{"id":578,"date":"2012-09-02T11:00:55","date_gmt":"2012-09-02T16:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=578"},"modified":"2021-02-26T10:01:49","modified_gmt":"2021-02-26T15:01:49","slug":"a-pastoral-epistle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2012\/09\/02\/a-pastoral-epistle\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pastoral Epistle"},"content":{"rendered":"

James 1: 17-27<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

Welcome to a new year.\u00a0 There are various points at which a new year may be celebrated, according to various religious, national, familial and personal calendars.\u00a0 Matriculation is the University new year festival.\u00a0 Welcome back. (Yesterday on Bay State Road there was family with son and daughter, and a car with chairs and stuffed animals hanging out the windows.\u00a0 On that street there were good people\u2014police, resident advisors, custodians, administrators, chaplains, faculty, staff\u2014around to say hello, as in the song:\u00a0 \u2018you say yes, I say no, you say stop and I say, you say goodbye and I say hello\u2019 (one Dad started to sing the old Beatles tune!).<\/p>\n

We will begin with a pastoral epistle, a little spoken letter, spoken from heart to heart, we trust.\u00a0 Both of our primary readings, but particularly the passage from James, lure us in this direction.\u00a0 You will think too of advice you gave, or were given, encouragement you gave, or were given, when a new day dawned, and a new horizon opened.\u00a0 Your mother simply cried and asked you to call once in a while.\u00a0 Your dad said to remember where you came from.\u00a0 Your girlfriend said she would see you at homecoming, if you came home.\u00a0 Your younger brother just smiled and waved.\u00a0 All of these too were pastoral epistles, probably more significant because more personal.<\/p>\n

When faculty enter or return to campus, they come with a sense of the new.\u00a0 When administrators come or return to see the wave of others now present though months absent, they come with a sense of the new.\u00a0 When business people and retirees and the many searching for work come to the chapel on labor day, in a season that really does not overly respect labor anymore, they come longing for a sense of new possibilities.\u00a0 And you?\u00a0 What brought you here, to sacrament and sermon?\u00a0 We are so glad you have come.<\/p>\n

On arrival, come the new year, it can seem that this is someone else\u2019s place and somebody else\u2019s time.\u00a0 Especially in the heart of pretty fair sized city, with the noise and traffic of the urban landscape, you can get the feeling that other people know the place better and other people have a better sense of the time here.\u00a0 There is a kind of comforting, though false, sensation that goes with this sensibility.\u00a0 Others know better.\u00a0 I am new, or new again.\u00a0 This is not really my space.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even know what they mean by esplanade, by Fenway, by beach, by garden.\u00a0 They must know better.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t really have any idea what is transpiring around me here.\u00a0 I guess I will just sit and watch, or sit in my room, or sit by and wait.<\/p>\n

The word from this pulpit and chancel this morning is not meant to dissuade you entirely from a bit of caution.\u00a0 Caution when you cross the street.\u00a0 Caution when you choose your friends and locations.\u00a0 Caution when you are invited, as steadily we all are, to live in a way that is bitterly beneath who are you meant to be.\u00a0 Caution when you make your plans.\u00a0 Be slow to speak, slow to anger, slow to forget who you really are.\u00a0\u00a0 Two years ago a tiny young fresh woman from a small South Carolina town came in after a car had hit a cyclist out front.\u00a0\u00a0 She just sat and trembled.\u00a0 She was remembering who she was.\u00a0 No, we do not discountenance the importance of caution.<\/p>\n

Yet that is not the gospel this morning, as important as it is.\u00a0 Be careful.\u00a0 But be caring too.\u00a0 Be protective.\u00a0 But be proactive too.\u00a0 Be self critical.\u00a0 But be self confident too.\u00a0 This is your time.\u00a0 This is your place.\u00a0 The God of wholeness (\u2018the perfect law\u2019) and the God of freedom (\u2018the law of liberty\u2019) is loving you into love, gracing you into grace, and freeing you into freedom.\u00a0 If you hear that, and I hope that you do, then go and do it.\u00a0 Be careful.\u00a0 But be caring too.\u00a0 Be protective.\u00a0 But be proactive too.\u00a0 Be self critical.\u00a0 But be self confident too.\u00a0 It may seem or feel otherwise, but hear the good news:\u00a0 this time is your time, not somebody else\u2019s time.\u00a0 These days and months that will fly by are not somehow primary reserved for other people, or somehow better grasped by other people.\u00a0 That fellow who has been teaching thirty years, and you are just starting, is not somehow more fully drenched by this present moment.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 This day, autumn, year, decade\u2014they are your time.\u00a0 Carpe diem.\u00a0 Sin is not taking what is offered:\u00a0 that is the definition of sin, not taking what you are graciously given.\u00a0 We need to work, and to respect those who offer work.\u00a0 I know ours is a capitalist not a laborist system, capitalism not laborism.\u00a0 But this is Labor Day weekend.\u00a0 Perhaps we could remember for a moment those great voices who protected the wives and children of coal miners, of factory workers, of dock yard laborers.\u00a0 Lincoln:\u00a0 Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.\u00a0 Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.\u00a0 Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration (First Message to Congress, 12\/3\/61)<\/em> Here is life!\u00a0 Live it.\u00a0 Here is learning! Love it.\u00a0 Here is friendship! Embrace it.\u00a0 Here is challenge!\u00a0 Face it.\u00a0 Here is failure!\u00a0 Admit it.\u00a0 Religious experience is not primarily religious, in the sense that it is not primary found in the hours of church or tutelage or liturgy or devotion.\u00a0 Of course I am contractually obligated and also personally and profoundly committed to imploring you to get yourself to church on Sunday.\u00a0 This you will want to do.\u00a0 But religious experience comes through life, not church only, or mainly.\u00a0 It comes in seizing the day, and embracing the time.\u00a0\u00a0 Life: L I F E.\u00a0 When you come to church the next several weeks, come thankful for times when time stood still for a moment.\u00a0 In an honest debate.\u00a0 Reading Kant.\u00a0 Pouring yourself into an experiment.\u00a0 Rowing.\u00a0\u00a0 Seeing the sunrise across the ocean.<\/p>\n

Nor, by the way, is this massive space, the 350 buildings of Boston University, and the 350 years of Boston, the home of the bean and the cod, somehow somebody else\u2019s.\u00a0 They are yours for the knowing.\u00a0 This great city opens its heart every day to anyone with a good pair of shoes.\u00a0 Your plan is to make this historic city yours.\u00a0 Buy a standing room only ticket to see the remains of the Red Sox.\u00a0 I mean the Red Sox season.\u00a0 On the first day it snows, walk through the public garden.\u00a0 Take the fast ferry to Cape Cod, once at least.\u00a0 Whenever you hear music coming from a classroom, an auditorium, a concert hall or a chapel, like this one, stop and listen.\u00a0 Make one of the Italian restaurants in the North End a personal favorite.\u00a0 Make that two.\u00a0 On Columbus weekend, walk or jog the whole of the Emerald Necklace.\u00a0 Find your way once each term to the seashore.\u00a0 Do not assume that others, sleeping off steady drinking, or endlessly watching as in a mirror (\u2018one who observes his natural face in a mirror\u2019) some cyber image, or carelessly involved with someone else\u2019s body, or making plans for future acquisition, or simply hiding out somewhere, do not assume that such others know this place or own this place more than you do. You will be invited to live in ways that are bitterly beneath you.\u00a0 A pastoral letter:\u00a0 hope to grow in the capacity for moral discernment\u2014good and bad, right and wrong, better and worse;\u00a0 avoid a staple, steady diet of addictive substances, drugs or alchohol\u2014stay and be healthy, with some sense of balance;\u00a0 intend to honor others, in this BU home of personalist philosophy that guided MLK and others, by wanting to honor others, especially in their spirit, soul, body, and person, including those most intimate encounters and involvements\u2014honor the other in the other; step aside from the tide of greed in our era:\u00a0 there is more to living than becoming the richest woman in the graveyard;\u00a0 learn from others the habit of empathy\u2014feeling another\u2019s hurts and understanding another\u2019s fears; find some places\u2014nature, worship, friendship, quiet, reading, prayer\u2014where your ownmost self can come up for air.<\/p>\n

Life is what you DO in it.\u00a0 You might keep in mind the widow and orphan, the lonely and the needy.\u00a0 Life will provide you many examples.\u00a0 Be no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts.\u00a0 This is your space,\u00a0 your place, your current and your personal\u00a0 location.\u00a0 Take a second seat to no one.\u00a0 You can and should sit in the front of the bus.<\/p>\n

Time. This is your time.\u00a0 Space.\u00a0 This is our space.\u00a0 It has been my summer prayer, thinking of our faculty returning, and our administrators on the qui vive, and our staff in full throttle, and our students arriving, and our community coming home from the days of sunshine and family, it has been my prayer to send you this pastoral epistle.\u00a0 Now is your time.\u00a0 Here is your place.<\/p>\n

Listen to Robert Frost\u2019s poem about a star\u2026<\/p>\n

What will this year bring?\u00a0 It is up to you.<\/p>\n

Let us pray:<\/p>\n

Gracious God, Holy and Just<\/em><\/p>\n

Thou Silent Mystery, beckoning deep<\/em><\/p>\n

In whom we live and move and have our being<\/em><\/p>\n

Grant us peace, we pray<\/em><\/p>\n

Give us grace, we pray<\/em><\/p>\n

In the eyeblink of these four years<\/em><\/p>\n

Give us peace to resist what we would regret<\/em><\/p>\n

Give us grace to receive what will make us rejoice<\/em><\/p>\n

Four years hence, diplomas in hand<\/em><\/p>\n

May we be heavy with joy and free of regret<\/em><\/p>\n

Help us to avoid the regret that follows abuse of ourselves,<\/em><\/p>\n

Of our environment, of substances, and of others.<\/em><\/p>\n

Warn us away from what, lastingly we will regret.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fill us with a daily sense of adventure to embrace<\/em><\/p>\n

What lastingly we will enjoy:<\/em><\/p>\n

Friendship, discovery, reading, effort, achievement, accomplishment,<\/em><\/p>\n

Self-giving, devotion, and love.<\/em><\/p>\n

Grant us peace to resist what we would regret and grace to receive what<\/em><\/p>\n

Causes us to rejoice.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

~The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill,<\/em><\/p>\n

Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James 1: 17-27 Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only. Welcome to a new year.\u00a0 There are various points at which a new year may be celebrated, according to various religious, national, familial and personal calendars.\u00a0 Matriculation is the University new year festival.\u00a0 Welcome back. (Yesterday on Bay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[52,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578"}],"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=578"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3055,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions\/3055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}