{"id":3777,"date":"2025-04-06T11:00:53","date_gmt":"2025-04-06T15:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3777"},"modified":"2025-04-15T20:46:29","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T00:46:29","slug":"communion-meditation-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2025\/04\/06\/communion-meditation-6\/","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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John 12:1\u20138<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/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

John 12: 1-8<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

April 6, 2025<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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

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

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

She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

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

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Sundays too my father got up early<\/em><\/p>\n

And put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,<\/em><\/p>\n

Then with cracked hands that ached<\/em><\/p>\n

From labor in the weekday weather made<\/em><\/p>\n

Banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.<\/em><\/p>\n

When the rooms were warm, he\u2019d call,<\/em><\/p>\n

And slowly I would rise and dress<\/em><\/p>\n

Fearing the chronic angers of that house,<\/em><\/p>\n

Speaking indifferently to him, <\/em><\/p>\n

Who had driven out the cold<\/em><\/p>\n

And polished my good shoes as well.<\/em><\/p>\n

What did I know of love\u2019s austere and lonely offices?<\/em><\/p>\n

(By Robert Hayden)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>What of our gospel in John this Lord\u2019s day?\u00a0 For a moment, John has brought interruption to our year long. weekly reading from Luke. With authority. But what form of authority does the Gospel of John prefer, select, elect, prize?\u00a0 Ah, glad you asked\u2026<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>No church in John, just a communal experience of Christ.\u00a0 No leadership in John, just the deeds and words of the risen, I mean crucified, I mean incarnate, I mean spirited One.\u00a0 No worries about ethics in John, no catalogue of virtues or vices, just a single command, to love.\u00a0 No hierarchy, patriarchy, oligarchy, ecclesiology in John.\u00a0 Just this:\u00a0 Spirit.\u00a0 Another Counselor.\u00a0 With you forever.\u00a0 A guide into all further truth.\u00a0 How is that going to work?\u00a0 Exactly.\u00a0 That is why we have the letters of John, uno dos y tres,<\/em> because, clearly, it did not.\u00a0 The letters add in:\u00a0 leadership, orthodoxy, ethics, teaching, form, all.\u00a0 They wake from the Johannine dream.\u00a0 But what a dream!\u00a0 A spirited dream of spirit.\u00a0 <\/span>A dream of Spirit, leading to truth, over time.\u00a0 A fullness of fragrance, spirit in life.\u00a0 As in Proust, \u2018What matters is to transform common occurrence into art (NYRB).\u2019<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>You will recognize the story of the anointing at Bethany.\u00a0 Sort of\u2026as we sort of recognize things in memory, or forget and remember or forget\u2026<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It is like the \u201cfamiliar\u201d parable (sic):\u00a0 A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and saw a man who had fallen among thieves, so he went and he asked his father for his inheritance.\u00a0 The father gave him seeds to plant, but most fell on rocky ground.\u00a0 He appealed to a judge, who would not listen, and then to a dishonest steward, who would listen, but who stole the rest of the seeds, and then planted them and they multiplied thirty, sixty and a hundredfold.\u00a0 But he left 99 of the fold and went after a lost sheep.\u00a0 On the way, he stumbled on a lost coin, and put it in his tunic.\u00a0 This will be like a mustard seed, he thought, which is small but grows a big plant.\u00a0 He went back to his father and said, I am not worthy to be a son, but make me a worker in a vineyard, and pay me as much as you pay those who started at dawn.\u00a0 Which of these do you think proved neighbor to the man who fell among thieves?<\/em>…I know you remember that one. (\uf04a<\/span>).<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>That is, John has somehow combined a story which was also known to Mark, and used by Matthew, with a story from Luke, unused by Mark or Matthew, and has added his own special ingredients, Johannine special sauce if you will.\u00a0 Or maybe a redactor re-edited portions of this passage.\u00a0 For the record: John has added Judas as the stingy one; John has added Judas\u2019 motive, not so liberal, of greed;\u00a0John has not kept Mark\u2019s ethical admonition, \u2018For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want you can do good to them\u2019.<\/em> (But Matthew also apparently erased that sentence, for who knows what reason.)\u00a0 John also has misplaced or erased the fine conclusion, which Mark writes and Matthew copies, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.<\/em> John also neglects to repeat that Jesus said of Mary\u2019s act that she has done a beautiful thing for me<\/em>.\u00a0 In other words, what has been told in John was not so much in memory of her, though perhaps in the rest of the whole world it was so.\u00a0 Most delicately, Mark and John both use a rare adjective, rendered her by the English word \u2018pure\u2019, which comes in the original from the same root as the word \u2018faith\u2019.\u00a0 The gospels repeated an admonition from Deuteronomy 15, \u2018the poor are ever present\u2019, not at all to discountenance care of the poor (so important to us, and rightly so), but to lift the fragrance, the wonder at the heart of the gospel, to the highest level. (Bultmann, perhaps rightly, hears here a reference to the full fragrance of gnosis, <\/em>knowledge, spreading throughout the world.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>John, alone, fills the room with fragrance.\u00a0 That is his point, here.\u00a0 Incense, the sense of the holy, the mysterium tremendum,<\/em> the idea of the holy, the presence.\u00a0 Resurrection precedes crucifixion in this reading.\u00a0 Crucifixion is merely a coming occasion for incarnation in this reading.\u00a0 Incarnation is a lasting fragrance in this reading, the fullness of fragrance.\u00a0 <\/span>The fragrant communion reminder, the fragrant gospel reminder, the fragrant Sunday reminder of our own, our personal, mortality.<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>My friend says of his work in ministry:\u00a0 \u2018we are trying to help people discover their spiritual side so that they can make a difference for good in the world\u2019.\u00a0 That is what we are trying to do in and from this pulpit, trying to help people discover their spiritual side so that they can make a difference for good in the world.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Long ago, tracing the same line, our poetic friend George Herbert wrote:<\/p>\n

Love bade me welcome: yet my sould drew back, Guiltie of dust and sinne.<\/em><\/p>\n

But quick-ey\u2019d Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in,<\/em><\/p>\n

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning, If I lack\u2019d any thing.<\/em><\/p>\n

A guest, I answer\u2019d, worthy to be here : Love said, You shall be he.<\/em><\/p>\n

I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah my deare, I cannot look on thee.<\/em><\/p>\n

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, Who made the eyes but I?<\/em><\/p>\n

Truth Lord, but I have marr\u2019d them : let my shame Go where it doth deserve.<\/em><\/p>\n

And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame? My deare, then I will serve.<\/em><\/p>\n

You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat. So I did sit and eat.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>To do so, for eucharist, we come together, in the same place, and at the same time, for Sunday worship.\u00a0 <\/span>Some of us learn to do so, learn so, as children. One year a friend brought her children to worship on Christmas eve.\u00a0 Afterward, she asked each one\u20146,8, and11 years old\u2014what they most liked.\u00a0 Said 6, \u2018I especially liked the candle, except the wax dripped on my finger and that hurt.\u00a0 Said 8, \u2018I liked communion and the way the choir music drew us forward, together, into it.\u2019\u00a0 Said 11, \u2018I like the way you feel after you have been to church\u2019.\u00a0 6,8,11\u2014they came to themselves.\u00a0 And grandma did too.\u00a0 <\/span>And here, this Lord\u2019s Day, meditating on eucharist, we may too.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ron Dworkin wrote just before his death: I shall take these two\u2014life\u2019s intrinsic meaning and nature\u2019s intrinsic beauty\u2014as paradigms of a fully religious attitude to life\u2026These are not convictions that one can isolate from the rest of one\u2019s life.\u00a0 They engage a whole personality.\u00a0 They permeate experience:\u00a0 they generate pride, remorse and thrill.\u00a0 Mystery is an important part of that thrill. (NYTRB, 68, 3\/13).<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Yes, our current tragedy has daily roots, roots in the daily foibles of the human. Tomorrow you might wake up to list the smaller showers of estrangement that meet us every day, long before we ever are drenched in the great thunderstorm of tragedy.\u00a0 <\/span>And we are living in the throes of national tragedy, as the tens of thousands gathered yesterday on the Boston, the Boston <\/em>Common, did testify. The gathering was a shared, communal witness in grief to unfolding national tragedy, whose roots are deep and tangled and personal and daily\u2026<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Premature resignation
\nPartial self-awareness
\nIndirect criticism
\nCold honesty
\nInflated responsibility
\nExcessive enjoyment
\nNeedless worry<\/p>\n

Wasted time
\nCareless haste
\nMisguided loyalty
\nPostponed grief
\nAvoided maturation
\nPartial planning
\nUnconscious entitlement
\nPointless earning
\nSelf-serving posture
\nThankless reception<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>My grieving friend wrote of presence, some years ago, wrestling and reckoning with the loss of his wife\u2026<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Her death left me empty.\u00a0 Stunned even.\u00a0 That emptiness stayed for the 1st<\/sup> year.\u00a0 Then, two years ago, I began to be bumping into something that I finally put a name down. \u2018The Presence\u201d.\u00a0 My first experience with the mystic corners of our world.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>I felt unprepared and awkward, but in time, I began to experience what can only be described as whisperings quietly in my ears.\u00a0 So, I began to struggle with poetry as I think I was hearing:<\/em><\/p>\n

God is as close as my breath<\/em><\/p>\n

My heart pulsing my breast<\/em><\/p>\n

No search reveals the Presence;<\/em><\/p>\n

Only exhaustion, tragedy, and<\/em><\/p>\n

Failure will temper my vision to<\/em><\/p>\n

The point where I can sense the<\/em><\/p>\n

Presence who responds to my<\/em><\/p>\n

Needs with gifts of patience<\/em><\/p>\n

(F Halse, Epiphany at Kennebunk Pond, 8\/16\/01)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Says the Lord:\u00a0 <\/span>She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service Click here to watch the full service John 12:1\u20138 Click here to hear just the sermon   Communion Meditation John 12: 1-8 April 6, 2025 Marsh Chapel Robert Allan Hill \u00a0 She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. \u00a0 Spirit […]<\/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\/3777"}],"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=3777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3778,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777\/revisions\/3778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}