{"id":468,"date":"2012-03-25T11:00:40","date_gmt":"2012-03-25T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=468"},"modified":"2021-02-25T09:26:16","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T14:26:16","slug":"think-globally-act-locally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2012\/03\/25\/think-globally-act-locally\/","title":{"rendered":"Think Globally, Act Locally"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service.<\/a>
\nClick here to hear the sermon only.<\/a>
\nJohn 12: 20-33<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today, John gives us the marrow of GMHopkins\u2019 hope:<\/p>\n

Thou mastering me<\/em><\/p>\n

God giver of breath and bread;<\/em><\/p>\n

World\u2019s strand, sway of the sea;<\/em><\/p>\n

Lord of living and dead;<\/em><\/p>\n

Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,<\/em><\/p>\n

And after it almost unmade, what with dread,<\/em><\/p>\n

Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?<\/em><\/p>\n

Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.<\/em><\/p>\n

(GMH)<\/em><\/p>\n

We turn to the poetry of experience and Scripture and tradition and reason to help us.\u00a0 For five Sundays, concluding today, we have journeyed together, from activity to awareness, from motion to mindfulness, from sensation to reflection.\u00a0 In particular we are trying faithfully to gain some ground, some purchase, in the interplay of technology and faith, of culture and Christ.<\/p>\n

Over six years, in Lent, from this pulpit and nave, together we have tried to engage the best thought of those whose own expression of faith may differ from ours:\u00a0 those who affirm a Scripture Alone (sola Scriptura) understanding of authority, though we do not here; those who lean more toward Paul and less toward the Gospels, though we do not here; those who privilege the death tradition of Jesus over the life tradition, the cross over the cradle (fit considerations for Lent in any case), though we do not here.\u00a0 In 2007, then, we grappled with John Calvin in Lent; in 2008 with St. Paul; in 2009 with Derision and Decision; in 2010 with Atonement; in 2011 with Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and this year with Jacques Ellul, who coined the phrase, think globally act locally.<\/em><\/p>\n

1. Experience<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

First, we look again to our own experience, trusting our experience.<\/p>\n

This week a radio listener sent me a cartoon.\u00a0 God is sitting on a cloud, holding a computer and talking to an angel.\u00a0 God says, \u2018I just answered a prayer and mistakenly hit \u2018reply all\u2019.<\/p>\n

Park your car.\u00a0 Save your money.\u00a0 Do not \u2018reply all\u2019.\u00a0 So you will have good influence on the environment, the economy and the culture.<\/p>\n

In our own experience, we are testing the spirit of truth, trying to move from fingertips to mindfulness, from sensation to reflection in the heart of the digital age.<\/p>\n

Midway from sensation to reflection, we test ourselves by practice this coming week:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. On Monday, aver: wherever you are, be there.<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. On Tuesday: before you check your face book, face your checkbook.<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. On Wednesday, decide: orders need borders:\u00a0 respond to voice in one day, email etc in three days, writing in one week.<\/em><\/li>\n
  4. On Thursday, choose: make a Lenten exception: answer your non emergency email all on Wednesday each week.<\/em><\/li>\n
  5. On Friday, raise the bar: respond to facebook and twitter with text, to text with email, to email with voice, to voice with letter, to letter with visit.<\/em><\/li>\n
  6. On Saturday, remember:\u00a0 electronic communication \u00a0is international, irretrievable, immutable, eternal, so whatever you write make sure are happy to have it appear on the front page of the Boston Globe or chiseled on your tombstone.<\/em><\/li>\n
  7. Come Sunday, of course:\u00a0 attend or listen to Marsh Chapel.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    We have come into a time when, across wide stretches of common life, it is thought that sending an electronic communication alone constitutes doing something lasting or fruitful.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet no one is born or dies on screen, literally or spiritually.\u00a0 No one connects with someone, in a heart sense, on screen.\u00a0 No one sees through the window of the soul on screen, nor feels a touch of physical love on screen, nor senses the breath and closeness of being human on screen.\u00a0 Most significantly, no one speaks by email.\u00a0 There is no speech nor are there words, their voice is not heard.<\/em> Language, your mother tongue, takes years to acquire, even at an elementary level.\u00a0 The use of language, your mother tongue, in the company of others, takes even longer to learn.\u00a0 You cannot learn in front of a screen how to hear.\u00a0 Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, as the Scripture affirms.\u00a0 How do you watch the mind and tongue play forward and backward with a thought aborning when there is no tongue to hear, no head to see, as the shifting and sifting occur?\u00a0 How do you learn the habits of deep listening, when all you do is scan?\u00a0 How do you experience the delight of unexpected humor, the force of interruption, the concentration of heart to heart with an unforeseen agreement? \u00a0Honor your father and mother (tongue) that thy days may be long upon the earth.<\/em><\/p>\n

    2. \u00a0Scripture<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

    Second with reverence we listen to the Holy Scriptures.<\/p>\n

    Our gospel is from John 12. In John, Jesus demarcates the limits of individualism during a wedding in Cana.\u00a0 Jesus pillories pride by night with Nicodemus.\u00a0 Jesus unwraps the touching self-presentations of hypocrisy in conversation at the well.\u00a0 Jesus heals a broken spirit.\u00a0 Jesus feeds the throng with two fish and five barley loaves.\u00a0 Jesus gives sight and insight, bifocal and stereoptic, to a man born blind.\u00a0 Jesus comes upon dead Lazarus and bring resurrection and life.\u00a0 He brings the introvert out of the closet of loneliness.\u00a0 He brings the literalist out of the closet of materialism.\u00a0 He brings the passionate out of the closet of guilt.\u00a0 He brings the dim-witted out of the closet of myopia.\u00a0 He brings the church out of the closet of hunger.\u00a0 He brings the dead to life.<\/p>\n

    Here the Gospel affirms Jesus\u2019 coming crucifixion as his glorification, one of the most important and repeated emphases in the fourth gospel.\u00a0 The seed falls, dies, is buried, and wondrously comes forth with fruit.\u00a0 In our community, here at Boston University, not a day goes by that I do not rub shoulders with this Gospel.\u00a0 Those who teach the younger do so in a generative mode.\u00a0 They are willing to let a seed fall, be planted and die\u2014a lecture given but perhaps not appreciated; a suggestion made but not heeded; a great hope proferred but not embraced.\u00a0 To teach is to die, hour by hour, in the hope that a long time from now\u2014decades from now\u2014the seed will bear fruit.\u00a0 That takes faith.\u00a0 That takes a cruciform self understanding.\u00a0 So you who learn and teach may hear John today.<\/p>\n

    But why are we hearing John today?\u00a0 Because we used the lectionary, a shared schedule of readings, used by most Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches.<\/p>\n

    For five reasons we continue to use the lectionary here.<\/p>\n

    First, both the ecumenical consensus and the United Methodist history of Marsh Chapel encourage us to do so.\u00a0 Particularly this choice and golden gift to present and future church unity is a treasure to be protected.<\/p>\n

    Second, the readings provide a basis for coherent development of an hour long service\u201420 minutes of sermon, 20 minutes of music, 20 minutes of liturgy\u2014on a common basis.<\/p>\n

    Third, Marsh Chapel provided some of the influence and early work on the lectionary itself, which history and labor we want to honor.<\/p>\n

    Fourth, we preach to some 50,000 radio listeners per week, many of whom have already attended their own church\u2014or are about to do\u2014wherein the same lessons are read;\u00a0 this gives us a vital connection to our virtual congregation.<\/p>\n

    Fifth, it keeps thematic preachers like this one speaking to you today, from only riding his or her favorite themes and texts, say Grace and Love, and avoiding less attractive themes, say Hell and High Water. We intend to continue to utilize the common lectionary here.<\/p>\n

    There are nonetheless serious problems with lectionary use.\u00a0 Let us name five of these, too.<\/p>\n

    First, and speaking as non-lectionary preacher, the small bits of scripture make difficult larger preaching lenses\u2014a sermon on the book of Jonah, for example, or a great theological topic like Redemption, or, as we are doing again this lent, a series of sermons on a major theme\u2014our Faith and Technology theme say\u2014which encompass more than four fragments of scripture.<\/p>\n

    Second, the lectionary greatly aids those who already know their Bible, but confuses those who do not.\u00a0 If you know that Genesis is the first book in the Bible, is part of the Pentateuch or Books of Moses, is the origin of thought on creation and covenant, and precedes all the other 65 Biblical books, you have a way of hearing a snippet from Genesis 17 in a way that makes sense.\u00a0 But if you have no idea about Genesis, the passage is opaque.\u00a0 First you have to have arithmetic\u2014the six portions of Scripture (OT:\u00a0 Law, Prophets, Writings; NT: Gospels, Letters, Apocalypses), the names of the books, the flow of the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation\u2014before you can do algebra (compare Numbers to John, Psalm 107 to Psalm 100, and so on).\u00a0 The lectionary cannot teach you the Bible.\u00a0 For that you need to study one book at a time (so, our study of Mark with Rev. Yoon following worship here), or study the whole Bible in a year (so, the still excellent UMC DISCIPLE Bible Study) or read the Bible, a passage a day, from cover to cover.\u00a0 You need to add and subtract before you take on quadratic equations.<\/p>\n

    Third, there is more than one lectionary.\u00a0 Yes, the churches\u2019 selection of readings and seasons is one, and we could say primary.\u00a0 But there are others.\u00a0 Every local congregation has its annual \u2018lectionary\u2019\u2014from annual meeting to stewardship Sunday to children\u2019s day.\u00a0 For us here this includes monthly luncheon, fellowship in September, on Parents\u2019 Weekend, at Christmas, in Hymn Sing (this Sunday!), at Easter Breakfast, and on Patriots Day (in addition to various subgroup gatherings for Adult Classes, for Men, for Women, for Students, for Families with Children, and people shall we say \u2018at mid life\u2019) and Bach Sunday.\u00a0 Also, every congregation has a denominational lectionary, provided by the prevailing judicatory (so for Methodists that includes annual conference, student Sunday, one great hour of sharing, and Aldersgate Sunday).\u00a0 At Marsh Chapel, our judicatory is Boston University, so we observe Matriculation, Parents\u2019 and Alumni Weekends, Lessons and Carols, Martin Luther King Sunday, This I Believe, Baccalaureate, and Commencement.\u00a0 Yet there is still another lectionary\u2014not Liturgical Calendar nor Local Calendar nor Denominational Calendar, but national calendar.\u00a0 Like it or not, the fourth of July has symbolic and liturgical meaning, as to some degree do Thanksgiving, Mother\u2019s Day, and Ground Hog Day.\u00a0 Think of last year: \u20189\/11\u2019 needed attention. Consequently, the Scriptural lectionary is in creative tension with these other three.<\/p>\n

    Fourth, it is usually difficult fully to interpret three or four lessons in one 22 minute sermon. So, some are either lightly or under interpreted.\u00a0 This can leave people puzzled, leaving church tangled up with a dark psalm, or an apocalyptic prediction, or a gender unfriendly proverb, or the pronunciation of Methusela.\u00a0 If you do not teach people, for instance, that the Gospel of John includes an ancient form of anti-semitism abhorrent to real Christianity, (so well recounted in last evening\u2019s program for the brilliant St John Passion) they can leave church, or the hearing of the sermon, mistaken about the gospel.\u00a0 One great failure of our pulpits in our time is the failure of our preachers regularly and creatively to root our sermons in the known history, the understood sociology, and the particular theology of each passage.\u00a0 But to do so takes sermonic time (and much more time in sermonic development).<\/p>\n

    Fifth, and last, as my old Navy chaplain assistant minister used to say: How can somebody in Nashville know what passage my congregation most needs to hear this week?\u00a0 The lectionary makes lazy preachers, who do not regularly sift and scour the whole Scripture. <\/em> One size does not necessarily fit all.<\/p>\n

    3. Tradition<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

    Third, we turn to our tradition.\u00a0 Our Lenten interlocutor this year, similar in choice to those over the five previous years, has been Jacques Ellul, whose writing on technology and theology foreshadowed a generation ago some of our own current experience.\u00a0 By \u2018thinking globally\u2019 in this over used phrase which has become his grave marker, Ellul meant that we should think sub specie aeternitatis, think eternally if you will.\u00a0 Hence the importance for him of Scripture and of his favorite interpreter, Karl Barth.\u00a0 By \u2018acting locally\u2019 Ellul meant for us to live as salt, light and sheep, as those who practice Christianity;\u00a0 it captures our sense of hope. Faith offers:\u00a0 1. Transcendence 2. Promise 3. New Creation (present now).\u00a0 Here is the last and briefest of the Lenten litanies offered to evoke Ellul\u2019s thought.\u00a0 Hear it as you would a psalm or an aria, listen with the ear as well as the mind:<\/p>\n

    In our time intelligence is set free from dogmas but has become a slave to means.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u2018In my own life, I confronted the demands of Marx and the demands of the Bible and put them together.\u2019 Marx spoke to the economic situation.\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 But he did not have all the answers to the greater matters\u2014life, death, love.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

    I set up a Parallel (camping) university, and focused my volunteer work on \u00a01. Delinquent youth\u00a0 2. Environment.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

    A person needs to become someone who can use the technologies and at the same time not be used by, assimilated by, or subordinated to them\u2026prepare to live in technology and at the same time against technology\u2026develop a critical awareness of the modern\u00a0 world\u2019 83<\/em><\/p>\n

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

    \u2018The Christian is one who brings as much free play as possible into the parts of society \u2026that are linked to one another\u2019 110<\/em><\/p>\n

    Two strong teachers from my own past embody this same dialetic: \u00a0Lloyd Easton at Ohio Wesleyan, a BU PhD and fifth generation personalist philosopher, and expert on the writings of the young Marx on society and culture (so his book of that title); and Christopher Morse of Union Theological Seminary, a great student of both Calvin and Barth, who taught them in a place and time when they were all but forgotten in the hey day of Cone, Guttierez, Harrison, Koyama, and liberation theology in general<\/p>\n

    4. Reason<\/em><\/p>\n

    Fourth, we set our reflective reason to work.<\/p>\n

    On a personal level, something triggered for me one night last week, in the grace of table fellowship.\u00a0 That is, the emergence in a welcoming home, over a nice meal, in a meaningful setting, of a combination of fellowship, education, and service, in a natural, organic way (not to say without preparation, planning and work) is an apocalypse of what the grace to which the church bears witness is all about, I think. \u00a0There was something real and really afoot, and for that I was really thankful.\u00a0 In every dimension this radiant table fellowship militated against impersonal communication.\u00a0 It is the communion, the companionship for which we hunger.<\/p>\n

    Let us be mindful.\u00a0 Let us reason together.<\/p>\n

    Hit and run electronic communication produces a mindset that tends to emphasize the short run.\u00a0 (Mayor Bloomberg in NYC said as much this week). Aerial bombardment forms of electronic communication tend to draw the mind to the very present.\u00a0 Click and stick rejoinders, used repeatedly through the day, from screen to screen, voiceless and voluminous, can produce a mind, or absence of mind, that then can influence ranges of behavior beyond the technical.\u00a0 That is, our forms of electronic interaction can have a coarsening effect on our culture.\u00a0 Such communication, as silent as deadly, can enfeeble our relations, make us unprepared and ill practiced in the art and so in the voice of acquaintance, friendship, and love.<\/p>\n

    We are so sensationally habituated to distanced, cold, hard, electronic, visual, voiceless intercourse, that our human and even most intimately human intercourse\u2014ourselves ostensibly at our warmest and best\u2014becomes itself distanced, cold, hard, electronic, visual, and voiceless.\u00a0 Where is the voice of the Song of Solomon in our residences and dwellings?\u00a0 Or the voices of Juliet and Romeo? You may not want to hear this or trust it unless I send it by email.\u00a0 But it is still the case.\u00a0 Our technology is swamping and drowning our theology.\u00a0 And it is the youngest, most nubile, those moving from nubility to nobility, and so most innocently vulnerable among us who are most harmed.<\/p>\n

    We at Marsh Chapel have both an avuncular and a pastoral role to play in teaching and helping, by how we live and by what we say and by how we say, and what we live for.<\/p>\n

    As we at Marsh Chapel attempt to model dimensions of health and safety, across our community and campus, and particularly in a time fraught with difficulty in the areas of sexuality and violence, let us persevere in three discreet directions.\u00a0 Ellul would identify them as salt, light and sheep.\u00a0 First, let us keep the feast, and be present on Sunday to witness to faith, and to be nourished together by the salt that brings savor.\u00a0 Your bodily presence in worship helps others.\u00a0 Second, let us walk in the light, come to the light, and walk in the light, by listening for God\u2019s word, for good, and naming and claiming the good.\u00a0 Third, let us make of this sacred space a safe place, sacred space\u2014safe place, as those who have a Shepherd who knows and loves his sheep.<\/p>\n

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

    Experience, Scripture, Tradition, Reason. You have taken a road less traveled, a path from sensation to reflection.\u00a0 May the mindfulness of Lent prepare you for the mystery of Easter.\u00a0 We turn to the poets to help us.\u00a0 John Henry Newman:<\/p>\n

    “Let us preach You without preaching;<\/em><\/p>\n

    not by words but by our example;<\/em><\/p>\n

    by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what we do,<\/em><\/p>\n

    the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to You.” (J H Newman)<\/em><\/p>\n

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

    Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

    Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only. John 12: 20-33 Preface Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Today, John gives us the marrow of GMHopkins\u2019 hope: Thou mastering me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[47,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468"}],"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=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":471,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions\/471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}