{"id":983,"date":"2014-10-19T11:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-10-19T15:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=983"},"modified":"2019-11-05T11:54:58","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T16:54:58","slug":"the-things-that-are-gods-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2014\/10\/19\/the-things-that-are-gods-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Things That Are God’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew 22:15-22<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

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

We are left to wonder in conscience about \u2018the things that are God\u2019s\u2019.\u00a0 What are they?\u00a0 We are not told.\u00a0 There is no live interview from the heavenly conference room.\u00a0 There is no point-by-point bulletin, with details promised at 11pm.\u00a0 There is no footnote, or explanatory second conversation.\u00a0 We are left on our own by our Lord to wonder in conscience about \u2018the things that are God\u2019s\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 We are given a fair and good amount of freedom in doing so.<\/p>\n

In conscience, do you wonder about \u2018the things that are God\u2019s\u2019?<\/p>\n

Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar\u2019s.\u00a0 Give to God the things that are God\u2019s.\u00a0 (In the Gospel of Thomas, [110ad?] a bit yet later than Matthew [85ad?] who is a bit yet later than Mark [70ad?] who is a good bit later than whatever Jesus might actually have said [30ad?], the Lord adds, \u2018and give to me the things that are mine\u2019!)<\/p>\n

Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, give to God what belongs to God, and give to me what is mine (GT, logion 100). <\/i><\/p>\n

Matthew, true to form, intensifies the bitterness of Jesus toward Pharisees, of church toward synagogue, of Christian to Jew.\u00a0 He hikes up entrap (Mark) to entangle.\u00a0 He is \u2018aware of their malice\u2019.\u00a0 To the question, \u2018why put me to the test\u2019 he adds, for good measure, \u2018you hypocrites\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 His Jesus demands not just a coin, but\u00a0 \u2018(all) the money for the tax\u2019.<\/p>\n

Through the year, from this pulpit, we have tried continuously to trace the moves Matthew makes in 85ad away from what Mark, his source, had written in 70ad.\u00a0 Mostly, we want to be crystal clear about the way the gospel changes, with the setting, changes with the occasion, changes, with the time and season and year.\u00a0 New occasions teach new duties. Time makes ancient good uncouth.\u00a0 One must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.<\/i><\/p>\n

A standard reading of the passage is that the Herodians (supporters of Herod who is the Simon Legree of Rome in the cotton fields of Palestine) would want the tax paid to Caesar whereas the Pharisees (the French Resistance of Palestine against the Third Reich of Rome) would want resistance to payment of the tax. \u00a0Jesus is caught.\u00a0 \u00a0If he agrees with the Herodians, the people will kill him.\u00a0 If he agrees with the Pharisees, the Romans will kill him.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe\u2026the starry heavens above and the moral law within,\u201d wrote the German philosopher Immanuel Kant at the end of his\u00a0Critique of Practical Reason\u00a0(1788), and these words were inscribed on his tombstone.<\/p>\n

We are left to wonder in conscience about \u2018the things that are God\u2019s\u2019.\u00a0 What are they?\u00a0\u00a0 Are they wonder and conscience\u2014the starry heavens above and the moral law within?\u00a0 Wonder and conscience?\u00a0 Wonder and conscience, spirit and soul?<\/p>\n

The Starry Heavens Above:\u00a0 Spirit<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wonder.\u00a0 Without wonder your God is too large.\u00a0 Wonder at the small things, for they are the things of God.<\/p>\n

1. Wonder marvels that small things make a big difference.<\/p>\n

The boat motor<\/i> idled well and even carried the pontoon boat forward, but at a snail\u2019s pace.\u00a0 All boats disappoint just like all dogs bite.\u00a0\u00a0 The summer on our lake is a series of boat breakdowns.\u00a0 I wondered:\u00a0 old age finally taking the motor?\u00a0 Carburetor?\u00a0 Choke?\u00a0 Throttle wires?\u00a0 I am no mechanic.\u00a0 This usually means taking the boat out of the water and towing it 30 miles for repairs.\u00a0 The motor casing came off easily.\u00a0 In a few minutes, it was apparent even to a non-mechanic that a single connection, throttle to gas line, had slipped undone.\u00a0 Just as easily, without tools, it was reconnected.\u00a0 The motor purred.\u00a0\u00a0 Small things, little things, can make a big difference.<\/p>\n

Our out cottage, a broken down old fishing camp, built probably on weekends by one guy with tools, a six pack and a rod and reel, has a pump.<\/i>\u00a0 On that well and pump depend cooking, eating, cleaning washing, showers and other forms of relief.\u00a0 It is outside, so subject to weather and other beings.\u00a0 The pump stopped one afternoon.\u00a0 I am no plumber, but I know a good one.\u00a0 We called him.\u00a0 You worry when your family needs water and you have no way to provide it.\u00a0 A new pump?\u00a0 Line problems?\u00a0 Dry well? What is wrong?\u00a0 But it was something very little.\u00a0 Ants had found their way into the electric box and broken the connection.\u00a0 Two minutes of expert attention, ants erased, problem solved.\u00a0 Small little things can make a big difference.<\/p>\n

The dock<\/i> itself is new, partly brand new.\u00a0 The dock is our island into the lake, our portal into boating, our entrance into swimming, our bridge into fishing, our outpost of land in water.\u00a0\u00a0 It is just a wonderful territory in itself.\u00a0 But in order to get from the hillside down onto the dock, a makeshift staircase is required.\u00a0 It is fraction of the size of the dock, a farthing compared to a pound.\u00a0 It is a humble set of six stairs in wood reaching out onto the magisterial dock.\u00a0 Without the stairs, though, the dock is useless.\u00a0 All the weight, all the space, all the expanse, all the expense of the four piece dock lies permanently adrift from the mainland without the simple steps.\u00a0 Small things, little things, make a difference, and open up the possibility of much, much greater things.<\/p>\n

2. Wonder remembers the little things with lasting consequences.\u00a0 Children begin to get hearts of wisdom in learning this.<\/p>\n

Back from the fishing camp, and a warm water pumped shower there, now out on the dock beneath the stairs, ready to board the boat for a motor powered rid, our 7 year old granddaughter caught something in her younger brother\u2019s rhetoric.\u00a0 Brother said, \u201cEric said to me yesterday that he would take me tubing behind his boat today\u2019.\u00a0 Sister said, \u201cI know that is what he said, but that is not what he meant.\u201d\u00a0 There is short, short way from birdie to bogie, from right to almost right, from what is said to what is meant.\u00a0 To be able to hear that difference is a spiritual gift, a small, little, powerful, spiritual gift.\u00a0 \u201cI know that is what he said, but that is not what he meant!\u201d\u00a0 Small things, little things, make a difference, and open up the possibility of real understanding.<\/p>\n

It is a Sabbath reminder for us.\u00a0 Little things can change the world. Remember when someone said something to you that intervened, helped, saved.\u00a0 Sometimes the best medicine is whatever gives you the courage to take one more step forward.\u00a0 You have the mind, heart, faith and voice to speak such an intervening word this week.\u00a0 Will it make any difference?\u00a0 Small, little things, make a difference.<\/p>\n

Wonder keeps us from making God too large.<\/p>\n

The Moral Law Within:\u00a0 Soul<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Conscience.\u00a0 Without conscience your God is too small.<\/p>\n

Without wonder your God is too large.\u00a0 Without God conscience your God is too small.<\/p>\n

Conscience is the beating heart of truth and justice.\u00a0 Conscience is the soul of soul.\u00a0 Let your conscience be your guide, for conscience is soul, conscience is one of the things of God.\u00a0 Conscience reminds that the kingdom of heaven is not a present state of mind but a coming state of affairs.<\/p>\n

1. Conscience recoils at the horror of injustice.<\/p>\n

Peterboro is one of the poor, small towns with rich histories that dot the upstate landscape.\u00a0 Like Seneca Falls, known for the birth of the women\u2019s movement.\u00a0 Like Palmyra, known for the birth of Mormonism.\u00a0 Like Oneida, known for the birth of a communitarian utopianism which itself gave birth to the children of stirpiculture there.\u00a0 Like New Lebanon, known for the birth of the Shaker community.\u00a0 Like Fort Stanwix and Fort Ticonderoga and Fort Poughkeepsie, where the American Revolution was saved in thwarting British advance.\u00a0 Like Fulton, which with Robert Fulton gave birth to the steamboat.\u00a0 Like the long winding stretch of water forming the remains of the Erie Canal, Albany to Buffalo, the opening the west to commerce.\u00a0 Like Lake Placid of Olympic fame, the retreat, home and burial place of the cloud-splitter himself, John Brown, who in Kansas and at Harper\u2019s Ferry, and from his gallows pulpit did ignite the civil war, to free the slaves.\u00a0 Like Orwell and Redfield, tiny northern towns, know home to Unity Acres, a ministry with the poor, and the places of origin for the Berrigan brothers, radical catholic peace activists over the last 50 years.\u00a0 Like Onondaga Lake, the center of the Iroquois confederacy\u2014Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and later Tuscarora, and the legend of Hiawatha.\u00a0 Like the gloriously beautiful Finger Lakes, known as the \u2018burned over district\u2019 of religious fervor following the second great awakening.\u00a0 Like Corning, Rome, Oneida, Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo and Schenectady known for the birth of industrial development in glass, firearms, silver, film, salt, steel, and electricity.\u00a0\u00a0 Like Rochester, known for Frederick Douglass and his abolitionist paper, the North Star.\u00a0 Like Syracuse, known for world wide leadership in the creation and development of air conditioning.\u00a0 The Southern states owe a great debt to Rochester and Syracuse, for the two things that make current southern growth possible at all, civil right and air conditioning.\u00a0 Peterboro is one of these now poor, small towns with rich histories.<\/p>\n

Peterboro was founded by Gerrit Smith.\u00a0 Smith was an ardent abolitionist with a trust fund.\u00a0 He spent his father\u2019s money to buy land southeast of Syracuse, along the high ridge at the northern end of the Allegheny plateau.\u00a0 He used the land to provide safe dwellings for free slaves, who came up from the south in dark, crossing various rivers, Susquehanna, Genesee, Delaware, with dogs barking and slavers chasing, and the occasional Harriet Tubman as guide, armed with prayer and a pistol.\u00a0 The tracts he gave to these people of misfortune and found fortune are still farmed today, and in some few cases by the familial descendants of Gerritt Smith\u2019s abolitionist largesse.\u00a0 He also built an almshouse, a kind of hospital for the poor, in Eaton NY, nearby Peterboro, which as an 8 year old I remember entering as my father made a pastoral call on a dying man there.\u00a0 It has long since closed.\u00a0 The Methodist church in Peterboro, the remains thereof, includes people of color who are of the lineage of Gerritt Smith\u2019s abolitionist generosity.\u00a0\u00a0 It is rare more colorful hue in the pew than one finds in other upstate churches.<\/p>\n

That is, there is much good, of good conscience, in the length and breadth, the history and legacy of Upstate New York.\u00a0 That is, there is much good in the very village, the little town of Peterboro, a poor hamlet with a rich history.<\/p>\n

Yet on July 8 at 7pm a tornado took the lives of four people in and near Peterboro, NY.\u00a0\u00a0 A four–month old little girl and her 35 year old mother died when their mobile home was crushed in the wind.\u00a0 The local paper carried photographs of them both, two beautiful pictures on the front page.\u00a0 Two others died, an elderly woman, and also the male partner of a female oncologist in the region.<\/p>\n

Tornados are rare in New York, some ten or so per year, almost all minor and inconsequential.\u00a0\u00a0 Tornados are unknown, or had been, in this part of the upstate region, as Governor Cuomo said in his remarks about the tragedy, and the new normal in radical weather events.<\/p>\n

Why do such things happen?\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n

2. Conscience recoils at the violence and accident in nature and history.<\/p>\n

During that tornado week, other cyclones hit.\u00a0 A fine young woman gave birth to a baby daughter with a whole in her heart.\u00a0 A salt of the earth carpenter, a laboring gentleman, had to clean of the car door against which his older brother had shot himself after years of financial difficulty and depression.\u00a0 A 60-year-old saintly woman, who has given her life to pre school children and the Methodist church, in equal measure, was told she would need chemotherapy for the rest of her life.\u00a0 A father of four, a recovering alcoholic, grandfather of nine, community leader and faithful soul discovered he has esophageal cancer.\u00a0\u00a0 We do not mention global rates of infant mortality, especially in the first month of life, statistics that have not improved at all in our time.\u00a0\u00a0 We do not mention 180,000 civilian dead in Syria, surpassing the number slain in Iraq.\u00a0 We do not mention the hundreds of Palestinians killed without a single Israeli death, in the mini war of the same fortnight.\u00a0 Just to say, that during that tornado week, scores of other cyclones, microbursts, wind blasts of various types and size did touch ground, in the heart of human lives.\u00a0 From May 2012 to May 2013 we buried 13 BU students.<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 Why do such things happen?<\/p>\n

We do not know why these things happen.\u00a0 We know in our experience of random hurt the biblical truth in Jesus\u2019 teaching that rain falls on just and the unjust alike.\u00a0 We know in our experience of horrible, unspeakable tragedy the biblical reference to the tower of Siloam that fell killing dozens who were no better nor worse than those spared.\u00a0 We know in our experience the falsehood of Job\u2019s friends and counselors who in mistake and error tried to explain to Job his misery, which they had not themselves suffered.\u00a0 We know in our experience of sin, death, meaninglessness the gut cry of Jesus in debate, \u2018none is good but God, and in the garden, \u2018let this cup pass from me\u2019, and on the cross, \u2018why have you forsaken me?\u2019.<\/p>\n

And in our experience, we confess, we find if far easier to discount in size, scope, measure and meaning the pain of others than we do to discount our own.\u00a0 For instance.\u00a0 How often have I thought, and heard, in some arguments, \u2018things in this world would be different if men bore children and knew the pain of childbirth\u2019. 6 to 3 votes in the Supreme Court can on this score be quite revealing. We do not know why these things happen, and we are prone to discount others\u2019 lacerations by comparison with our own.\u00a0 How many of us wish we had Syrian passports, Iraqi citizenship, or Ukrainian bank accounts this morning?<\/p>\n

Conscience keeps us from making God too small.<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My wife Jan drove home, that is, on July 8 at 7pm, heading to our summer house, coming with 7 miles of Peterboro at the tornado hour.\u00a0 She has never seen a darker sky, she says.\u00a0 And if she had not gotten home?\u00a0 That is, if our family were now living with the tornado tragedy and loss inflicted on others?\u00a0 I would be of great gratitude, at a minimum, to find myself surrounded, as this morning, by a company of women and men, honest about hurt, graceful in grief, dignified in the hour of death, and loving in the face of meaningless, inexplicable, unintelligible laceration.\u00a0 But I know I would harbor, for the long stretch of healing it would take, a white hot anger at the injustice of such a loss.<\/p>\n

We are left to wonder in conscience about \u2018the things that are God\u2019s\u2019.\u00a0 What are they?\u00a0\u00a0 Are they wonder and conscience\u2014the starry heavens above and the moral law within?\u00a0 Wonder and conscience?\u00a0 Wonder and conscience, spirit and soul, things of God.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

I believe in God.\u00a0 I believe in the creative divine power that unleashed the universe. \u00a0I believe that no one has ever seen God.\u00a0 I believe in the potential for a purposeful existence by faith, the faithfulness of God in Christ in my case.\u00a0 I believe that even the darkest moment and harshest experience is held, included, embraced and redeemed in the divine love, as a mystery and as a hope.<\/p>\n

I believe in freedom.\u00a0 I do not believe that God has a plan for every single life, free of human freedom.\u00a0 I do not believe that God has a map quest route for your life, nor that God sends tornados to chew up poor towns with rich histories, nor that God brutally executes young mothers and little children living in mobile homes.\u00a0 I do not believe that everything has a purpose, that everything is beautiful in its own way, that we will understand it better by and by, or that all experience is directly, divinely, precisely ordered.\u00a0 Who would worship a God like that?<\/p>\n

I believe in love.\u00a0 The gospel is the gospel of freedom, of grace, of love, of pardon, of forgiveness, of acceptance, of healing, and of hope.\u00a0 I believe all of us are better when we are loved by others and when we connect in faith with divine love.\u00a0 \u00a0For me, the statement, God is Love, is about the second not the first person of the Trinity. For those looking today for a more formally exacting or exacting theological position, my heart felt regrets and condolences.<\/p>\n

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/a><\/p>\n

If you would like more information about Marsh Chapel at Boston University, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you would like information about donating to the Chapel, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew 22:15-22 Click here to hear the full service Click here to hear the sermon only Frontispiece We are left to wonder in conscience about \u2018the things that are God\u2019s\u2019.\u00a0 What are they?\u00a0 We are not told.\u00a0 There is no live interview from the heavenly conference room.\u00a0 There is no point-by-point bulletin, with details promised […]<\/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\/983"}],"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=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1006,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions\/1006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}