Susquehanna Morning

Susquehanna Morning

Monday, March 5, 2018

Lent 15: So This is Love, 1989, Part 2

In the spring of 1989 I was in the second semester of my degree program. I was taking three classes, and I also had a very, very part time gig as a music leader (planner, singer, guitarist) for a Sunday mass at Boston College's Newton Chapel. The mass had a rotation of priests each Sunday, as well as women from the theology department (BC also had women preaching at Saint Ignatius, a parish church on the main campus).

The chaplain who kept that rota going was also a good friend who had been a year ahead of me as an undergrad. One day (in person? on the phone? no memory of the specifics), she asked whether I would like to preach on the third Sunday in Lent. Without giving it much thought at all, I said "Sure!"

I'd never preached before, nor had I considered preaching. I was already seeing myself as someone in ministry, but I was also aware that the situation at BC (with women preaching) was the exception and not the rule (a fact that really made itself clear after moving from Massachusetts to the Southern Tier of New York, where I learned what the Catholic church was like outside the BC bubble). I'd always appreciated seeing a woman in the pulpit, which was about every 5-6 weeks. Now I would be that woman. Once, anyway.

The gospel for the day was the story of the Samaritan woman whom Jesus encounters at a well. I wasn't sure how to approach preaching the text, so I went to the O'Neill Library (named for former Speaker of the House/ BC alum Tip O'Neill). I looked up "Scripture, Gospel of John." I think I checked out three books.

I learned a lot about that passage. I learned that the Hebrew Scriptures contain several stories of in which a well figured significantly in the meeting and matching of couples-- Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Moses and Zipporah. I learned not to take the idea of the woman's five husbands too literally, as the idea that Samaritans worshiped five gods was a salvo typically leveled at Samaritans by Jews (because Samaritans had five shrines, whereas Jews had--by now--just the one).

I learned that a passage of scripture is a lot like a cave, which, once you light your torch, opens up and out, a room off to your right, a passage to your left, and a surprise in every nook and cranny. I learned that I loved being in that cave, and that I actually had a thirst to know, more and more, about that passage... and now, about other passages.

Around this time, Ned (the toddler) was developing his love for the musical cartoon genre (which would eventually become the musical theater genre, and then, simply theatre). Which is to say, we were watching a VHS tape of Disney's 1950 animated film Cinderella, at least once a day. This means that I also watched it-- or, at least, that is served as the background for my days at home.

So, with Cinderella's music in my head and my newfound love of scripture study taking over my heart, I set to writing my first sermon.

In the end, I stood up in the Newton Chapel and began the sermon by singing the song Cinderella and the prince share when they meet:

So this is love... hmmmm
So this is love.
So this is what makes life divine.
I'm all aglow...hmmmm
And now I know
A vision of heaven is mine.


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