{"id":690,"date":"2013-04-07T11:00:59","date_gmt":"2013-04-07T16:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=690"},"modified":"2019-11-19T12:49:05","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T17:49:05","slug":"resurrection-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2013\/04\/07\/resurrection-grace\/","title":{"rendered":"Resurrection Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"

John: 20:19-31<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

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Gospel<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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My Lord and My God <\/i><\/p>\n

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Resurrection Grace offers us gracious allegiance and resurrection reverence<\/i><\/p>\n

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Jesus Christ our Lord who commands allegiance<\/i><\/p>\n

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Jesus Christ our Lord who inspires reverence<\/i><\/p>\n

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A way to live and a way to love, doing and being<\/i><\/p>\n

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David sings so in the Psalms:\u00a0 my Strength and my Might<\/i><\/p>\n

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Peter preaches so in Acts:\u00a0 He is exalted as Leader and Savior<\/i><\/p>\n

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John teaches so in the Apocalypse:\u00a0 Alpha and Omega<\/i><\/p>\n

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Strength and Might!<\/i><\/p>\n

Leader and Savior!<\/i><\/p>\n

Alpha and Omega!<\/i><\/p>\n

Lord and God!<\/i><\/p>\n

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Have we received Him this Easter with song, and word, and lesson, and love?<\/i><\/p>\n

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Lord and God.<\/i><\/p>\n

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The Gospel of John is so different:\u00a0 four resurrection stories, the figure of Thomas, Thomas doubting faith, his seeing that is believing and believing that is seeing, his friendship with the estranged, he (alone) gets the meaning of the story right.<\/i><\/p>\n

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To live in resurrection grace is to find, to be found, by the true Lord and the real God, to accept allegiance and reverence.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Allegiance<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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You will pledge allegiance to someone, and maybe, already, you have. <\/i><\/p>\n

Beware the dark danger of allowing lesser loyalties to eclipse the one great loyalty.<\/i><\/p>\n

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You are pilgrim not a tourist, a pilgrim not a tourist.<\/i><\/p>\n

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You are here on a journey not a lark.<\/i><\/p>\n

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We are a pilgrim people, stumbling our way forward, as Robert F Kennedy tried to remind us 45 years ago, weeping with those who wept in Indianapolis, the night King was murdered.\u00a0 Kennedy preached:<\/i><\/p>\n

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\u201cWe can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization – black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King<\/b> did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.<\/i> <\/i><\/p>\n

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart<\/b> the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.<\/i> <\/i><\/p>\n

But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times.<\/i> <\/i><\/p>\n

My favorite poet was Aeschylus<\/b>. He once wrote: “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”<\/i> <\/i><\/p>\n

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another<\/b>, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.<\/i> <\/i><\/p>\n

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks<\/b> wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.\u201d<\/i> <\/i><\/p>\n

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Something, or someone, will claim your allegiance.\u00a0 Beware giving the sacred dimension of your heart to something less than worthy of your heart.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Ask:\u00a0 Who are you?\u00a0 What do you believe?\u00a0 How do you love?\u00a0 To what are you called? Whom shall you forgive?<\/i><\/p>\n

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To what do you give your highest allegiance.\u00a0 The old Boston personalists counted cooperation as the highest good.\u00a0 Bodily cooperation\u2014health.\u00a0 Social cooperation\u2014civilization.\u00a0\u00a0 Climactic cooperation\u2014nature.\u00a0 Personal cooperation\u2014the beloved community.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Love is the norm, not a mere virtue.\u00a0 Love is the power that makes virtue possible.\u00a0 Love is who we are meant and made to be.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Have you truly selected one just need, one issue in justice, and applied and invested yourself with allegiance? <\/i><\/p>\n

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Reverence<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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You will finally worship somewhere, somehow.\u00a0 The human being is irretrievably religious\u2014not such good news in the face of pride, sloth, falsehood, superstition, hypocrisy, and idolatry.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Nonchalance about non attendance in public, ordered worship expands the circles of nonchalance about others, about different others, about the hurts of different others, about the willingness to neglect the hurts of different others, about the capacity to harm different others.\u00a0 There is a straight line from absence in church to drone warfare.<\/i><\/p>\n

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If on Easter Sunday you saw and heard only your own kith, kindred and kind, beward.\u00a0 Brunch with your wife\u2019s family, dinner with your parents, a nap in the Easter afternoon. Lack of physical engagement with the physical presence of others, in reverence, narrows the personal imagination about what life is for others.<\/i><\/p>\n

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People all people belong to one another.<\/i><\/p>\n

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We may take five days of prayer.\u00a0 One in a prison.\u00a0 One in a hospital.\u00a0 One in a school.\u00a0 One in a psych unit.\u00a0 One on a farm (R Shankar).<\/i><\/p>\n

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That is John\u2019s difference, ironically, universality.\u00a0 Our puny, trumped up differences of size, gender, race, religion, color, orientation, age, creed, tongue, waist and shirt measure\u2014what we see\u2014falls away before what we believe, in love.\u00a0 Love is God.\u00a0 We are loved, so we may love.<\/i><\/p>\n

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We think this week about Martin Luther King and the Letter from Birmingham Jail.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Some of us are habitual.\u00a0 Some of us are spiritual.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Some of us are habitual:\u00a0 morning prayer, daily reading, Sunday worship, tithing, gathering, all.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But are we spiritually habitual?<\/i><\/p>\n

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Some of us are spiritual:\u00a0 present, alive, free, gracious, loving, open, all.\u00a0 But are we habitually spiritual?<\/i><\/p>\n

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Let those of us who are habitual, be spiritually so.\u00a0 May we have the power not only the form of faith<\/i><\/p>\n

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Let those of us who are spiritual, be habitually so.\u00a0 May we have the form not only the power of faith.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Who is your Lord?\u00a0 Who commands your allegiance?<\/i><\/p>\n

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Who is your God?\u00a0 Who inspires your reverence?<\/i><\/p>\n

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Coda<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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Be happy<\/i><\/p>\n

Stay happy<\/i><\/p>\n

Be confident<\/i><\/p>\n

Have fun<\/i><\/p>\n

Create fun<\/i><\/p>\n

Enjoy<\/i><\/p>\n

Count it all joy<\/i><\/p>\n

Shine<\/i><\/p>\n

Live in Love<\/i><\/p>\n

You so will benefit others<\/i><\/p>\n

~The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John: 20:19-31 Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only. Gospel My Lord and My God Resurrection Grace offers us gracious allegiance and resurrection reverence Jesus Christ our Lord who commands allegiance Jesus Christ our Lord who inspires reverence A way to live and a way to love, doing […]<\/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\/690"}],"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=690"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2459,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions\/2459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}