{"id":759,"date":"2013-09-08T11:00:26","date_gmt":"2013-09-08T15:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=759"},"modified":"2019-11-19T12:26:02","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T17:26:02","slug":"spiritual-fulfillment-in-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2013\/09\/08\/spiritual-fulfillment-in-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Spiritual Fulfillment in College"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luke 14: 25-35<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

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

Your spiritual fulfillment in these years may come from an honest, full reading of Scripture, an earnest, full exercise of reason, and an ample, full appreciation of tradition.<\/p>\n

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

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

Consider a verse of scripture:\u00a0 \u201cWhoever does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple\u201d (Lk 14:33)<\/p>\n

You may have occasion to take a quiet walk this week. On the Esplanade.\u00a0 Down through the Public Garden.\u00a0 Along the Emerald Necklace.\u00a0 Out on the beach.\u00a0 (Your monthly ocean visit, which you promised last Sunday), As you walk, wander, and wonder, as you saunter with a saintly step, along the Commonwealth Mall, say, ponder our Scripture today.<\/p>\n

Luke\u2019s collection of sayings here, Luke 14: 25, in the middle of ten chapters or so, Luke 9-19,\u00a0 that are Luke\u2019s own developed composition, including many of the most memorable teachings of primitive Christianity that are nonetheless not found elsewhere (the Good Samaritan, the Lost Sheep and Coin, the Prodigal Son, and other), are, in all honesty, somewhat inelegantly jumbled together, in ways that do not necessarily fully harmonize.<\/p>\n

(Following Augustine\u2019s advice that a sermon in form should resemble the form of the Scripture on which it is based, you here are offered in this sermon a collection of teachings that in all honesty are somewhat inelegantly jumbled together, in ways that do not fully harmonize (J)!)<\/p>\n

Luke 14: 25ff. is composed near the end of the first century, the dating of Luke being somewhere between the writing of Mark, and Luke\u2019s first citation in other sources\u2014a wide berth to be honest.<\/p>\n

The passage carries a hyperbolic dominical saying, not unlike the hyperbole in \u2018if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out\u2019, setting distance, a disciplined existential distance, between self and parents, self and spouse, self and progeny, self and family, self and security.\u00a0 (Following in faith will include loss and conflict.)\u00a0 Striking, isn\u2019t it, how this prediction of leaving kith and kin, leaving home, intersects with the experience of coming to college?<\/p>\n

Our text is perhaps best understood in Matthew\u2019s rendering, (Matthew and Luke both have received the sayings from a shared earlier document, known by scholars as \u2018Q\u201d) \u2019\u2018whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me\u2019 (Matt 10:37)<\/p>\n

The use of the image of the cross probably means it was originally composed in the preaching of the church, not in the teaching of the Lord, whose cross was not yet, after all, at this point in the gospel narrative, on the horizon.\u00a0 There is not a direct line, if there is any line at all, from Luke 14, in 90ad, to Jesus\u2019 teaching, in 30ad.<\/p>\n

Luke 14 is addressed to men (notice the absence, as S Ringe reminds us, of husbands in the list of those to be hated), a further indication Luke, largely inclusive of women, is using a document he has inherited, Q.<\/p>\n

The reading does not reject the significance of every day economic, social, familial, political and even military life\u2014the mini parables of tower and king keep our feet on the ground.\u00a0 That is, there is a real respect here for what we might call common sense.\u00a0 \u201cPrudent action is the essential theme\u201d (Ringe, LUKE, op. cit).<\/p>\n

Luke 14 \u00a0asks, in a serendipitously timely and direct way for us, considering Syria, that we count the cost.\u00a0 The cost of a project.\u00a0 The cost of a plan.\u00a0 The cost of a conflict.\u00a0 The cost of going to war.<\/p>\n

Strictly speaking, the collection of sayings and mini-parables,(again, some written by Luke, some coming to us from the collection we call \u201cQ\u201d, then perhaps shaped by Luke) do not come to a neat conclusion in vs 33, the need to renounce all possessions.\u00a0 The general point is clear enough though:\u00a0 discipleship costs.\u00a0 Nor, in sum, is this a call to asceticism, but more a \u2018simple readiness for God\u2019s demand\u2019 (R Bultmann).<\/p>\n

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

Consider a second verse of Scripture: \u201cWhat king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?\u201d (Lk 14: 32)<\/p>\n

On your walk, you might be thinking about Syria.<\/p>\n

You might be quietly thankful to live in a great country like ours wherein the uses of power, with responsibility, are considered and discussed.\u00a0 Where a president turns to a congress for deliberation, debate and vote.\u00a0 Where women and men in military service serve others by serving the cause of peace, and the keeping of the peace.<\/p>\n

If I were with you I might chime in with a heartfelt gratitude for the freedom of the pulpit, and of this pulpit.\u00a0 Our community has graciously over time listened to what it did not always like, and protected the statement of what it did not always affirm.\u00a0 That is truly gracious.\u00a0 We should bluntly repeat that on these things, grave issues of war and peace, people of good heart and mind, of good will and spirit, can honestly differ, and disagree.<\/p>\n

You might also be thinking about religious teaching about war and peace. (I notice by Google, by the way, that there is exactly one book of sermons, in print, addressing the war in Iraq, 2001-2007.\u00a0 I can tell you the ISBN number, if you like (J). )<\/p>\n

From several rehearsals here, others with you might remember that our tradition has two sorts of teachings here, pacifism and activism.\u00a0 On the left hand, we have the earliest teaching, Matt. 5 and elsewhere, not to resist the evil one, a pacifist tradition with far support than just the Mennonites, Quakers, Amish and others.\u00a0 In fact this chapel and our school of theology, including my namesake Allan Knight Chalmers, embraced pacifism over many years, years ago.\u00a0 \u2018If anyone smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also\u2019.\u00a0 But our debate today is more on the other hand, the right hand if you will, Rom. 13 and elsewhere, of just war theory. \u00a0\u00a0Here is the recognition, speaking of wisdom and innocence, serpents and doves, that justice for the lamb sometimes means resistance to the wolf. \u00a0It will be easy, finger by finger, for you to remember the issues and questions in this second form of Christian teaching:\u00a0 is the action responsive not preemptive?, multilateral not unilateral?, ameliorative not imperial?, foresighted not unforeseeable?, proportionally limited not potentially limitless?<\/p>\n

In the particular case of Syria 2013, grateful for presidential leadership that is war wary if not war weary, and willing to engage discussion, other questions may touch you, as, now studying in a great University, you exercise your reason.<\/p>\n

What is the exact desired outcome?;\u00a0 what the possible unintended consequences?;\u00a0 why 90 days for a 1 to 2 day missile shot across the bow?; who quietly or silently, and for what reasons, is propelling this?; for enforcement of an international norm to be real, must it be military, or are there credible other options? Just what would a limited, proportional, meaningful deterrent be?;\u00a0 have we exhausted every serious form of serious diplomacy?; what sort of precedents are we setting?.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, what are the costs to peace and order of inaction in the face of 1400 gassed to death?; does not such a \u2018brazen breach of an important norm\u2019 require response if such a norm is not completely to unravel?; is the country war weary or war wary or both?; can we say and do more for refugees, some 2 million today from Syria, than we have done?;\u00a0 why have the Arab League, European countries, NATO, the EU, the UN and so far congress been unwilling to enter a coalition of the willing?; is what is popular necessarily what is right?; how are we truly and best to \u2018deliberate carefully, choose wisely, and embrace our responsibility\u2019 (B Obama, 9\/6\/13)?;\u00a0 what are we going to do about this?.<\/p>\n

For now, we here will raise these questions, and watch and listen as the debate ensues this week.\u00a0 We shall affirm, though, listening to Luke 14, as well, that the skeptical voices need carefully to be heard, both from within the church and from within the culture.<\/p>\n

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

Consider a third verse of Scripture: \u201cWhoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple\u201d (Lk 14:27).<\/p>\n

Your walk may bring you back past Marsh Chapel.\u00a0 Think if you do about our time here two days ago, on Friday.<\/p>\n

It was a beautiful, sun-dappled, bright Friday on Marsh Plaza.\u00a0 Thanks to the College of Arts and Sciences, ice cream was served from four formal stations, and hundreds came to partake.\u00a0 The chapel organ was booming, as musicians prepared for a busy weekend.\u00a0 The Charles River glistened beyond \u2018the beach\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 Blue sky, cool air, communal gathering\u2014and ice cream.\u00a0 A happy hour or two, on September 6.<\/p>\n

I watched as Terriers older and younger sample the ice-cuisine.\u00a0 Some looked into the chapel\u2014named for a Methodist minister, our fourth president, Daniel Marsh, as is the plaza itself.\u00a0 Some squinted up at John Wesley, above the front chapel door, in a robe, reading his Bible\u2014the founder of Methodism, an English Protestant movement, in the 1700\u2019s.\u00a0 A couple, finished with their cones, looked in at the Connick stained glass windows, glanced at the Methodist hymnals in the pews, and peer at Abraham Lincoln (not a Methodist himself, though his biography\u2014personal faithfulness, and social responsibility\u2014epitomized the best of Methodism in his nineteenth century).\u00a0\u00a0 Three young men ringed the Boston University seal, next to the Martin Luther King, Jr. monument, and, avoiding stepping on the seal, read its motto, crafted long ago by Daniel Marsh, a thoroughly Methodist triad:\u00a0\u00a0learning, virtue, and piety<\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0 I wondered:\u00a0 how could I briefly say to these hundreds just what lasting meaning the Methodist provenance of Boston University continues to have?\u00a0 What difference does it make that in 1839 John Dempster\u2014at Methodist minister from upstate New York\u2014founded the theological seminary that later became our University?\u00a0 After all, BU today is a large, urban, non-sectarian, northern, private, research university, which includes women and men from the whole inhabited earth.\u00a0 What lingers from its birth out of Methodism?<\/p>\n

Learning.<\/i> The seal tells the story.\u00a0 From its inception in America, Methodism, more energetically than any other tradition, established schools and colleges, from Beacon Hill in Boston all the way to route 66 and Claremont in California.\u00a0 Today 128 universities, seminaries, and other schools adorn America, all fruit of an early love of learning, exemplified by John Wesley himself\u2014an Oxford Don, a classics scholar, a biblical theologian.\u00a0 Speaking of his beloved Bible, said Wesley, \u2018I desire to be\u00a0homo unius libri<\/i>\u2019, \u2018a man of one book\u2019.\u00a0 Methodism never invested all authority in the Bible, because learning about the Bible pointed Wesley and his followers to other truths, in history and in reason and in experience.\u00a0 Learning was the key.\u00a0 My namesake, Professor Allan Knight Chalmers, a mentor to ML King and others, implored his graduate theological students to read \u2018a book a day\u2019.\u00a0 The old saying that,\u00a0nihil humanum, <\/i>that \u2018nothing human is foreign to us\u2019, expresses the love of learning inherited from our Methodist past. Recognizing, with John 8:32, the crucial treasure of learning, of knowledge, we drank education with our mother\u2019s milk at the birth of BU.<\/p>\n

Virtue. <\/i>But Methodism has more than academic rigor to offer us, in reflection on our past.\u00a0 Learning and virtue and piety\u2014knowing and doing and being, if you will\u2014all are part of becoming fully human.\u00a0 Methodism emphasized, and emphasizes, the shared experiences in life:\u00a0 \u2018that which has been believed always and everywhere by everyone\u2019; \u2018in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in things charity\u2019; \u2018a people happy in God\u2019; \u2018the best of all is, God is with us\u2019.\u00a0 Our BU history comes out of a movement of \u2018doers\u2019, in the main\u2014dreamers, yes, and doubters, too, but largely doers. They put a church in virtually every county in the country.\u00a0 They split, north and south, ahead of the civil war, over slavery.\u00a0 Having been poor, they ministered always and fully with the poor.\u00a0 They tithed (as most still do\u2014giving away 10% each year of their earnings).\u00a0 Wesley put it this way:\u00a0\u2018do all the good you can\u2026<\/i> Faith without works is dead.\u00a0 Our modern BU work with the Chelsea schools can stand as an example of a dozen other great BU transformative gifts, which well up out of the ancient Methodist bone structure of the school.\u00a0 BU over 170 years has defined itself, not by whom it excluded, but by whom it included\u2014the children of the poor, the working class, former slaves, people of color, different religious traditions, women\u2014and in our time, the otherwise abled, the gay and lesbian community,\u00a0 internationals, and others.<\/p>\n

Piety<\/i>.\u00a0 I admit this is a superannuated word.\u00a0 It sounds vaguely and curiously cloistered.\u00a0 But what it means is vital and crucial for you, and me.\u00a0 That is, what we learn and how we act finally shape who we are.\u00a0 There is a lasting, soulful dimension to the human being, an own-most self behind the public persona, a multi-dimensional\u00a0person<\/i> (in the tradition of Boston University\u2019s own philosophical tradition of Personalism) down deeper than the one-dimensional surface.\u00a0 At heart, for the Methodists, piety meant love, to love one another, even as God has loved us (1 John 4:7).\u00a0 If we are not both lovers and knowers, both learners and lovers, we have left behind part of our souls.\u00a0 But if we do love one another, these Methodists taught, God abides in us.\u00a0 There are many ways to keep faith.\u00a0 The tolerant, magnanimous openness of Methodism, at its best, reminds us so.\u00a0 \u2018If thine heart be as mine, give me thine hand\u2019, said John Wesley.\u00a0 Under the seal on Marsh plaza, on a sunlit, gleaming day, there lies the wonder and promise of love.\u00a0 And after all, without love, and an experience of love, what is life for?\u00a0 Charles Wesley, John\u2019s 18th<\/sup> century musical brother sang it this way, in a hymn written for the opening of an elementary school in 1762:\u00a0\u00a0Unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety\u2026,<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i>I have to think that all these long dead forebears would smile with delight at the next generation coming alive\u2014knowing, doing, and being\u2014in a happy gathering, in early September, on Marsh Plaza, Boston University.<\/p>\n

Your spiritual fulfillment in college may include a leisurely walk or two, meditating on Scripture, considering the current quandary of Syria, stopping in the sunshine of Marsh Plaza to think again about our inheritance. Your spiritual fulfillment in these years may come from an honest, full reading of Scripture, an earnest, full exercise of reason, and an ample, full appreciation of tradition.<\/p>\n

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

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