{"id":753,"date":"2013-08-25T11:00:30","date_gmt":"2013-08-25T15:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=753"},"modified":"2019-11-19T12:26:51","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T17:26:51","slug":"the-sermon-on-the-mound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2013\/08\/25\/the-sermon-on-the-mound\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sermon on the Mound"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

 <\/p>\n

Out on the Massachusetts Bay, in the autumn of 1630, Governor Jonathan Winthrop spoke to frightened pilgrims, half of whom would be dead before spring.\u00a0 One can try to imagine the rolling of the frigate in the surf, out on the Atlantic.\u00a0 One can feel the salt breeze, the water wind of the sea.\u00a0 The Governor is brief, in his sermon for the day:\u00a0 \u201cWe must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill.\u00a0 The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world\u201d.\u00a0 A remarkable, truly remarkable warning, to our country, at the moment of its inception.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is a cold day in early March, 1865.\u00a0 Four score and eight years after Independence, the nation has indeed become, as Winthrop prophesied in his Boston sermon, \u201ca story and byword through the world\u201d.\u00a0 600,000 men will\u00a0 have died by the time Lee and Grant meet at Appomatox, approximately one death for every 10 slaves forcibly brought to the New World.\u00a0 This day in March, Mr. Lincoln delivers his own sermon, to the gathered and we may assume chastened congress.\u00a0 It is Lincoln\u2019s Second Inaugural address:\u00a0 \u201cThe Almighty has His own purposes\u2026Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.\u00a0 Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman\u2019s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of\u00a0 blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, \u2018The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether\u2019.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWith malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work that we are in, to bind up the nation\u2019s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Into the next decade the state of Mississippi will spend 20% of its annual budget, each year, for artificial limbs.\u00a0 Lincoln himself will die within weeks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now we witness another gathering,\u00a0 and we hear another sermon.\u00a0 A hundred more years have past.\u00a0 It is August 28, 1963, a sweltering day in the nation\u2019s capitol.\u00a0 Hundreds of thousands of women and men have gathered within earshot of Lincoln\u2019s memorial, and within earshot of his Second Inaugural.\u00a0 They have come\u2014maybe some of you were there\u2014with firmness in the right as God gives to see the right, to strive to finish the work.\u00a0 A Baptist preacher captures the moment in ringing oratory:\u00a0 \u201cI have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down at the table of brotherhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Winthrop.\u00a0 Lincoln.\u00a0 King.\u00a0 1630. 1865. 1963.\u00a0 These are the\u00a0 three greatest sermons ever preached in our country\u2019s history.\u00a0\u00a0 Do you notice that not one of them was delivered in a church?\u00a0 Yet they all interpret the church\u2019s Gospel to the land of the free and the home of the brave.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Winthrop.\u00a0 Lincoln. King.\u00a0 \u00a0They believed in God\u2019s providence. They trusted, through terror, in God\u2019s favor. They thought that persons, even they themselves, had roles to play in the divine drama.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They warned of tragedy, they endured tragedy, they honestly acknowledged tragedy.\u00a0 What Winthrop prohesied, and what Lincoln witnessed, and what King attacked is our national tragedy still.\u00a0\u00a0 We still judge, by the color of skin and not by the content of character.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But God has not left us, nor does God abandon God\u2019s children.\u00a0 God works through human hearts, to bind up the nation\u2019s wounds.\u00a0 It is the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and this alone, which will bring peace.\u00a0 The church has nothing better to do, nothing other to do, nothing more important to do, nothing else to do than to preach.\u00a0 Preaching is everything, the whole nine yards.\u00a0 Let others be anxious and fretful over much service:\u00a0 you are a Christian\u2014sit at Christ\u2019s feet and lisp his Gospel to others.\u00a0 For when the Gospel is rightly preached and rightly heard, heaven invades earth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The best preaching happens beyond church.\u00a0 Some is spoken and some is lived.\u00a0 Said Franklin, teaching the only two values he thought important\u2014industry and frugality: \u201cnone preaches better than the ant, and he says nothing\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 We are not so much resident aliens as dual citizens.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is a godly love of country, a measured patriotism,\u00a0 a tempered sense of national identity, that can save.\u00a0 Today we have almost none of it left.\u00a0 Those on the right have been dangerously infected by authoritarian neo-fascistic ideas and emotions that have no place before the cross.\u00a0 Those on the left have mistakenly assumed that one could somehow exempt oneself from the national identity, have no national poetry, no healthy patriotism, no common faith with which to bow before the cross.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We have no choice about common identity, national character, love of country.\u00a0 Listen to Winthrop and Lincoln and King.\u00a0 What we have some limited influence over is the nature, the type, the relative health of such.\u00a0 Notice the Beatitudes, how the blessing fall on groups.\u00a0 Blessed are those\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I believe there is at least one saving story from which, over time, we may gain strength and insight for our common story, poetry and preaching.\u00a0 What Whitman said about poetry is doubly true for the Gospel itself:\u00a0 \u201cThe United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem\u2026Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and the night\u2026Really great poetry is always the result of a national spirit, and not the privilege of a polished and select few the strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung.\u201d\u00a0 Here is what a godly love of country can do.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This year, without much fanfare, we passed the 60th<\/sup> anniversary of Jackie Robinson\u2019s entrance into major league baseball.\u00a0 The armed forces were still legally segregated.\u00a0 So were public schools. That was America in 1947 when a tee-totaling Bible quoting Republican from Ohio integrated major league baseball.\u00a0 Who remembers today the lone ranger type\u2014so decried in church circles today\u2014who spent most of a lifetime working for one transformation.\u00a0 Rickey was taught the Gospel in the Methodist church of that time where there was to be no separation, like that we have today, between a deep personal faith (conservative) and an active social involvement (liberal).\u00a0 Rickey was one of those people who just never heard that \u201cit can\u2019t be done\u201d.\u00a0 For thirty years, slowly, painstakingly, he manuevered and strategized and planned and brought about the greatest change in the history of our national pastime.\u00a0 IT CAN BE DONE.\u00a0 Go to Cooperstown this summer and see the story unfold.\u00a0 There is sermon on the mound, preached in life, brought to voice through one lone Methodist, in one lone lifetime, in one lone sport, in one lone generation.\u00a0 IT CAN BE DONE.\u00a0 But you need a preacher, like Rickey: \u201cI prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the reticence of wisdom\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Where is the Branch Rickey of Wall Street?<\/p>\n

Where is the Branch Rickey of the local church?<\/p>\n

Where is the Branch Rickey of the public school?<\/p>\n

Where is the Branch Rickey of your neighborhood?<\/p>\n

Where is the Branch Rickey of the urban\\suburban<\/p>\n

split in Monroe County?<\/p>\n

Where is that secular saint who doesn\u2019t realize it can\u2019t be done?<\/p>\n

Where is the preacher of the next sermon on the mound?<\/p>\n

Maybe she is here today.\u00a0 Maybe you are she.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I heard William McClain, an African American preacher, tell about growing up in Tuskegee Alabama. He grew up listening to the team Branch Rickey fielded in Brooklyn.\u00a0 \u201cWhen Jackie stood at the plate, we stood with him.\u00a0 When he struck out we did too.\u00a0 When he hit the ball we jumped and cheered.\u00a0 When he slid home, we dusted off our own pants.\u00a0 When he stole a base, he stole for us.\u00a0 When he hit a home run, we were the victors.\u00a0 And he was spiked we felt it, a long way away, down south.\u00a0 He gave us hope.\u00a0 He gave us hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Don\u2019t let people tell you things can’t change for the better.\u00a0 They can.\u00a0 This country can work.\u00a0 We just need a few more Branch Rickeys and a few sermons on the mound.<\/p>\n

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

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

Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only.   Out on the Massachusetts Bay, in the autumn of 1630, Governor Jonathan Winthrop spoke to frightened pilgrims, half of whom would be dead before spring.\u00a0 One can try to imagine the rolling of the frigate in the surf, out on […]<\/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\/753"}],"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=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2433,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions\/2433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}