St. Paul’s Church in
Bergen, Jersey City NJ
July 2, 2017
Year A, Proper 8: The
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Jeremiah 28:5-9
Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18
Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42
The Ongoing Redemption of the World
It’s
funny the things you remember, right?
Years
ago I happened to read an article written by an atheist. I don’t remember
exactly what the piece was about but I remember that in it he declared that, of
course, he didn’t believe in God, but that even if there were a God, this God
would have long ago gotten bored by our predictability and disgusted by our bad
behavior, and gone off somewhere and left us on our own.
And
you can kind of understand why he felt this way, right?
I
can almost imagine God getting fed up
with us, particularly these days when our old and persistent sins of hatred and
greed and cruelty and bigotry all seem to be very much on the loose.
Especially
if you watch the news a lot, it can all seem quite depressing and hopeless.
But,
our faith and, I’d argue, our own experience, teach us that God has not given
up on us, but that instead God continues to be at work in large ways and
especially in seemingly small and easy to miss ways, doing what God always
does, transforming hate into love, turning death into new life.
In
today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus points to the infinite value of even small acts of
generosity, even the simple act of offering a cup of cold water.
And,
so God invites us to be part of the great work of transforming hate into love
and turning death into new life, one cup of cold water at a time.
It’s
funny, the things you remember.
Back
in the early to mid-1990’s I taught History at St. Vincent Academy, an
all-girls Catholic high school right in the middle of the Central Ward of Newark.
I
remember very well when I went there for my interview.
I
remember riding the bus from Penn Station up Market Street, looking out the
window at block after block of rubble-strewn lots, a city that had barely begun
to recover from the 1967 riots and economic collapse.
It
all looked as hopeless as could be.
What
was I getting myself into, I wondered.
Well,
anyway, my interview that day was the longest and still the best of my life.
I
spent much of the day talking with Sister June who was - and still is - the
head of the school.
She
told me the story of St. Vincent’s - the story of how back in the late ‘60s,
when pretty much everyone who could
get out of Newark was getting out of
Newark, when schools and other institutions were closing or fleeing to the
suburbs, the Sisters of Charity and their coworkers made the brave and faithful
commitment to stay in the city and offer a quality education to the girls of
Newark and the surrounding towns, girls, who, let’s just say it, the world
dismissed as really not worth much effort at all.
But,
through the grim days of the 1970s and 1980s and into the 1990s, the faculty
and administration of St. Vincent’s offered love and respect and, maybe most
important of all, high expectations, to hundreds and hundreds of girls.
One
cup of cold water, at a time.
It
was an honor to play a small part in that holy and noble effort and, now,
thanks the miracle of Facebook, I’ve been able to catch up with quite a few of
the girls I taught back then.
To
be honest, it’s a little shocking that they’ve begun to enter their forties!
But, it is deeply moving to see many of
them doing so well, now raising their own beautiful families and, most of all, it
is gratifying that so many of them are involved in work that makes the world a
better place: teachers, doctors, nurses, scientists, lawyers committed to
social justice, one after the other, so many of them, each in her own way,
handing out cups of cold water to the so very thirsty people of their
communities.
And,
look what’s happened to Newark!
Today,
if you take that same bus up Market Street that I took twenty-five plus years
ago, the rubble-strewn lots have been replaced with rows of townhouses and new
businesses and schools. It’s not perfect by any means but where there was hopelessness
and death, there is now new life.
Now,
I’m not saying that this is because of St. Vincent’s, but I’m not saying it’s not
because of St. Vincent’s, either.
One
more memory from my long-ago interview:
Amid
all the discussion of history and teaching, Sister June slipped in a little
Theology, as well.
She
said that she saw her work and the mission of the school as part of “the
ongoing redemption of the world.”
“The
ongoing redemption of the world.”
As
Christians, we believe that through his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus
redeemed the world, freed the world from sin and death.
This
work is already done, but it is not yet completed, since, as the atheist
writer pointed out, and as we can all see with our own eyes, things are still
pretty bad, sin and death are still very much on the loose in the world.
And,
that “not yet completed” part is where we come in.
We’re
called to live like we really believe what we say we believe.
We
called to live like sin and death are really defeated and that, ultimately,
thanks be to the God who doesn’t give up on us, love and life win.
And,
that’s the way of life that beautiful little Isabell is about to get signed up
for in the water of Baptism, that’s the way of Jesus that we all signed up for,
or got signed up for, in our Baptism.
When
we share the Good News, when we forgive and ask forgiveness, when we love and
respect one another especially the hard to love and the hard to respect, when
we give away our lives in service to others, then love and life really do win.
Like
those brave and faithful nuns and the other teachers at St. Vincent’s back in
the seemingly God-forsaken Newark of the late ‘60s, with God’s help, Isabell
and all of us can decide to play our own seemingly small but oh-so-important
part in the ongoing redemption of the world, right here, offering one cup of
cold water at a time.
Amen.
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