{"id":656,"date":"2013-02-03T11:00:58","date_gmt":"2013-02-03T16:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=656"},"modified":"2019-11-19T13:31:47","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T18:31:47","slug":"winter-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2013\/02\/03\/winter-grace\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

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Snow makes things slow<\/i><\/p>\n

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As R Warren wrote in her new poem: \u2018a silhouette rimmed in snow-light\u2019, we too follow Christ, our beacon not our boundary<\/i><\/p>\n

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Its tactile and visual embrace gives us a winter grace<\/i><\/p>\n

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With Jeremiah, come winter, we may pause to listen<\/i><\/p>\n

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Not to do, but to be<\/i><\/p>\n

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To listen for the divine in the word, as did the ancient prophet who labored until the fall of Jerusalem (snipped from our reading) and then some<\/i><\/p>\n

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I will touch your lips, saith the Lord, who called a young man, another young man, as would occur again, later, in Nazareth<\/i><\/p>\n

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We learned in a bucolic age, to spill water and freeze it, to shovel snow and clear it, to skate, backwards and forwards, to play, stick in hand, to learn, when Colgate finished its Reid Athletic Center that hockey could be played indoors too<\/i><\/p>\n

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An old flexible flier, veteran of the snow ice hillsides<\/i><\/p>\n

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Skiis, boots, goggles<\/i><\/p>\n

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An old black and white photograph of snow drifts above the telephone lines<\/i><\/p>\n

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Winter is the season of spirit, Summer the season of flesh<\/i><\/p>\n

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Those who taught us more by example than precept to be:<\/i><\/p>\n

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

Loyal <\/i><\/p>\n

Helpful<\/i><\/p>\n

Friendly<\/i><\/p>\n

Courteous<\/i><\/p>\n

Kind <\/i><\/p>\n

Obedient<\/i><\/p>\n

Cheerful<\/i><\/p>\n

Thrifty<\/i><\/p>\n

Brave<\/i><\/p>\n

Clean <\/i><\/p>\n

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

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At 10:30 every Sunday, here in the nave, you may join others, with Rev. Holly, in silent prayer<\/i><\/p>\n

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Listen\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

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David too, or the psalmist, had his memories of youth, which brought laughter and song<\/i><\/p>\n

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O LORD upon you have I leaned from my birth<\/i><\/p>\n

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When we are affronted, confronted with misery in mystery, as some today,\u00a0 we too take our refuge in continuous praise, song and laughter, in WHOSE presence there is fullness of joy<\/i><\/p>\n

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A rock.\u00a0 The home of wise man.\u00a0 A rock.\u00a0 Thou art Peter.\u00a0 A rock.\u00a0 A mighty refuge.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Even Ground Hog Day offers something solid, something good.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Every heart has secret sorrows<\/i><\/p>\n

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Monday\u2019s child is fair of face<\/i><\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s child is full of grace<\/i><\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s child is full of woe<\/i><\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s child has far to go<\/i><\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s child is loving and giving<\/i><\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s child works hard for a living<\/i><\/p>\n

But the child that is born on the Sabbath Day<\/i><\/p>\n

Is happy, witty, bright and gay!<\/i><\/p>\n

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After church next week you may want to sing with the Thurman Choir, under the baton of SAJarrett\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

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Laugh and Sing\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

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Snow makes things slow<\/i><\/p>\n

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Paul offers his teaching to us, if we learn from him<\/i><\/p>\n

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About love<\/i><\/p>\n

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Love is God<\/i><\/p>\n

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Because I am loved, I can love<\/i><\/p>\n

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Behold the superiority, the nature, and the permanence of LOVE<\/i><\/p>\n

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The religious norm, the norm of faith is love, joy of heaven to earth come down<\/i><\/p>\n

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Trustworthy, loyal, helpful\u2026.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Learn to love<\/i><\/p>\n

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Come and join our undergraduates, confer with them and others<\/i><\/p>\n

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Learn, by day, by night, by day, to love<\/i><\/p>\n

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Learn\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

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Now the community of Jesus\u2019 growing up years cannot fully accommodate his grown up voice<\/i><\/p>\n

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There is a wintery harshness in the moment he leaves<\/i><\/p>\n

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In love, directly, he says they are not special, not unique, except as is every snow flake, and they are angry, and he departs.<\/i><\/p>\n

Every departure foreshadows the last<\/i><\/p>\n

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We are more mortal than we regularly realize<\/i><\/p>\n

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Our own departure, our ability to leave, to leave this frozen earth, this or another community, our families and family, in the bleak winter quiet, the austere winter quiet, we may passingly, suddenly recognize our omega point, dimly perceptible, afar<\/i><\/p>\n

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Jesus chooses two stories in which prophets take care of outsiders.\u00a0 Blessings are to fall, not on the home town community, but on outsiders\u2014Syrian, Syrophoenician, the ritually unclean, non-Jews<\/i><\/p>\n

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Now the community of Jesus\u2019 growing up years cannot fully accommodate his grown up voice<\/i><\/p>\n

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There is a wintery harshness in the moment he leaves<\/i><\/p>\n

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In love, directly, he says they are not special, not unique, except as is every snow flake, and they are angry, and he departs.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Cyril Richardson had taught at Union Theological Seminary for 50 years.\u00a0 His course on Patristics was famous, the finest of finely honed hour long lectures on Clement, Ireneaus, Origen, Athanasius.\u00a0 He sat to teach.\u00a0 He would cast about, and mention P Tillich, whom he described as if Tillich were still a promising but odd graduate student, from the continent, who would have benefitted from better early church history (\u2018Athansius was there before Tillich was\u2019).\u00a0 Out of order I appealed to take his course, my first term.\u00a0 \u2018Who knows how long he will teach?\u2019, one said.\u00a0 There is a living relationship between the 45 minute lecture and the 22 minute sermon.\u00a0 If one lives, both do.\u00a0 Richardson brushed aside the fads of the day\u2014team teaching, contextual education, liberation theology, praxis\u2014and lectured with a winter grace.\u00a0 He died with one lecture only to go.\u00a0 Mr Ruppe, his assistant, read the faded penciled yellow pad lecture, with tears.<\/i><\/p>\n

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I am proud to have been Richardson\u2019s student.<\/i><\/p>\n

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At his funeral, the Episcopal priest demurred to preach, and read instead a sermon of Richardson\u2019s own, delivered at the death of a friend. <\/i><\/p>\n

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In it the deceased, now quoted, had said, simply, what disturbs us about death is the prospect of the deaths of our loved ones, on the one hand, and the death of our dreams, on the other.\u00a0 Let us face both prospects, he said.<\/i><\/p>\n

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It is a winter grace to face our fleshly limit.\u00a0 To prepare, Sunday by Sunday, to prepare to leave, as one day we must, one day we shall.<\/i><\/p>\n

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There are no ordinary days, no insignificant holidays.<\/i><\/p>\n

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You will remember that she and George were graduated from High School in Grover\u2019s Corners.\u00a0 On the basis of a frank talking to over a soda, in which Emily criticizes George for being less than fully humble, George decides not to leave home, not to go to college, but to start working an uncle\u2019s farm right away, and to marry Emily, the girl next door.\u00a0 You remember their wedding.\u00a0 \u201c A man looks pretty small at a wedding, all those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure the knot is tied in a mighty public way.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 You remember that Emily, after just a few years of profoundly happy marriage and life, tragically dies in childbirth.\u00a0 You remember that George finds no way to manage the extreme grief of his loss.\u00a0 Simple Yankee English.\u00a0 Simple reckoning about love, life, death and meaning.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Maybe you also remember, in the playwright\u2019s imagination, Emily from the communion of saints looking out on her young husband and wanting to go back.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Others warn her away from the plan:\u00a0 \u201cAll I can say Emily, is, don\u2019t\u2026it isn\u2019t wise\u2026(If you must do it) Choose an unimportant day.\u00a0 Choose the least important day of your life.\u00a0 It will be important enough.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

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She chooses February 11, 1899, her 12th birthday.\u00a0 She arrives at dawn.\u00a0 She sees Main Street, the drugstore, the livery stable, and breathes the brightness of a crisp winter morning.\u00a0 Simple.\u00a0 She looks into her own house.\u00a0 Her mother is making breakfast, her father returning from a speech given at Hamilton College.\u00a0 Neighbors pass in the snow.\u00a0 Simple.\u00a0 She sees how young and pretty her mother looks\u2014can\u2019t quite believe it.\u00a0 It is 10 below zero.\u00a0 There is fussing to find a blue hair ribbon\u2014\u201cits on the dresser\u2014if it were a snake it would bite you\u201d.\u00a0 Simple.\u00a0 Papa enters to give a hug and a kiss and a birthday gift.\u00a0 And others from mother and the boy next door. Simple.\u00a0 \u201cJust for a moment now we\u2019re all together.\u00a0 Mama, just for a moment now we\u2019re all together.\u00a0 Just for a moment we\u2019re happy.\u00a0 Let\u2019s look at one another.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

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Simple.\u00a0 This is the gospel of Ground Hog Day, the best holiday of the year, the holiday of the extraordinary ordinary, of the uncommonly common, of the sunlit winter, of the eternal now.\u00a0 Simple.\u00a0 Grover\u2019s Corners.\u00a0 Papa. Mama.\u00a0 Clocks ticking. \u00a0Sunflowers.\u00a0 Food. Coffee.\u00a0 New ironed dresses.\u00a0 Hot baths.\u00a0 Sleeping.\u00a0 Waking up. \u201cEarth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

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Reverence for Life is the beginning of wisdom, as Schweitzer said.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Jesus left Nazareth<\/i><\/p>\n

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Jeremiah left Jerusalem, David left Israel, Paul left Judaism, Jesus left Nazareth<\/i><\/p>\n

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We too shall leave<\/i><\/p>\n

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This table is opened to your comfort<\/i><\/p>\n

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As we take our leave<\/i><\/p>\n

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As we prepare to leave<\/i><\/p>\n

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To leave\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

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Remember your creed\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

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

Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only.   Snow makes things slow As R Warren wrote in her new poem: \u2018a silhouette rimmed in snow-light\u2019, we too follow Christ, our beacon not our boundary Its tactile and visual embrace gives us a winter grace With Jeremiah, come winter, […]<\/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\/656"}],"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=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2482,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/2482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}