{"id":61,"date":"2010-09-26T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-26T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2010\/09\/26\/cantata-and-covenant\/"},"modified":"2011-11-10T15:22:23","modified_gmt":"2011-11-10T20:22:23","slug":"cantata-and-covenant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2010\/09\/26\/cantata-and-covenant\/","title":{"rendered":"Cantata and Covenant"},"content":{"rendered":"
Click here to hear the sermon only.<\/a><\/p>\n

Luke 16: 19-31<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

We celebrate the endowment we already have. It is a rich and treasure. It is an endowment vocal not visible, audible not audited, psychic not physical, moral not material. Listen for its echoes\u2026listen\u2026<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Common ground\u2026<\/p>\n

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

Congregation and community, you come too.<\/p>\n

Earthly assembly and heavenly chorus, you come too.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re going out to clean the pasture spring.<\/p>\n

John Donne once sharply evoked, in a 17th century sermon, the power of divine covenant. Our cantata today coes the same, sharply evoking the power of covenant embrace, of the human, by the divine. Today\u2019s cantata grew up out of a wedding cantata. And weddings are symbols of covenant, human and divine.<\/p>\n

Donne preached long ago in London at a May wedding. Rather than reflecting in the abstract about the nature of marriage, or about the understanding of the church as the bride of Christ, or about divine love in general for the human being in general, Donne imagined himself in the bride\u2019s place. He envisioned himself walking publicly down the aisle, to meet the Lamb, the bridegroom. He pictured the procession, his walk toward the Lamb, the bridegroom. He imagined truthfully what the townspeople would whisper about him as he walked forward: \u201cLook at Donne. Do you remember what he did, all that he said, where he failed, all his faults?\u201d How could he possibly be worthy?\u201d Donne had probably seen many seen as many weddings as we do, summer by summer, with their processions, their thresholds of new creation, their sacramental covenants.<\/p>\n

Peter Hawkins, our dear friend and teacher, summarize the moment this way: \u201cThe Son of God as bridegroom does not care a whit that his intended\u2019s sins once were scarlet. All the bride has to do is lose her scruples, proceed and join in the feast to follow\u2026with complete confidence in the bridegroom\u2019s choice of her. Even if everyone else thinks the union is a mistake, \u2018The lamb shall marry me\u201d says Donne the preacher, \u201cand marry me in aeternum, forever\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is this kind of covenant joy which the cantata today evokes.<\/p>\n

Heavenly Flames<\/p>\n

Heavenly Flames: To Be Your Temple<\/p>\n

Souls pleasing to you in faith<\/p>\n

You chosen souls whom as chosen as his dwelling<\/p>\n

Who could choose a greater bliss<\/p>\n

Who can count the throng of blessings<\/p>\n

So will the site of sacrament be rewarded<\/p>\n

Peace Over Israel, Psalm 128<\/p>\n

Celebratory, rather than condemnatory<\/p>\n

Joyful<\/p>\n

Thankful<\/p>\n

Give thanks, God has considered you.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how I could live without Bach.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s music – written by those great musical preachers of the Baroque Bach and Sch\u00fctz \u2013 amplifies the central Christian message of salvation for all who believe by faith, and enter into covenant with God in Christ.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with our offertory anthem, \u2018Viel werden kommen\u2019 by Heinrich Sch\u00fctz. You can read the translation in your bulletin. He draws on a small portion of the text from Matthew Chapter 8 about Jesus\u2019s encounter with the centurion. If you recall the passage, the Centurion, presumably a gentile, comes to Jesus asking him to heal a sick servant. Jesus is moved by the Centurion\u2019s demonstration of faith, and after the miracle \u2013 true to form \u2013 Jesus finds in this the act a teachable moment. Here comes our text for the anthem. Despite the gnashing of teeth imagery, the scripture in full context ,means that access to Salvation, communion or covenant with God, is available to all, even the most unlikely \u2013 think of the woman at the well. He goes a little further here to indicate that, moreover, those who make assumptions about their Salvation may find themselves in the hot seat \u2013 just as Rich man Divies in today\u2019s lesson from Luke.<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t be certain about biblical interpretations during Sch\u00fctz\u2019s day, but the set of pieces from which our motet is drawn was published at the end of the Thirty Years War, that awful period which pitted brother against brother, and confession against confession. In the Matthew lesson, Jesus clearly meant that the Centurion, a gentile, shared an equal chance at Salvation. Perhaps Sch\u00fctz, in the 17th Century, was making a similar statement about Catholic versus Protestant. No great of logic is required to define which divisions plague today\u2019s global community. Regardless, when we meet Sch\u00fctz at the heavenly banquet with Abraham, Isaac, und Jakob, we can be sure to ask him!<\/p>\n

Now to our Cantata for the day. Bach celebrates this communion with Christ, this holy wedding where Christ is bride-groom and we, the Church, his bride, in truly spectacular ways. Originally written for a wedding in 1724, Bach recasts his cantata for a Pentecost Sunday in the early 1740s. More than fifteen years later, he recognized the superior quality of his earlier effort, and found in it a text that suited the celebration of covenant, not just between two people who profess love and devotion for one another, but that this relationship mirrors the believer\u2019s life in Christ, a devotion \u2013 a love \u2013 fanned by the flame of the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n

Music of the high Baroque is much like a Swiss clock – there is extraordinary beauty in the clock itself \u2013 face and casing – but that beauty is deepened by the wonder, precision, and complexities of the moving parts beneath the surface. As an aural guide for Cantata 34, listen for how Bach sets the word Ewiges \u2013 or eternal, and at the same time the flickering, darting line sing for the word Feuer \u2013 or fire. Notice how Bach sets the word for \u2018ignite\u2019 \u2013 entz\u00fcnde \u2013 you can almost feel the music spark each time the choir sings it. The trumpet signals the arrival of Christ, as bride-groom, of this most royal of weddings.<\/p>\n

The central movement of the cantata, focuses on the rapture of the individual whose body becomes Christ\u2019s Holy Temple. There is a perfection and naturalness of beauty here \u2013 directly from the sublimity of Eden\u2019s garden.<\/p>\n

The cantata ends in thanks and praise, but not without significant emphasis on Christ\u2019s pronouncement, \u2018Peace upon Israel.\u2019<\/p>\n

Today we observe two masters whose musical settings give voice to Christ\u2019s wedding invitation. An invitation to all, without amendment or exclusion.<\/p>\n

We prepare ourselves for cantata and covenant, in wonder and vulnerability and self-awareness\u2026<\/p>\n

Wonder<\/span><\/div>\n

The ageless boulders of the long abandoned dam, the maple and the great birch by twilight, the chipmunk in the busyness of his days and of his dying, even I, making my dwelling place among them, are not only right in our season. We also have our value in eternity, as witnesses to the audacious miracle of being rather than nothing. Ultimately, that is the moral sense of nature, infinitely to be cherished: that there is something. That is the eternal wonder articulated in the rightness and rhythm of time which humans honor in their commandments, the wonder of being\u2026There are humans\u2026who become blind to goodness, to truth and beauty, who drink wine without pausing to cherish it, who pluck flowers without pausing to give thanks, who accept joy and grief as all in a day\u2019s work, to be enjoyed or managed, without ever seeing the presence of eternity in them. But that is not the point. What is crucial is that humans, whether they do so or not, are capable of encountering a moment not simply as a transition between a before and an after but as the miracle of eternity ingressing intot time. That, rather than the ability to fashion tools, stands out as the distinctive human calling.<\/p>\n

Erazim Kohak<\/span><\/p>\n

Vulnerability<\/span><\/div>\n

Nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute: we must simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time it is a great consolation; for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bond between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap: He does not fill it, but on the contrary, He keeps it empty, and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of pain.<\/p>\n

Dietrich Bonhoeffer<\/span><\/p>\n

Self Awareness<\/div>\n

Words\u2014I often imagine this\u2014are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in \u2018foreign commerce\u2019, on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house, is to withdraw, step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves\u2014this is the poet\u2019s life\u2026Yet listen well. Not to my words, but to the tumult that rages in your body when you listen to yourself\u2026And why should the actions of the imagination not be as real as those of the perception?<\/p>\n

Gaston Bachelard<\/span><\/p>\n

~ The Reverend Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
\nDr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, Marsh Chapel Choir<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Click here to hear the sermon only. Luke 16: 19-31 The Chapel\u2019s gothic nave, built to lift the spirit, welcomes you. The Chapel\u2019s sixty year history, at the heart of Boston University, welcomes you. The Chapel\u2019s regard for persons and personality, both in its Connick stained glass windows and in its current ministry, welcomes you. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61"}],"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=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":339,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}