{"id":630,"date":"2012-12-09T11:00:25","date_gmt":"2012-12-09T16:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=630"},"modified":"2019-11-26T11:56:01","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T16:56:01","slug":"avent-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2012\/12\/09\/avent-grace\/","title":{"rendered":"Avent Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"

1 Thessalonians 3:10<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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

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

 <\/p>\n

To mend your faith, the apostle wrote, to mend, to mend faith\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A noun and a verb, faith and mend.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Faith is our personal reliance on God.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Faith is our willingness, both in doubt and in trust, to live each day.\u00a0 You honor life by living it.\u00a0 You find faith by receiving it.\u00a0 Faith is the state of being grasped by the Spirit, of being grasped by the Holy Spirit in love and justice and truth. \u00a0Any real faith has got some doubt in it, to keep it honest.\u00a0\u00a0 Faith is the experience of being fully alive, of living with courage, of being willing to risk, to fail, and to start again. Faith is where and who you are when you are your own-most self.\u00a0 Faith is freedom, real freedom.\u00a0 Of course we seek the ultimate, the infinite, the divine!\u00a0 Of course we do!\u00a0 Whatever else is life for?\u00a0 This is why I tend to think that everybody, or very nearly so, has some kind of faith.\u00a0 You may not have it dressed up in fancy linguistic garments.\u00a0 That\u2019s all right.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to be Paul Tillich to have the courage to be.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to read his Dynamics of Faith to have faith.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And, you have grown up so you know what faith is not.\u00a0 Not blind trust.\u00a0 Not knowledge of all mysteries.\u00a0 Not exception from the laws of nature, physics, gravity, motion.\u00a0 Not obedience to authority for the sake of obedience to authority, religious or otherwise.\u00a0 Not capture by false ultimacies like success or nation or even religion. Not protection from calamity. Born, we are old enough to die. Rain falls on the just and unjust.\u00a0 This is what the cross is all about\u2014the measure and correction of false faith, what faith is not.\u00a0 Real religious faith is unsparingly self critical.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But your faith gives you the courage to withstand what you cannot understand.\u00a0 Your faith lives in the courage to be, over against all the frightful existential anxieties of sin, of death, of meaninglessness.\u00a0 On the street, right on the street, where you live. You may be at a point to hear this word, after a week of rending, of tearing, of cuts and bruises and untimely death.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jesus has taught us that we are children of God, heirs of life eternal.\u00a0 Jesus has made us children of God.\u00a0 In word and sacrament, today, you are reminded and mended.\u00a0 Mended.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The gospel in this word illumines and inspires.\u00a0 You will have heard and read our phrase from last week\u2019s lesson, \u2018mend your faith\u2019, before.\u00a0\u00a0 In a way you heard it again, moments ago, in Luke and Philippians.\u00a0\u00a0 The gospel, down under, down in the valley, expects a filling up to come, a kind of geological mending, mountains and hills lowered, crooked ways straightened, rough places smoothed out.\u00a0 A mending of the earth, of nature, and a right beautiful reading.\u00a0 The letter, composed in the slammer (add your favorite prison term\u2014pokey, calaboose, hoosegow, grey bar hotel, municipal motel, stir, up the river, the joint), expects a freedom from behind bars, and more, a partnership of the gospel.\u00a0 A mending of the yoke of bondage,\u00a0 of history, wherein love abounds, and knowledge too, and discernment too, and excellence and glory! And praise!, and a right beautiful reading. You heard it here, this morning.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But you heard it last Sunday, in a sliver of a silver line.\u00a0 Paul said he hoped to be with his favorite congregation, \u2018to complete was is lacking in your faith\u2019.\u00a0 That at least is what you heard last week, from the NRSV.\u00a0\u00a0 A while back, a generation ago, from the RSV, you would have heard, \u2018supply what is lacking in your faith\u2019.\u00a0 And at the building of Marsh Chapel, in the KJV, you would have heard \u2018perfect what is lacking in your faith\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 Complete sounds like a final exam.\u00a0 Supply sounds like an economic theory.\u00a0 Perfect sounds cold to the bone.\u00a0 Paul yearns to make things right, and the rendering of his yearning is carried to us in these translations.\u00a0 Every person of faith, you and he and all, and certainly every minister of the gospel, at our best, yearns to complete, to supply, to perfect.\u00a0 Because we are so unfinished! Because we are so famished!\u00a0 Because we are so fragmented!\u00a0 But there is a better way to render the original verb, better than complete or supply or perfect.\u00a0 Happily, the concordance and references closely define the word, KATARTISAI, as \u2018mend\u2019.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Last Sunday before worship some of us sat quietly to read the lessons of the day.\u00a0 One student quietly read 1 Thess. 3:10.\u00a0 But he read\u2014not from NRSV or RSV or KJV\u2014but from NEB, another translation.\u00a0 \u2018To mend your faith\u201d, his version read.\u00a0\u00a0 The slight change is a sliver of a silver lining.\u00a0\u00a0 Our faith needs mending.\u00a0 Every one\u2019s faith needs some stitching up, now and then.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Betrayal tears at the fabric of faith.\u00a0\u00a0 Faith needs mending. The former governor of California sat for years over many meals across a shared table, without mentioning that one of the caretaker\u2019s sons was his.\u00a0\u00a0 After that, faith needs mending.\u00a0 The former assistant to John Edwards, who testified energetically against him for his betrayal, knew early about betrayal.\u00a0 His father, had been the Dean of Duke Chapel, but a sometime visitor at\u00a0 a nearby Red Roof Inn, in the company of a non-spouse.\u00a0 That early betrayal cut deeply into the fabric of later life.\u00a0 Both his dad and his boss had been false.\u00a0 Sometimes, come Sunday, faith needs mending.\u00a0 A current leader learns the hard way that no email is ever private, ever.\u00a0 Put anything you want in email as long as you are glad to have it on your tombstone, or on the front page of the Times.\u00a0 But the public cacophony is pale, by comparison with the rending of the garment of faith for the loved ones.\u00a0 Faith for sure, to be sure, will need a stitch or two.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And what about the bigger betrayals, when nature and history let us deeply down?\u00a0 Some mending required.\u00a0 When violence between middle eastern nations goes on endlessly, generation to generation.\u00a0 Mending required.\u00a0 When a good nation somehow quietly slides into \u00a0unexamined drone warfare, wherein a man in a blue shirt drives from Manlius to North Syracuse, to sit in a screen room, and push buttons, with deadly consequence, a world away.\u00a0 And then to stop at Wegmans on the way home, to pick up Cheerios and an extra Christmas ornament\u2014a quiet evening in the suburbs.\u00a0 Some mending required.\u00a0 Or, harder and more immediate, when the specter of untimely death descends upon a commonwealth on commonwealth avenue, and an early, unfair, unjust and tragic loss evokes a piercing question: \u201c Where was God?\u00a0 I thought God loved us?\u201d\u00a0 Or, in the nature of things, when a formal and false accusation, untrue but lastingly cutting, maims one we love, we know about needing a needle and a thread and a stitch and a little tuck, a little mending, of our faith.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The route to Bethlehem goes through the river Jordan, the icy, cold, real, existential river Jordan.<\/p>\n

As my student fellow student of the Bible remembered, Paul was a tentmaker.\u00a0 He knew about canvass and holes and leaks and cuts and could mend as well as make.\u00a0 That is what makes the NEB translation so mendingly meaningful.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our son had a stuffed animal for many years.\u00a0 The animal was a raccoon.\u00a0 His name was Rooster.\u00a0 Rooster raccoon.\u00a0 I have no idea how such a name came to be his but his it was.\u00a0 Rooster raccoon went with us on vacation.\u00a0 Rooster\u2014the raccoon I mean\u2014went with us on boat rides, on tobogan rides, on car rides.\u00a0 Rooster had his own seat in the way back of the van.\u00a0 He swam at Marconi beach.\u00a0 He rode over the Mercier bridge into Montreal.\u00a0 He learned to swim, the hard way, by falling overboard.\u00a0\u00a0 He slept outside in a snow fort.\u00a0\u00a0 He was the first one up in the morning, and the last one to bed at night.\u00a0 Sometimes the dog would take him by the collar and run around.\u00a0 We sometimes asked him to say the grace at dinner.\u00a0\u00a0 He would offer a resonant, silent prayer.\u00a0 After a few years he looked like he was about finished.\u00a0 For stuffed raccoons, one human year is the same as 14.\u00a0 By accident, near Christmas, one evening, rooster raccoon found himself seated a little to close to the macaroni and cheese on the stove, and up he went in smoke.\u00a0 Or at least in part he went up in smoke.\u00a0 He was left missing the left part of his left part.\u00a0\u00a0 I see the child\u2019s hand holding up the smoldering dog eared raccoon, with no words, only tears, and an unspoken question.\u00a0 \u2018Can\u2019t you do something?\u2019\u00a0 And then a quick, confident maternal murmur:\u00a0 \u201cJust let me have him.\u00a0 You wait and see.\u00a0 He will be good as new.\u00a0 We can mend it.\u00a0 We can mend it.\u201d\u00a0 And she did.\u00a0 And rooster raccoon was and is the best looking stuffed raccoon, without a left side, that you could ever want.\u00a0 He is the most oddly named, and now most oddly shaped, stuffed raccoon, this side of the Mississippi.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now you will rightly say that some things cannot be mended.\u00a0 At least not perfectly, not completely, not with full supply.\u00a0 \u2018Dean Hill, some things cannot be mended\u2019 you will say.\u00a0 And I will reply:\u00a0 \u2018Don\u2019t I know it\u2019.\u00a0 The damage is done.\u00a0\u00a0 Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is hard to get it back in.\u00a0 But the longing to mend?\u00a0 That never ends.\u00a0 The desire to mend?\u00a0 That is everlasting.\u00a0 The willingness to sew and trim and patch and weave and make it do or do without?\u00a0 That urge to mend the tears in your loved ones\u2019 faith?\u00a0 That goes from heaven to earth.\u00a0 And there is something in that wanting, to mend, that, like the Eucharist, brings heaven here.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Faith is our willingness, both in doubt and in trust, to live each day.\u00a0 You honor life by living it.\u00a0 You find faith by receiving it.\u00a0 Faith is the state of being grasped by the Spirit, of being grasped by the Holy Spirit in love and justice and truth.\u00a0 Any real faith has got some doubt in it, to keep it honest.\u00a0\u00a0 Faith is the experience of being fully alive, of living with courage, of being willing to risk, to fail, and to start again. Faith is where and who you are when you are your own-most self.\u00a0 Faith is freedom, real freedom. Your faith gives you the courage to withstand what you cannot understand.\u00a0 Your faith lives in the courage to be, over against all the frightful existential anxieties of sin, of death, of meaninglessness.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe pray most earnestly night and day to be allowed to see you again and to mend your faith where it falls short\u201d (1 Thess. 3:10)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1 Thessalonians 3:10 Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only.   To mend your faith, the apostle wrote, to mend, to mend faith\u2026   A noun and a verb, faith and mend.   Faith is our personal reliance on God.   Faith is our willingness, both in doubt […]<\/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\/630"}],"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=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":631,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions\/631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}