{"id":786,"date":"2013-11-17T11:00:02","date_gmt":"2013-11-17T16:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=786"},"modified":"2019-11-19T12:08:35","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T17:08:35","slug":"new-frontier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2013\/11\/17\/new-frontier\/","title":{"rendered":"New Frontier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luke 21: 5-19<\/a>; 2 Thess. 3: 6-13<\/a>; Isaiah 65: 17-25<\/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

1. Ford<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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

In the Henry Ford Museum, near Detroit, you will find a remarkable assortment of Amerabilia.\u00a0 Would you like to see Ford\u2019s first automobile?\u00a0 Its tiny little black wooden self greets you.\u00a0 Do you remember the Edsel?\u00a0 Here is one.\u00a0 Have you spent time over the years in a Howard Johnsons\u2014not recently, I know, but once on a time?\u00a0 Here are signs for the restaurant and the ice cream and the motel.\u00a0 Do you own a map of the country that features Route 66?\u00a0 You will want one after this tour.\u00a0 Did you ever see one of those amphibious cars, both auto and boat, with drive shaft and propellers?\u00a0 The museum has one in baby blue.\u00a0 What is it about that 57 Chevy?\u00a0 One two tone, green and cream, greets you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I did not plan to be personally moved in the car museum and was not moved.\u00a0 Until the end.\u00a0 At the end there is a procession of presidential automobiles, sort of Motor Force One, you could say.\u00a0 One that TR used and with him Woodrow Wilson.\u00a0 FDR had a great black one.\u00a0 And Eisenhower, too.\u00a0 I think they were all Lincolns.\u00a0 Most of the detail, though, I forgot as I came to the 1963 version.\u00a0 Now topped, not convertible.\u00a0 Now bulletproof, not open.\u00a0 Now shined, black and immobile, not dusty and scuffed and moving past a grassy knoll.\u00a0 But right there, right blessed there.<\/p>\n

A fine, long, black 1963 Lincoln Continental, the very best of American engineering, on the best of American roads, in the best of American cities, carried the best of American leaders\u2026to his death.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What do you recall of November 22, 1963, almost exactly 50 years ago?<\/p>\n

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

2. November<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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

These gray days, late autumn days, with shifting light and shadow\u2014they carry an uncanny significance.\u00a0 Something in them.\u00a0 Something in the naked tree limbs, grasping empty gray.\u00a0 Something in the crisp air, foretaste of winter to come.\u00a0 Something in the constant twilight.\u00a0 Something of a cosmic sacrality lurks behind the dark maple limbs of November.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The naked limbs also recall the violent death of a young president.\u00a0 Television and modern American violence have grown up together over forty years.\u00a0\u00a0 Our childhood introduction to violence.\u00a0 To gun violence.\u00a0 (It is striking that our current national conversation about gun violence makes so little reference to this formative, symbolic moment, involving a single shooter and a single rifle).\u00a0 Women and men of one generation know where they were on November 22, 1963 at 2:00pm, like those of another generation recall December 7, 1941, and those of yet another will recall September 11, 2001.\u00a0 They remember the hour the message came, the people who delivered the word, the reactions of family members, the atmosphere of the day, the hidden meanings, unspoken words, portents of the future which all were somehow connected to the dark maple limbs of that November.\u00a0 One remembers:\u00a0 the flag covered casket, borne by a simple wagon, drawn by a team of horses; crowds of mourners; women\u2019s black hats; men\u2019s fedoras; children waving; school flags at half mast; bewilderment, anger, fear, grief.\u00a0 An English teacher recites Whitman\u2019s then 100 year old eulogy for Abraham Lincoln:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

O Captain, my captain, our fearful trip is done<\/h2>\n

The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won<\/h2>\n

Exult O shores and ring O bells<\/i><\/p>\n

But I with mournful tread,<\/i><\/p>\n

Walk the deck my Captain lies<\/i><\/p>\n

Fallen cold and dead.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3. Scripture<\/h1>\n

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

Preliminarily, Jesus first reminds us that we all face judgment, an accounting, a reckoning.\u00a0 This is not news.\u00a0 Life itself spells this out for us.\u00a0 Old age, dusk, autumn, November\u2014we know in our bones about accounting time.\u00a0 Harvest, report cards, evaluations, income tax\u2014we know in our experience about judgment.\u00a0 Jesus calmly reminds us that life includes reckoning.\u00a0 Here he says nothing by the way about individual reckoning, only that accorded to nations.\u00a0 He tells us that we will be judged as nations, for our own collective, common lives.\u00a0 Preliminarily, Jesus second connects judgment with relationship not religion, with human relations not religious experience.\u00a0 In this judgment, heightened religious experience counts not at all.\u00a0 It is actual living, not religious experience, which is judged.\u00a0 Service\u2014not music not retreats not fellowship not ecstacy not preaching not prayer not all the things that feed us.\u00a0 But service, for which the nourishment is meant.\u00a0 We have in our denomination a January Sunday known as Human Relations Sunday.\u00a0 But I always wonder, what Sunday is not one such?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, the deutero-pauline admonishment, 2 Thess., to avoid false apocalyptic (that the resurrection has already occurred) and so to honor work, and of the dignity of work.\u00a0 So, the Isaian hope of sword become plowshares, the iron of violence become the iron of piece.\u00a0 So, the Psalmist\u2019s hymn of praise. So the Lukan small apocalypse, with its clear as a bell warning to live each day preparing for judgment, to live each day as if it were your last.\u00a0 So the Lukan condemnation of religion (ie the temple) \u2018a place where abuse is masked by piety\u2019 (S Ringe).\u00a0 Here are signs of finality and judgment:\u00a0 natural disaster, false speech, warfare, political chaos.\u00a0 They are in standard apocalyptic form, a recital of history (what the church has endured in the second half of the first century) placed in predictive, forecasted form (what the scholars call vaticinuum ex eventu).\u00a0 We are not promised the gifts of success or even safety, but only of endurance in faith: \u2018by your endurance you will gain your lives\u2019.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That is, all times are end times, and every day is the last.\u00a0 One who loses a parent or sibling knows this.\u00a0 One who receives calamitous unexpected news knows this.\u00a0 One who sees a beloved institution ruined by feckless, mendacious, predatory, malfeasant leadership knows this<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4. Lincoln<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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

We also today are hours from the 150th<\/sup> anniversary of Lincoln\u2019s Gettysburg Address, itself a poem shot through with awareness of all manner of endings.\u00a0 A kind of homecoming, a release from violence, is what Abraham Lincoln proposed in his short masterpiece, 150 years ago, in Gettysburg.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What do you recall about November 19, 1863, nearly 150 years ago today.\u00a0 Words matter more than deeds.\u00a0 The saving task is to remember the right ones, like these, 272 words, 10 lines, 2 minutes:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.<\/i> <\/i><\/p>\n

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.<\/i> <\/i><\/p>\n

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.<\/i> <\/i><\/p>\n

5. Violence<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fifty years later I know that many of you can still feel, can taste the trauma of those days, days in which a hard and bitter truth flew\u00a0 home, \u201ccame home to roost\u201d.\u00a0 The violence in which America was born now haunts the land of the free and the home of the brave.\u00a0 Violence.\u00a0 Pioneer violence against native peoples.\u00a0 Plantation owner violence against owned slaves.\u00a0 Armed violence in the struggle over the Union.\u00a0 The violence of class on class and capital on labor.\u00a0 The lesson of the Kennedy assassination was and is that the violence in which America was born lives on, and will turn its wrath on future generations.\u00a0 His violent death was a moment of apocalyptic judgment upon a nation with a family history of violence.\u00a0 Every one of the possible perpetrators of the act itself represent systemic violence.\u00a0 The violence of Cuban American conflict.\u00a0 The violence of the cold war.\u00a0 The violence of the world and underworld.\u00a0 Our culture is awash in violent rhetoric, violent attitude, violent action.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Once the horror of violence hits home, a new frontier can open before us.\u00a0\u00a0 Where sin abounds, grace overabounds.\u00a0 Once aware of the horror of violence which clearly we are, and once touched by the sting of violence which clearly we are, and once free of the fear of violence, which clearly we are not (truly the thing we have to fear is fear itself and its capacity to take our thanksgiving, our native generosity from us), then we may with renewed vigor look out onto a new frontier.\u00a0 This is the new frontier of peace.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Perhaps the Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel composed most eloquently the hope of that time:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Religion\u2019s task is to cultivate disgust for violence and lies, sensitivity to other people\u2019s suffering and the love of peace.<\/i><\/p>\n

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

Different are the languages of prayer, but the tears the same.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

God is greater than religion, and faith is deeper than dogma.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion\u2014its message becomes meaningless.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

God\u2019s voice speaks in many languages, communicating itself in a diversity of intuitions. <\/i><\/p>\n

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

Man\u2019s most precious thought is God, but God\u2019s most precious thought is man.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

6. Border<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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

This same moment faces us as a nation, as a people and as a church.\u00a0 We have been stung by violence too.\u00a0 We can respond with further violence.\u00a0 Or we can begin to \u2018go home\u2019 day by day, to suffer the daily shame and dishonor which all violence finally bequeaths, and, in Christ, as Calvin would say \u2018in the school of Christ\u2019, learn to practice the things that make for peace.\u00a0 Living daily with the bruises and damage of yesterday\u2019s rapacity takes the cross of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 It is the cross, alone, that carries the power for such laborious, long march of mercy.\u00a0 In the cross we discover a love that casts out fear.\u00a0 And fear is our greatest, most fearsome obstacle to the new frontier of peace.\u00a0 When we come toward a new frontier we naturally have fear.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once a day for most of three years, and once a month for another eight, I crossed the border into Canada.\u00a0 The border questions are those before us in every hour, are they not?\u00a0 What is your name?\u00a0 Where are you from?\u00a0 Where are you headed?Do you have anything to declare.\u00a0 Eyes and ears await your response in ever room entered, every email received, every meeting attended.\u00a0 Who are you?\u00a0 What is your story?\u00a0 Do you have anything to say?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One very cold winter day, in the middle of a clean snowfall, I skidded down north toward Huntingdon Quebec.\u00a0 It was about 5am, and it was as dark as the dark side of the moon.\u00a0 I drove slowly to stay on the road.\u00a0 I was anxious. Then ahead at an intersection I saw a great truck paused and blinking.\u00a0 In the snow I pulled alongside the cab and looked up at the driver.\u00a0 He looked fearful.\u00a0 He squinted and asked \u201cOu est le frontiere?\u201d (Where is the border).\u00a0 I summoned what little French I could, put on my bravest accent and began to reply.\u00a0 But before I had cobbled together two sentences he, listening to my inflection, burst in:\u00a0 \u201coh, good lord, you\u2019re an American, I can tell, you speak English!\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes we have fears at the border of the known and unknown that vanish at the crossing, and entering the new frontier means coming home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

7. Peace<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jesus empowers us in the way beyond violence.\u00a0 Elsewhere in Scripture he gives us five very practical commands.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here are five forms of exercise for those preparing for judgment, for those crossing into a new frontier, all of which are measured by their effect on the littlest, most vulnerable, members of the church and the human family.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Find a way to sit quietly with those who are imprisoned.\u00a0 Including those imprisoned by fear, pride, ideology, personality, accident, circumstance.\u00a0 Go and sit with them and listen.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Find a way to heal sickness. \u00a0Health is too important to leave to physicians only.\u00a0 You go and heal.\u00a0 Assess what habits have brought you health and share them.\u00a0 Salvation is health.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

       <\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Find a way to cover the naked.\u00a0 Those who are exposed, open to harm, exposed to scorn and mocking and criticism.\u00a0 Go and put some clothing on them, some encouragement, some humor, some honor.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

         <\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Find a way to befriend strangers.\u00a0 Strangers need welcome, friendship.\u00a0 Until you have been one, maybe you don\u2019t know.\u00a0 Watch for the stranger and offer hospitality.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

           <\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Find a way to offer food and drink, not to those who have already plenty of both, but those who have parched throats and empty stomachs.\u00a0 How we would love to take pitchers of faith and loaves of hope and batches of love to all of the people in our county who hunger for them!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

             <\/p>\n

             <\/p>\n

            These are the things that make for peace.\u00a0 These are the signposts on the long road home from violence.\u00a0 These are the gospeljudgment words.\u00a0 A church which practices them, and is practiced in their arts, will have much to offer to the healing of a violated culture.<\/p>\n

             <\/p>\n

            8. Kennedy<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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

            One summer we visited Hyannisport, and there walked around the Kennedy memorial.\u00a0 It is a moving experience.\u00a0 The harbor is laden with beautiful sailboats.\u00a0 The monument is handsome.\u00a0 Across the round deck of the memorial there is chiseled a sentence quotation:\u00a0 \u201cI believe that American should set sail and not lie still in the harbor\u201d.\u00a0 At his best, Kennedy appealed to our honor not to our security:\u00a0 \u201cnot a set of promises but a set of challenges\u201d.\u00a0 It is our honor and our willingness to sacrifice which will mitigate violence:\u00a0 \u201cask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country\u201d.\u00a0 It is our stamina which will take us to the new frontier of peace:\u00a0 \u201cto bear the long twilight struggle, year in and year out, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulatiion\u201d.<\/p>\n

             <\/p>\n

            Much of what Kennedy planned has been achieved.\u00a0 Communism is dead.\u00a0 Nuclear weaponry is largely under control.\u00a0 Relations between Protestants and Catholics are good.\u00a0 Basic civil rights have largely been achieved.\u00a0 Latin America is open to us.\u00a0 A man has landed on the moon.<\/p>\n

             <\/p>\n

            But violence, ah violence, violence remains.\u00a0 Gun violence, ah gun violence, gun violence remains.\u00a0 The scourge of our generation.<\/p>\n

             <\/p>\n

            So let us set sail for a new frontier, and practice the things that make for peace. \u00a0Let us sing the song of peace, with Isaiah and David and 2 Paul and Jesus.\u00a0 Let us sing the hymn of peace, with Lincoln and Whitman and Heschel and Kennedy. And let us be willing to \u201cpay any price, bear any burden, support any friend, oppose any foe\u201d to face down the fear that violence brings, and to cross into a new frontier.\u00a0 A new frontier of peace\u2026<\/p>\n

             <\/p>\n

            It is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave.\u00a0 It is wisdom to the mighty, honor to the brave.\u00a0 The world shall be His footstool and the soul of wrong His slave.\u00a0 Our God is marching on\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

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

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

            Luke 21: 5-19; 2 Thess. 3: 6-13; Isaiah 65: 17-25 Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only. 1. Ford In the Henry Ford Museum, near Detroit, you will find a remarkable assortment of Amerabilia.\u00a0 Would you like to see Ford\u2019s first automobile?\u00a0 Its tiny little black wooden self […]<\/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\/786"}],"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=786"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2417,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions\/2417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}