{"id":777,"date":"2013-11-03T11:00:28","date_gmt":"2013-11-03T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=777"},"modified":"2019-11-19T12:10:43","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T17:10:43","slug":"saints-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2013\/11\/03\/saints-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Saints of God"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luke 6<\/a><\/p>\n

Ephesians 1<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

Religious Saint in China<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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

Saints of God are all around us.\u00a0 You are they.\u00a0 You.\u00a0\u00a0 In Chicago last week I saw one, a dear old friend, former Minister of First UMC Evanston, former Acadmic Dean at Claremont.\u00a0 I later that week came across a sermon of his.<\/p>\n

Emory Purcell wrote, \u201cWhen I was a child, there were often missionaries or evangelists staying with us. One I remember most fondly was Mary Schlosser. About fifty years of age then, she had been a missionary in China for many years.<\/i><\/p>\n

All of us have heard stories of how missionaries forced native people to give up their culture and become westerners; how missionaries were tools of capitalistic colonialism. Some were indeed. But not Mary Schlosser. All she talked about were, not her converts, but the boys and girls in her school in China: how bright and eager and loving they were. She had high hopes for each of them and had arranged for some of them to go abroad to prestigious universities to study. She knew that one day they were going to make significant contributions to their people.<\/i><\/p>\n

Now, you never read about Mary Schlosser in Time. As a young woman she had had a promising career ahead of her. The call to China persuaded her to pour out her life there. After I knew her, Mary Schlosser spent many years in a communist prison camp in China and died shortly after her release.<\/i><\/p>\n

I did read about Mary Schlosser a few years ago. A group of dissident students from China had been interviewed by a religious news editor. They talked about the missionaries who had taught their parents at a school in Kaifung. Among the names remembered were Clara Leffingwell and Mary Schlosser.<\/i><\/p>\n

I have a sense that Mary Schlosser\u2019s resurrected life is only beginning. It is love, finally, that surpasses money and power; and overcomes tragedy. Mary Schlosser poured out her life in love for her boys and girls. Through her love, broken as it was, God\u2019s love poured through more and more to life down through the generations.<\/i><\/p>\n

The thing I remember about Mary Schlosser is her radiance. Was she happy? I don\u2019t know. It is, in fact, an irrelevant question. Mary was radiant. In her enthusiasm and in the greatness of her soul, the sun shown on us. This is our hope.<\/i><\/p>\n

Rudyard Kipling was once addressing students at McGill University in Montreal. The lure of having things and even the power of success all sound so good if you listen quick. Yet, powerful successful egotism is the ultimate failure. Kipling said:<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cSomeday, you will meet a person who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Over the years I have been privileged to know many people who are rich the way Mary Schosser was rich. Sunday school and public school teachers – parents and young people – bosses and workers. People who have poured out their lives in love so that God\u2019s love can bring life.<\/i><\/p>\n

I want to suggest that is what has actually made (America) great: not all the things we have<\/span> to be happy; but, rather, the generous people who pick up the cross of human need-people whose radiant lives testify to life beyond the cross.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

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

Friends, beloved of Marsh Chapel and the airwaves:\u00a0 The saints of God have been well acquainted with impediments to the language of love.\u00a0 The saints of God have manifold experience of the resistance in experience to the reign of love.\u00a0 The saints of God know, through and through, the multiple discouragements to the path of love.<\/p>\n

One is the very question of the capacity of speech to ignite a decision, of any kind, for a new alternative, of any sort.\u00a0\u00a0 Every day, every week brings a new wave of words not fitly spoken, of deeds not fruitfully done, of sentiments not charitably rendered.\u00a0\u00a0 Is preaching an anachronism?\u00a0 Or teaching?\u00a0 Or earnest discourse of any kind?\u00a0 Doubt about language itself is itself an impediment to learning the language of love.<\/p>\n

Another is the relatively modest response, by cultural comparisons at any rate, to the lived forms of love, imperfectly represented in families, in churches, in movements and missions.\u00a0\u00a0 There is a kind of discouraging but inevitable comparison, truth to tell, that lurks behind the mammoth celebration of a World Series victory.\u00a0 We know what it feels like to celebrate, and to celebrate a clear victory.\u00a0 It feels great.\u00a0 But the victories which make us feel great, are not so great themselves.\u00a0\u00a0 We have a way of cheering a run, a home run, a grand slam.\u00a0\u00a0 But we are not as fully aligned with, or inclined toward, the generations-long struggles that might bring a truly wonderful victory over\u2014you name it.\u00a0 What we do celebrate somehow eclipses what we could celebrate.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless.\u00a0 I believe in the power of love, and in the language of love, and in the power of the language of love. \u00a0I believe you do too.\u00a0 You are saints of God. \u00a0Love is the way forward, and in the end is the only way forward.\u00a0 Love is the way the world gets better, and in the end is the only measure of the world getting better.\u00a0 Love is the transfiguration of imagination, the integration of variation, the modification of attenuation, the multiplication of aspiration.\u00a0 Love never ends.\u00a0 Love is God.\u00a0 The Bible records these sentences, in 1 Corinthians and in 1 John.\u00a0 Love never ends.\u00a0 Love is God.<\/p>\n

Our choir sang love like angels on Monday in NYC.\u00a0 They entered the city, put on the city as a robe, as a new suit of clothes, offered with grace the musical grace of God, paused for applause, and disrobed, returning the clothing of the city on departure.\u00a0\u00a0 Into noise they brought music.\u00a0 Into cacophony they brought symphony.\u00a0 Into streets lined with garbage they brought order, charity, magnanimity, generosity.\u00a0 Into the lingering horror of 9\/11, whose victims were treated in George Washington\u2019s pew before which they sang, they brought the beauty of holiness, the grace and goodness and love of lovely good and gracious music\u2014Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus.\u00a0\u00a0 I felt:\u00a0 you young people are too good for this world, or at least for parts of it.\u00a0 Love lifted us, that afternoon.\u00a0 Love, sung out by saints of God.<\/p>\n

The student of Paul who probably wrote Ephesians cuts into our souls with a gleaming phrase.\u00a0 \u2018With the eyes of your heart enlightened\u2019.\u00a0 He has about him a church that has lived now for some decades beyond Jesus of Nazareth.\u00a0 So, three reflections on inheritance.\u00a0 So, the seal of the Spirit.\u00a0 So (rightly rendered) your faith in\\toward all the saints, or your faithfulness in\\toward them, and the inheritance bequeathed by them.\u00a0 So, the name that is above every name.\u00a0 So, the church, the body of Christ. \u2018With the eyes of your heart enlightened\u2019.\u00a0 Saints of God have such eyes.<\/p>\n

Especially here our teacher offers us something beautifully saving in this epistle.\u00a0 There is a spatial dimension to salvation.\u00a0 One is caught up by a certain community, along the lines of a certain map, in the embrace of a certain spiritual geography.\u00a0 You will feel it, perhaps coming down the sawdust trail of the aisle in Marsh Chapel, for communion.\u00a0 You are not alone.\u00a0 The saints of God are with you, around you. \u2018With the eyes of your heart enlightened\u2019.<\/p>\n

Boston is taking stock this week, taking stock of a year of mayhem and marvel both.\u00a0 It is too soon, well too soon, for us yet to absorb the sounds and sights of 2013.\u00a0 For this we shall need not only the eyes of the heart, but the ears of the heart as well.\u00a0 To hear the explosions as they did ricochet down Boylston Street.\u00a0 To hear the sirens racing at night down Commonwealth.\u00a0 But also to hear the cracks of bats that sent balls and outfielders tumbling into the outfields and into the bull pen and into the stands.\u00a0 And to hear the surge of joy, the shared happiness, lifted in a choral shout at the long end of many games.\u00a0 Boston is taking stock, this week, taking stock of this year gone by, wherein again we have been taught by experience to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep.<\/p>\n

Jesus in St Luke utters both blessing and woe.\u00a0 There is a leveling coming in God\u2019s time.\u00a0 The last shall be first, the first last.\u00a0 From worst to first. \u00a0In God\u2019s time which we cannot understand.\u00a0 We have only the yearning of the heart, the eyes of the heart, and the examples of the saints to go by.\u00a0 But lifelong loss of limb, horrific harm to innocent women and men, calls up for us a longing for resurrection, a yearning, visible in the eyes of the heart, for restoration.\u00a0 In God\u2019s time we look forward to what we can never see in our time.\u00a0 In our bones we know that the leveling of justice is the path to love.\u00a0 Valleys exalted, hills made low.\u00a0 The Republican Governor of Ohio this week expressed the same sentiment.\u00a0 The poor have suffered enough.\u00a0 Wealth carries responsibility with it.\u00a0 All should be fed at the Lord\u2019s table.\u00a0 Laugh and celebrate, but a leveling is coming, in God\u2019s time.\u00a0\u00a0 Above earth\u2019s lamentations, there is divine restoration, if only to start in the eyes of the heart.\u00a0 Saints of God see with enlightened eyes, eyes of the heart.<\/p>\n

Secular Saint in Syracuse<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Some of you know I was home in Syracuse a few weeks ago.\u00a0 Theirs is an historically Methodist though now largely secular college, like ours.\u00a0\u00a0 But all the secularity, all the un-religion, all the modernity in the world, in the end, does not occlude the enlightenment of the eyes of the heart.\u00a0 Love lives.\u00a0 The saints of God, religious and unreligious, observant and secular, theist and a-theist, churchly and cultural, share these eyes, a seeing with the heart (wouldn\u2019t that make a good book title?).\u00a0 You should read the commencement address, by George Saunders, given at Syracuse University last spring.\u00a0 Here is its marrow:<\/p>\n

One useful thing you can do with an old person, in addition to borrowing money from them, or asking them to do one of their old-time \u201cdances,\u201d so you can watch, while laughing, is ask: \u201cLooking back, what do you regret?\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s something I do regret:<\/i><\/p>\n

In seventh grade, this new kid joined our class.\u00a0 In the interest of confidentiality, her Convocation Speech name will be \u201cELLEN.\u201d\u00a0 ELLEN was small, shy.\u00a0 She wore these blue cat\u2019s-eye glasses that, at the time, only old ladies wore.\u00a0 When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it.<\/i><\/p>\n

So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (\u201cYour hair taste good?\u201d \u2013 that sort of thing).\u00a0 I could see this hurt her. \u00a0I still remember the way she\u2019d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded of her place in things, she was trying, as much as possible, to disappear.\u00a0 After awhile she\u2019d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth.\u00a0 At home, I imagined, after school, her mother would say, you know: \u201cHow was your day, sweetie?\u201d and she\u2019d say, \u201cOh, fine.\u201d\u00a0 And her mother would say, \u201cMaking any friends?\u201d and she\u2019d go, \u201cSure, lots.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Sometimes I\u2019d see her hanging around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.<\/i><\/p>\n

And then \u2013 they moved.\u00a0 That was it.\u00a0 No tragedy, no big final hazing.<\/i><\/p>\n

One day she was there, next day she wasn\u2019t.<\/i><\/p>\n

End of story.<\/i><\/p>\n

Now, why do I regret that?\u00a0 Why, forty-two years later, am I still thinking about it? \u00a0Relative to most of the other kids, I was actually pretty nice to her.\u00a0 I never said an unkind word to her.\u00a0 In fact, I sometimes even (mildly) defended her.<\/i><\/p>\n

But still.\u00a0 It bothers me.\u2028\u2028So here\u2019s something I know to be true, although it\u2019s a little corny, and I don\u2019t quite know what to do with it:<\/i><\/p>\n

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. <\/i><\/p>\n

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded\u2026sensibly.\u00a0 Reservedly.\u00a0 Mildly.\u00a0 (But not kindly).<\/i><\/p>\n

Because kindness, it turns out, is hard. <\/i><\/p>\n

Do all the other things, the ambitious things \u2013 travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers \u2013 but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.\u00a0 Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.\u00a0 That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality \u2013 your soul, if you will \u2013 is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. \u00a0Bright as Shakespeare\u2019s, bright as Gandhi\u2019s, bright as Mother Teresa\u2019s.\u00a0 Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place.\u00a0 Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.<\/i><\/p>\n

Someday I hope to meet Mr. George Saunders, one of the saints of God.\u00a0 Until then, I will take up his cause, and ask you to do so too.\u00a0 Robert Cummings Neville wrote (2001):\u00a0 \u201cChristianity first and foremost is about being kind.\u201d (Symbols of Jesus, xviii).\u00a0 Are you walking in the light?\u00a0 Are you loving your neighbor?\u00a0 As you would have others do for you, do you do so for them?\u00a0 Are you seeing with the eyes of the heart?<\/p>\n

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

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

Luke 6 Ephesians 1 Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only. Religious Saint in China Saints of God are all around us.\u00a0 You are they.\u00a0 You.\u00a0\u00a0 In Chicago last week I saw one, a dear old friend, former Minister of First UMC Evanston, former Acadmic Dean at Claremont.\u00a0 […]<\/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\/777"}],"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=777"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2420,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions\/2420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}