St. Paul’s Church in
Bergen & Church of the Incarnation, Jersey City NJ
September 16, 2018
Year B, Proper 19:
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proverbs 1:20-33
Psalm 19
James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38
Our Elevator Pitch: Jesus Is Lord
On
Thursday night I missed what I’m told was a delicious Stone Soup supper because
I needed to be at another meeting of the Hudson County Freeholders.
In
the days leading up to the meeting, the County Executive and the Freeholders
had announced that they had come up with a plan – what they call a “path to
exit” – to gradually wind down Hudson County’s contract to hold ICE detainees
in our county jail.
But,
then, a day or two before the meeting, the Freeholders announced that they
weren’t yet ready to discuss and vote on this plan – that it was postponed
until October.
Having
been fooled before, there were still a large number of activists and lawyers
(and a couple of clergy) present and willing to let the Freeholders know what
they think about this important subject.
It
was a long and pretty tedious meeting and looking around I saw how many of us
were spending much of our time staring at our phones: texting, scrolling
through social media, playing games, whatever – all despite the posted signs
warning that “Use of Cellular Phones is Prohibited.”
Good
luck with that – because in this day and age most of us can hardly imagine
being separated from our phones even for the few hours of a freeholders meeting
– or even for the length of a church service!
This
constant connection and instant communication has all sorts of consequences and
effects – and one of them is that trends and fads are able to spread really
fast.
Though,
there’s nothing really new about fads.
I
remember as a kid the “pet rock” fad. Remember that?
Of
course, you could just pick up a rock
off the ground and make it your pet, but the preferred method was to head down
to 440, to Two Guys or Valley Fair, and spend your hard-earned money (or, more
likely, your parents’ hard-earned money) on a rock packaged in a box, that was
marked “Pet Rock.”
Over the years there have been the Cabbage Patch Kids, and Beanie Babies.
Over the years there have been the Cabbage Patch Kids, and Beanie Babies.
I
remember when I first started teaching there was the fad of girls wearing a
teething ring around their necks as a piece of jewelry – a fad that drove many
of the more enlightened teachers absolutely bananas!
In
more recent times, there’s been Pokemon Go and fidget spinners – and now
there’s something called Juul – a nicotine delivery system designed to look
like a product made by Apple – it looks sort of like a computer flash drive – meant
to get another generation hooked on tobacco.
The
church goes through its own fads, too.
Usually
they are mostly well-meaning and creative attempts to make the Church more
relevant or appealing to people who are not already churchgoers – well-meaning
attempts that, after a few years, sometimes may look a little misguided and
dated.
So,
there were Clown Masses (with, yes, the priest and others dressed as clowns)
for those who want nightmares after attending church.
There
was The Hip Hop Prayer Book and The Hip Hop Mass, and the U2charist, and just
recently Grace Cathedral in San Francisco hosted what it called a “Beyoncé
Mass.”
Now,
for the record, if any of this brings Christ to people, I’m all for it!
There
for a while it was kind of a fad in the church that we clergy should think of
ourselves as “spiritual entrepreneurs” – that we are not just caretakers of our
institutions and our people but we are meant to be self-starters – to build new
ministries for a new time.
The
term “entrepreneur” is problematic but there’s something to that, right? In
fact, I like to think that our Triangle Park Community Center is an example of
spiritual entrepreneurship.
And,
then a couple of years ago in the church, it was kind of a fad to talk a lot
about our “elevator pitch.”
Do
you know what this is?
It’s
is a concept that comes from the business world – a way to market yourself or
an idea.
“Elevator
pitch” means that we should be able to very quickly summarize a concept so that
someone can understand the basics – like if you had just a few moments in an
elevator to get your point across.
I
thought of elevator pitches when I began to reflect on the haunting and
profound questions that Jesus asks his followers in today’s Gospel lesson.
Questions
that Jesus asks us today.
“Who
do people say that I am?”
“Who
do you say that I am?”
It’s
not surprising that back then it seems that people had lots of different ideas
about who Jesus is – maybe not so different from today, I guess.
It’s
not surprising that back then people had lots of different ideas about who
Jesus is because the correct answer is so… unlikely.
Jesus
was raised by a couple of nobodies in Nowheresville, far from the political and
religious power of his day.
Jesus
was a poor man from the sticks who, as far, as anybody knew didn’t have much of
a pedigree – not from a well-known family – didn’t attend a great school or
study under one of the wise men of the time.
Jesus
was not particularly successful – his “movement,” if we can call it that,
didn’t add up to much in the eyes of the world. And, his shameful death would
have convinced most people that he was a total failure. Maybe worse than that,
probably most of the people of his time and place had no idea who Jesus was, no
idea that he lived and died, and no idea of what happened next.
And,
yet.
And,
yet, maybe surprisingly, it’s the Apostle Peter – who so often messed up and,
as we heard today, will in fact mess up in a big way in just a moment – it’s
Peter who answers the question best:
“Who
do you say that I am?”
“You are the
Messiah.”
And,
for two thousand years the Church has faced the challenge of how best to share
this most surprising, most life-changing news with the world.
In
the early days, long before the invention of the elevator, the Church came up
with what we might call its first elevator pitch:
“Jesus
is Lord.”
Of
course, the elevator pitch is just the start – but it’s an important start.
Because,
if Jesus is Lord then that changes everything – everything for us and for the
world.
If Jesus is Lord,
then the Caesars of the past and present are most definitely not lord,
definitely not in charge, despite all appearances to the contrary.
If
Jesus is Lord, then we know that God chose to come among us as a poor nobody
from Nowheresville – and we are called to love and serve God by loving and
serving those the world dismisses as nobodies today.
If
Jesus is Lord, then we should look for signs of the Holy in the most unlikely
locations – along Bergen Avenue, at Shop Rite, on the bus, in Dunkin Donuts…
If
Jesus is Lord, then we really are meant to love one another – to love even our
enemies – to love even those imprisoned by the state – to love even those
lacking the right paperwork, to love even those we are taught to hate and fear.
If
Jesus is Lord, then it’s going to cost us – to cost us our time and our money,
our gifts, and even our prejudices and judgments.
If
Jesus is Lord, then fads may come and go, empires may rise and fall, the storms
of life may sometimes knock us down, but we can never be separated from God’s
love – never, no matter what.
If
Jesus is Lord, then even when things don’t look so good and we’re so afraid, in
the end, love defeats death.
So,
whether we’re hip-hopping the Mass or singing with Beyoncé in the
cathedral or being spiritual entrepreneurs in Triangle Park or just going to
church in the same way and the same place we always have:
Jesus
is Lord.
Even
after everything, that is our elevator pitch.
Amen.
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