{"id":640,"date":"2012-12-23T11:00:12","date_gmt":"2012-12-23T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=640"},"modified":"2019-11-19T13:53:45","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T18:53:45","slug":"dream-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2012\/12\/23\/dream-child\/","title":{"rendered":"Dream Child"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luke 1: 39-45<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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


\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Preface<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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

A long time ago, a young woman headed out, uphill, into the uplands, the highlands, the hill country.\u00a0 It is striking that we see her walking alone, given her condition, given the human condition, and given the conditional blessing she carries to us and to others.\u00a0 She is alone.\u00a0 There are many forms of solitude, including the joy of birth and the grief of death, and the power of dreams.\u00a0 You will picture her, in an awkward tunic, walking at dusk, up into the hills.\u00a0 We know (remember the Good Samaritan) that those roads harbored bandits.\u00a0 She goes quickly, perhaps for that reason, and with haste enters the home of the husband of a second cousin thrice removed.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Self-Mockery<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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

One thing we learn from these two women, right away, is regard for a sense of self-mockery.\u00a0 You could say self- awareness, or you could speak of the centered self, but Elizabeth and Mary, like their forebears, Sarah and Hannah, have gone further and have learned to smile at their own fragile limitation.\u00a0 They model self-mockery. They can laugh at themselves. \u2018Who am I that the mother of my Lord should visit me?\u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

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

It is possible that their self-abandon gives Elizabeth and Mary the ears to hear a divine promise.\u00a0 One of the interruptive intentions of Sunday worship is to offer you, and you, and you all, such an awareness.\u00a0 \u201cTake yourself lightly, so that you can fly like the angels.\u201d (W.S.Coffin).\u00a0 A little spiritual distance, a little self differentiation, a little non anxious presence\u2014these go a long way when you are hungry and thirsty for a reassurance of meaning, a reassurance in the face of our deeply violent and violating culture, a reassurance that life yet bears meaning.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

The Gospel According to St. Luke reverses our expectations.\u00a0 Those outside are on the inside, when the gospel comes.\u00a0 The commoner has the inside track in this monarchy.\u00a0 Who first hear resurrection news twenty four chapters and twenty four \u00a0weeks later, come March and Easter?\u00a0 Women.\u00a0 Who follow unstintingly, across Galilee and into Jerusalem?\u00a0 Women.\u00a0 Who, today, first hear the plan for redemption, the coming birth of the Dream Child?\u00a0 Women.\u00a0 (In case you miss the point, Luke brings in the shepherds Monday at 7:30pm).<\/em><\/p>\n

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

How could it be?\u00a0 How could these things be?\u00a0 Who am I?<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Over time, you begin to project less, on the world, and see more.\u00a0 Projection only gets you so far.\u00a0 After three or so decades of seeing what you hope to see and want to see, you begin to stop and look and listen, and lessen projection–unless you are one of these women.\u00a0 Not of them the saying, \u2018Too soon old too late smart\u201d.\u00a0 They get it early, earlier.\u00a0 Schleiermacher would be proud.\u00a0 They have that sense.\u00a0 Some things only the women seem to get right.\u00a0 They have that feeling.\u00a0\u00a0 Do you?\u00a0 Do you?\u00a0 However are you going to survive slaughter news without it?\u00a0 John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth\u2019s womb, at the sound of Mary\u2019s voice, Mary the mother of Jesus.\u00a0 Good Greek mythology, and helpful to a church trying to keep the Baptists in the pew, at 90ce.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Mary is blessed.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because she has believed, had faith. In what?\u00a0 Here, as in the verse identifying the singer of the psalm, there is some textual doubt.\u00a0 Is it that she has faith that she has been promised to deliver a child, and now sees that she will?\u00a0 Perhaps.\u00a0 I judge the stronger promise to be the stronger, though.\u00a0 She is blessed because she has faith that these promises WILL BE fulfilled (that is the verb, simple future, not conditional, not subjunctive).\u00a0 She trusts that a day will come: WHEN THE DREAM CHILD WILL COME AND HIS REIGN WILL NEVER END.\u00a0 And her faith is ours.\u00a0 Her faith is the gift of the Dream Child to us at Christmas.\u00a0 You have the gift of faith and love and hope that–in the teeth of slaughter–you can affirm that one day, one day, one getting up golden morning, one fine dawn day, one glistening day, the dream of the Dream Child will neither slumber nor sleep.\u00a0 Do you hope for that?\u00a0 Do you?\u00a0 Without it, however are you going to survive slaughter news? Mary\u2019s blessing is not the birth of a child but the birth of the Dream Child.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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

Vulnerability<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Another more obvious thing we learn from Mary and Elizabeth and from birth in general is a respect, a healthy regard, for human vulnerability. <\/em><\/p>\n

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

I learned this week that there are 120 \u2018centers\u2019 at Boston University.\u00a0 Each is the dream child of some professor, who has an idea about connecting ideas and money, and marrying them up in an academic center.\u00a0 I may open my own, someday, \u2018The Robert Allan Hill Center for Wonder, Vulnerability and Self-Mockery\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

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

I had my first real job, and first real boss.\u00a0 I ran the water front, under the stern eye of Koert Foster, who ran the campground.\u00a0 Koert never went to college, but he became President of his Rotary Club.\u00a0 He never went to college, but he flew and owned a Cessna 172.\u00a0 He never went to college but he talked theology nose to nose with those who did.\u00a0 He never went to college, but he was a scratch golfer and a prince of peace.\u00a0\u00a0 Here:\u00a0 when one of the 250 campers per week was injured, he would slow down, as he walked toward the broken arm.\u00a0 He did not rush to calamity.\u00a0 He walked, and he walked more slowly than he usually did.\u00a0 \u2018Take your own pulse first\u201d, his slow, steady approach taught me.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Koert was a deer hunter, as were most of the men around whom I grew up in the uplands, hills, hill country of upstate New York.\u00a0 I went my junior year to Spain\u2014give me another such some lifetime!\u2014to read Antonio Machado and Miguel de Unamuno,\u00a0 and prepare to teach college Spanish.\u00a0 One December day a tiny thin aerogram, in my mother\u2019s hand, came to Segovia, to the Campos de Castilla.\u00a0 \u2018Bob, Koert died in a hunting accident.\u00a0 He was shot by accident by his best friend, the town mailman, on the hairpin turn, halfway to the lake\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

I had not planned to go back to work the followings summer at the summer camp, but Koert was dead, and we all went back, and ran it.\u00a0 At age 20.\u00a0 Occasionally a busy Methodist minister would check in to see if things were OK.\u00a0 They were.\u00a0 20 years olds can do a lot.\u00a0 We worked from 6am to 8pm and then, in the twilight went waterskiing up and down that long finger lake, across from the nudist colony.\u00a0\u00a0 I was driving the boat, and throwing the ski rope.\u00a0 Peg, Koert\u2019s widow was the spotter.\u00a0 \u2018God called him home\u2019, she said.\u00a0 \u2018Did God call him home?\u2019 she asked.\u00a0 Coiling the rope, I shrugged, and hurling the ski rope I said I didn\u2019t think so.\u00a0 \u2018If you go to seminary, figure it out\u2019, she said.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Friends, we need to be clear about not going over the theological cliff, in horrific tragedy.\u00a0 You were here last week, when we said:<\/em><\/p>\n

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

As we sing carols let us soberly remember.\u00a0 Faith does not exclude us from calamity, but faith prepares us to fight it.\u00a0 Faith does not give us the capacity to understand, but it does give us the courage to withstand.\u00a0\u00a0 Faith is not an answer to every question, but it is a living daily question of ultimate concern.\u00a0 Faith in God is faith in God, not in another creaturely being.\u00a0 Our faith in God is cruciform, faith in the crucified God, who has chosen to make our vulnerable condition his own.<\/span> I know the early church rejected patri-passionism.\u00a0 But barely.\u00a0 And developing the capacity to meditate on profoundly unanswerable questions is why three times a fall we go and listen to Elie Wiesel. Faith does not protect us from calamity.\u00a0 Gravity, bullets, floods and earthquakes respect nothing about faith, and faith from them offers no protection. <\/em><\/p>\n

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

By apocalypse, evil shows us a part of who we are.\u00a0 We are revealed, this week, in Newtown, as a people, to be other people than we pretend and other people than we intend.\u00a0 We pretend to protect the weak, but we do not.\u00a0 We intend to protect the innocent, but we do not.\u00a0 That is, our penchant for acquisition, our desire to acquire rather than to be a choir, makes some other things expendable.\u00a0 As in a mirror, and not so dimly, a dark inner part of our common life is illumined.\u00a0 Not just one deranged killer, but a culture of guns and a culture of violence and a culture of acquisition, and a culture of apathy, these are brought to light, in this unfathomably tragic, unspeakably awful, sinfully evil crime. We are reluctant to give up even a slim measure of our power to purchase, to acquire, in order to protect children.\u00a0 Foolish we are, with a foolishness that brings tragedy.\u00a0 I think of the years I spent in Canada and the months in England, and I think we have some things to learn from both sibling cultures.\u00a0 Here in the USA, there is a cheapening and coarsening of life happening all around us, all the time, and we, though sometimes we find the temper to resist, are the worse for it.\u00a0 A decade of warfare has numbed us, made us tolerant of violence in ways we never were before.\u00a0 Take a walk with me some day on a college campus. <\/em><\/p>\n

Over forty years, as a culture, as a people, we have more and more given ourselves over to acquisition.\u00a0 We no longer preach to the choir<\/span>, we preach to acquire.<\/span> To acquire one turns sometimes to violence.\u00a0 Our culture is drenched in violence. \u00a0\u00a0We from New England need to remember the stern hope in the New England theological tradition from Edwards to Emerson.\u00a0 Edwards:\u00a0 \u201cResolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.\u201d \u00a0Emerson:\u00a0 \u201cMen are \u2018convertible\u2019 and this is the work of education, to awake the slumbering soul from its habitual sleep.\u201d Last week Night came, but unattended by repose. After a holocaust, there is no faith so whole as a broken faith.\u00a0 We need models of living with a broken faith.\u00a0 We need to become, one by one, and as the faith community of Marsh Chapel, a model of living with a broken faith.\u00a0 How?<\/em><\/p>\n

To begin, in faith, we leave behind who were, and take up our cross, and follow.\u00a0 Our cross, in our time, as has been steadily acclaimed from this pulpit, includes the hard heavy lifting of ridding this country of gun violence and of protection that does not protect.\u00a0 Granted that foolish and harmful things are done all the time, we need not participate in them.\u00a0 Our cross, in our time, as has been steadily acclaimed from this pulpit, includes the hard heavy lifting of growing, improving attention to mental health.\u00a0 Our cross, in our time, as has been steadily acclaimed from this pulpit, includes the hard heavy lifting of setting aside some cyber-cultural influences.\u00a0 We shall not cease from mental fight, nor shall our sword sleep in our hand, til we have no guns, mental health and a clean culture, in this green and pleasant land.\u00a0 You have a voice, you have a wallet, and you have a vote.\u00a0 Do you know this?\u00a0 Do you?\u00a0 How else will we ever face slaughter news?<\/em><\/p>\n

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

A digression:\u00a0 careful limitation of ammunition, requiring of its purchasers what we now require of those taking an airplane ride, full and personal and complete and discomfiting inspection, may be our best strategy.\u00a0 Buy your guns, if you must, but if you want ammunition for them, that is another story.\u00a0 If I can be groped at Logan airport to fly to Chicago, you can be checked and monitored, bullet by bullet.\u00a0 Yes, too, to : <\/em>bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, tightening rules for sales at gun shows and re-examining care for the mentally ill.\u00a0 It is a collective self defense, fit for the 21st<\/sup> century, which we need, not an individual self defense, forged in the 18th<\/sup>.<\/em><\/p>\n

A second digression: Fundamentalist readings, harmful and foolish they are, are not limited to readings of Holy Writ.\u00a0 Fundamentalist readings, equally harmful and foolish, and similar in scope and reasoning, are also given to national writ, constitution and bill of rights.\u00a0\u00a0 What words meant in 90ad, in Luke, require current, contemporary, living interpretation.\u00a0 What words meant in 1800ad, in the bill of rights, require current, contemporary, living interpretation.\u00a0 What is most novel may oddly be truest to the tradition, and what is least traditional may be truest to the meaning of the tradition.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Wonder<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Our heroic women, Mary and Elizabeth, teach us something else, too.\u00a0 Every day is our last, until the next, and they live so.\u00a0 They sing so.\u00a0 They live on tip toe and sing on pitch.\u00a0 They magnify the Lord.\u00a0 The world does not lack for wonders, but only for a sense of wonder.\u00a0 How is it that Luke, 20 centuries ago, eclipsed the men and evoked the women?\u00a0 How is it that, come Christmas, people who sleep on Sunday will come to worship? How is it that in the candle lit dark of Christmas Eve, 7:30pm, there is a dim, palpable sense of the numinous, so easily forgotten all year?\u00a0 How is it that the beauty of the carols and anthems and hymns, even against the steady cold wind of the merely material, manages to get through, come December?<\/em><\/p>\n

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

All this is true, because of the proper translation of Luke 1:45:\u00a0 Mary had faith that God\u2019s promise will<\/span><\/em> <\/span>be fulfilled.\u00a0 You have that faith, have been given that faith, have been seized by the church\u2019s confession of that faith. Down under, down deep in the American psyche, there is a surging heart felt generosity, unknown, untapped, uninvited, unbidden, unwelcomed by our ostensible leaders. \u00a0Ernest Campbell:\u00a0 \u201cTo be mature is to:\u00a0 build schools in which you will not study; plant trees under which you will not sit; grow churches in which you will not worship\u201d.\u00a0 Ah, to worship.\u00a0 Let me end with a little jeremiad about worship, for your consideration as look to 2013.\u00a0 Think of it as a recommended resolution.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

If you do not have one hour, each week, in which to face your own mortality, your own fragility, your own dependence, what is any other hour worth?\u00a0 Luke alone tells these stories.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 He is struggling, as we are, \u00a0to build the church<\/span>.\u00a0 Some, inside the church, whom he wants to hold onto, are followers of the Baptist.\u00a0 So Luke recalls a story that honors not only the Baptist, but also his holy birth.\u00a0 Others, outside the church, whom he wants to embrace, are Greeks who like their religions sprinkled with birth legends like those of the Greco Roman Gods.\u00a0 So Luke recalls a story that has an altogether Greek birth miracle, like the Virgin Birth story itself.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

A culture of violence will not disappear on its own.\u00a0 A community of faith will need to erase it.\u00a0 That means coming to church on Sunday.\u00a0 A disregard for mental health will not disappear on its own.\u00a0 A community of faith will need to heal it.\u00a0 That means coming to church on Sunday.\u00a0 A homeland sized addiction to firearms will not disappear on its own.\u00a0 A community of faith will need to bring sobriety.\u00a0 That means coming to church on Sunday.\u00a0 To this hard work, you will bring the spirit gift of perseverance.\u00a0 My friend said:\u00a0 \u201c90% of life is showing up.\u00a0 The other 10% is perseverance.\u201d\u00a0 Show up on Sunday.\u00a0 Persevere on Monday.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

If singing the hymns of faith is not worth doing, what is?\u00a0 If preaching the gospel of kindness is not worth doing, what is?\u00a0 If supporting friends in community is not worth doing, what is?\u00a0 If this one lone Sunday hour is not worth your time, your attention, your commitment, your devotion, just what is your time, attention, commitment and devotion really worth?\u00a0 If the love of the Dream Child is not worth dreaming about, what is?<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Coda<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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

A long time ago, a young woman headed out, uphill, into the uplands, the highlands, the hill country.\u00a0 It is striking that she is alone, given her condition, given the human condition, and given the conditional blessing she carries to us and to others.\u00a0 She is alone.\u00a0 There are many forms of solitude, including the joy of birth and the grief of death, and the power of dreams.\u00a0 You will picture her, in some awkward tunic, walking at dusk, up into the hills.\u00a0 We know, remember the Good Samaritan, that those roads hid bandits.\u00a0 She goes quickly, perhaps for that reason, and with haste enters the home of the husband of a second cousin thrice removed.\u00a0 We will remember her, as Christmas moves to Christmastide.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

When the song of the angels is stilled<\/em><\/p>\n

And the star in the sky is gone<\/em><\/p>\n

And the kings and princes are home<\/em><\/p>\n

And the shepherds are back with their flocks<\/em><\/p>\n

Then the work of Christmas begins<\/em><\/p>\n

To find the lost<\/em><\/p>\n

To heal the broken<\/em><\/p>\n

To feed the hungry<\/em><\/p>\n

To release the prisoner<\/em><\/p>\n

To rebuild the nations<\/em><\/p>\n

To bring peace among brothers<\/em><\/p>\n

To make music in the heart<\/em><\/p>\n

(Dean of Marsh Chapel, Howard Thurman)<\/em><\/p>\n


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

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

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

Luke 1: 39-45 Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only. Preface A long time ago, a young woman headed out, uphill, into the uplands, the highlands, the hill country.\u00a0 It is striking that we see her walking alone, given her condition, given the human condition, and given the […]<\/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\/640"}],"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=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2491,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/2491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}