{"id":516,"date":"2012-05-06T11:00:14","date_gmt":"2012-05-06T16:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=516"},"modified":"2019-12-03T12:11:20","modified_gmt":"2019-12-03T17:11:20","slug":"unfinished-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2012\/05\/06\/unfinished-grace\/","title":{"rendered":"Unfinished Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service.<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the sermon only.<\/a><\/p>\n

1 John 4: 7-12<\/a><\/p>\n

Mark 16: 1-8<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018To be mature is build schools in which you will not study, to plant trees under which you will not sit, to grow churches in which you will not worship.\u2019 (Ernest Campbell).<\/p>\n

John would agree:\u00a0 John Dempster.\u00a0 John Appleseed.\u00a0 John Wesley.\u00a0 1 John.\u00a0 John would agree.<\/p>\n

The cataract of Easter, its shattering, thunderous, calamitous, munificent, apocalypse of love, leaves parcels and morsels strewn about the lawn of life.\u00a0 Our Holy Communion in Eastertide is forever an unfinished grace.\u00a0 We stumble about, following the Easter kiss of grace (gnadenkusse<\/em>), the Easter quickening.\u00a0 We bump into bits and pieces left behind the resurrection tornado.<\/p>\n

For one thing, the gospel for this Easter, Mark 16, re-read this morning, ends in mid-flight, end in mid-sentence, its last word a preposition, \u2018for\u2019.\u00a0 A weak case (from the critical moderate viewpoint0 finds a couple of other sources in antiquity, in ancient Greek literature, which end with this dangling preposition.\u00a0 But the much more muscular view, as usual, is that of the moderate critics, not that of the critical moderates.\u00a0 The end of the scroll (as often happened to beginnings and endings of these documents) probably was torn and lost. \u00a0The Easter gospel is literally (not a word I usually associate with the Bible) unfinished.\u00a0 Its ending is unending.\u00a0 For\u2026.what?<\/p>\n

If you doubt this, let me remind you that all the subsequent editors of Mark tried to fix up the finish.\u00a0 Beginning with Mark.\u00a0 There are three different endings to Mark.\u00a0 The unfinished original, and two finished unoriginals, the shorter and the longer.\u00a0 They are not improvements, except in a grammatical sense.\u00a0 Next come Matthew and Luke, writing 20 years after Mark.\u00a0 They also both replace the unfinished finish, with a finished finish, not original, but, like a nice addition to an old house, appropriate to the space.\u00a0 The Fourth Gospel enlarged Mark\u2019s sketch (a version may have influenced John), with three other stories (of Mary, of the disciples, and of Thomas).\u00a0 And of course Paul knows nothing of any of this, so had nothing to add.\u00a0 Whether or not you want to think about unfinished grace as the metaphorical unfinished symphony of Being is your choice.\u00a0 The fact stubbornly remains:\u00a0 Mark 16 ends unfinished, in mid-sentence, \u2018they were afraid for\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

Life is open.\u00a0 Freedom is real.\u00a0 Easter causes us a little humility about what we think we know.\u00a0 Unfinished grace cautions us at Easter.\u00a0 Life is unfolding in unfinished grace.\u00a0 If, for instance, you have attended a recent lengthy conference or meeting which was by all accounts an unmitigated disaster, and you are tempted to despair, beware.\u00a0 Grace is afoot, alive, active, and unfinished.\u00a0 There is more future than you may think in the future.<\/p>\n

For another thing, in the aftermath and after glow of Easter, sometimes when we come to our senses we deeply realize unfinished work, unresolved issues, unappreciated love.\u00a0 Every year, studying the Gospel of John, this hits like a trailer falling out of a tornado.<\/p>\n

I am speaking of Nicodemus.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t hear about him this year, for he is only in John.\u00a0 You remember his awkward appearance at night in John 3.\u00a0 He disappears, but reappears at the very end, John 19:29, and helps Joseph of Arimethea to bury Jesus\u2019 body.\u00a0 \u2018Nicodemus, who first came to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes\u2019.\u00a0 So poignant, this, so true to life, so accurate about us.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know what we have got until it is gone.\u00a0 At last\u2014too late but not too late\u2014Nicodemus responds in love to the Christ who loved him to death.\u00a0 He shows up at the burial.<\/p>\n

Some returning faithful souls from Tampa Florida may this month suddenly realize what has been lost in the Methodist church.\u00a0 You don\u2019t what you\u2019ve got until its gone.\u00a0 For 200 years in various forms our church supported a security of appointment, a modest kind of connectional tenure.\u00a0 In this practice was located the basis for the covenant of the clergy in conference.\u00a0 In this practice was located the functional basis for itinerancy, in appointment and apportionment.\u00a0 In this practice was located the final protection of the freedom of the pulpit from harm and muffling by Episcopal leaders for whom such freedom is uncomfortable.\u00a0\u00a0 I<\/p>\n

In short, the church said to those entering ministry: \u2018you study for four years in college, three years in seminary, work for three years under supervision, and agree to go anywhere you are sent at the appointment of the Bishop, along with your family by the way, and live in a parsonage and earn $40,000 a year.\u00a0 We will at least guarantee you a place to preach, however modest that may be.\u00a0 But now, the demands on the young clergy are the same, but the responsible balance, the fair deal from an earlier day is gone.\u00a0 All the weight is on one end of the teeter totter.\u00a0 Beware of mendacious and predatory Bishops:\u00a0 power corrupts, and absolute power, now in view, corrupts absolutely.\u00a0 It is the equivalent of eliminating tenure on the Charles River campus in one vote, with no full debate.<\/p>\n

Maybe the judicial council will rule this too out of order.\u00a0 You don\u2019t know what you have got until it is gone.<\/p>\n

Nicodemus doesn\u2019t know what he has until it is gone.\u00a0 Still, there is a way\u2014100 pounds of treasure way\u2014for Nicodemus to find faith.\u00a0 Part of the joy of Easter is that this spiritual street theater involves audience participation, a play unfinished until you, like Nicodemus, step upon stage, take your cues, memorize and deliver your lines.\u00a0 Unfinished grace includes us\u2014if we will allow it\u2014at Easter.<\/p>\n

Yet another thing:\u00a0 as bread and wine await.\u00a0 1,000 of us worshipped here in the triduum\u2014an explosion.\u00a0 Odd, I looked up at Frances Willard, Easter day.\u00a0 She is found standing perpetually alongside Abraham Lincoln, here in our western stained glass.\u00a0 To finish Marsh Chapel, sixty years ago, Daniel Marsh had to decide on one final figure, for the last stained glass window.\u00a0 The choice became a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre, with letters and advice flying fast and furious.\u00a0 In a day when people felt strongly about Connick stained glass windows.\u00a0 Who should it be?<\/p>\n

Marsh finally chose Frances Willard, the female force behind prohibition.\u00a0 Interesting.\u00a0 A quintessential Methodist choice, in one sense, and a lingering, awkward physical presence on a secular, urban, large, cold, Northern, anything but temperate let alone abstinent, campus.<\/p>\n

Here is what President Marsh wrote about Frances Willard:<\/p>\n

\u2018I dare to prophesy that as the years go by and the history of the New World comes to be read\u2026the name of Frances Willard will stand by the side of Lincoln\u2019 (Lady Somerset of England).\u00a0 Dean of Women at Northwestern\u2026Her upbringing, her religious convictions, her natural bent for reform\u2026put her in the temperance movement\u2026President of the WTCU\u2026A statue of her stands in the rotunda of the Capitol\u2026It is a monument to a beautiful life.<\/em> (Charm of the Chapel, 182)<\/p>\n

Willard said: \u2018temperance is moderation in the things that are good and abstinence from things that are foul\u2019; \u2018I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum\u2019; \u00a0\u2018the struggle of the soul is toward expression\u2019 She was born near Rochester (Churchville).\u00a0 She gave 400 speeches a year in the company of her longtime companion, Anna Adams Gordon: \u2018there is no village that has not its examples of \u2018two hearts in counsel\u2019 both of which are feminine\u2019.\u00a0 For Willard, temperance was primarily a movement at advancing the cause of suffrage (to my mind anyway), \u2018 Yet eighty years after the experience and failure of prohibition (with thanks for Ken Burns\u2019 recent portrayal) Francis Willard is still here, and we still have unfinished work, unfinished imaginative labor to do regarding alcohol.\u00a0 \u00a0I am not in favor of prohibition and not a t-totaller, although I grew up in a dry home.\u00a0 But as a Dad, granddad, pastor, chaplain, Dean and minister, if the choice is between prohibition and sexual exploitation, I take prohibition in a New York minute.\u00a0 Our work on college campuses regarding alcohol is unfinished.<\/p>\n

I will linger with Willard a brief moment longer.\u00a0 Notice her way of living.\u00a0 She lived all her life with her life long partner.\u00a0 One day, our denomination will honor the emerging Frances Willards in our midst, the 10% of those 8 and 9 year old kids who know that somehow they are just a little different from the majority, who know they have a God given and different orientation.\u00a0 We will bring them to Marsh Chapel and introduce them to one of their forebears, Frances Willard, a feminist, suffragette, international leader, dean, temperance advocate, pioneer, and very probably a gay woman of the 19th century.\u00a0\u00a0 She didn\u2019t see her main goal, voting rights for women, in her lifetime.\u00a0 That happened twenty years after she died.\u00a0 But it happened.\u00a0 If you are limping home from a General Conference that was an unmitigated disaster, take a little heart from those who labored for causes that came to fruition only long after they had died.\u00a0 Just so, unfinished grace challenges us at Easter.\u00a0 Grace challenges us to remember that real change takes time, but it will come.\u00a0 It is coming.\u00a0 It is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018To be mature is build schools in which you will not study, to plant trees under which you will not sit, to grow churches in which you will not worship.\u2019<\/p>\n

John would agree:\u00a0 John Dempster.\u00a0 John Appleseed.\u00a0 John Wesley.\u00a0 1 John.\u00a0 John would agree.<\/p>\n

Beloved let us love one another, for love is from God and one who loves is born of God and knows God.\u00a0 He who does not love does not know God for God is love.\u00a0 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.\u00a0 In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.\u00a0 Beloved if God so loved us we also ought to love one another.\u00a0 No one has ever seen God;\u00a0 if we love one another God\u2019s love abides in us and is perfected in us.<\/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. 1 John 4: 7-12 Mark 16: 1-8 \u2018To be mature is build schools in which you will not study, to plant trees under which you will not sit, to grow churches in which you will not worship.\u2019 (Ernest Campbell). John would […]<\/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\/516"}],"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=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2552,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions\/2552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}