{"id":852,"date":"2014-03-02T11:00:57","date_gmt":"2014-03-02T16:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=852"},"modified":"2019-11-12T11:08:31","modified_gmt":"2019-11-12T16:08:31","slug":"one-means-of-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2014\/03\/02\/one-means-of-grace\/","title":{"rendered":"One Means of Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew 17: 1-9<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Walk with me for a moment, if you will.\u00a0 You are saintly souls, so you will smoothly saunter along.\u00a0\u00a0 Our seminarians want to think about the way they walk, through the town of their service.\u00a0 People can tell a lot about you by the way you walk.\u00a0 Is she approachable? Always in a hurry? Open to interruption (ministry is interruption)?\u00a0 Able to kick up leaves or snow?\u00a0 You as a community know how to saunter.\u00a0 You do.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our walk is the journey of faith.\u00a0 Faith is a gift.\u00a0 The gift is the gift of a journey, of travel, of motion and movement and progress and regress.\u00a0 It may be that in a lifetime we create more problems than we solve.\u00a0\u00a0 Who is to say?\u00a0 Yet we do learn, step by step, whether in progress or not, whether in fruitfulness, or not.\u00a0 After failure, after defeat, you can always ask yourself, or another:\u00a0 \u2018what did you learn from that\u2019?\u00a0 \u2018For all that hurt, what did you learn?\u2019\u00a0 That can be as healing as anything, for those with whom you walk.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ahead of us on the trail\u2014just take a moment to lift the gaze and train the eyes\u2014we can see or foresee some trail markers ahead.\u00a0\u00a0 You will come walking, sauntering, the saints of God to feast on the holiness of God, down the aisle in a moment for One Means of Grace.\u00a0 You foresee Holy Communion.\u00a0 You will walk further and later this week into the forty days of Lent, starting Wednesday.\u00a0 You foresee preparation, discipline, study, fasting, come Lent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You see out more than a month, and just at the end of Lent, too, another marker.\u00a0 A return, one year later, to Boylston Street.\u00a0 A return, step by step, a year later, to Marathon Monday.\u00a0 A return, just about Easter, to the horrific violence, the unspeakable and damnable bombing of our New England family picnic.\u00a0 A return to the death of Lu Lingzi, our BU student.\u00a0 We are preparing services and vigils and gatherings, including at 10am Monday April 21, here.\u00a0 Hold those hurt in prayer, those hurting in prayer, those who helped in prayer, those healing in prayer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is something, one step two step, something of heart beating as we walk along, lub dub, lub dub, the beating of the heart as we beat along the path in the journey of faith.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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

\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Take one step.\u00a0 You are coming into One Means of Grace, which it the holy meal of Christ, the Eucharist.\u00a0 Eucharist means thanksgiving.\u00a0 Eucharist is thanksgiving.\u00a0\u00a0 As the years pass, the gospel of Transfiguration becomes so dear, does it not?\u00a0 In a lingering moment, a poetical beauty, the three disciples without Andrew, high on a mountain, are entranced, enthralled, enchanted.\u00a0 They worship.\u00a0 They truly worship.\u00a0 They give thanks and worship God, bowing to Moses (law) Elijah (prophets) and Jesus (grace).\u00a0 Love\u2014how can you not?\u2014the painting Matthew does:\u00a0 a face of sunshine, a deference (\u2018if you wish\u2019), a bright<\/i> cloud, falling on the face, filling with awe, the vision.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Follow the trail of this text, Matthew 17.\u00a0 Its seedbed is in Exodus 24, by the way.\u00a0 Its roots are in Mark 9, which Matthew has appended and amended.\u00a0 It has its own beauty, right here right now.\u00a0 It is preached upon, early, in 2 Peter.\u00a0 The gospel itself steps along, moves along, makes progress.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The world does not lack for wonders but only for a sense of wonder (Chesterton).\u00a0 Your life does not lack for mystery but only for a sense of mystery.\u00a0 Your week does not lack for worth but only for an hour of worship.\u00a0 \u201cI love the silent church, before there is any speaking\u201d (Emerson).\u00a0 To a friend last week: \u00a0\u201cI am aware of the increased attention to Calvin and Calvinism, even in newspapers (N.Y. Times, others). \u00a0I believe the attention is in part due to the overall substantial theological material therein, and in part to what you allude to below, which is the gracious grandeur of the creator behind the creation, so emphasized in Calvin. \u00a0It is striking to me that Calvin, working in the beauty of the Alps, and Robinson, growing up in the beauty of the Rockies, have a kindred sense of the mountainous greatness of God.\u201d \u00a0<\/i> Pause just a moment on the mountain.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When you come to worship you place yourself in earshot of beauty.\u00a0 When you come to worship you stand and sit in the company of real courage, heroines and heroes of old.\u00a0 When you come to worship you at last find a way\u2014language, imagery, symbol, all\u2014to express an ultimate concern for ultimate reality. When you come to worship you see the whole horizon, the whole ocean, from birth through love to death.\u00a0 When you come to worship you place all the rest of your life in the loving embrace of Love.\u00a0 When you come to worship you are reminded that you are a child of God, no matter what else or other your boss, co workers, neighbors, family, friends or roommates have said or intimated.\u00a0 When you come to worship you enter the space of Grace.\u00a0 People have such ragged reasons for skipping worship.\u00a0 Make it your plan, as you walk along, to find a church family to love and church home to enjoy and a church service to attend at least one hour a week.\u00a0 To be thankful, Eucharist.\u00a0 To give thanks, Eucharist.\u00a0 To sing a song of thanksgiving, Eucharist.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Opposition:\u00a0 Yet sometimes worship goes wrong.\u00a0 When it does, for you, say so, to whomever.\u00a0 If it does so regularly or spectacularly, go elsewhere, pronto.\u00a0 Life is short.\u00a0 We need make no excuses for prizing our time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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

\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Take another step. You are coming into One Means of Grace, which is the holy meal of Christ, in remembrance.\u00a0 This do in remembrance of me. \u00a0To remember and to recall are not the same things, but memory and recollection are cousins, at least.\u00a0 Do you ever have conversations with loved ones who are now \u2018in a greater light and on a farther shore\u2019?\u00a0 The bath of baptism and the meal of communion, simple gifts, remind us of who we are and whose we are.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is here bread for the journey.\u00a0 But some of that nourishment is found not in the meal but in the mind.\u00a0 You are walking now, or soon, up the sawdust trail that is our center aisle, or imagining that walk from your breakfast nook, your front seat, your living room, or your desk.\u00a0 This One Means of Grace reminds you of your best, own most, truly faithful self.\u00a0 Such a reminder can be blinding, joyous, painful, and costly.\u00a0 Your social location does truly matter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Boston University invited students and others to apply to run the Marathon, this year, in memory of our student, Lu Lingzi.\u00a0 200 applications came for 7 spots, a process well ordered by our Dean of Students office.\u00a0 Some of us read through the applications in order to select 7.\u00a0 They are private so they are not quoted, here.\u00a0 But moving?\u00a0 Emotional? Wonderful? Real?\u00a0 All, and more.\u00a0 This do in remembrance of me.\u00a0 All 200 wanted to lace their sneakers and don their running togs and endure the 27.3 miles\u2014to remember.\u00a0 In a way, these worthy applications were themselves sacramental.\u00a0 This do in remembrance of me.\u00a0 In our congregation we have others who are running, this year especially in remembrance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Such kindness, such reverence, remind us who we have set out, and sauntered on, to be.\u00a0\u00a0 Good people can differ about real and big things, people of faith can see things in varieties of ways.\u00a0 There are many ways of keeping faith.\u00a0 Yet, when one hears the call to exact the death penalty, even for such heinous and miserable violence a year ago, one wonders, in remembrance.\u00a0 This is not really about two brothers, one dead and one heading to trial, is it?\u00a0 This is really about us, about you and me, about what kind of community we are, and want to be.\u00a0\u00a0 Taking life as a way of protecting life\u2014is this who we want to be?\u00a0 Opposing killing by killing\u2014is this who we want to see when we stand in the mirror of judgment?\u00a0\u00a0 You may well feel the real and raw urge for vengeance.\u00a0 Who would not feel some at least of this?\u00a0 But who are we?\u00a0 This is about us, about the people of Boston, and who we most want to be.\u00a0 It is something to think about on the long walk, the journey of faith, from Eucharist to Lent to Easter to the marathon.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Take a third step. You are coming into One Means of Grace, which is the holy meal of Christ, in real presence.\u00a0 In, with and under the humble elements of bread and wine, changing nothing and changing everything, we are met in presence. \u2018You will do well to pay attention to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts\u2019.\u00a0 2 Peter is the latest document in the New Testament, written in the name of Peter more than 100 years after the life of Jesus of Nazareth (Jude is its second chapter!).\u00a0 The tradition and memory of the Transfiguration lives on, and lives on well, here.\u00a0 We need not fear the dark.\u00a0 We need not fear death.\u00a0 Death is not like a candle snuffed, but like a lamp turned down because the dawn has come.\u00a0 Eliot poetized that we humans are \u2018fear in a handful of dust\u2019 and so we are, full of anxiety\u2014existential anxiety, survivors anxiety, performance anxiety, emotional anxiety.\u00a0 Into fear and anxiety intrudes a sense of presence.\u00a0 For your journey of faith, take along a hymn of thanksgiving, take along a word of remembrance, but take along as well a sense of presence.\u00a0 For all the forms and understandings of disenchantment around us, there lingers, here and now, a sense of presence.\u00a0 \u00a0Presence is all about.\u00a0 Immediacy.\u00a0 Inwardness.\u00a0 Experience.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We are coming to communion.\u00a0 My grandmother, born in 1893, spent five decades as communion steward of her little Methodist church.\u00a0 Four times a year she filled tiny shot glasses and carved small bread cubes, juggling the trays into church, and waiting anxiously through the hour to see whether she had prepared sufficient elements.\u00a0 I do not remember her remembering to me a single communion homily, by the way, though she will have heard more than fifty years\u2019 worth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At communion I remember her.\u00a0 I am thankful for her.\u00a0 I sense her presence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After graduating from Smith College she went to teach school in Tivoli NY, a little town on the Hudson River, east shore.\u00a0 There later she met my grandfather, in a boarding house for single teachers and others, run by his mother.\u00a0 His first wife died very young.\u00a0 One cold winter day\u2014it may have been 100 years ago this winter\u2014she skated on the fully frozen Hudson (rarely so fully frozen), from Tivoli down (south) to Poughkeepsie, 14 miles.\u00a0 Then she skated back, 14 miles.\u00a0 Here she is, a young woman, free of the farm, teaching German, meeting young men, falling in love, and skating 28 miles on the rarely so frozen Hudson River.\u00a0 I see her lacing her skates, in the bright cold air.\u00a0 I imagine her arranging her coat and cap and scarf and mittens.\u00a0 I watch her push off, across the clear smooth ice, like that on the Charles this morning.<\/p>\n

She pauses, mid skate, looking up into the blue tinted evergreens on the shore line, smiling, happy, free.\u00a0 All the wonderful Olympic skating of Sochi pales by comparison.\u00a0 She skates in the Presence.\u00a0 A real presence, in, with and under all else.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At communion I remember her.\u00a0 I am thankful for her.\u00a0 I sense her presence.\u00a0 She embodies what the greats have taught:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tillich: \u2018such a degree of entanglement between worldly wisdom and divine revelation that culture is considered the form of religion and religion as culture\u2019s depths\u2019<\/p>\n

Kelsey: \u2018God actively relates to us to create us, to draw us to eschatological consummation, and to reconcile us when we have become estranged from God\u2019<\/p>\n

Neville:\u00a0 Live the Ultimates.\u00a0\u00a0 Be Just.\u00a0 Develop Wholeness.\u00a0 Be Compassionate.\u00a0 Accomplish Something.\u00a0 Be Grateful. \u00a0Honor the universality of value in anything that has form.\u00a0 To be is to have value.<\/p>\n

M Robinson: \u2018Our civilization believed for a long time in God and the soul and sin and salvation, assuming, whatever else, that meaning had a larger frame and context than this life in this world (Adam, 84).\u00a0 We hope to acquire rather than to achieve.\u00a0 We still believe in the seriousness of being human, while we have lost the means of acknowledging this belief.\u00a0 We are spiritual agoraphobes.\u2019<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

William Sloane Coffin offered his generation ways of thinking and living One Means of Grace.\u00a0 With happiness we may call one another to the walk, the journey of faith in remembering his wisdom (from the Faces on Faith series)<\/p>\n

Faith:\u00a0 faith is being grasped by the power of love.<\/p>\n

Safety:\u00a0 God provides minimum protection and maximum support.<\/p>\n

Adversity:\u00a0 We learn most from adversity.<\/p>\n

Sin:\u00a0 Sin is a state of being.\u00a0 When the triangle of love, GOD SELF NEIGHBOR, is sundered, there is sin.<\/p>\n

Guilt:\u00a0 Guilt is the last stronghold of pride.<\/p>\n

Will:\u00a0 The rational mind is not match for the irrational will.<\/p>\n

Mercy:\u00a0 There is more mercy in God than there is sin in us.<\/p>\n

Justice:\u00a0 Pastoral concern for the rich must match prophetic concern for the poor.<\/p>\n

Love:\u00a0 The religious norm is love.<\/p>\n

Trouble:\u00a0 It is what is known and unspoken that causes the most trouble.<\/p>\n

Truth:\u00a0 Faith gives the strength to confront unpleasant truth.<\/p>\n

Journey:\u00a0 Faith puts you on the road.\u00a0 Hope keeps you on the road.\u00a0 Love is the end of the road.<\/p>\n

\u00a0~The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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