Communion Meditation

The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill (Dean of the Chapel) preaches a sermon on Luke 4:21–30 entitled “Communion Meditation.” The Marsh Chapel Choir performs “LO god, who by the leading of a star” by Thomas Attwood, and “Ave verum corpus, Op. 166” by Mélanie “Mel”Bonis.

Bulletin

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Sermon Text

Opening

Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sin…

For the fruit of spirit is love…

We believe in God who has created and is creating….

Sacrament

Lead a new life…

Ten Commandments…

Shakespeare’s 66…

Tir’d with all these, for restful death I cry,

As, to behold desert a beggar born,

And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,

And purest faith unhappily forsworn,

And gilded honour shamefully misplac’d,

And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,

And right perfection wrongfully disgrac’d,

And strength by limping sway disabled,

And art made tongue-tied by authority,

And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,

And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,

And captive good attending captain ill.

Tir’d with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

Ground Hog Day 5: prayer, worship, journal, tithing, you.

RAH: conversations, center left and center right

Sacrament: mystery. The daily, the quotidian asperity and simplicity of the sacraments, baptism and communion, a bath and a meal, are not to adorned needlessly, but reverently, discreetly and in the fear of God.

Our parents taught us: the wise man built his house upon the rock…

Scripture

Again, the strange world of the Bible beckons us. St. Luke, you see, stands every day, every Sunday, before us, here in the nave of Marsh Chapel. Here is Jesus in all his Dominical Authority. Here too is Luke. The Scripture—mighty, ancient, holy—calls to us, today out of Gospel According to Luke. Luke evokes the uncanny.One day you awake, early, and are able to recall the contours of dream. Strange. One day, walking, your mind and memory are visited by a feeling gone fore years. One day, frightful this, news comes of a loved one’s death. One day you come to worship to worship. Behold the numinous, the uncanny, the mysterious, the strange, here, now, the strange world of the Bible.

*2. Today–Luke. (He is east of, stage left of Jesus. Matthew and Mark are west of, to the stage right of Jesus. Luke and John are to the stage left of Jesus. And you can hear that truth in more than one way (☺)).Those at the dawn of life…in the twilight of life…in the shadows of life…You too were strangers in the land of Egypt…as you have done it to the littlest of these you have done it also to me…Our Holy Scripture today places us, at first, in a thicket of problems and questions: The Scripture is fulfilled in its hearing. A prophet is not honored at home. Elijah and Elisha go to Sidon and Syria. The crowd is outraged and poises to attack. Jesus eases on down the road. What is going on here, in this strange world of the Bible, which beckons to us to leave behind our mercantile mediocrity?

*3. The Scripture is fulfilled, not in a perfectly just world, in a perfected justice, like that, frankly acclaimed in Isaiah, but in the Reader and the Voice. Isaiah’s literal prophecy was not fulfilled, and to date has yet been fulfilled. Another fulfillment Jesus acclaims: The resurrection is the preaching of the gospel. The gospel is more than justice. Now real religion, for sure, is never very far from justice. But justice, alone, the prophetic, alone, is not the gospel, some of the last fifty years of quasi-theological education to the contrary not with-standing. The gospel is bigger, truer, deeper–and more personal than that. The prophetic is a part but not the heart of the gospel. The prophetic tradition is a just part but not the full heart of the gospel…as Luke tartly reminds us today.

*4. That is, Elijah and Elisha here are remembered for a very particular reason, one at odds with justice. They have gone outside of Israel, outside of the community of faith, outside of the expected audience, and outside of their own prophetic tradition. With Israel hungry in famine, the chosen people awaiting rain water, Elijah comforts them not, not at all, but goes instead to a foreign land, that of Tyre and Sidon, to alone woman, a lone widow, a lone gentile. With Israel halt and lame and leprous, in need of healing and health care, Elisha comforts them not, and goes away into a foreign land and heals a Syrian, a lone gentile. Jesus’ sermon at home, where, as with every prophet, he faces a tough home crowd, explodes the minor, limited appeal of justice…to universalize, to preach, the gospel. The gospel is not justice…but love. No wonder the crowd is so angry. The gospel moves away from the interior to the exterior, from the expected to the unexpected, from the just to the loving, from the familiar…to the strange. In our passage, Luke has given us the whole of his mysterious gospel in miniature. He has given us a prototypical text: Isaiah, 61, with its theme of deliverance to those who are hurting. He has given us, next, a reminder that God works in God’s own ways, as he did in the days of Elijah and Elisha, when those outside of the faith community were helped first. He has given us a warning, through the threat of the crowd to throw Jesus to death, of what awaits Him at the end of the road from Nazareth to Jerusalem. He has further given us a fragrant scent of promise, as Jesus escapes, the same sense we are given at Easter—death cannot hold him, even death cannot hold him, not even death can hold him. He is the Lily of the Valley…

*5. God is at work, at work in the world, at work in the world to make and keep human life human, often to the consternation and surprise of God’s very own people. (J Bennett).

(Strange, Luke, Prophetic, Elijah\Elisha, Bennett)

Closing

We believe in God the Father Almighty…

I lift up mine eyes to the hills…

Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sin…