Encircling Each Other in Love

St. Paul’s Church in Bergen, Jersey City NJ

May 26, 2013

Year C: The First Sunday after Pentecost – Trinity Sunday

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Psalm 8

Romans 5:1-5

John 16:12-15

Encircling Each Other in Love

            One thing we know for sure about Jesus is that he was pretty unhappy with a lot of religious people back in the First Century. (And most of the religious people weren’t too crazy about Jesus, either.)

            Over and over throughout the gospels we hear stories of Jesus condemning religious people for their hypocrisy – preaching one thing yet practicing something very different.

            Over and over throughout the gospels we hear stories of Jesus criticizing religious people for their arrogance – for thinking that they were better than other people, superior to those dirty sinners who obviously were despised by God.

            And over and over throughout the gospels we hear stories of Jesus challenging religious people to realize that they didn’t know God quite as well as they thought they did.

            Through his life, death and resurrection, Jesus reveals that God’s love is far greater – far wider – than anyone had ever imagined.

            Unfortunately, often religious people have a hard time getting – hard time accepting - the generosity of God’s love.

            The other day Pope Francis got a lot of religious Christians very upset by something he said. It’s become the pope’s custom at weekday mass to offer brief, informal homilies without notes, giving a real sense of his thoughts and his heart.

            Anyway, the other day in one of his homilies the pope said, "The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ, all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! 'Father, the atheists?' Even the atheists. Everyone!" We must meet one another doing good. 'But I don't believe, Father, I am an atheist!' But do good: we will meet one another there."

            I guess it’s no surprise that in our own time there are plenty of religious people who are not so different from those religious people Jesus had such a hard time with two thousand years ago.

            Plenty of religious people today – probably including us, at least sometimes, are hypocrites – preaching and proclaiming one thing, yet practicing something very different.

            Plenty of religious people today – probably including us, at least sometimes, are arrogant, thinking that we’re better than other people, superior to those dirty sinners out there – better than those atheists! - who are obviously despised by God.

            Plenty of religious people today – probably including us, at least sometimes, think we know God very well – and are not open to the reality that God’s love is far greater – far wider – than we had ever imagined.

            Well, every year on the First Sunday after Pentecost, the Church gives us the opportunity to reflect on how much we don’t know – and, also, on how much we do know – about God.

            It’s Trinity Sunday – a day to reflect on the great mystery of one God in three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

            God is an inexhaustible mystery. Our language is always inadequate when it comes to describing – let alone understanding – God.

            Sounding a bit like a Buddhist, the great theologian St. Augustine once said, “If you comprehend something, it is not God.”

            But, at the same time, God wants to be known by us. And God can be known through Scripture, through the witness of faithful people through the ages, and through creation itself. So, today and every day we are invited to ponder God, to reflect on God, and to meditate on God. We are invited to get to know God better.

            And for two thousand years Christians have been doing just that. And over the first few centuries of Christian history, some thinkers came to realize that we experience the one holy and living God as three: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

            For a long time – and still to some extent – Christians have argued and sometimes even killed each other over how God can be Three in One and exactly how the three Persons of the Trinity relate to each other. Meanwhile our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters throw up their hands in dismay, dismissing us Christians as closet polytheists.

            Out of all the Christian images of the Trinity, the one that I find most powerful is the Trinity as an eternal dance – a never-ending dance among the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – an unending dance as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit encircle each other in love.

            Now, I guess the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit could have danced away, encircling each other forever and ever alone in a perfect, self-contained community of love.

            But, since God’s love is far greater – far wider – than we can imagine, God chose – God chooses – through Jesus to widen the circle to include all of creation – to include even the atheists – to include even us.

            God wants us to be part of the eternal dance. God wants to encircle us with love. God wants us to encircle each other – to encircle the whole world – in love.

            So, we’re left with a choice.

            We can reject God’s invitation to the dance.

            Or, we say yes. We can allow the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit to encircle us with love.

            We can say yes and encircle each other with love.

            We can say yes and encircle with love the people we don’t like, the people who never say thank you, the people who are different from us, the people who don’t like us or maybe even hate us.

            We can say yes and encircle with love the people who have so little, the people who have lost so much, the people who are frightened – or who frighten us, the people who don’t seem too bright – or who seem too smart for their own good.

            We can say yes and encircle with love our city, broken by poverty, violence, corruption and despair.

            We can say yes and encircle with love the Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and, yes, even the atheists who live all around us.

            We can say yes and encircle with love God’s good creation by nurturing our own little plot of soil here on Duncan Avenue and by challenging each other and our government to be far better stewards of the earth battered and bruised by us.

            Every year on the First Sunday after Pentecost, the Church gives us the opportunity to reflect on how much we don’t know – and how much we do know – about God.

            It’s Trinity Sunday – a day to reflect on the great mystery of one God in three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

            God is an inexhaustible mystery. Our language is always inadequate when it comes to describing – let alone understanding – God.

            But, God wants to be known by us.

            And through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we know that God’s love is far greater – far wider – than we can imagine.

            God – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – are in an eternal dance, encircling each other in love.

            And God wants us to be part of the eternal dance. God wants to encircle us with love. God wants us to encircle each other – to encircle the whole world – in love.

            May it be so.

            Amen.

              

The Holy Spirit, Fiery and Comforting

St. Paul’s Church in Bergen, Jersey City NJ

May 19, 2013

Year C: The Day of Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21

Psalm 104: 25-35, 37

Romans 8:14-17

John 14: 8-17, 25-27

The Holy Spirit, Fiery and Comforting

            Happy Pentecost!

            Pentecost is a very big day in the church. In fact, Pentecost is the feast second in importance only to Easter.

            Pentecost, fifty days after Easter, is the day we remember and celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to the disciples in Jerusalem some two thousand years ago.

            Pentecost is the day that we remember and celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to Christians throughout the ages.

            Pentecost is the day that we remember and celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to us here today.

            And, actually, the Feast of Pentecost has its roots in the Old Testament, so it’s much older than Christianity. It was and still is a feast celebrated by Jews fifty days after the great feast of Passover.

            Pentecost began as a harvest festival – a time when the Jewish people would offer some of their crops – offer their best - their “first fruits” - in thanksgiving to God. 

            Later, it lost most of its agricultural meaning and instead became a day to remember and celebrate the gift of the Law to Moses.

            So, it’s not clear what exactly was being celebrated on that Pentecost in Jerusalem back two thousand years ago. But, as we heard in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, whatever they were celebrating had attracted Jews from all around the known world and it had also attracted the little group of Jesus’ followers.

            At the start of the Pentecost story in Acts, the author gives an important detail. The disciples “were all together in one place.”

            Now, on the one hand this could mean that the disciples were all together in the house having a happy Pentecost party.

            But, that doesn’t seem likely.

            Instead, it seems like the disciples who had recently been through so much – Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension – were frightened and lost without their leader, their teacher, their friend – frightened and lost without Jesus. So, on that great feast they were all together in a house in Jerusalem, frightened and lost.

            And then, suddenly, everything changed.

            We’re told there was a loud sound from heaven like a rushing wind – a loud sound that filled their house.

            “Divided tongues, as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.”

            And, somehow, the disciples were able to speak in many different languages. The disciples were able to tell the whole world the Good News of Jesus. And the Church was born.

            Because of that description of “divided tongues, as of fire” it’s the custom to wear red on Pentecost. It’s been the custom that red is the color of the Holy Spirit.

            Back on that day in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, the Holy Spirit really was red – really was fiery – burning away the fear and doubt of the disciples, purifying them so that they could be courageous witnesses of Jesus, inspiring them to love their neighbors, fortifying them to begin the work of building the Church.

            And the Holy Spirit is still fiery, burning away our fear and doubt, purifying us to be courageous witnesses of Jesus, inspiring us to love our neighbors, fortifying us to build up the Church.

            It may not have been quite as dramatic as what happened two thousand years ago in Jerusalem, but I bet many of us have experienced this fiery red Holy Spirit.

            I bet many of us have experienced the Holy Spirit on fire in and around us, transforming our lives.

            I’ve experienced that fiery Holy Spirit a few times in my life. Most recently, it was the fiery Holy Spirit that somehow managed to get St. Paul’s and Sue and me back together again.

            As Pauline and the vestry and some of you know, it took some doing to make this happen. From the start it felt right to me – it felt like I had been ordained to be your rector – but there were plenty of obstacles and twists and turns along the way.

            Yet, each time we reached what looked like a roadblock, it felt to me like the Holy Spirit just burned on through, inspiring us and inspiring the bishop and others at the diocese to figure out a way forward.

            And, actually, the fiery red Holy Spirit visits St. Paul’s on a regular basis.

            Last Sunday I mentioned how much I love the Exchange of Peace here. And, tell me, doesn’t that feel a lot like Pentecost every week? All of us – from around the corner and around the world – all of us – whether we grew up in these pews or just arrived at St. Paul’s a few weeks ago – all of us – whether we’re lifelong Episcopalians or we don’t even know how to spell “Episcopalian” – all of us – reach out and offer God’s peace and God’s love to one another.

            The fiery Holy Spirit visits this place all the time.

            But, that’s not the only way we experience the power and love of the Holy Spirit.

            The Holy Spirit is not always fiery. The Holy Spirit can also be comforting. And here at St. Paul’s, the Holy Spirit also comes in… blue. Just look at the beautiful window behind you. And the comforting blue Holy Spirit represented by that window really is here – really is with us – all the time.

            We hear about the comforting Holy Spirit in today’s gospel lesson.

            Once again we’re back at the Last Supper – back in the “Farewell Discourse” when Jesus is trying – one last time - to teach his disciples what’s most important.

            Jesus tells them that he is going to ask God the Father to send an Advocate to be with them – to be with us – forever. And Jesus says that we are going to have a very personal, even intimate, relationship with this Advocate – with the Holy Spirit.

            Jesus says that we know the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit abides with us. We know the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is in us.

            This is another dimension to the Holy Spirit. Yes the Holy Spirit can be fiery, nearly knocking us over with power, transforming our lives, sending us off in totally unexpected directions, or bringing us safely home.

            But, the Holy Spirit can also be comforting, living among and within us all the time. And here at St. Paul’s that beautiful round window up there behind you can remind us that the comforting blue Holy Spirit. is with us always.

            We experience the comforting Holy Spirit when we admit wrongdoing and ask forgiveness from a family member, a friend, a coworker or a classmate.

            We experience the comforting Holy Spirit when we let go of a grudge or resentment, when we offer forgiveness to those who wrong us or hurt us.

            We experience the comforting Holy Spirit when we lose a job, or suffer a broken relationship, or face an illness, or lose the one we loved most in the world, and somehow we’re able to move forward reassembling the pieces of our life – not the same as it was before and with gaps that can never be filled – but, still, life and love.

            Some of you know that at certain times the sunlight streams through that blue Holy Spirit window up there, coating our church in beautiful blue. I love that. And for me that blue glow symbolizes how the Holy Spirit coats us in love and comfort.

            So, today we celebrate Pentecost, fifty days after Easter, the day we remember and celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to the disciples in Jerusalem back some two thousand years ago.

            Today we celebrate Pentecost. We celebrate the gift of the fiery red Holy Spirit burning away fear and doubt, purifying, inspiring and fortifying the early disciples – and us.

            Today we celebrate Pentecost. We celebrate the gift of the comforting blue Holy Spirit abiding with the first disciples – abiding in us – living in us – always.

            And, like our Jewish brothers and sisters, on Pentecost and every day may we give thanks to God by offering our best – by offering our “first fruits.”

            Amen.                        

The Oneness that Makes God Known

St. Paul’s Church in Bergen, Jersey City NJ

May 12, 2013

Year C: The Seventh Sunday of Easter

Acts 16:16-34

Psalm 97

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

John 17:20-26

The Oneness that Makes God Known

            The lesson I just read comes from the Gospel of John’s account of the Last Supper – the final meal shared between Jesus and his closest friends and followers.

            The way John tells the story, since Jesus knows that his time on earth is running out, he tries – in what’s called the Final Discourse - to get through to his often thick-headed followers, to teach them – and to teach us here today - what’s most important.

            So, at that final meal, Jesus gets down on his hands and knees and washes the feet of his disciples, acting out his most important lesson: that we are all meant to be loving servants of God and loving servants of one another.

            And now, in today’s passage, we come to the end of the Farewell Discourse, the end of the Last Supper.

            And what does Jesus do at the end of his time with his friends?

            No surprise: Jesus prays.

            Jesus prays for his disciples gathered around him – and Jesus prays for us.             
            Jesus says, "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

            At the end of the Last Supper, at the end of his time with his friends, at the end of the Farewell Discourse, Jesus prays for oneness.

            Jesus prays for oneness among his disciples back in Jerusalem two thousand years ago – and Jesus prays for oneness among us here today.

            Jesus prays for the oneness that makes God known.

            Unfortunately, most of the time we fall far short of oneness.

            You don’t need me to tell you that the city, the country, the world, and even often the church are broken, fragmented and divided.

            Often we are broken between the rich and the poor, fragmented by race and ethnicity, divided between liberals and conservatives.

            Often we are broken between urbanites and suburbanites, fragmented by our success and our failure, divided between the young and not so young.

            Often we watch our own TV channels, making sure that we’re never exposed to points of view or cultures different from our own.

            Often we demonize people who disagree with us – willing to assume the worst – willing to assume that our opponents are not just wrong but that they’re mean-spirited, malicious and maybe even downright evil.

            And, all too often the Church falls far short of oneness.

            Over the years the three remaining Episcopal churches in Jersey City have not always been willing or able to work well together.

            And just walk around our neighborhood and see all the churches of the many Christian denominations, including our own, that all exist because of disagreements and divisions that usually later on seem to have been not so important.

            Yet, like Humpty Dumpty, once something gets broken – even the Body of Christ – it’s nearly impossible to put it back together again.

            Yet, Jesus still prays for his followers – prays for us - to be one, like he and the Father are one.

            And, every once in a while, we get a glimpse of the oneness that Jesus prays for – the oneness among his followers, the oneness of all people, the oneness that makes God known.

            Often we glimpse that oneness in times of disaster and tragedy.

            Like most of you, I remember very well the glimpse of oneness we saw after the September 11 attacks. I remember that first terrible evening when Fr. Hamilton gathered some of us together to pray and grieve over in the chapel, when we reached out to those in need, when we cut each other as much slack as needed, when just about the whole world became one in solidarity against unspeakable horror committed against people just sitting at their desks or taking a flight on a crystal clear morning.

            And in the years since, when there have been attacks here and elsewhere, when American cities have been submerged by powerful storms, often we’ve glimpsed that oneness yet again.

            Fortunately, it’s not just in times of tragedy that we glimpse the oneness that makes God known.

            Often we glimpse that oneness in the bond between parent and child – and today on Mother’s Day we celebrate the special love – the unique unity between mother and child – the oneness formed over nine months of pregnancy and years of loving care.

            And, at our best, we glimpse the oneness that makes God known right here in church, right here at St. Paul’s.

            I’ll never forget the first Sunday that my wife Sue and I walked through those doors.

            We were struck by so much: the beauty of this place, the diversity of the congregation, Fr. Hamilton’s smart and passionate preaching, and the wonderful music.

            But, as some of you know, I’ve never gotten over the exchange of peace.

            Where we came from when you went to church you hoped nobody would sit close so when it was time for the peace you could just give a little wave or a nod or maybe the peace sign.

            But, here…just about everybody was out in the aisle, greeting each other with what looked like and, it turned out was, genuine affection and deep love.

            For a few minutes, our fragmentation, our brokenness, and our divisions are healed – and we glimpse, we experience, the oneness that makes God known.

            And then after we glimpse oneness during the peace, we experience oneness in the most profound way imaginable when we gather at the Lord’s Table, reach out our hands and take the Body and Blood of Christ into our bodies and into our hearts.

            At the end of the Last Supper, Jesus prayed for his disciples, and then he said, "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

            At the end of the Last Supper, at the end of his time with his friends, at the end of the Farewell Discourse, Jesus prays for oneness.

            And, Jesus is still praying for oneness – for the oneness that makes God known here at St. Paul’s – the oneness that makes God known in Jersey City, in the diocese, in the country and throughout the world.

            Jesus is still praying for oneness – for the oneness that will unite us with our sister churches in Jersey City, inspiring us to proclaim together the Good News in deed and in word.

            Jesus is still praying for oneness – for the oneness that will break down the divisions between rich and poor, between black and white, between the successes and the failures, between liberals and conservatives, between the young and the old, between suburbanites and urbanites.

            Jesus is still praying for oneness – for the oneness that like an earthquake will rock the world’s foundations, the oneness that will heal the bad history and mistrust between the oppressors and the oppressed, between the jailers and the jailed, between the powerful and the weak.

            Jesus is still praying for oneness – for the oneness that makes God known.

            And so as we begin a new chapter together, may we here at St. Paul’s answer Jesus’ prayer - and be one, making God known to Jersey City and beyond.

            Amen.