Click here to hear the sermon only.<\/a><\/p>\nAll in a Lifetime<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Like other births, Jesus\u2019 own occurs in the midst of trouble.\u00a0\u00a0 He is hardly born before another dream befalls Joseph, the poor fellow, a man drenched in dreams, and commands the Holy Family to flee to Egypt.\u00a0\u00a0 So the prophet had predicted.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Like most growth, Jesus\u2019 own develops amid controversy.\u00a0\u00a0 Herod fulfills another prophesy by slaying the children of Bethlehem, who then as now are in peril every hour.\u00a0 So the prophet had predicted.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Like much childhood, Jesus\u2019 own transpires amid governmental wrangling, religious strife, and existential uncertainty.\u00a0 His family comes to make their home in Nazareth, down at the north end of the lake, and Jesus becomes a Nazorean.\u00a0 So the prophet had predicted.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jesus is immersed in our full life.\u00a0 Jesus is our childhood\u2019s measure.\u00a0 Day by day, like us he grew.\u00a0\u00a0 He was little, weak and helpless.\u00a0 Tears and smiles like us he knew.\u00a0 And he feeleth for our sadness.\u00a0 And he shareth in our gladness.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Christmas Gospel is this:\u00a0 God has taken human form, entered our condition, become flesh.\u00a0 For our present congregation, and especially come Christmas for our faithful radio congregants, listening from afar, we gladly announce this good news!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He came that we might have life and live it abundantly.\u00a0\u00a0 In the next century after his birth, Irenaeus was to say, in summarizing his salvation:\u00a0 \u201cthe glory of God is a human being fully alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The birth of Jesus penetrates all of the seasons of life.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Even dear, dour Ecclesiastes, who found so little to celebrate in life, at least made space, in his otherwise saturnine perspective, to honor time, the passage of time, the flow of time, and the regular return of times and seasons:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\nFor everything there is a season<\/h1>\n
And a time for every purpose under heaven<\/i><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
As we pause between Christmas and the New Year (and so between past and future, youth and age, life and death, heaven and earth, this age and the age to come), perhaps we too can incarnationally celebrate the seasons of life.\u00a0 Look with me out at 2014, from a theological, liturgical, and religious perspective.\u00a0 Listen on radio, from afar, to the ecumenical voice of Marsh Chapel, wherein all the families of Christendom, and of the earth itself, find a real home.\u00a0 For to every denomination there is a season, and a time for every perspective under heaven!\u00a0 Here is what I mean.\u00a0 Every theological insight is here liturgically on site.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
To Every Denomination there is a Season <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n\n- A.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/i><\/b>Calvinists<\/i><\/b><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
You may not think much of the Presbyterians.\u00a0 They can be cold people, I know.\u00a0 \u2018God\u2019s frozen people\u2019, said one.\u00a0\u00a0 You may never have wanted to wade in the dark, icy water of Calvinist despair.\u00a0 You may not see yourself through the lens of a Bergman film.\u00a0 But there is a time and a season.\u00a0 When Ash Wednesday arrives in a couple months, we are all Presbyterians.\u00a0 Yes, if at no other point, on this day we do well to read Calvin.\u00a0 For we are dust, and to dust we do return, as both the Bible and Ignatius of Loyola taught (more on him in a moment).\u00a0 We do all sin, and do all fall short of the glory of God.\u00a0 We are fully mortal and utterly prone to harm others.\u00a0 In Calvin\u2019s favorite, winning phrase, a personal delight of my own as well, we are, simply, \u201ctotally depraved\u201d.\u00a0 His follower, Jonathan Edwards, described us as sinners in the hands of an angry God, held like filthy spiders over the pits of hellfire, and spared only by God\u2019s strong wrist, who in holding us to save us, nonetheless averts his eyes from the hideous sight.\u00a0 Yikes!\u00a0 That is serious Ash Wednesday stuff! Really to sense this, you need the mind of John Calvin, the voice of Jonathan Edwards, and the heart of John of Patmos.\u00a0\u00a0 I admit, it is not a happy creed, but it is a sober one.\u00a0\u00a0 As my Scottish Presbyterian relatives from my mother in law\u2019s side might say:\u00a0 \u201cBob, you are so often, so wrong!.\u201d Marsh Chapel embraces Presbyterians, especially on Ash Wednesday.\u00a0 As we have done other years on Atonement and M Robinson and D Bonhoeffer and J Ellul, we will preach on Calvin this March, 2014. \u00a0Buy a Presbyterian lunch early in Lent, and appreciate the gifts of their season.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
B.\u00a0\u00a0 Jesuits<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n
Speaking of Lent, you may be thinking about the Jesuits.\u00a0 Perhaps you attended a Jesuit college, or teach in one. (I have taught in one, Lemoyne College, since 1989). Maybe you have wondered about Ignatius of Loyola, born in Pamplona, a Spaniard and a warrior, who was converted through illness to a beatific vision of Jesus, the Christ, Lord and Savior.\u00a0 Believe me, in Lent we are all Jesuits.\u00a0 In the season of Lenten discipline and preparation, you know, March of ice and snow and cold, we rely on some form of Jesuitical discipline.\u00a0 You may not precisely use his \u201cSpiritual Exercises\u201d, his daily devotion of silence and prayer and vision of Jesus.\u00a0 You may be sorry that he set loose the Inquisition and Index as tools of the Counter Reformation.\u00a0 You may feel he carried too much eye and too much military into a faith that is primarily auditory and irenic.\u00a0 In that, you would be a Lutheran, you Lutheran you.\u00a0 But in Lent, we are all soldiers in the Society of Jesus, ready to drill and train and prepare and exercise and submit.\u00a0 As Teresa of Avila put it, \u201ceven when we are thrown from the mud-cart of life, God is with us.\u201d (Her voice we will need with our annual Marsh prayer brunch this Marathon Monday, April 21, 10am, here). Marsh Chapel embraces Jesuits, whether in the Vatican or on the street, especially in Lent.\u00a0 Everyone is a Jesuit, come Lent.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\nC. Lutherans<\/h2>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Since, though, you brought up Luther, we must also give credit where credit is due.\u00a0 Come Good Friday, when we survey the wondrous cross, on which the Prince of Glory died, our greatest gain we count but loss, and pour contempt on all our pride.\u00a0 I know that the ground at the foot of the cross is pretty level, but the view of the cross that is best is found from the perspective of the Lutherans, who stoutly recall, with Luther, crux sola nostra teologia.<\/i>\u00a0 Lutherans!\u00a0 We love you at Marsh Chapel! The Cross alone, come Good Friday, is our teaching.\u00a0\u00a0 Luther\u2019s grave is not found in Lake Wobegon, but you can see it from there.\u00a0 We need to remember, especially on Good Friday, that all of our best intentions fall short.\u00a0 Especially when we think we have it just right, whatever it<\/i> is, we invariably have it just wrong.\u00a0 It was Katie von Bora, a former nun, who in marrying Luther reminded him of his humanity and \u201cbrought out the most winsome traits\u201d of the Reformer\u2019s character. All our symbols, personal and familial and national and denominational, lie prostrate before the cross, all need right interpretation to avoid idolatry.\u00a0 Even the cross, our own central symbol, needs that interpretation, which is why we consent to a 25 minute sermon every week, even though the Baptists would rather shout and pray.\u00a0 Did we in our own strength confide, our winning would be losing!\u00a0\u00a0 When it comes to the Cross, \u201cnobody does it better\u201d than Luther.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
D. Baptists<\/h2>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
I have just mentioned the Baptists.\u00a0\u00a0 This, you worry, brings the camel\u2019s nose under the tent. They are always threatening to become the sideshow that ate up the circus, you say.\u00a0\u00a0 You give them an inch, they will take a mile, you say.\u00a0 Speaking of miles, they can seem a mile wide and an inch deep, you say. They give anarchy a bad name, you say.\u00a0 But we must recognize that there is a season for everybody.\u00a0 Especially the Baptists.\u00a0 For in June, or late May, when the world is young again, we will celebrate Pentecost, the day of Spirit.\u00a0\u00a0 Every week I know you try to invite one person to join you in the joy of Marsh Chapel.\u00a0 Baptists are embraced here. After 50 days after 40 days, that is 90 days from Calvin\u2019s ashes, we pause again to remember that God is with us.\u00a0 Wesley died saying, \u201cthe best of all is, God is with us!\u201d\u00a0 (Relax, I will get to the Methodists, in due time.\u00a0 Remember, we are gathering some Methodists here at 10am on May 22.)\u00a0\u00a0 Beware your caution about Baptists.\u00a0 The Baptists are not all canoe and no paddle, not all axe-murder and no sheriff, not all fire and no hose, not all hat and no cattle, God love \u2018em.\u00a0\u00a0 Not All Spirit, whatever the Trinitarian Orthodox say.\u00a0\u00a0 The Baptists may seem<\/i> almost Unitarians of the Third Person of the Trinity!\u00a0 I tell you though, come Pentecost, that\u2019s the day, Lord, dear Lord above, God Almighty, God of love, please look down and see my people through.\u00a0\u00a0 When that wind of God is blowing (I do not refer to your preacher sermonizing), then you need some Baptists around to shake things up a little.\u00a0 Yes you do.\u00a0 Rembert Weakland said that Christians are always in a little bit of trouble.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Isabella Van Wagener (Sojourner Truth) said, \u201cThat man says women can\u2019t have as much rights as man, cause Christ wasn\u2019t a woman.\u00a0 Where did your Christ come from?\u00a0 From God and a woman. \u00a0Man had nothing to do with him!\u201d\u00a0 See what I mean?! You need to shout when the Spirit says shout!<\/p>\n<\/h2>\nE. The Orthodox<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n
The Orthodox do not do a lot of shouting on Sunday.\u00a0 Or on Monday. \u00a0They happily meet in Marsh Chapel every Monday evening, and there is but little hollering.\u00a0 They\u2019re not big shouters, except during their summer festivals, which happen to come, properly I think, about the time of Trinity Sunday.\u00a0 The more liturgical churches, Orthodox and Episcopalian and Catholic, remember this Sunday, Trinity Sunday, better than others.\u00a0 We love the Orthodox at Marsh, especially come Trinity Sunday.\u00a0 This is the season when we remember that God is more than Almighty Creator (no matter what the Muslims say) and that God is more than Lordly Savior (no matter what the Holy Rollers say) and that God is more than Mysterious Spirit (no matter what the Californians say).\u00a0 God is three, three, three Faces in one.\u00a0 Leave it to the Orthodox to remind us.\u00a0 Their wedding services last three hours.\u00a0 One for each Person of the Trinity, perhaps.\u00a0 When you come to June 15, go to a Greek festival and dance to the Triune God.\u00a0 Go ahead.\u00a0 Hug a Trinitarian in June!\u00a0 \u00a0A few blocks down Commonwealth, at Arlington Street, the ghost of William Ellery Channing may be angry about it, but you go ahead and love your Trinitarian neighbor as your own self.\u00a0\u00a0 As Constantine\u2019s mother, Helena, may have said on her many 4th<\/sup> century pilgrimages to Jerusalem,\u00a0 \u201clet us remember well those who have revered God before us.\u201d\u00a0 Our national 2014 summer preaching series, on the theme, \u2018The Gospel and Emerging Adulthood\u2019\u2014with preachers Nix, Walton, Romanik and others\u2014will help us revere God in our time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
F. Roman Catholics<\/h2>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Now that we are knee deep in liturgy, let us honor the Roman Catholics.\u00a0 Every third member of our Marsh community today comes out of a Roman Catholic background.\u00a0 Our history, liturgy, nave, location and personality as a congregation have regularly made this move accessible to women and men of many different interests and backgrounds.\u00a0 On World Communion Sunday 2014 we will all be Catholic! Especially this year and next when we look back with joy on Vatican II, and its explosion of aggiornamento<\/i>\u2014renewal.\u00a0 Aggiornamento:\u00a0 <\/i>I love the chance to say a word in Italian. You are listening on the radio to Marsh Chapel.\u00a0 With the universal church we here celebrate the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.\u00a0 With the universal church we here acknowledge one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism.\u00a0 With the universal church we here recognize the global character of the Christian communion.\u00a0\u00a0 It has been the Roman Catholic church, more steadily than most, that has defended the human body in our time.\u00a0 It has been the Catholic church that has regularly regarded the poor and those of low estate.\u00a0 It has been the Catholic church that has kept the long history of Christendom before us.\u00a0 Our liturgical ties to the universal church should not be loosened by the very real doctrinal differences we have with Rome.\u00a0 John Wesley preached a whole sermon on extending an olive branch, a sign of peace, to the Romans.\u00a0 From our Anglican heritage, we are a moderate people.\u00a0 We know the value of an olive branch.\u00a0 On World Communion Sunday , come October, we shall affirm here at Marsh, one holy, catholic and apostolic church.\u00a0 We remember, among so many others, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, whose simple deeds of service to the poorest spoke volumes to her time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
G. Anglicans<\/h2>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Now, I just mentioned the Anglicans.\u00a0 Did you notice how the Anglican or Episcopal tradition found its way, on little cat feet, into our seasonal review?\u00a0 Typical.\u00a0 You will usually find an Anglican sidling up alongside you in discussion, listening and careful in discourse.\u00a0 To the Episcopalian, a smile comes before a frown, a \u201cquite so\u201d before a \u201cnot so\u201d. \u00a0Anglicans are like everybody else\u2014only moreso.\u00a0 They revere the variety and diversity of the communion of saints.\u00a0 They agree to disagree, agreeably.\u00a0 They are peaceable people, nearly Quaker in character.\u00a0 Not for them the starch of Lutheran polemics, nor the bitter herbs of Calvinist dogma.\u00a0 A little sherry in the afternoon, a little Handel, a little wooly conversation\u2014jolly good!\u00a0 Tallyho!\u00a0 Pip-pip! Cheerio!\u00a0\u00a0 It is reason, rather than revelation alone, that has guided the Church of England, reason and a stiff dose of liturgy, including the veneration of Saints.\u00a0 One a soldier, one a priest, one slain by a fierce wild beast.\u00a0 On All Saints Day, we are all Anglicans.\u00a0 (And on Halloween, too!!!).\u00a0 Marsh Chapel loves Episcopalians.\u00a0 They are princes of peace, these sons and daughters of George III.\u00a0 They are optimistic people!\u00a0 Said Queen Victoria, \u201cwe are not interested in the possibilities of defeat\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
H. Quakers<\/h2>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Real peace, the waiting and quiet of peace in the heart, however, are ultimately the province of our Pennsylvanian neighbors.\u00a0 In Advent, you are a Quaker through and through.\u00a0 Oh, you worship God.\u00a0 You know that in heaven we will be greeted by St Peter, not by Benjamin Franklin; that we will walk the golden streets, not Market Street in Philadelphia; that we will hear the angelic choir not the Liberty Bell; that we are disciples first and citizens second.\u00a0 Still, the city of brotherly love, only a few hours south, the American home of the spiritual descendents of George Fox, that Quaking Englishman, is the home of a radical quest for peace, a waiting for peace, a longing for peace, a season of quiet that is utterly Quaker in nature.\u00a0 \u201cI have called you Friends\u201d, said our Lord.\u00a0 I tell you, when you have truly felt the power of the Society of Friends, you will be as ready for the peace of Advent as you were prepared for the discipline of Lent by the Society of Jesus.\u00a0 It is enough to make you sing like a Methodist!\u00a0 The Quakers may not have been always as militarily committed as others may have liked. \u00a0In faith, they may have stepped aside when others had to step forward.\u00a0 Still, it was to them that Ben Franklin turned at the end of his life, in 1792, to implore the young nation to jettison slavery, and they alone, prescient and right, stood by him.\u00a0 In Advent, we all are Philadelphia Quakers, eating Cheesesteaks and twinkies and sculling on the Scuykill River.\u00a0 We all await peace.\u00a0 We remember Mother Ann Lee and the shaking Quakers singing, \u201cin truth simplicity is gain, to bow and to bend we shan\u2019t be ashamed; to turn, turn will be our delight, til by turning, turning, we come round right.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The People Called Methodists<\/h2>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Do you suspect that we have saved the best for last?\u00a0 For come December 2014 it will be Christmastide, again.\u00a0 Sing we now of Christmas, Noel, Noel!\u00a0 A song greets the dawn.\u00a0 It is the singing of the birds before daybreak that heralds a new morning, and it is the singing of the church of Christ, in season and out, that heralds a new creation.\u00a0 You are here to invite somebody to come to worship with you in 2014.\u00a0 So you will ring the bell, sing the song, tell the tale of Christmas.\u00a0 Christmas means invitation.\u00a0 The birds sing while it is still dark, and the church sings while sin remains.\u00a0 People do change, for the better, even when we are reluctant to notice. Emerson:\u00a0 the human being is convertible. <\/i>To come to Christmas, truly to come to Christmas, you must come singing.\u00a0 In church, in the shower, at prayer meeting, in the choir, carolling, at youth group, by yourself.\u00a0 To sing is to be a Methodist.\u00a0 A singing Methodist, as our common speech declares.\u00a0 All sing, but none so sweetly.\u00a0 All sing, but none so vibrantly.\u00a0 All sing, but none with a list of rules about how to do so pasted in the front of a hymnal, whose reproduction every generation is the church equivalent of world war 3.\u00a0 All sing, but none with the theological bearing of singing with the Wesleys.\u00a0 To sing the Wesley hymns is to plant one\u2019s standard upon the field of battle and roar:\u00a0 let the games begin! And what shall we sing?\u00a0 Carols of course.\u00a0 And which carols.\u00a0 Those of the English tradition of course.\u00a0 And which of these? There is but one of the first rank.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is the doctrine of the Incarnation, more than those others from Crucifixion to Resurrection, which so marks the people called Methodist.\u00a0 The primitive church told two stories of Jesus, that of his death (Holy Week and Easter) and that of his birth (Advent and Christmas).\u00a0 You must sing both, not just one, or the other.\u00a0 So the Wesley\u2019s adored the Gospel of John, and \u201cthe word became flesh and dwelt among us\u201d.\u00a0 So they hoped for a new creation, finished, pure and spotless.\u00a0 (I love my church with all my heart, even in the teeth of all our difficulties.) So they built churches, great and beautiful, but just for appetizers to the real meal—orphanages, mission societies, colleges, universities, medical schools, hospitals, including 128 US schools and colleges, with Boston University leading the parade. So Susanna Wesley bore 20 children, 17 of whom survived, one of whom, John, died saying, \u201cthe best of all is\u2014God is with us!\u201d, another of whom, Charles, gave us the gospel at Christmas:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hail the heaven born prince of peace<\/h1>\n
Hail the Sun of Righteousness<\/i><\/p>\n
Light and life to all He brings<\/i><\/p>\n
Risen with healing in his wings<\/i><\/p>\n
Mild he lays his glory by<\/i><\/p>\n
Born that we no more may die<\/i><\/p>\n
Born to raise the us from the earth<\/i><\/p>\n
Born to give us second birth<\/i><\/p>\n
Hark the herald angels sing!<\/i><\/p>\n
Glory to the Newborn King!<\/i><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
Can you hear this?\u00a0 It begs a hearing.\u00a0 If you do, I challenge you, call you to a resolution:\u00a0 find a church in 2014!\u00a0 Worship God once a week next year!\u00a0 Join us here at Marsh Chapel!\u00a0 And bring a friend with you!<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
~The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matthew 2: 13-23 Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only. All in a Lifetime Like other births, Jesus\u2019 own occurs in the midst of trouble.\u00a0\u00a0 He is hardly born before another dream befalls Joseph, the poor fellow, a man drenched in dreams, and commands the Holy Family to […]<\/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\/820"}],"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=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":825,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions\/825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}