{"id":855,"date":"2014-03-09T11:00:18","date_gmt":"2014-03-09T16:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=855"},"modified":"2021-02-23T11:26:58","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T16:26:58","slug":"calvin-for-lent-exit-or-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2014\/03\/09\/calvin-for-lent-exit-or-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Calvin for Lent: Exit or Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Matthew 4: 1-11<\/a><\/p>\n

Romans 5: 12-19<\/a><\/p>\n

Genesis 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7<\/a><\/p>\n

(Philippians 1: 19ff.)<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

Over pasta last summer, a hot July night, six of us of long friendship ate and talked.\u00a0 Our dear friend Anita has been for decades a committed lay reader in her summer church.\u00a0 She has taken pride in her work, praying and practicing for her lector role, recruiting others, and helping in worship.\u00a0 With spaghetti and wine and the warmth of long relationship we nodded and supped.\u00a0 But something had happened.\u00a0 The old pastor left.\u00a0 A new one came.\u00a0 He was, sadly, rude and belligerent with his helpers.\u00a0 Not just once, or twice.<\/p>\n

Said Anita:\u00a0 \u201cWhat should I do?\u00a0 I love to read, and I love my lector team.\u00a0 But his behavior I cannot abide.\u00a0 I have talked to him.\u00a0 He rebuffs me.\u00a0 If I stay, I endure and even collude in his misbehavior, but I will still have my voice in church and with the committee.\u00a0 If I leave, I exit from what I love and also leave behind any influence I might have to help, support or protect others.\u00a0 I am loyal to my church, but I am ready to go.\u00a0 What should I do?\u2019<\/p>\n

Hours, days and months are actually shot through with this form of dilemma in choice.\u00a0 Exit or leave?\u00a0 A famous study forty years ago laid out for economists the dimensions of the dilemma.\u00a0 (Albert O. Hirschman<\/a>. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States.<\/i><\/a> Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.) \u00a0But such a condition goes well beyond the marketplace.<\/p>\n

Exit is as old the exit from the Garden of Eden.\u00a0 Voice is as old as the dominical voice of Christ resisting temptation.\u00a0 Exit and voice: how do the Scriptures frame such living choice?<\/p>\n

Our lessons from Holy Scripture this morning propound the moral and mortal limits of life in sin and death.\u00a0 As does every Sunday benediction, sung or spoken, Genesis 2 and Romans 5 and Matthew 4, directly remind you:\u00a0 your life is brief and messy.<\/p>\n

The ancient myth, beginning in the garden of paradise and moving to the east of Eden, entwines fragility and fragmentation, existence and estrangement, sin and death.\u00a0\u00a0 The tree of the knowledge of good and evil provides the symbolic substance, the serpent provides the symbolic occasion, and the fig leaves provides the symbolic covering of the entanglement of sin and death, shame and loss.\u00a0\u00a0 The strange world of the Bible\u2014not strange in the sense of odd or wrong but strange in the sense of numinous and monumental\u2014accosts us today with a ringing reminder of suffering and death.<\/p>\n

Others may put these verses in different frames (a pan-religious frame (Joseph Campbell), or in a salvation history frame (G Von Rad), or in a tradition historical frame (Rudolph Bultmann), or in a literary religious frame (Diana Eck)). \u00a0\u00a0For us in worship, though, these words are holy writ.\u00a0 They function as words with divine import for human living.\u00a0 They remind us of moral and mortal limits to life in sin and death, suffering and death.\u00a0 They set before us the perilous multiple choices of life in a certain realistic context, as we shall see in a moment with regard to the choices, hourly and daily, between exit and voice.<\/p>\n

The deep, hard cold of a real old time religion winter season, like ours here in 2014, befits our Holy Scriptures today.\u00a0 It is bracing to feel the full wind and cold of winter.\u00a0 We are thus reminded, perhaps even made mellow and melancholy, no bad thing, by the stern icy reminder of morality and mortality, sin and death.<\/p>\n

This Lent we engage as our conversation partner in preaching, the great Geneva Protestant reformer John Calvin (1509-1564).\u00a0\u00a0 We have found it helpful, in this season, to link our preaching here at Marsh Chapel, an historically Methodist pulpit, with voices from the related but distinct Reformed tradition, which has been so important over 400 years in New England.\u00a0\u00a0 The Methodist tradition has emphasized human freedom, the Reformed divine freedom.\u00a0 In Lent each year we have brought the two into some interaction, both harmonious and dissonant.\u00a0 It is fitting that we begin with Genesis 2.\u00a0 Genesis 1 is a more Anglican chapter, if you will, representing the goodness of creation.\u00a0 2 and 3 are more Calvinist, if you will, representing the fallen character of creation, known daily to us in sin, death and the threat of meaninglessness.\u00a0 Both traditions, English and French, make space for both creation and fall.\u00a0 But the emphasis is different, one more garden the other more serpent, one more creation the other more fall.\u00a0 (With Calvin we encounter the chief resource for others we have engaged other years\u2014voices like those of Robinson (2013), Ellul (2012), Bonhoeffer (a Lutheran cousin)(2011), and themes like Atonement (2009) and Decision (2008).)<\/p>\n

Our passage from Romans 5 gives us Paul\u2019s own apocalyptic rendering of the themes of sin and death.\u00a0 We should be careful to recognize that the words are the same here as in Genesis 2 and 3, but the meanings are different.\u00a0 For Paul both sin and death are spheres of influence, orbs of control, dominions and principalities and powers.\u00a0 His apocalyptic worldview makes a changed use of the inherited terms from Genesis.\u00a0 Likewise his philosophical mode is quite different from the narrative structures in Genesis 2 and 3.\u00a0 The freedom found in Christ smashes the controls of the orbs of sin and death, for Paul.<\/p>\n

So Calvin writes, about this passage: To sin is to be corrupt.\u00a0 The natural depravity which we bring from our mother\u2019s womb, although it does not produce its fruits immediately, is still sin before God, and deserves his punishment\u2026Grace means the pure goodness of God, or his unmerited love, of which He has given us a proof in Christ, in order to relieve our misery. <\/i>You did hear the Apostle say that this grace was given to all men.\u00a0 That sounds fairly universalistic to most readers.\u00a0 All.\u00a0 Yet Calvin says otherwise:\u00a0 Paul makes grace common to all men, not because it in fact extends to all, but because it is offered to all\u2026not all receive him. (Commentaries, loc.cit.)<\/i><\/p>\n

Like that wind you felt on the Esplanade the other day, these sentences from Geneva in 1540 or so have their purposes.\u00a0 They posit that we are not in possession of grace as much as we are in need of grace.\u00a0\u00a0 Grace is the gift of God sorely needed by the people of God.\u00a0 130,000 dead in Syria.\u00a0 A four year old pummeled to death in New England.\u00a0 A mother driving into the surf with her children in Daytona Beach.\u00a0 Construct your own list, following a good reading of the Sunday newspaper.\u00a0 A cold, sober realism is found both in Romans 5, on Calvin\u2019s reading, and in the daily reports of suffering, near and far.<\/p>\n

Our passage from Matthew 4 connects with Adam and Christ along the trail of temptation, from the garden of Eden to the wilderness of Palestine.\u00a0 This gospel, a teacher\u2019s gospel, makes sure to begin with the harder news, that even Christ himself was tempted to make improper use of freedom.\u00a0 In Calvin\u2019s view, every form of temptation comes with a divine purpose, a gracious protection, and a form of grace to be received:\u00a0 The temptations that strike us are not fortuitous, or the turn of Satan\u2019s whim, without God\u2019s permission, but that the Spirit of God presides in all our trials, that our faith may be the better tried.\u00a0 So we may take our sure hope that God, who is the supreme Master of the ring, will not be unmindful of us, or fail to succor our weaknesses, as He sees we are unequal to them. (Commentaries, loc. cit.)<\/i><\/p>\n

In January William Faulkner\u2019s Go Down, Moses<\/i> stood out from others on a bookstore shelf.\u00a0\u00a0 A sort of novel, it is, as powerful as it is impenetrable: \u00a0\u201cHimself was his own battleground, the scene of his own vanquishment and the mausoleum of his own defeat\u2019 \u2026\u2019aint only one thing worse than not being alive and that\u2019s shame\u2019\u2026\u201dthey learn only through violent suffering, with words written in human blood\u201d\u2026\u201dthey can learn nothing save through suffering, remember nothing save when underlined in blood\u201d.<\/i><\/p>\n

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

How shall we use our human freedom faithfully in the light of the divine freedom known to us in Christ?<\/p>\n

Exit or voice or resignation?\u00a0 Fight or flight or play dead?<\/p>\n

Your roommate smokes for breakfast, drugs for lunch, drinks for dinner.\u00a0 Do you leave\u2014him, school or both?\u00a0 Do you confront\u2014\u2018one of us is crazy and I think it\u2019s you\u2019?\u00a0 Do you grin and bear it?<\/p>\n

Your faculty has taken a new direction, that is, a wrong turn.\u00a0 For well- intentioned reasons, they have exchanged birthright for pottage.\u00a0 Do you politic, agitate, criticize, and combat in what may well be a losing cause?\u00a0 Do you call a friend who has wanted you to come to Brown or NYU for a long time anyway, and prepare to exit?\u00a0 Or do you close your door, grade your papers and play a little more golf?<\/p>\n

Your brother is about to marry the wrong woman.\u00a0 He is impressionable and she is impressive\u2014an empress if you will.\u00a0 Do you shout a warning and then risk never speaking to him again?\u00a0 Do you reason, consult, have lunch, empathize and appeal to the better angels of his nature?\u00a0 Do you throw up your hands, send an early shower gift, and bite your tongue?<\/p>\n

You are a major world super power.\u00a0 With limited success you have partially pacified a resentful Middle Eastern Muslim nation.\u00a0 Now what?\u00a0 Do you exit, stage left, leaving behind a decade of warfare, tens of thousands dead, tribal hatreds still much in evidence, and hope for the best?\u00a0 Do you stay, increase your footprint and military presence, give voice to the rights and needs of children, women, non-muslims and others?\u00a0 Or do you practice a little benign neglect, and put your energy into health care, immigration reform, nuclear disarmament, Chinese economics, and the next election?<\/p>\n

How much for exit and how much for voice?\u00a0 How much for flight and how much for fight?\u00a0 And, then, when do you just pull your turtle head back into the shell and play dead?<\/p>\n

In 54 ad Paul of Tarsus, the Apostle to the Gentiles, in a verse with subterranean links to Genesis and Matthew, exit and voice, wrestled with the same angel\\demon.<\/p>\n

On one hand, he wrote, \u2018For me to live is Christ, to die is gain. Yet which I shall choose I cannot telI.\u2019 (Phil. 1: 21). For once his regular apocalyptic eschatology, the horizontal primitive hope of the day of the Lord, which he fully expects to see in the flesh, gives way to a simple, vertical, Greek, gnostic eschatology, an immediate translation to glory.\u00a0 Troubles, trouble in the churches it may be, spark Paul\u2019s momentary exit strategy, his longing to\u00a0 \u2018depart and be with Christ\u2019.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, he considered, \u2018To remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account\u2019. \u00a0I am for you, so I should be with you.\u00a0 It is better for you that I am here.\u00a0 We can add:\u00a0 to raise my voice, to lift my voice, to write my letters, to preach my Gospel, to have influence into the next generation. Paul longs for exit. Paul lives for voice.<\/p>\n

How much for exit?\u00a0\u00a0 How much for voice?\u00a0 How much protestant exit?\u00a0 How much catholic loyalty?\u00a0 How much reformation?\u00a0 How much counter-reformation?\u00a0 How much pulpit?\u00a0 How much table?\u00a0 How much discontinuity?\u00a0 How much continuity?\u00a0 How much new world?\u00a0 How much old world?<\/p>\n

On these spiritual balances \u00a0hang the cure of our souls.\u00a0 Needless to say, there is not an answer, no formulaic response, no \u2018one size fits all\u2019, no ethical Procrustean bed.\u00a0 Another Pauline verse beckons:\u00a0 \u2018only let each one be fully convinced in his own mind\u2019 (Rom 8:44).\u00a0 We could, in faith, though, at least carry away from Lent 1 some shared understandings as people of faith.<\/p>\n

We understand<\/i> that on a daily if not hourly basis, we are choosing, by the freedom of the will, between exit and voice.\u00a0 To have voice means to have to stay.\u00a0 To exit means to give up voice.\u00a0 To exit may be your statement, your voice, within a certain context, but it is, then, your valediction, your swan song.\u00a0 On the other hand, your voice may be your exit, but it is then a prophetic utterance, with all the continuing costs attested in the 4 greater and 12 lesser prophecies of our Hebrew scripture.\u00a0\u00a0 Or you could just sit this one out, take a siesta.<\/p>\n

We understand<\/i> that most decisions involve some admixture, some balance\u2014neither Webster only or Calhoun, only; but the shadow of Henry Clay, the great compromiser.<\/p>\n

We understand<\/i> that where we place our physical self, our body, where we place our standard on the field of battle, our social location, makes a difference.\u00a0 Starting with showing up for worship, to speak with our neighbors, to sing the hymns of faith, to utter our prayers, to attend to the Word.<\/p>\n

We understand<\/i>, too, that whatever voice we lift, even the muted voice of silent witness, has a hearing, makes a difference, marks our faith, and influences the faith of others.<\/p>\n

Exit?\u00a0 Voice?<\/p>\n

Over forty years, in painful relationship to my beloved Methodist Church, I with others have struggled about exit and voice.\u00a0 Many of my friends, colleagues, students, and companions have chosen exit, one way or another.\u00a0 In some limited ways, I have, too.\u00a0 These are faithful people making hard decisions.\u00a0 I honor the cradle Methodist who chooses Episcopal orders, the Methodist seminarian who reluctantly becomes a Congregationalist, the gen-x and millennial cohorts leaving us behind<\/p>\n

I stay.\u00a0 I stay to raise my voice, and to reject giving my orders, my position, my influence, and, over time multiple generations of pastoral leadership, to a currently afro centric general church.\u00a0 I stay because I believe that over time, around the world, under the influence of a self-correcting spirit of truth loose in the universe, the mighty scourge of homophobia will be rejected by a body that in its singing voice and reasonable mind\u2014in its spiritual bones\u2014lives the gospel of freedom, grace, love, acceptance, kindness, and forgiveness.\u00a0 Over time, Methodists will not want to harm 9 year old gay children.<\/p>\n

But.\u00a0 This response is generational<\/i>.\u00a0 It will take longer than my limited life time for this change fully to come.\u00a0 This response is global.<\/i>\u00a0 It will require a change of heart, over time, in African Methodists.\u00a0 This response is gritty<\/i>.\u00a0 It will mean underground railways to marry gays and deploy ordained gays.\u00a0 It will mean prayer and withholding apportionment dollars.\u00a0 It will mean seasoned, genuine <\/i>response in many settings:\u00a0 charge, annual, jurisdictional, global and intergalactic conferences.\u00a0 It will mean upomone<\/i>\u2014longsuffering, longsuffering, longsuffering.\u00a0 It will involve political love.<\/p>\n

(Political love, active love in institutional life, is a crucial, necessary feature of realistic faithfulness.<\/p>\n

Political love is political because it occurs by intention within the city community.\u00a0 Political love is love because it is divinely gracious\u2014an incursive addition to life.<\/p>\n

Love listens and remembers.\u00a0 Love compliments with sincerity and pointed limitation.\u00a0 Love watches for another\u2019s unspoken longing.\u00a0 Love uncovers festering injustice.\u00a0 Love shows up, attends, responds, and then invites.<\/p>\n

This political love accepts the requirement of alliance, even alliance with opposition, without neglecting friendships, or forgetting the beauty of friendship.)<\/p>\n

Dag Hammarskjold:\u00a0 \u201cGod does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal Deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason\u201d.<\/p>\n

Exit or voice?\u00a0 You be the judge.<\/p>\n

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

Click here to hear the full service. Matthew 4: 1-11 Romans 5: 12-19 Genesis 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7 (Philippians 1: 19ff.) Click here to hear the sermon only. Scripture Over pasta last summer, a hot July night, six of us of long friendship ate and talked.\u00a0 Our dear friend Anita has been for decades a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[44,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855"}],"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=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2984,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions\/2984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}