{"id":383,"date":"2011-12-11T11:00:20","date_gmt":"2011-12-11T16:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=383"},"modified":"2020-01-28T18:26:22","modified_gmt":"2020-01-28T23:26:22","slug":"advent-carol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2011\/12\/11\/advent-carol\/","title":{"rendered":"Advent Carol"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the entire service.<\/a>
\nClick here to hear the sermon only.<\/a>
\nLuke 1: 26-38<\/a><\/p>\n

People imagine proposals and weddings in this season.\u00a0 Often the images are of cities, bright lights, jewelry, red dresses, handsome ties and mink coats.<\/p>\n

But Samuel tells of a shepherd king, raised in the country, taken from the pasture.\u00a0 Mary sings of low estate,\u00a0 and filling the hungry with good things, she herself being unexpectedly with child.\u00a0 Luke recalls a north country, Galilee, small town Nazareth exurban story.\u00a0 Hm.\u00a0 Country.\u00a0 Unexpected birth.\u00a0 North of the city.\u00a0 Story.\u00a0 Hm\u2026It reminds me\u2026<\/p>\n

In the early 1980\u2019s we were stationed (appointed) an hour and a half\u00a0 west of Montreal: in the country, up north.\u00a0 We lived in a large, ungainly, and drafty country parsonage.\u00a0 You knew it was a parsonage because on the front of the house there was a sign, to the left of the porch door, which read:\u00a0 Methodist Parsonage.\u00a0\u00a0 Just so you know.\u00a0 Whether the sign was meant to apologize for the down at the heal condition of the house, or was meant as a point of clarification about ownership, or was, as it certainly proved to be, meant as a guide for hoboes in need of sandwiches, as they drifted through that little town, know one ever said.\u00a0 But it was more than adequate, more than reasonably adequate for two young parents, and two little children, and one child on the way.\u00a0\u00a0 It was our second parsonage.<\/p>\n

Our first parsonage in Ithaca was once the home of Pearl Buck.\u00a0 Our third in Syracuse was a street from the homes of Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolfe.\u00a0 Our fourth home was down the street from the Rochester grave of Frederick Douglass, and not far from that of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.\u00a0 Now we live near the offices of Robert Pinsky and Rosanna Warren.\u00a0 But this the second parsonage was in the town immortalized by Laura Engels Wilder, in her book Farmer Boy, the birthplace and home of her husband, Almonzo Wilder, just 6 miles from the Canadian border.\u00a0 Words have fed us and feed us still.\u00a0 As my friend said, of his own liberation, \u2018words were my way out.\u2019 We have no excuses not to scour the earth, the heavens, time and place for words fitly spoken, like apples, apples, apples in the sun.<\/p>\n

The parsonage was big enough, with two living rooms and an ample dining room, to accommodate some 75 people at one time.\u00a0 We had learned this, and this number, because on the previous Maundy Thursday, the heat in the church had failed, at 10 below zero.\u00a0 So the service of Holy Communion that evening was convened in the parsonage, with hymns played on the baby grand piano, and people scattered from couch to kitchen to pantry to stairs to window sill.\u00a0 One elderly gentleman sat with the minister\u2019s wife accompanist, right on the piano bench. I think he felt honored. Most later agreed that it was not only the coziest but easily the most memorable communion service they could recall.<\/p>\n

Sometime well after the snow had begun to cover the farms and valleys of Burke NY, sometime after November 1, that is, the minister had a phone call from a neighboring farmer.\u00a0 The man asked whether the preacher would conduct a wedding for a non-member.\u00a0 Certainly he would and had and the farmer knew this as well as the preacher so the question in the air or over the phone line was the unspoken question what are we talking about?<\/p>\n

Well, North Franklin County is not a place of endless talk.\u00a0 There is in fact little said, week by week, and month by month, in the north country.\u00a0 Most would agree there that this is the way things should be, allowing as how most things said don\u2019t need saying at all, and those that do need saying need better saying than they mostly get.\u00a0 I personally knew a beautiful young couple, prosperous potato farmers with two children, for three years and never once heard the husband say a single word.\u00a0 The preacher is also allowed and expected to talk, there being I guess some uncertainty about how to think about the clergy.\u00a0 But even so, the briefer the better, if you please, pastor.\u00a0 Wordless wisdom up north compared favorably with the loquacious knowledge we had known in Ithaca, in the days of Carl Sagan and Hans Bethe.\u00a0 Mile by mile, going north, surprisingly, wisdom if not knowledge increased, along with kindness.<\/p>\n

In any event, after a long while of hemming and hawing and not saying, the minister wrangled out of the farmer that the farmer\u2019s hired man wanted to get married.\u00a0 Actually he needed to get married.\u00a0 He wanted to get married, but he also was in a situation where he needed to get married, too.\u00a0 This took the not usually talkative farmer a long while to explain because he did not directly explain what he was trying to explain.\u00a0 Phrases like \u2018unexpected circumstance\u2019 and \u2018things moving pretty fast\u2019 and \u2018sometimes these things happen\u2019 and \u2018they are really good young folks\u2019 were clearly spoken but their actually footing on planet earth was hard, or not possible, to ascertain.\u00a0 Finally the preacher said simply, \u2018send them up, I am glad to talk to them\u2019.\u00a0 This led to some meetings in the church office, on days when the oil furnace was working, and some lumbering, awkward conversation about marriage, and some planning for a service to solemnize their marriage.<\/p>\n

The couple lived on the farm where the husband worked.\u00a0 They lived in a single wide trailer, which is a trailer exactly half as big as a double wide trailer.\u00a0 Hay bales stuffed around the edges and thankfully covered with much snow for half the year mostly kept the pipes from freezing.\u00a0 Housing was provided for the hired man, just like for the minister, but the trailer was a whole lot smaller and a whole lot more dangerous than the parsonage (at least in most physical ways).\u00a0 Milking at 4am and 4pm, every day, and work, all day, in between, every day.\u00a0 You could rent the movie Frozen River and then know quite a lot about this neck of the woods.<\/p>\n

After some talk with his wife that night, and receiving the benefit of her genuine generosity and creative kindness, the minister suggested that the couple be married on Christmas Eve day, at noon, in the parsonage.\u00a0 It would be a small wedding, and, as his wife thoughtfully suggested, they could put the children down for nap, early, and then use the piano, have some refreshments, and make something happy and pretty in and of the moment.<\/p>\n

The last day of Advent, December 24, came, with a gust of bitter wind, a snow shower, and then a bleak barely visible sun at midday.\u00a0 A little late, the bride and groom appeared.\u00a0 But their friends, who would sign for them (the Empire State being one which requires witnesses other than the clergy, a wise requirement) had somehow not appeared.\u00a0 The three year old daughter could be heard crawling and listening from the top of the stairs.\u00a0 The wind blew and the snow fell.\u00a0 Finally, to make the matter potentially legal, a neighbor lady was invited to come and join the service.\u00a0 She and the minister\u2019s wife later signed the license.\u00a0 The minister performed the ceremony.\u00a0 A carol was sung, that day in late Advent.\u00a0 The three year old would appear, and disappear, as the service progressed, and appeared for good when the cookies were served.\u00a0 Other than the words of the wedding themselves, I do not recall that anything else was said.\u00a0 I refer you to the remarks made some moments ago about the paucity of speech along the great frozen St Lawrence river.\u00a0 But no words really were needed.\u00a0 The farm wife, young and pregnant, was simply dressed in a light dress.\u00a0 Her smile, her gleaming eyes, her red cheeks and smile, her evident enjoyment of the home and homely setting were a full epic poem of happy gratitude.\u00a0 And her husband, scrubbed and crammed head long into a tight black suit and wayward tie, was as dignified, reverent, true and terrified as any groom at any time in the 900 or so weddings the minister has thus far done.\u00a0 Do you?\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 The three year old\u2019s face looked down from the stairs.\u00a0 Do you?\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 The piano played softly, a little meditation, Love Came Down at Christmas.<\/p>\n

One loving neighbor, one jubilant three year old, one fairly green preacher, and one creatively generous wife, were present to attest to a wedding, a union of hearts and souls, on a cold winter day, in a forgotten patch of rough land, now some thirty years ago.\u00a0 I can see that piano, taste the cookies, hear the carols, feel the hands, sense the candles as if it were an hour ago, and in some ways it was, just an hour ago.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of fine and treasured forms of theological learning which one can and must acquire in the six brief semesters of divinity school.\u00a0 Moses and Jesus, Paul and John, Augustine and Pelagius, Luther and Erasmus, Wesley and Calvin, Barth and Tillich, Amoun of Nitria, the documentary hypothesis, the second aorist, filioque and the teleological suspension of the ethical.\u00a0 All of these and all that stands in between one can and must receive, while there is the time and freedom to meet and know them.\u00a0 You are digging a dip well from which you will need pure water to drink, as you preach, and you try to slake the thirst of the human soul.<\/p>\n

The practice of ministry, the privilege of the practice of ministry, however, is learned in the actual doing of ministry, on the piano bench, over cookies, in the smaller living room, at $9,000 a year, in a drafty old manse, with a toddler spying, and a tiny but ever so majestic event\u2014declaration of love, til death us do part.\u00a0 There is a temptation, when one is in school, to think reality begins and ends with the library or the internet or the reputation of a beloved teacher.\u00a0 But it is a big world out there, waiting for you, murky, endlessly fascinating, strange full of need and longing for love, longing for an experience of God.<\/p>\n

When the boots were donned, and the gloves and coats put on, the bride, in the hour of her wedding, kissed the child and hugged the pianist.\u00a0 To the minister she gave her hand, and with that Methodist handshake gave the gift of meaning, lasting meaning, in the work and struggle of ministry, wherein one works and struggles to find and keep the grace to put oneself at the disposal of others.\u00a0 On the last day of Advent, on a bitter winter afternoon, at least one preacher was given the privilege of seeing the privilege of life in ministry.\u00a0 And something more:\u00a0 in the handshake, a hint of the hidden God, and the gospel of divine love, creating us, forgiving us, guiding us.\u00a0 It was a sort of Advent Carol.\u00a0 An Advent Carol, lingering like lasting beauty always does, in the eternity of memory.\u00a0 What a privilege to live and be in ministry.\u00a0 There is nothing like it, not in all creation.\u00a0 What a privilege.<\/p>\n

The door closed, and the minister and his wife smiled and hugged each other, and sent the daughter back up to nap.<\/p>\n

Advent comes around once a year to force an upon us an attitude adjustment.\u00a0 From Luke to Francis to El Greco to Wesley to Boston University in Chelsea and in our Medical Center, we are being reminded of something, our attitude is receiving an adjustment.\u00a0 Faithful witnesses from Nazareth to Roxbury, remind us so. Jesus came out in the country, in birth, up north, among the poor, as a child.<\/p>\n

Maybe we can remember that, in our time.<\/p>\n

When we learn on a televised 60 minutes news program of children in central Florida, whose homes, whose mangers, whose night repose are in automobiles, parked outside a Walmart where a kind manager lets them be, and they wash up for school at McDonalds, maybe we will remember\u2026<\/p>\n

When we recall a little boy left with a pillow and a window ajar in an upstate NY casino parking lot, while mom went to play the slots, maybe we will remember\u2026<\/p>\n

When the costs of war, aerial bombardment, are reported in round numbers, in collateral damage, including unnamed children, maybe we will remember\u2026<\/p>\n

When we count 20% of the poor in this country as children, maybe we will remember\u2026<\/p>\n

When we see flickering on the evening news a fire in a trailer, or a tenement, or a third floor walk up, and think of three year olds there, maybe we will remember\u2026<\/p>\n

When we strike again the balance of responsibility and compassion, liberty and justice, freedom and grace, and cast our verbal, financial, and civic ballots, maybe we will remember\u2026<\/p>\n

When the preachers says, repeatedly, \u2018let those who have much not have too much, and those who have little not have too little, maybe we will remember, remember, remember, the manner of his Advent:\u00a0 outside, countryside, inside, manger side, northside, far side\u2014a poor unexpected baby child.<\/p>\n

Maybe it is too much for some to agree that all should have raiment, roof, bedding, safety, a doctor when sick, a teacher when learning, a sacred space that means a safe place.\u00a0 Maybe you would not agree that ALL might so live.\u00a0 But could we not at least grant all this to children?\u00a0 To those 14 and under?\u00a0 To those who have not had a chance to miss and mistake there chance just yet?<\/p>\n

As my parents used to say, \u2018Bob, somebody let you grow up.\u2019\u00a0 They didn\u2019t sound like they meant that as a compliment.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, thirty years ago, in a modest parsonage living room\u2026<\/p>\n

A knock came again at the door.\u00a0 There stood the groom, gloves off.\u00a0 He had something he had forgotten.\u00a0 He had something he wanted to give.\u00a0 Not to say, but to do.\u00a0 Not to speak, but to act.\u00a0 Not to describe, but to give.\u00a0 I refer you to the demography of verbal silence along the frozen St Lawrence offered some moments ago.\u00a0 He held out his hand, with bills rumpled and folded there in.\u00a0 He looked down, and then quickly up at the pastor.\u00a0 He gave me four dollars.\u00a0 He was truly proud to give it.\u00a0 And I was truly proud to receive it.\u00a0 I only wish I had had the sense to put the bills away as a physical reminder of the day.<\/p>\n

No, as a reminder the action required of love, the doing of good.\u00a0 Do you love Jesus?\u00a0 Then you will do something for him.<\/p>\n

At every turn, as we come to Christmas, we are reminded that faith is born in trouble, like that little bit of faithfulness was born on the last day of Advent so far away and so many years ago.\u00a0 We are reminded of the lowly entrance our Lord makes into life.\u00a0 That night, at age three, a little girl sang in church, for the first but not the last time, a carol from the countryside, the unexpected side, the northside, whose author is, so fittingly, unknown:<\/p>\n

Away in a manger no crib for a bed
\nThe little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head
\nThe stars in the bright sky Looked down where he lay
\nThe little Lord Jesus Asleep on the hay<\/em><\/p>\n

Be near me Lord Jesus I ask thee to stay
\nClose by me forever\u00a0 And love me I pray
\nBless all the dear children in thy tender care
\nAnd fit us for heaven to live with thee there.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Click here to hear the entire service. Click here to hear the sermon only. Luke 1: 26-38 People imagine proposals and weddings in this season.\u00a0 Often the images are of cities, bright lights, jewelry, red dresses, handsome ties and mink coats. But Samuel tells of a shepherd king, raised in the country, taken from the […]<\/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\/383"}],"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=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2638,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/2638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}