{"id":589,"date":"2012-09-23T11:00:06","date_gmt":"2012-09-23T16:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=589"},"modified":"2019-11-26T12:42:30","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T17:42:30","slug":"our-common-wealth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2012\/09\/23\/our-common-wealth\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Common Wealth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark 8: 24-9:1<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

 <\/p>\n

A. Today<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Wealth.\u00a0 Today and yesterday and everyday, present and past and future.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Last Saturday, along the Charles River, thousands marched in a Heart Walk.\u00a0 Children zigzagged across the path.\u00a0 An octogenarian wore his name tag:\u00a0 Uncle James, a survivor.\u00a0 Little troops in colored T shirts\u2014yellow, brown, red, silver\u2014marked by hospital names and sponsor names and business names, walked along a common path, not far from commonwealth avenue.\u00a0 A shorter man and taller woman walked side by side, then, in a moment, clasped hands:\u00a0 a couple was born!\u00a0 Older, younger, all colors and shapes, dimly embracing and embodying something unspoken but shared, a common life.\u00a0\u00a0 Bought with God\u2019s life, a ransom, one for many.\u00a0 One group bore this shirt message:\u00a0 \u2018we walk to remember P J\u2019.\u00a0 (E Hemingway was asked once to write a short story in 6 words.\u00a0 His reply: \u2018Baby shoes for sale. Never worn.\u2019)\u00a0 One purple group had the right phrase: \u2018Take a few steps for a good cause\u2019.\u00a0 That is about all we do here come Sunday morning.\u00a0 We parade in.\u00a0 We process.\u00a0 We remember our heart, and the dire importance of its health.\u00a0 We join a world wide parade, come Sunday, here in our modest gothic nave.\u00a0 We sing, preach and pray, then we recess, and march on.\u00a0 Underneath the motion and color of the existential parade there abides this deep ground of power, love, grace, freedom and truth:\u00a0 God has given up God\u2019s life so that we might have life.\u00a0 Divine absence empowers human presence.\u00a0 Need I point out that what God has done for us, we in our own measured ways do for those who follow us?\u00a0 Our life is given, well or poorly, that others might live.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 Paul teaches us how to live this truth:\u00a0 \u201cHe who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack\u201d (2 Cor 8:15):\u00a0 You have found a way, in a balanced and measured manner, to give to others.\u00a0 As a community you know the truth of Paul\u2019s advice in giving and living,\u00a0 found in 2 Corinthians 8.\u00a0 1.\u00a0 You are excellent in so many other things, so you will want to excel here.\u00a0 2.\u00a0 Real giving is always of one\u2019s own free will.\u00a0 3.\u00a0 There is a healthy comparative rivalry for growth in giving which we may affirm.\u00a0 4. We give according to what we have, so that he who has much may not have too much and he who has little may not have too little.\u00a0 5. Our measure of what is right, \u201chonorable\u201d, is found both in the sight of God and in the sight of others.\u00a0 6.\u00a0 One who sows bountifully reaps bountifully.\u00a0 7.\u00a0 Happiness, cheer is the mark of real giving. 8. God will provide what is needed.\u00a0\u00a0 9. The main blessing of giving is to the giver:\u00a0 You will be enriched in every way for great generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God, for the rendering of this service not only supplies the wants of the saints but also overflows in many thanksgivings to God.\u00a0 Under the test of this service, you will glorify God by your obedience in acknowledging the gospel of Christ, and by the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others.<\/em><\/p>\n

4. Though we do not always, regularly recall it, our life is His life, and His, ours.\u00a0 The pattern of his life becomes the pattern of our own lives.\u00a0 Not many of us are placed in the situation of the four chaplains in our back window, each of whom gave a younger sailor his life jacket as the ship went down.\u00a0 Not many of us are Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pacifist become activist become prisoner become martyr.\u00a0 Not many of us have all of our giving concentrated into one quick stroke, one life moment.\u00a0 But be not deceived.\u00a0 You too are giving away your life, one way or another, day by day.\u00a0 You too are giving life that others may live.\u00a0 From the mother\u2019s breast milk to the father\u2019s night labor to the teacher\u2019s extra effort to the soldier\u2019s risky service to the grandmother\u2019s soft advice to the officer\u2019s dangerous duty.\u00a0 To live, truly to be alive in the heart of the Common Wealth, the Christ of God, is to give and love and serve.\u00a0 Faith is the way we accept the gift, the manner in which we account the ransom, the human life by which we receive the self emptying of the divine life.\u00a0 God has died that we might live.<\/p>\n

5. Jesus is our Common Wealth.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Faith.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Ground.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Hope.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Life.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Wealth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

B.\u00a0 Yesterday<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Wealth.\u00a0 Our tradition reminds us so.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 We at Marsh Chapel, and we at Boston University may not yet have the largest financial endowment in the country, or along the Charles River. One day, that may change. Our current capital campaign, \u2018Choosing to be Great\u201d, will help. \u00a0If you would like to help us to help that to change, please let me know. Be assured that we will do whatever we can for your personal and spiritual welfare, in gratitude.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 But there is another way in which Marsh Chapel, and Boston University may already have the largest endowment in the country, or along the Charles River. Our riches are vocal. Our largest endowment is not financial but audible, not monetary but epistolary, not in the coin of the realm but in the language of the heart. Boston University, and centrally within the University, Marsh Chapel, is a treasure store of voice. You notice that, probably, every Sunday when you come across the plaza, and pass the sculpture and monument to Martin Luther King, birds in flight. Said Karl Barth, \u2018The gospel is the freedom of a bird in flight\u2019. But King\u2019s voice was not only or mainly a solo voice. He sang in a choir, in choro novo. He sang as one bird in the flock. Howard Thurman sang with him, for example. So did Allan Knight Chalmers. Robert Hamill\u2019s voice was known in his regular column in motive magazine. Littell lead the way. \u00a0Ten Presidents.\u00a0 Six Deans of the Chapel.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 Come Sunday, every Sunday, here at Marsh Chapel:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Chapel\u2019s gothic nave, built to lift the spirit, welcomes you<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Chapel\u2019s sixty year history, at the heart of Boston University, welcomes you<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Chapel\u2019s regard for persons and personality, both in its Connick stained glass windows and in its current ministry, welcomes you<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Chapel\u2019s familiar love of music, weekday and Sunday, welcomes you<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Chapel\u2019s congregation of caring, loving souls, in this sanctuary, welcomes you in spirit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Welcome today as we enhance our endowment.<\/p>\n

Endowment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5.\u00a0 Yes, a word brings a lift to the decanal eyebrow, a stirring to the Episcopal soul, a tingle to the Provostial spirit, a warming to the Presidential heart.\u00a0 A welcome word, today, on an Alumni Weekend. Now, endowments are crucial for chapel, for school, for university.\u00a0 We shall other days on which to build such. \u00a0But today we celebrate the endowment we already have.\u00a0 It is a rich and treasure. \u00a0A tradition of \u2018common wealth\u2019 on Commonwealth Avenue.\u00a0 It is an endowment vocal not visible, audible not audited, psychic not physical, moral not material.<\/p>\n

Listen for its echoes\u2026listen\u2026listen to the voices of Boston University and of Marsh Chapel\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All the good you can\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

The two so long disjoined\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Heart of the city, service of the city\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Learning, virtue, piety\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Good friends all\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Hope of the world\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Are ye able, still the Master, whispers down eternity\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Common ground\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Content of character\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

6.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Wealth.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Faith.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Ground.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Hope.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Life.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Wealth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

7.\u00a0 Lift up your hearts:\u00a0 Signs of courtesy\u2026to someone who could be of no service\u2026reveal to us suddenly\u2026a whole world of beliefs to which (we) never give any direct expression but which govern (our) conduct\u2026(Proust, RTP, 1016)<\/em><\/p>\n

8.\u00a0 We too are summoned to take our place in the march, the great procession of faith, the heart walk of our common wealth.\u00a0 Does anyone want to follow?\u00a0 Renounce self, love others.\u00a0 Have a sense that others are you and that you are the other.\u00a0 Take up the cross, then.<\/p>\n

9.\u00a0 Friends:\u00a0 there is something so direct and common about this teaching, something we as buyers and sellers, as savers and spenders, as those with pockets and wallets and accounts can \u2018get\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 Our life rests on the gift of our Common Wealth, the gift of God in Jesus Christ.\u00a0 As we learn, very partially, to do, year by year, to give our days and hours and lives for others\u2014our friends, our family, our community, our country, our church, our world, all\u2014so God has done for us, by laying down the divine life, as a ransom.\u00a0 In some dark mysterious way, this was the only way to get us loose, set us free, give us life.\u00a0 Isaiah had foretold it.<\/p>\n

10.\u00a0 Calvin wrote first about sanctification and then about justification, first about holiness and then about salvation, first about ethics and then about theology.\u00a0 For once, we have followed his lead, last week and this.\u00a0 For the call to justice raises a question.\u00a0 Why should anyone care?\u00a0 Why should anyone care to be just?\u00a0 What makes that claim a worthy claim?\u00a0 Last week we listened for the moral of this account, the ethical teaching of Mark 8 about justice.\u00a0 This week we listen for the spiritual meaning, the reason anyone would care to care about the moral of the story, the portrait of God, the life of God, God\u2019s given life, life giving love.\u00a0 God has died that we might live.\u00a0 That makes the ransom of Christ so precious.\u00a0 That makes the gift of each day so valuable.\u00a0 A radical Calvinist, author of The Death of God, who died himself last week, Gabriel Vahanian, put it this way: \u2018God is not necessary but he is inevitable.\u00a0 He is wholly other and wholly present.\u00a0 Faith in him, the conversion of our human reality, both culturally and existentially, is the demand he still makes upon us\u2019 (NYT obit, 9\/12)<\/p>\n

11.\u00a0 Dorothy Sayer, a radio listener reminded me, put it this way:<\/p>\n

The worker\u2019s first duty is to serve the work. The popular catchphrase of today is that it is everybody\u2019s duty to serve the community, but there is a catch in it. It is the old catch about the two great commandments. \u201cLove God \u2013 and your neighbor: on those two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.\u201d\u2026 The catch in it, which nowadays the world has largely forgotten, is that the second commandment depends upon the first, and that without the first, it is a delusion and a snare. Much of our present trouble and disillusionment have come from putting the second commandment before the first\u2026 Whenever man is made the center of things, he becomes the storm center of\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

C. Everyday<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Wealth.\u00a0 Our Scripture reveals Him so.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 There is something beyond our telling, something down deep on which we ground everything else.\u00a0 T Wilder:\u00a0 we don\u2019t take it out and look at it very often but still we know:\u00a0 there is something eternal about every human life.<\/em><\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 Behold, I tell you a mystery\u2026Our Gospel lesson cuts to the heart of faith and life.\u00a0 The mystery and the rigor of following after a crucified Christ have ever been right in the heart of faithful life.\u00a0\u00a0 We are invited to join the parade.\u00a0 If nothing else, our faith and tradition squarely face original sin, inevitable death, communal guilt, and tragic loss.\u00a0 Today\u2019s lesson is an early formulation of this heart and this faith and this life.\u00a0 There come moments, regularly, in which the question reverberates, \u2018but\u2026you\u2026who do you say that I am?\u2019\u00a0 The earliest church lived under the shadow of this question, and so do we.\u00a0 When others see us, and see us taking the name of Christ, whom do they see that we say, in our living, who he is?\u00a0 Peter\u2019s rebuke is remembered and rehearsed because some, or maybe better said, some part of all of us, find the crucified Christ unacceptable.\u00a0 Peter is told:\u00a0 get behind me, that is, follow, learn, and take up.\u00a0 Peter names Christ in the same way that Mark\u2019s church named him, and in the same way that you do here, too.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 Jesus walk is to some measure that of his followers as well.\u00a0 It is ours, too.\u00a0 We too labor on without full or final victory.\u00a0 We too, whether suddenly or slowly, give up the life given us at birth.\u00a0 We too face and struggle in facing up to injustice, tragic mistake, forces that make human life inhuman.\u00a0 We, too, live and die seemingly apart from God.\u00a0 The end, the fulfilling wholeness of the reign of God, has in fact not come.\u00a0 We cut to the heart of being, of being itself, of being alive, today, Mark 8:27, this last week of summer, 2012.<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0 There is though another side to the same story.\u00a0 Jesus\u2019 path becomes ours, to some measure.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0We too live with a sense of the dawn of a better history at hand.\u00a0 We too live with the potential, always present, for a new rebirth of wonder, love and praise.\u00a0 We too struggle forward, in the midst of much ambiguity, and sometimes in a depth and despair of pain, guided on by a north star of hope marked \u2018will rise again\u2019.\u00a0 We too face the future free to shape it.\u00a0 Free to make our mark, to rise up for a just cause, to rise up for a just peace, to rise up for a just world, to rise up for the hope of a common wealth, a shared future, a siblinghood of society in which every child is cherished and no man maligned and no woman wasted and every person protected.\u00a0\u00a0 Wealth, to have worth, will be common, shared, spread out.\u00a0 For what would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?\u00a0 What can one give in exchange for one\u2019s soul?<\/p>\n

6. Jesus is our Common Wealth.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Faith.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Ground.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Hope.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Life.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Wealth.<\/p>\n

7.\u00a0 Our Common Wealth, who gave his life as a ransom for others.\u00a0 You may not be a lasting fan of atonement theory and theology:\u00a0 nor am I.\u00a0 Yet the one partial explanation which St Mark will give, later in the Gospel, for the death of Jesus, marks him forever as our Common Wealth.\u00a0 In explicitly commercial terms, mercantile language, the language of payment and recompense, of ransom, one for all, Jesus is so named:\u00a0 Common Wealth.\u00a0 He, the basis for our common life and living community.\u00a0 While you may have heard so, you may not have heard, really heard the word:\u00a0 God has given up God\u2019s life for the life of the world.<\/p>\n

8.\u00a0 Yes, the expectation of the immediate return was disappointed.\u00a0 Our disappointment continues, to this day.\u00a0 Our hoped for future lies still in the future.\u00a0 Yet, along the way there is a presence, there is an alluring mystery, a ground underneath the ground on which we walk.\u00a0 It is holy ground.\u00a0\u00a0 A great gift has been given, a great price paid, a great offering made.\u00a0 All the twirling magic of life, along the heart walk of faith, all of this life has been bought with a price.\u00a0 When Mark asks himself, \u2018why did Jesus die?\u2019, he gives only one answer:\u00a0 as a ransom (so, rightly for once, Marcus, II, 605).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The \u2018wealth\u2019 that has produced our common life, our common wealth, is Jesus Christ, and him crucified.\u00a0 There is something very disturbing, and odd, yet true and clear, here.\u00a0 God has given God\u2019s life for ours.\u00a0 We are to go and do the same for others.\u00a0 The figure of a ransom\u2014a bag of treasure given over to open a way to freedom.\u00a0 The Greek word for ransom means release.\u00a0 The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for the many (for all).\u00a0 One life given, life given all.\u00a0 Jesus is our common wealth which releases all of the rest of life, the life underneath all other life, the ground of life and being and all.\u00a0 For many?\u00a0 How many?\u00a0 Very many!\u00a0 All!\u00a0 He purchases a way forward, a ticket, a passage for the voyage, at a very steep price.<\/p>\n

9.\u00a0 The life of God, God\u2019s very life, moves to its nadir.\u00a0 Our common life, the life of the world, human life, is freed to move to its apex.\u00a0 God dies. Man lives.\u00a0 The Son of Man dies.\u00a0 The sons of men live.\u00a0 Behold\u2014SURSUM CORDA\u2014the gospel mystery!\u00a0\u00a0 The divine generosity is whole, absolute, complete, perfected.<\/p>\n

10. As we shall sing together in just a few months:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jesus is our childhood\u2019s pattern<\/em><\/p>\n

Day by day like us he grew<\/em><\/p>\n

He was little, weak and helpless<\/em><\/p>\n

Tears and smiles, like us he knew<\/em><\/p>\n

And he feeleth for our sadness<\/em><\/p>\n

And he shareth in our gladness<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And our eyes at last shall see him<\/em><\/p>\n

Through his own redeeming love<\/em><\/p>\n

For that child so dear and gentle<\/em><\/p>\n

Is our Lord in heaven above<\/em><\/p>\n

And he leads his children on<\/em><\/p>\n

To the place where he has go<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

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

Mark 8: 24-9:1 Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only.   A. Today   1.\u00a0 Jesus is our Common Wealth.\u00a0 Today and yesterday and everyday, present and past and future. 2.\u00a0 Last Saturday, along the Charles River, thousands marched in a Heart Walk.\u00a0 Children zigzagged across the path.\u00a0 […]<\/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\/589"}],"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=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2507,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions\/2507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}