Toward a Common Hope. Robert Allan Hill

      Toward a Common Hope

      Chautauqua Lake Sermons

      Copyright © 2018 Robert Allan Hill. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Wipf & Stock

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-5741-2

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-5742-9

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-5743-6

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 12/03/18

      Preface

      In August of 2017, Jan and I had the privilege of enjoying the unique setting, surroundings, program, and leadership of The Chautauqua Institution. From August 6th to 13th, we were engaged in the music, lectures, discussions, dinners, and informal conversations which make Chautauqua such a unique and powerful means and mode of grace, summer by summer. This book of sermons collects those preached in that week (the first six), along with others that had been brought along in reserve (the last five), as it were, in case they were needed.

      The Spaniards have a term and tradition to identify a form of ongoing, lengthy, easy conversation which is somewhat harder to come by here in America—una tertulia—an engaged and engaging conversation. Chautauqua, though ruggedly American, rural not urban, still historically Methodist, and altogether different from the paseos and taverns of Madrid, Segovia, or Barcelona, does share the same regard (even reverence) for conversation. We would like to thank those friends, old and new, with whom we spoke at Chautauqua, for their heart, mind, and spirit, generously shared on the porches, along the lakeside, over dinner, and on the walkways of the Institution, which is so precious and unique to New York and to the United States.

      In particular, we express our thanks for the warm hospitality and unstinting kindness of Chautauqua’s leaders, including but not limited to President Michael Hill; Department of Religion Director, the Rev. Dr. Robert Franklin: and Department of Religion Associate Director (now in fact director herself), Ms. Maureen Rovegno.

      In the evenings, walking on the bank of the Charles River in Boston, something of the spirit of Chautauqua strides along with us, week by week, and a shimmering reminder of learning harnessed to piety, a glimpse of what gracious life can be, and the tunes and words of sacred hymns meant for singing in the warm open summer air: Now on land and sea descending brings the night its peace profound; let our vesper hymn be blending with the holy calm around; Jubilate! Jubilate! Jubilate! Amen; let our vesper hymn be blending with the holy calm around.

      The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill

      Dean, Marsh Chapel

      Professor, New Testament and Pastoral Theology

      Chaplain to the University, Office of Religious Life

      Boston University

      6173583394

      [email protected]

      The Sermon on the Mound

      Galatians 5:1

      Sunday, August 6th, 2017

Out on the Massachusetts Bay, in the autumn of 1630, Governor Jonathan Winthrop spoke to frightened pilgrims, half of whom would be dead before spring. One can try to imagine the rolling of the frigate in the surf, out on the Atlantic. One can feel the salt breeze, the water wind of the sea. The Governor is brief, in his sermon for the day: “We must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.”1 A remarkable, truly remarkable warning to our country at the moment of its inception.

      It is a cold day in early March, 1865. Four score and eight years after Independence, the nation has indeed become, as Winthrop prophesied in his Boston sermon, “a story and byword through the world.” 600,000 men will have died by the time Lee and Grant meet at Appomattox, approximately one death for every 10 slaves forcibly brought to the New World. This day in March, Mr. Lincoln delivers his own sermon, to the gathered and—we may assume—chastened congress. It is Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address:

      The Almighty has His own purposes . . . Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether’.’

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work that we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.2

      Into the next decade, the state of Mississippi will spend 20 percent of its annual budget, each year, for artificial limbs. Lincoln himself will die within weeks.

Now we witness another gathering, and we hear another sermon. A hundred more years have passed. It is August 28th, 1963, a sweltering day in the nation’s capital. Hundreds of thousands of women and men have gathered within earshot of Lincoln’s memorial and within earshot of his Second Inaugural. They have come—maybe some of you were there—with firmness in the right as God gives to see the right, to strive to finish the work. A Baptist preacher captures the moment in ringing oratory: “I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down at the table of brotherhood.”3

      Winthrop. Lincoln. King. 1630. 1865. 1963. These are the three greatest sermons ever preached in our country’s history. Do you notice that not one of them was delivered in a church? Yet they all interpret the church’s Gospel to the land of the free and the home of the brave.

      Winthrop. Lincoln. King. They believed in God’s providence. They trusted, through terror, in God’s favor. They thought that persons, that even they themselves, had roles to play in the divine drama. They warned of tragedy, they endured tragedy, and they honestly acknowledged tragedy. What Winthrop prophesied, what Lincoln witnessed, and what King attacked is our national tragedy still. We still judge by the color of skin and not by the content of character. And now, in this year of our Lord 2017, we see across the land a shredding of inherited forms of civil society on a weekly basis, a shredding of healthy culture, a shredding of respect for language, rhetoric, and speech—tweet by tweet by blessed tweet.

      But God has not left us nor does God abandon God’s children. God works through human hearts to bind up the nation’s wounds. It is the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and this alone, which will bring peace. The church has nothing better to do, nothing other to do, nothing more important to do, and nothing else to do than to preach. Preaching is everything, the whole nine yards. Let others be anxious and fretful over much service: you are a Christian—sit