one another face to face, and maintain<\/em><\/p>\n

those structures of public wellbeing<\/em><\/p>\n

and the common good.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the spirit of Christ, we are in worship this morning to attest to something.\u00a0 Faith is the power to withstand what we cannot understand.\u00a0 Worship is the practice of faith by which we learn to withstand what we cannot understand.\u00a0 God is the presence, force, truth, and love Who alone deserves worship, and worship is the practice of the faith by which we learn to withstand what we cannot understand.\u00a0 Worship prepares us to resist.\u00a0 So, we see Jesus again in the wilderness.\u00a0 To resist all that makes human life inhuman.\u00a0 So here you are, come lent, come Sunday, come 11am, today again to walk in the wild, in the wilderness.<\/p>\n

The necessary freedom, and the disciplined grace, of Luke\u2019s gospel firmly accosts us with the daily need, the daily task, the daily prospect, the daily adventure, the daily promise, the daily existential, lonely, windswept mountain top liberty of faith in the resurrection. Back at home, it may be, for those present this morning, or there at home, it may be, for those listening today there is transfiguration awaiting, a resurrection beckoning, a faith and gospel lying in hiding, ready for action. Write that letter. Sign that check. Make that call. Read that verse. Forget that hurt. Watch. Fight. Pray. Live rejoicing every day.<\/p>\n

Come! Come travel together this Lent! Listen to Luke! Learn from Unamuno!\u00a0 <\/span>Live in Love!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service Click here to watch the full service Luke 4:1\u201313 Click here to hear just the sermon   Lent 2025: Miguel De Unamuno Luke 4: 1-13 2025 Marsh Lenten Series Marsh Chapel March 9, 2025 Robert Allan Hill The Marsh Lenten Sermon Series 2007-2025 In this Marsh Chapel pulpit, […]<\/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\/3765"}],"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=3765"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3771,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3765\/revisions\/3771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}