Saturday, September 16, 2017

Peter Berger Remembrance, Boston University Alumni Weekend, 2017



Peter Berger: A Rumor of Angels
Marsh Chapel
Alumni Memorial Service
September 16, 2017
Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean

                        After my dad died seven years ago we began to go through his things, as families do.  Desk, tools, books, guns, clothes.  (Order, play, hope, justice, humor).  We did not make much progress at first.  After three years I noted:  ‘We still have not made that much. His desk, somewhat more ordered, is laden drawer after drawer.  The many tools, both inherited from earlier generations and purchased as needed over a life time, still lie here and there in the basement.  A doll house, made for a granddaughter and then taken in for repairs years ago, and then left unattended, did migrate to the home of the great grand daughter.  The guns—a relic of another time in the woods and deer hunting of northern New York—were carefully removed by two lawyer siblings.  The papers and records now are in boxes with little titles—an improvement of sorts. His clothes still hang in the old closet’. 
                        I was either assigned or self assigned or asked (or not) to begin to take care of the books, forty years worth of books in the lifetime library of a Methodist preacher whose preaching teacher at Boston University, Allan Knight Chalmers, for whom I was named, had admonished his pupils to read one book every day.   That is to say, there were more than a few books to look through.
                        I dawdled, lollygagged, procrastinated, avoided, and otherwise shirked my solemn duty.  I asked all those I could to go through the library and take at least two books.  The books are mostly signed and dated, and of course they have the personal underlining and notes which are typical for most of us.  I appropriated a few:  a set of Jacques Ellul, for a Lenten series two years ago; a few books from BU—Booth, Chalmers, Bowne; sermon collections from Weatherhead, Gomes, Tittle, Fosdick;  others.   But I found my progress slow and slower.  With each book, my willingness to skim and skip diminished.  I found my intrigue at his notes increasing, and my attention to his underlining expanding.  I dream on and off of a large oak door, heavy with metal locks and frame, unopened, chained shut:  my dad on one side and I on the other. In the lasting grief I feel at the earthly loss of my dad, it has happened that his preacher’s library has become a kind of spiritual bridge, a mode of ongoing conversation between us.
            There is range of life through which there radiates, like morning sunlight, high and deep and piercingly real experience.  Most of this range of experience is not, or not only, in worship or liturgy or ecclesiastical involvement or patterned devotion—these are of course crucial and important, but more as signposts than as the actual meadows and still waters of religious, that is to say non-religious, religious experience.
            One day this summer, on one of my less than fruitful forays into the library, I came upon a book, the title of which is borrowed for this morning’s sermon (A Rumor of Angels: NY, Doubleday, 1969—portions quoted below found therein).  Published in 1969, hardly more than 100 pages, accessible to clergy and lay alike, brisk and direct in style, sprinkled with salt and light in humor and aphorism, the book, it happens, was written by a Boston University colleague and friend of mine, the premier sociologist of religion of our time, Peter Berger.  Professor Berger has graciously endured lunches and conversation, including some semi-successful jokes, with me over these last few years.  I knew of this book, both its title and its general argument, which is that God is not dead, religion is not dead and religious experience is not entirely absent from this earthly vale of tears.  But I had never read it.  I stuffed the book in my bag.      
            It is hard to try to recreate the context, 1968, in which Berger was writing and thinking what hardly anyone else was thinking and writing.  I will not try to do so.  1. But try to imagine, or remember, a time when Time magazine’s cover read, ‘Is God Dead?’, or 2. when the most potent religious word was ‘secular’, or 3. when administrative malfeasance led to a drug experiment on Good Friday in the basement of Marsh Chapel, or 4. when the most successful camp meeting was a mud soaked musical weekend in the Upstate New York village of Woodstock.  Just when all hell was breaking loose, Berger wrote about heaven.   Like debate participants try to do, he caused people to take a second look at something, or someone.
            There is transcendence—he speaks of the ‘supernatural’—all about us.  Maybe that is why you have come, together, to worship on this Alumni weekend.  What are the signposts, the clues to transcendence we should look for—in our lived experience?  Berger’s summary still works.  You may be surprised by the clues he names, the rumors of angels he overhears…
            First, give a little credit to your own blessed rage for order.  Some of you are hoarders, of sorts, and bring order by refusing to get rid of anything.  Others are the very opposite, ‘when in doubt throw it out’.   You have a desire to see things set right, one way or another.  What were those kids doing at Woodstock, in the mud, listening to Janis Joplin, fifty years ago?  They were shouting to the heavens that things were not right, that something was out of order.  Berger:  A.  This is the human faith in order as such, a faith closely related to man’s fundamental trust in reality.  This faith is experienced not only in the history of societies and civilizations, but in the life of each individual—indeed, child psychologists tell us there can be no maturation without the presence of this faith at the outset of the socialization process. B. Man’s propensity for order is grounded in a faith or trust that, ultimately, reality is ‘in order’, ‘all right’, ‘as it should be’.  Do you have a longing for order? Underneath, just there, is a mode of religious experience.  Talk a bit about it, parents and children.
            Second, and swinging to a different spot, pause and meditate a little on your own enjoyment of play. 1. I see grown men enthralled on a green field following a wee little white ball, which seems to have a mind of its own, for three or four hours in the hot sun.  2. I see grown women shopping together without any particular need, but immersed, self forgetful, in the process of purchasing, God knows what.  3.I see emerging adults fixed and fixated, days on end, in the World of Warcraft.  4. Families were mesmerized this past summer, glued to gymnastics in England. 5.  Can you remember playing bridge in college all night long, to the detriment of your zoology grade?  Berger: A.In playing, one steps out of one time into another…When adults play with genuine joy, they momentarily regain the deathlessness of childhood(Viewers of the recent film Moonrise Kingdom readily understand this). The experience of joyful play is not something that must be sought on some mystical margin of existence.  It can readily be found in the reality of ordinary life…The religious justification of the experience can be achieved only in an act of faith…B.This faith is inductive—it does not rest on a mysterious revelation, but rather on what we experience in our common, ordinary lives…Religion is the final vindication of childhood and of joy, and of all gestures that replicate these.  One said: “I played basketball today, on the intramural team—it was awesome.”  Talk about it a bit, parents and children.
            Third, we sense the (my word) supranatural, the transcendent, in the experience of hope.  Hope does spring eternal in the human breast.  Hope keeps us going when otherwise we would not.  1. You may have seen Meryl  Streep and Tommy Lee Jones dramatize this in the midst of their struggling marriage.  The movie title:  ‘Hope Springs’.   2. Parents hope their children will thrive in college.  Students hope so too.  So do professors and administrators and Deans of Chapels.  We hope. There is something lasting, real, meaningful, costly and true about hope.  3. Where there is life there is hope.  Better:  where there is hope there is life.  People with no regular religion at all know about hope, and its absence.  Berger: A. Human existence is always oriented toward the future.  Man exists by constantly extending his being into the future, both in his consciousness and in his activity. B.  Put differently, man realizes himself in projects…It is through hope that men overcome the difficulties of the here and now. And it is through hope that men find meaning in the face of extreme suffering…There seems to be a death-refusing hope at the very core of our humanitas.  While empirical reason indicates that this hope is an illusion, there is something in us that, however shamefacedly in an age of triumphant rationality goes on saying ‘no!’ and even says ‘no’ to the ever so plausible explanation of empirical reason…Faith takes into account the intentions within our natural experience of hope that point toward a supernatural fulfillment.  I wonder if the generations sitting together in the pews this morning might, come Christmas, talk a bit about that most unreligious religious experience, a thing called hope, a place called hope, a time called hope, a feeling called hope? 
            Fourth, we have burning desire to see real justice done, and also to see massive injustice called to account.  Berger uses, well, the word damnation.  I am using slightly different language because I cannot make his argument as well with this word this morning.  It is too loaded.  But the heart of the intention is true and strong.  We want people who get away with murder not ultimately to get away with murder.  E Brunner, after WWII, was asked why he spoke about the devil:  Said he:  Two reasons.  Jesus did.  And I have seen him.  When we think of mass murder, of horrific injustice, intentionally and painstakingly executed, we demand justice.  There is something down deep in the human heart that just will not let things go.  This is not about forgiveness.  It is about retributive justice.  Sometimes young people have a keener sense of this than their elders.  Berger: This refers to experiences in which our sense of what is humanly permissible is so fundamentally outraged that the only adequate response to the offense as well as to the offender seems to be a curse of supernatural dimensions…A. There are certain deeds that cry out to heaven…Not only are we constrained to condemn, and to condemn absolutely, but ,if we should be in a position to do so, we would feel constrained to take action on the basis of that certainty…B.Deeds that cry out to heaven also cry out for hell…No human punishment is enough in the case of deeds as monstrous as these…(this is) a moral order that transcends the human community and thus invokes a retribution that is more than human.  When adults talk as adults, younger with older, there arise memories and understandings, dark in hue and deep in sentiment, that call out for an extraordinary, unearthly, transcendent justice.  How shall we talk about these?  Talk a bit, bit by bit, in the years to come, parents and children.
            Fifth, one can sense the horizon of heaven, the transcendent radiance of mystery, the supranatural or supernatural, in the simple experience of humor, perhaps the very polar opposite of the cry for retributive justice.  1. Here I will pause to tell an ostensibly humorous story.  I was asked to pray at the start of a billion dollar campaign.  My reply:  ‘It would be my pressure—I mean my pleasure.’  2. People ask about interreligious life on campus and I say:  ‘The Hindus are the most Christian people I deal with’.  3. Phyllis Diller died this year. You remember her husband:  Fang.  You remember her mother in law:  Moby Dick.  You remember her sister in law:  Captain Bligh.  You remember her self deprecation (‘I once wore peek a boo blouse.  One man peeked and then shouted ‘boo!’).  You remember her cackling laughter.  Humor, real humor, stops time still.  ‘He who sits in the heavens shall laugh’, says the psalmist.  Berger:  There is one fundamental discrepancy from which all other comic discrepancies are derived—the discrepancy between man and the universe…A. The comic reflects the imprisonment of the human spirit in the world…B.Humor mocks the ‘serious’ business of the world and the might who carry it out…Power is the final illusion, while laughter reveals the final truth…It is the Quixote’s hope rather than Sancho Panza’s ‘realism’ that is ultimately vindicated, and the gestures of the clown have a sacramental dignity.  When you gather at Thanksgiving table, after the prayer and before the turkey, tell one funny story, or one joke, or one humorous memory.  Talk a bit, talk a bit, talk a bit, parents and children.
                        Here is our theme:  Order, play, hope, justice, humor: religious experiences without recourse to religion. You may not be so religious, or so you think.  But do you create order, and crave play, and desire hope, and long for justice, and enjoy humor?  These are signs, for you, signs of something else, something lasting and true and good and extraordinary.  Talk a bit about it, parents and children.  As Bonnie Raitt put it:  let’s give them something to talk about!
                       

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

A FINE STUDENT PRAYER






Actions and Inactions, Marsh Chapel, September 10, 2017
Creator of the Universe,
It is a miracle. It is a miracle to be alive, and well.
We pray that we understand this in the wake of natural disaster and destruction. We pray for the victims of the earthquake in Mexico. We pray for those in the gulf and in the tropics who are recovering from hurricane Irma and hurricane Harvey. We pray for those preparing for Irma and Jose.
We pray that we see the miracle that it is to be alive, as collections of atoms forged in stars that over many years travelled through different cosmic events, until settling upon our mote of dust, where the remnants of dead stars became organic molecules, and then finally, life.
 We pray that we see the sacredness in what we are: momentary insignificant breaths of starry vapor, here for moments and then gone in cosmic timescales.
We pray that we see that, we, these brief beings, these brief breaths, can, through our actions, change the very nature and climate of the mote of dust we live on.
We pray that in the midst of our changing climate, we would see the significance in our action, or inaction.
We pray that, through the Ground of Being, we may see that inaction is action, and that all actions are significant.
We pray that You would move us, as beings grounded in You, to hear Your voice, and understand the gravity of our actions as beings, and of its impact on Nature, on Your creation.
And in it all, we pray that our lives reflect this understanding of significance, and that we hear Your calling, and move to the aid of our planet. We pray for researchers, for policy makers, and for leaders. We pray for every being to see where they have an impact, for we all live on this mote of dust together.
We pray for the leadership around the world, that bridges would be built and walls lowered. We pray that we see not only the significance of our lives, but also the significance of the lives of others.
For it is the One who took on insignificance to show significance that taught us that our actions done to other beings are actions done to You.
And if inaction is action, then we pray that our hearts would break for what breaks Your heart.
We pray for hope in the midst of these tensions, that we see the hope, and that we strive to live out as the hands and feet of the One who took on insignificance to show significance, and taught us what it meant to be,
                  And it is in the power of this One’s name, Jesus the Christ, that we pray,
Amen.
© Nickholas Leopoldo Rodriguez, September 2017

Friday, March 10, 2017

Hill Annual Report 2016



Annual Statistical Report
Robert Allan Hill
Boston University
Dean of Marsh Chapel, Professor of New Testament and Pastoral Theology, and Chaplain to the University
January 1, 2016—December 31, 2016

TEN  2016 Highlights: 13th RAH Book, Pastoral Preaching (Wipf and Stock, ISBN: 8781498297455),5/5/16; 1100 in 4 Easter services; 1474 (up from 1118, 2015) in Christmas week\Lessons and Carols services; University Chaplain for International Students, Ms. Jessica Chicka (full time, 1/1/16); New Assistant to the Dean, Ms. Heidi Freimanis), 12/19/16; Total 159 young women and men either entering or continuing in ministry, through Marsh Chapel, 2008-2016; 220 BU students active weekly in Marsh Chapel programs, worship, and groups;  Marsh Development Group second year; 21 national and regional guest speaking and preaching moments, in annual conferences, churches, colleges and other (*including full day with Baltimore Washington Conference 350 clergy, 11/15/16);

A.    Dean of Marsh Chapel: Preacher

1.Sunday Sermons and Services, both Marsh and elsewhere: 51  (bu.edu\chapel; deanhill.blogspot.com); Marsh Chapel Sunday worship services are broadcast in New England on NPR to 50K-80K; in addition, another 25K (up from 4K four years ago) listen by livestream or podcast, Sunday or midweek; the services are streamed on the BU website, for all 300K living BU alumni and others around the globe (weekly listeners in Paris, Beijing, Sao Paulo, Juno); the service is provided for the 40K resident BU faculty\students\administration and staff; 215 weekly average school year attendance.
2. Special Services: 21
ML King Observance, BU Baccalaureate\Commencement, BU Matriculation, BU Alumni Weekend Memorial, This I Believe, Marsh Matriculation Service, Lessons & Carols (2x), Blue Christmas, Annual Spring Term Ten (10) Prayers\Invocations)
3. Guest Speaking Events 2015: 17
UMFNE, Union Chapel NH, BU Lemoyne College, Fayetteville NY UMC,  Jay Halfond MET class (2x), STH Library, UNYACUMC Syracuse, Ithaca Forest Home Chapel UMC, RISEN District, Old South Church, Asbury Grove, Chicago and Cape Cod Weddings, BU Initiative on Cities Forum Chair, *Baltimore Washington Clergy Advent Retreat Day
4. Meetings, Weekly, Monthly, other: 16:
Marsh Staff, Marsh Advisory Board, Marsh Development Group, Faculty BUSTH, Faculty Area A and Area D BUSTH, Worship BUSTH, Dean’s Council, University Council, University Leadership Group, BU Faculty, Religious Life Council, BU Chaplains, New England Annual Conference Foundation Board and Marketing Committee, New England AC Development Committee, Harvard Epworth Wesley Foundation Board, Harvard Memorial Church Board of Visitors, Learning Project Board of Visitors
5. Visits: (office, home, hospital, other): 918 (not including daily 45min campus walk)
6. 2016 New Chapter Members Received 4:
Dr. Cara Stepp (BU, SAR); Ms. Jacquelyn Stucker (Marsh Choir), Ed Lynch, Susan Lynch (Stowe, NH)
7. Program Initiatives: 24; a. Marsh semester program expansion (see term book on website, bu.eu\chapel; b. Sunday Groups: Morning Study, International Study, Thurman Choir (non-audition), Advent\Lent Lectionary Sunday Study, Coffee Group, Monthly Lunch; c. Marsh Staff Hires (International Chaplain Ms. Jessica Chicka; Assistant to the Dean, Ms. Heidi Freimanis); d. Ministry\L Whitney Initiatives (goal 200 students in weekly worship and fellowship, in process); e. Music\S Jarrett Initiatives (6 ensembles:  Chapel Choir, Chapel Collegium, Inner Strength, Summer Choir, Thurman Choir, Lorelei); Bach Experience (4x\year); f. R Bouchard\Hospitality Initiatives (goal 250 worship attendance September to May in process (all but three Fall Term 2016 Sundays over 200, with additional December 2016 activities (New Member Breakfast 12/18, Additional Advertising, 1pm Christmas Eve, other); g. Continued Reliance on Strategic Plan; h. Motives Magazine (Marsh Annual Theological Journal) in process; i. 9 Hill Receptions and Open Houses at ‘Deanery’ (96 Bay State Road #10, including Jan’s first Sunday of the month 9:45am student brunch, plus Christmas Open House at Castle (200+ in attendance 2016); j. Subgroup Foci:  Friends of Music, Newlyweds, Radio Congregation, Weekly Visitors, Religious Life Council, 200 Students; k. Weekly ‘Dean’s Choice’ (one BU event chosen for announcement in worship and in bulletin); m. Expanded Parents’ Weekend and Alumni Weekend (Memorial Service) offerings; n. Work on Deanship endowment (total now close to $1M of $5M needed, 2 small gifts last year, the first since 1962); o. Significant building enhancement (Robinson Chapel, Dean’s Office, Windows) and other in process (narthex and access); p. Spring Term rugged week by week special needs and events q. 4th year for added 9am Easter Service (total 1,100K in attendance at 4 Easter Services); r. Christmas Eve grows to 2 services with strong attendance; s. Consistent Fall Theme Sundays, every Sunday from 8/30 to 11/22 (Summer Series, Matriculation, Labor Sunday, International Sunday, Alumni Sunday, Bach Sunday, World Communion Sunday, Columbus Sunday, Parents Weekend Sunday, Reformation Sunday, All Saints Sunday, Stewardship Sunday, Bach Sunday 2, Thanksgiving Sunday (then into Advent\Christmas); t. Marsh Ecumenical daily worship:  11am Sunday, 8pm Sunday (ISGC); 12 noon Monday; 6pm Monday Compline; 11am and 5:15pm Wednesday; 12:20 Thursday; u: Conversation theme (see separate report, *below)
8. 2016  Baptisms:  5
Brody Robert McDonald, Adelee Jean Erickson, Grayson Randle Storm, Landon Philip McBride, Maija Elizabeth Heikkla
9. 2016 Weddings  RAH officiant:  5
Klipp\Geuder; Duane\McCorrin; Rhode\Zenir; Woodward\Cattrachia; Ichigo\Takahasi
10. 2016 Funerals and Memorials:  7
Gregg Edward Schade, Jai Menon, Fr Vincent Makozi, Glendora Putnam, Austin Lamont, Owen Chen, Caroline Christian, Allen Joe Moore
  1. Professor of New Testament and Pastoral Theology: (Tenured Full Professor)
  1. Worship Service Wednesdays 11:10am
  2. STH monthly faculty meeting
  3. Annual STH Faculty Retreat
  4. 2016 RAH Publications:  1. Sunday Sermons, BU website; 2. One Book (thirteenth): Pastoral Preaching; 3. Robert Allan Hill Huffington Post Blog (new this year); 4. Autumn Sermon Series on Conversation; 5. Summer Sermon Series: The Lukan Horizon 6. Dean Hill’s Blog (deanhill.blogspot.com); 7. Weekly 2K communication (various actual and potential outlets: Huffington Post, GBHEM, Book Reviews, Boston Globe, other) 8. Weekly sermons: At 2500 words a sermon, the collection for 2016 would be 125,000 words, or two 300 page books.
  5. Courses 2016: Pastoral Leadership, Integration of Theology and Practice, The Gospel of John: BU; John: Lemoyne College
  6. Doctoral Defense Committees (3)
  7. STH Methodism Committee (no meetings)
  8. Areas A and D Monthly meetings
  9. One Ph.D. student:  Kathleen Troost-Cramer, writing on the Gospel of John *** Defended 4/15/16, graduated May 2016** (wonderful!!!)
C. Chaplain to the University and Dean of Religious Life

1. Daily 45 minute walks on campus and conversations.
2. BU Today Articles, other Religious Life Articles and Interviews (several): (see Marsh Website, ‘In the News’):
3. BU Matriculation, Alumni Awards, Senior Breakfast, Commencement, Multi-faith Dinner, and Baccalaureate prayers, other: 10 every spring
4. 43 (mostly part-time) paid staff at Marsh Chapel
5. Marsh Board of Advisors (29 persons), May and September
6. Pastoral Counseling: 102 (sacramental and personal moments, part of total visits above).
8. Open Houses\Receptions\Dinners in 96 Bay State Residence: 9
(Staff, Parent’s Weekend, Appetizer Group November, Christmas Sunday Open House, October BSR 96, Christmas Party, Valentines, Patriot’s Day Brunch, Book Club, other)
9. Student Deaths 2016: 4
Benjamin Meit, Jai Menon, Juliana Jackson, Owen Chen
Other BU: Sophie Hobson, Elaine Kirschenbaum, Josiah Epps
10. Administration:  Oversight of 6 University Chaplains and 25 Campus Ministers, 43 internal Marsh Staff (see sign boards and web site).  Most Difficult 2012-2016 : Hillel Transition Hours (250 hours). (As of 2013 all BU chaplains are new since my arrival). Annual Marsh income target set and met at 1/14 of expenses.
11.  Sampling of authors read in 2016: Proust (finished the two volumes of ‘Le Recherche de Temps Perdu’!), Turkle, Brooks, Cole, Coats, Russo, Hart, Bacevich.  Summer Writing Quota of 1 page\day.
12. December Christmas\Holiday events attended BU: 33 (fascinating community pattern)
13. Travel, person and\or work:  Tampa, San Diego, Rochester, Syracuse, New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, San Antonio.  Four family events:  Christopher’s marriage (3x); Mother’s Transfer to Nursing Home and House Clean out and Sale; Summer Time with Grandchildren; Health Issues.
14. Tithe (details available on request)
15. Christmas Pastoral Phone Calls:  64
17.10 Continuing Education Events\Retreats Annually: 2 UMC Annual Conferences (UNYAC, NEAC), 2 AAR\SBL (national, regional), 2 NHTDG (spring, fall), 2 BU (Provost, STH), 2 Marsh (August, February).
18. 2017 Goals (2x2!):  20 Pounds (lose 20); 2 AAR\SBL Papers (John and Bach); Weekly 2’s (250 worship attendance, 25 personal visits, audience of 2K publication each week); 2 Building Improvements (Narthex and Access); 2 International\National Preaching Moments (Chautauqua\August, and one other); 2 Ministry Advances.





*Autumn 2016 Weekly\Regular Marsh Chapel Conversation Groups:

Global:  Yoga (10), FY101 (20), International Dinner (10), Monday Meditations (5), Interfaith Council (10), Creative Arts (10), Religion on Tap(10) );

Ministry: (Monday Dinner (20), children’s ministry (10), FY101 (20), Ministry Staff Weekly (15), Noon Thursday Silence (5), Sunday Morning Adult Study (10), RAH Bible Study (5), BUUMF (5), Abolitionist Chapel (10), Confucian Group (20), ISGC (30) Common Ground Communion (20), Compline Monday (10), Wednesday Eucharist (10), ‘Daily Devotions’ (200); Intercessory Prayer Sunday (5));

Hospitality: (Office Staff (10), Religious Life Council (20), Marsh Advisory Board (20), Evangelical Campus Ministers Prayer Circle (10), Development Task Force (10), Weekly Senior Staff (10),

Music: (Chapel Choir (40), Collegium (40), Summer Choir (20), ISGC (30), Thurman Choir (20), Lorelei (10), Take Note (10), In Choro Novo (35)