{"id":771,"date":"2013-10-13T11:00:58","date_gmt":"2013-10-13T15:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=771"},"modified":"2019-11-19T12:14:19","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T17:14:19","slug":"an-ocean-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2013\/10\/13\/an-ocean-view\/","title":{"rendered":"An Ocean View"},"content":{"rendered":"

Psalm 107:23<\/a><\/p>\n

Jeremiah 29<\/a>, 2 Timothy 2<\/a>, Luke 17<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

\n

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

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

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

We stood upon a promontory, at the ocean\u2019s edge, this late spring past, south of Portsmouth.\u00a0 A slight sea breeze lifted spirits, and kites, and moistened the morning air.\u00a0 Below, hunting among the seaweed, the rocks, the sand, hunting for clams and crabs and fish, we watched an elementary school class at play.\u00a0 Blue shirted boys, yellow bloused girls, teachers free in the sun to walk and talk, and the steady ocean wind around enveloped us on the continent\u2019s eastern doorstep.\u00a0 The wind blew in the memory of a verse.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters.\u00a0 They see the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous works in the deep.\u00a0 For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea (Ps 107:23).<\/i><\/p>\n

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

<\/i>Today we pause.\u00a0 Ours is a restful sermon, today.\u00a0 We are ready, come Columbus Day weekend, across the campus and country, for a spiritual siesta, a personal paseo, a moment along the ocean for Sabbath rest.\u00a0 He leadeth me beside the still waters\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

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

<\/i>That spring seaside day, one boy was fixing a kite.\u00a0 Red haired, freckled, pensive, enthralled.\u00a0 Then he looked up and out and east, out and across the great deep.\u00a0 Now 7 soon 17 soon 47 soon 87:\u00a0 there he looked out and east and waited as the wind wrapped him in quiet.\u00a0 For a moment, an early summer moment, outside class, alongside surf, beside friends, for a moment, he took an ocean view.\u00a0 We do too, at least we should.\u00a0 Today, with him, for a moment, we pause \u2018to see the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous works in the deep\u2019.\u00a0 Look.\u00a0 Look east and into the sea breeze.\u00a0 Let the salt fill your lungs.\u00a0 Let the waves lap your toes.\u00a0 Let the blue sky and the blue sea widen your eyes.\u00a0 Let the roar of the surf give rhythm for your eyes, your heart\u2014your blues.\u00a0 An ocean view. \u00a0What do you see?\u00a0 An ocean view is a view of beauty and goodness and truth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

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

Do you see beauty?\u00a0 \u201cWho hast laid the beams of thy chambers on the waters\u2019 (Ps 104:3). \u00a0This week we recognized and celebrated the Higgs Boson.\u00a0 We recall, especially in such a week, that over 15 billion years have now passed since \u2018the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep\u2019 (Gen: 1:2).\u00a0 The blue on blue line at the horizon sky on sea, sea on sky, air on water, water on air, oxygen on hydrogen, hydrogen on oxygen, light on life, life on light.\u00a0 Hurricanal terror lies beyond that horizon.\u00a0 Tidal crests powerful to destroy may there arise.\u00a0 \u2018Leviathan\u2019\u2014shark, octopus, whale, all\u2014there dwells.\u00a0 The beauty is terrific, to be sure.\u00a0 Captain Ahab\u2019s eye, hunting the great white whale, limping upon a leg lost, crazed by the fury at the horizons of death and life\u2014his eye too is ours.\u00a0 Our ocean view, to be true, views the entire ocean, its present blue horizontal perfection and its wild, violent, creative-destructive, hurricanal power.\u00a0 Beauty is not entirely subsumed under placidity.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes, as Jeremiah admitted, you have to accept and improve upon what is not good but given:\u00a0 \u2018seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare\u2019 (Jer. 29:7). \u00a0\u00a0Sometimes the historical redress to wrong you seek is still some years hence.\u00a0\u00a0 In some beauty there is a time to embrace, and in some there is a time to refrain from embracing\u2014to run for cover, if you can.\u00a0 On that spring morning\u2014see!\u2014a gull drifting on the waves, a ship listing starboard in the sun, a fish jumping\u2014clap!, a swimmer in the great salt sea.\u00a0 Job:\u00a0 \u2018he has planted the circumference of the earth\u2019.\u00a0 Beauty, pure and powerful, there is in an ocean view.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In Le Recherche des Temps Perdue, <\/i>M Proust\u00a0 has given us written beauty, set inland in Paris and then at Balbec by the sea.\u00a0\u00a0 The beauty he sees encompasses both.\u00a0 Proust can see the ocean and its beauty in the fields by which he drives, but also can see the beauty of the fields in the ocean he loves.\u00a0 He wrote: The contrast that used then to strike me so forcibly between the country drives that I took with Mme. De Villeparisis and this proximity, fluid, inaccessible, mythological, of the Eternal Ocean, no longer existed for me.\u00a0 And there were days now when, on the contrary, the sea itself seemed almost rural.\u00a0 A tug, of which one could see only the funnel, was smoking in the distance like a factory amid fields while alone against the horizon a convex patch of white, sketched there doubtless by a sail\u2026made one think of the sunlit wall of some isolated building, an hospital or a school\u2026all this upon stormy days made the ocean a thing as varied, as solid, as broken, as populous, as civilized as the earth with its carriage roads over which I used to travel\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

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

Behold, beauty.<\/p>\n

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

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

Do you see goodness?\u00a0 Walk slowly, down to the water\u2019s edge.\u00a0 \u2018He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkenss\u2019 (Ps 104:9).\u00a0 The mighty ocean provokes human courage.\u00a0 \u2018They that go down to the sea in ships\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 The account of the lepers healed, wherein only one returns thanks, is St. Luke\u2019s way of painting the portrait of such goodness.\u00a0 Goodness in creation and life.\u00a0 Goodness in redemption and healing.\u00a0 Goodness in sanctification and thanksgiving:\u00a0 \u2018Rise and go your way.\u00a0 Your faith has made you well.\u2019 (Luke 17: 19). \u00a0\u00a0Gratitude is the attitude best suited to faith, and life, and eternity.\u00a0\u00a0 Gratitude brings a responsive human creativity, responding to the divine.\u00a0 There is a responsive human redemption, responding to the divine.\u00a0 There is a responsive human holiness, responding to the divine.\u00a0 Leif Erickson, in a sloop, paddling from Iceland to Greenland to New Scotland.\u00a0 Christopher Columbus, the Nina and Pinta and Santa Maria at sail, our namesake this weekend, coming ashore from three little boats.\u00a0 Magellan rounding the tip of South America.\u00a0 Captain Cook circling Hawaii.\u00a0 The Gloucester fishermen whose names sit ensconced in their statue on the coast.\u00a0 The four chaplains, painted and framed into our window here at Marsh Chapel, a rabbi, a priest, and two ministers, who gave their life jackets, and so their lives, to others in the Atlantic in 1944 .<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The tide comes in and the tide goes out.\u00a0 Real change for real good is real hard.\u00a0 It comes by increments.\u00a0 Alice Munro\u2019s Canadian stories, honored this week, exhibit the progress of love.\u00a0 The progress of love.\u00a0 It comes by increments.\u00a0 Some of Jim Crow died in the Civil War, but not all.\u00a0 Some of Jim Crow died in Reconstruction, but not all. \u00a0Some died with Voting Rights Act, but not all.\u00a0 Some of Jim Crow is running scared in the face of expanded health care for the poor in the south, but there will be some left, even after this.\u00a0 The Social Security Act of 1935, remember, excluded farm workers and domestics. \u00a0\u00a0Real change for real good is real hard.\u00a0 It comes by increments, like the glory of the morning on the wave.\u00a0\u00a0 Bit by bit, wave by wave.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But it comes.\u00a0 JFK:\u00a0 \u201cI believe that America should set sail, and not lie still in the harbor\u201d.\u00a0 An ocean view is a long view.\u00a0 An ocean view is along view when it comes to the potential for goodness.\u00a0 The struggle, the wrestling, for the good is not progressive only, successful only, victorious only.\u00a0 There is regression, amnesia, selfishness, sloth.\u00a0 Ebb.\u00a0 Flow. Undertow.\u00a0 All.\u00a0 Hume:\u00a0 \u201cMan is a fixed and limited animal whose nature is absolutely constant.\u00a0 It is only by tradition and organization that anything decent can be gotten out of him\u201d.\u00a0 If a Norseman though in the 13th<\/sup> century or so could sail a rowboat to America\u2026lf an Italian sea captain sailing under a Spanish flag could boldly sail where no one since Erickson had sailed before\u2026If we can land a man on the moon\u2026Goodness has as much of a shot as evil.\u00a0 Bill McGibben is alive and well.\u00a0 Holding the horizon in view and sailing for the north star by night will give us guidance.\u00a0 Micah:\u00a0 \u2018God will again have compassion on us.\u00a0 God will tread out our iniquities under foot.\u00a0 He will cast our sins into the depths of the sea<\/i>.\u2019\u00a0 Good.\u00a0 Goodness.\u00a0 Across the tides of time.\u00a0 In an ocean view.<\/p>\n

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

Behold, goodness.<\/p>\n

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

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

Do you see the truth?\u00a0 Hold the sextant, true, true north.\u00a0 Measure by the stars.\u00a0 Others have sailed this circumference before.\u00a0 The variations of the sea coast are a warning.\u00a0 Walk the beach.\u00a0 Students!\u00a0 Once a month, in your time in Boston, get to the ocean.\u00a0 Sand and mud.\u00a0 Craggy rocks.\u00a0 Cliffs.\u00a0 Inlets and outlets.\u00a0 The detritus of seaweed, barnacles, shells, mollusks, driftwood, shells and stones and pebbles and sand.\u00a0 All higgledy piggledy, at sixes and sevens, messy, disordered, quirky, oblique, out of alignment.\u00a0 Sand gives way to marsh.\u00a0 Marsh to wetland.\u00a0 Wetland to stone and cliff.\u00a0 Cliff walk to tide, ebb and flow and undertow.\u00a0 We are not in Kansas anymore, as a great American, Dorothy Gale, once said.\u00a0 On an ocean view, life is not all rectangles, all flat, all squares.\u00a0 Nor is truth all rectangles, all flat, all squares, all right angles.\u00a0 \u2018New occasions teach new duties.\u00a0 Time makes ancient good uncouth.\u00a0 One must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth. Truth is messy, like the seacoast.\u00a0 One must upward still and onward who would keep abreast of variegated, seaside, truth. Listen again to a part of our morning\u2019s epistle:\u00a0 I am suffering and wearing fetters, like a criminal.\u00a0 But the word of God is not fettered\u2026If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; but if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself\u2026Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth (2 Tim 2:8ff). <\/i> Sometimes the fetters themselves bespeak the truth of freedom.\u00a0 John Lewis wrote that he finally felt free when he was placed in jail in Nashville in 1960, in the struggle for civil rights.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Allow if you will a penultimate, pastoral word.\u00a0 It is six months since Marathon Monday.\u00a0 I know we are Boston Strong.\u00a0 But we are also Boston Healing.\u00a0 \u00a0Life has ebb and flow to it.\u00a0 And undertow.\u00a0 There is more than meets the eye in life.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes, in grief, sometimes, in trauma, sometimes, in loss, the real work comes later, later on, five months later.\u00a0 Many there are, right here, ready to help.\u00a0 An ocean view may help.\u00a0 Remember Thurman:\u00a0 the ocean and the night surrounded my little life with a reassurance that could not be affronted by any human behavior.\u00a0 The ocean at night gave me a sense of timelessness, of existing beyond the ebb and flow of circumstance.\u00a0 Death would be a small thing, I felt, in the sweep of that natural embrace.<\/i> Take the sweep of that natural embrace with you, this Lord\u2019s Day, as with the benediction at the close of service, we mark together again both our fallibility and our mortality.<\/p>\n

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

Behold, truth.<\/p>\n

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

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

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

And in application, \u00a0a personal coda, for the day\u2019s restful, seaside homily, about the view from Portsmouth, from Balbec, from Cape Cod, from the shoreline:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our summer pilgrimage to Spain this year included the ocean view from the shorelines of Mallorca.\u00a0 On Mallorca we had an interview with the ghost of Frederik Chopin and the spirit of George Sand.\u00a0 At every turn on those beautiful Ballearics one enjoys an ocean view.\u00a0 We carried that ocean vista with us in a return visit and retrospective journey to the haunts of college study in Segovia.\u00a0 The spiritual offering, the ocean view, of my Spain, just the lovely enjoyed part, can be summarized in two gorgeous Spanish nouns:\u00a0 siesta and paseo.<\/i><\/p>\n

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

<\/i>Siesta.\u00a0 At noon in Segovia, still, though the grace is receding in Madrid, all activity (work, study, commerce, all) ceases.\u00a0 At noon, one returns home, after a half-day of work, home to family, home to food, home to conversation, home to relief from heat, work, boss, responsibility, home to a massive, savory meal of wine, pasta, vegetables, wine, lamb, soup, rice, wine and pastry.\u00a0 After said repast, all go to sleep.\u00a0 It is 1:30pm and 100 degrees Farenheit. It is time to beat a hasty retreat from mad dogs, Englishmen, and the noon day sun.\u00a0 The common decision to leave behind \u2018getting and spending in which we lay waste our powers\u2019 is a radical cut into life, a separation, an existential liberation.\u00a0 Where finally do you find life?\u00a0 How much in work and how much in love?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paseo.\u00a0\u00a0 Shops in Segovia reopen at 4pm and work recommences then.\u00a0 Somewhat grudgingly, the labor force returns in force.\u00a0 But by 7:30pm or so, the \u2018tiendas estan cerradas\u2019.\u00a0 And then, throughout the town, the population enters into an evening parade, a daily stroll, the \u2018paseo\u2019. \u00a0The walk.\u00a0 The evening walk. Chopin, maybe following his paseo and ocean view, said: \u2018I came to stay in a wonderful cloister, in the most beautiful place in the world\u2019. The common decision to leave behind \u2018getting and spending in which we lay waste our powers\u2019 is a radical cut into life, a separation, an existential liberation.\u00a0 Where finally do you find life?\u00a0 How much in work and how much in love?\u00a0 And given all we have been given, are we not for a moment ready to turn and give thanks to the Giver of every good and healing gift?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A nap and a walk and an ocean view, a reminder in gratitude of the beautiful, good, and true. Beginning with Whittier, we shall end with Tennyson.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sunset and evening star,<\/i><\/p>\n

And one clear call for me!<\/i><\/p>\n

And may there be no moaning of the bar,<\/i><\/p>\n

When I put out to sea,<\/i><\/p>\n

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

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,<\/i><\/p>\n

Too full for sound and foam,<\/i><\/p>\n

When that which drew from out the boundless deep<\/i><\/p>\n

Turns again home.<\/i><\/p>\n

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

Twilight and evening bell,<\/i><\/p>\n

And after that the dark!<\/i><\/p>\n

And may there be no sadness of farewell,<\/i><\/p>\n

When I embark;<\/i><\/p>\n

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

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place<\/i><\/p>\n

The flood may bear me far,<\/i><\/p>\n

I hope to see my Pilot face to face<\/i><\/p>\n

When I have crost the bar.<\/i><\/p>\n

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

Psalm 107:23 Jeremiah 29, 2 Timothy 2, Luke 17 Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only. Preface We stood upon a promontory, at the ocean\u2019s edge, this late spring past, south of Portsmouth.\u00a0 A slight sea breeze lifted spirits, and kites, and moistened the morning air.\u00a0 Below, hunting […]<\/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\/771"}],"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=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2423,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions\/2423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}