Opening Convocation Address 05
Repairing the breach
Isaiah 58
Mark 6: 30-44
On Prayer,
You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word is
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that even if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.
Czeslaw Milosz
We are gathered here to mark the beginning of another academic year in the life of Andover Newton Theological School. With it comes the renewal of many fine traditions; honored, remembered and repeated through the generations. The formal academic procession, the celebration of a new class of students and the promise they embody, the formal declaration of beginning of classes, and varied expressions of our prayers for the school and its noble mission, are all outward and visible signs of what we believe are enduring truths about who we are and what we aspire to be. Convocation is, you might say, one of the sacraments of our institution.
Of course the reality is sometimes at a distance from these fine symbolic expressions, isn’t it? The faculty is anxious about their work load, how many boring meetings they will have to attend this year, their ample minds conspire to blast a window into the classroom in Davis 201, and they dream of the day their president will come through with the raise everyone but him seems to know they deserve! The trustees are thinking about how much money the school needs to raise and how much of it they will be asked to personally fork over! The students are trying to untangle the maze of the curriculum requirements, figuring out how to convince the Extreme Makeover TV show to adopt Farwell Hall for its next project, and wondering if you can really end up in debtor’s prison for defaulting scholarship loans! Finally there is the staff, who, ever-so-politely, sits mulling over the fact that, for yet another year, they will be expected to walk on water while carrying everybody else here on their backs!
Now, I recognize these cartoons are not the whole truth. I am well aware of the respect you carry for Andover Newton and its traditions. But the kernel of truth in my teasing is something I’m sure you all recognize. That’s the trouble with sacraments. They are supposed to point to something greater, not lesser; something substantial, not thin. Yet, too often that is precisely what happens, isn’t it? The selfish demons that surround us seem to conspire so that we lose touch with the substance – the enduring truths – that we profess under girds what we do. Our words and our pieties are exposed to be at a distance from our actions. We are found insincere; divided from the things we value the most. And, like so many others, we usually see these failings far more clearly in others than we see them in ourselves.
In the 58th Chapter of Isaiah the prophet speaks eloquently of this disease of insincerity as it consumed the house of Jacob. The people of Israel’s have always celebrated the decisive moments of God’s revelation. Similarly, times of personal and national crisis were marked by fasting as an act of contrition and repentance before God. It was largely in the post-exilic period that public fasts came to be widely observed, but there was an unusual time of moral confusion and empty religiosity that haunted those early years of return. Pious words were on everyone’s lips, but the country was a mess. It is in this context that the Hebrew scripture places us. The people who have been so pious and outwardly faithful in their fasting have complained that God has not heard their prayers. In response a sarcastic and scolding prophet offers God’s judgment: “You’ve got to be kidding! You act so humble and contrite, you go through all the motions, and you call that a fast! Don’t be hypocrites!”
Is this not the kind of fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke and let the oppressed go free…. Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked to cover them, and not hide yourself from your own kin?
When you finally get around to doing these things, when you finally learn what righteous living is all about,
then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like a noon day. In that day you will be like a well watered garden, like a spring that never fails. Your people will rebuild ancient ruins and raise up the age-old foundations. You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
God will answer them and be with them, but only once they figure out how to live righteously. Now ‘righteousness’ is not a concept that we use much these days, but it would behoove us to consider it more fully. It has been observed that we Christians have a long-standing love affair with doctrine and only secondarily begin to address the ethics of how we live. As David Gordis would be eager to teach us, Judaism does just the opposite. For all the intellectualism and vigorous debate in the Jewish religion, it rates living a good life on a higher ground. Essential to living a good life is my obligation to see the divinity in you: To grant to you and insist that others grant to you the same reverence, solitude and freedom I claim for myself as a child of God. To this obligation there are no exceptions. Similarly, these obligations extend to societies as well as individuals. Rabbi Steinberg has said that righteousness demands that every person old enough to know what is going on and strong enough to do something about it is responsible more or less directly for every injustice committed by our nation, our economy, class or the institution of which we are a part. [1] That is a level of responsibility we are not used to carrying. We’d rather point and blame than confess and commit.
In the Hebrew scripture righteousness is the fulfillment of the demands of a relationship, whether with God or humanity; indeed, the two are inextricably joined. You can’t fulfill the covenant with God if you deny justice to your neighbor. You are called to care for the poor and the oppressed and all those whom your society rejects and avoids. You are to be a peacemaker. And as Isaiah says, “You are not to hide yourself from your own kin.” When you can get out of the places that make you comfortable and safe, when you can recognize the humanity you share with those on the margins of life, you will finally start living the gospel you preach, and – get this! – Miracles will happen. God will be with you. You will walk that aerial bridge transformed by a magic stopping of the sun. And you will be called the repairer of the breach.
Of all the painful images I have seen of the devastation in New Orleans from hurricane Katrina, none haunts me more than the pictures of the broken levees. The symbolic commentary they offer on our nation’s priorities, our neglect of the poor, our racism, the true costs of war is staggering. Millions of gallons of water rushed through the breach in those walls engulfing, drowning and laying indiscriminate waste to thousands of lives. Those who have suffered the most are the poorest, and most of them are black. Twenty-seven percent of New Orleans residents lived below the poverty line, and many of those simply had no cars, or no money, and no way to leave. That’s not a natural disaster, that’s a national scandal. The poverty rate, and the gap between rich and poor, continues to increase in this nation, and that’s a national disgrace. Each and every gallon of water that poured through those broken levees is a shameful indictment we will never escape. And here’s what’s even harder: those breached levees are but one symbolic instance of a culture of neglect and distorted priorities. Far beyond the geography of the Gulf Coast, there are countless other levees of prejudice, fear, hatred, and poverty that are on the verge of bursting too. It is a truth we must at long last come to terms with, confess aloud, and seek forgiveness for.
The prophet’s voice travels through the centuries and echoes hauntingly in our ears.
Yet, just as Isaiah brings a stinging indictment of our shallowness, so too does he reveal God’s love for us. He tells us of God’s unyielding faithfulness to us despite our transgressions. Here’s the incredible good news: God’s covenant with us remains unbroken! For those who are prepared to live righteously, the enduring promise of restoration and reconciliation is ever alive.
This phrase ‘repairer of the breach,’ or as some translations have it ‘restorer of broken walls,’ is a wonderful image. It suggests that not only will those who have learned to live righteously be able to rebuild the ruined holy places in their lives, but they will be able to restore their broken relationship with humanity and, above all, their broken relationship with God.
At Andover Newton we believe that there is no other calling as urgent and as central to God’s reconciling love in Jesus Christ as this. This is the path of righteousness the prophets called us to follow. In Christ is an abundance to feed the multitude when all anyone else can see is scarcity and food for a few. In Christ is the ability to bring everyone to the table, especially those on the margins of life. In him we all can experience God’s healing love. In him we become repairers of the breach.
That’s why this year we have taken “Repairing the Breach” as our theme. Time and again you will see this idea played out in our academic and community life. It is why we have reached an agreement with the City Mission Society to create to opportunities for learning and service with the urban poor. It is why we are building one of the most unique partnerships in the nation with Hebrew College; a partnership that will make this Hill an epicenter of interreligious learning and dialogue. Among other things we host the International Interreligious Summer School here, bringing key Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders from around the world to our campus. That’s why our trustees today voted to enter a covenant with Bangor Theological School that envisions our schools will have a common future. That’s why you will see the United Nation’s Women’s Resource Network hold its conference here in early October. That’s why we will be offering the school’s first Stuart Lecture Series on Ethics, entitled “Beyond Business and Usual: Faith and Ethics Go to Work,” bringing some of the nation’s leading ethicists to the Hill. That’s why we’ve begun planning an historic dialogue of reconciliation between the Unitarian Universalists and the United Church of Christ. And that’s why I am pleased to share that our entire campus will be responding to the crisis on the Gulf Coast by helping to rebuild two African American churches in New Orleans.
And you shall be called repairers of the breach.
So it is that we come again to consider what we do here this day. We are assembled here to celebrate the beginning of a new academic year. May it be that what we convoke here is not empty ritual, all pomp and no circumstance. Rather let our commitment be that this will be a true sacramental act for Andover Newton Theological School. May it be that what we do here this day points to something great, righteous and worthy.
John deGrucy has said that ‘Sacraments are communal acts of remembering that symbolize the overcoming of the separation of between humanity and God. The sacraments, rightly understood and practiced, are essential for building the Christian community and its witness to God’s reconciliation.’ [2] Sacraments unite our fragmented lives, pointing directly to Christ’s reconciling work in the world. They say that we are born into the newness of life. They say that all will be fed and that all shall be sheltered; that a broken world can be rebuilt and that swords can be beaten into plowshares. They say that those who thirst will be quenched and that those who are sick will be healed! They say that all, all, are welcome in the Beloved Community!
Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught us that this Beloved Community we envision exists between our words and our sacraments. Too often, however, the gulf between the gospel preached and the gospel lived has been lost in our superficial, materialistic and hurried world. [3] And with that loss we also lose our hope for building the Beloved Community. So, if we truly seek this Promised Land, we must accept this great responsibility: to live a life where our preaching and our doing are one. We must be worthy witnesses.
The reuniting of sacrament and word is necessary for the transformation of the church. [4] Our ability to live righteously, to seek justice and walk humbly with our God is necessary for our own transformation and the transformation of the world we care so much about. Each of us here – students and faculty, staff and trustees, alums and friends – can be sacramental witnesses of reconciliation.
You shall be my witnesses; radical disciples of a new age! Yes, a living prayer! You shall be transformed! You shall be called to be repairers of the breach!
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge,
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above the landscapes the color of ripe gold,
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
AMEN.
[1] Some words and concepts in this paragraph are borrowed from Basic Judaism, M. Steinberg
[2] Reconciliation: Restoring Justice John deGrucy
Other sources of inspiration:
Post Modern Pilgrims, L. Sweet
The Beloved Community, C. Marsh
Sages and Dreamers, Elie Wiesel
Notes from a weekend with Marcus Borg, St. Andrews Church (UMC), Denver, CO