"Available to the Kingdom"

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

November 26, 2017

Year A: The Last Sunday after Pentecost – Christ the King

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

Psalm 95:1-7a

Ephesians 1:15-23

Matthew 25:31-46

“Available to the Kingdom”

“The Kingdom of God is available to you in the here and now. But the question is whether you are available to the kingdom.”

            As most of you know, for the past few months the leaders of St. Paul’s and Incarnation have been discussing the unification of our two churches early next year.

            Since we still have a few big and kind of thorny issues to work out, I haven’t said much publicly about it, yet. But, I’m happy to report that our “unification Committee” conversations have been positive, cordial, and productive.

            During our meetings, I have felt God’s Holy Spirit present and at work, creating genuine unity out of longtime division.

            One of the really nice side benefits of this process has been the opportunity to think about what’s essential about our life together here, at St. Paul’s.

What are the distinctive core characteristics of our church?

What makes St. Paul’s St. Paul’s?

If you’ve been around for a while you know there have been a lot of changes here these past few years but our core remains the same.

Here in church we are formal, but friendly.

We are traditional, but not stuffy.

That’s been kind of our niche here among the Episcopal churches in Jersey City and I don’t see it changing much no matter what happens next year.

As they say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

Since we are formal (but friendly) and traditional (but not stuffy), our worship is very similar to the way Christians have praised God for many centuries.

We observe the liturgical seasons of Lent and Advent and the great feast days just as Christians have for hundreds and hundreds of years.

If we could somehow transport Christians from the earliest days to St. Paul’s, they’d be confused and dazzled by lots of things, right? But, they would recognize the basic shape of what we do here week after week, listening to the stories of God and us and then gathering around the table and remembering Jesus blessing the bread and the wine, offering himself to us, offering himself for us all.

But, one thing that would probably puzzle the earliest Christians is the feast day that we celebrate today on the last Sunday of the church year: the Feast of Christ the King.

Christians from the past simply took Christ’s kingship for granted, would have understood in their bones, in their hearts, that since Christ is the King of kings and Lord of lords then all the others who claim to rule – all of the Caesars past and present – are pretenders, are frauds.

For the early Christians this was all so obvious that there was no need to have a special day to celebrate Christ’s kingship.

It would be like sun worshipers setting aside a special day to remember and celebrate the warmth of the sun!

Well, sure enough, the feast that we celebrate today – the Feast of Christ the King – is, in fact, one of the newest additions to the church calendar.

The Roman Catholic Church only added it to the calendar in 1925 and then moved it to the last Sunday of the church year in 1970 – and many other churches followed suit, including, obviously, the Episcopal Church.

The feast was added to the calendar because the Church realized that, unfortunately, a lot of Christians were placing their faith not in Christ, but in other “kings.”

Back in the 1920’s, the Church could plainly see that Christians were trusting Communist “kings” like Marx and Lenin – Fascist “kings” like Mussolini and, soon, Hitler – and many Capitalist “kings” who taught that money and the newest product can and will make us so very happy.

That was a long time ago, and it would be wonderful to say that nearly a century later we Christians have learned our lesson, but of course that’s not true.

Let’s face it, so many of us Christians still place our ultimate faith in the “kings” of today, whether that’s a military or political leader who singles out certain people as our enemies and promises a return to past glory, or maybe some new technology that does indeed bring miracles but also presents new and serious problems for us to figure out.

So, yes, I’m pretty sure that our ancestors in faith would be surprised – shocked even – that so many Christians fall for these pretenders, but they wouldn’t be surprised by the basic problem - because Christ is a king like no other and his kingdom is not the kind that the world celebrates or even expects, even after two thousand years.

On this final Sunday of the church year, our gospel lesson looks ahead to the last judgment, when we will be judged on how well we served the King and his Kingdom.

And, perhaps to our shock still even after all this time, it turns out that the Kingdom is Bergen Avenue and Christ the King is out there right now, begging for change or a bite to eat.

It turns out that the Kingdom is the homeless drop-in center where Christ the King is hanging out with his buddies, trying to keep warm, hoping for something more nutritious to eat than a cheese sandwich.

It turns out that the Kingdom is the nursing home where Christ the King is lying in bed, alone, forgotten by his family and friends.

It turns out that the Kingdom is among refugees fleeing from oppression and violence and Christ the King is right there among them wondering what kind of welcome he will receive from people who claim to be his followers.

It turns out that the Kingdom is in apartments all around us, where Christ the King lives alone and isolated, friendless, barely remembering the simple pleasure of breaking bread with a brother or sister.

And, it turns out that the Kingdom is right here at St. Paul’s, tucked away and easy to miss on a side street, formal (but friendly) and traditional (but not stuffy), where all different kinds of people meet just as our spiritual ancestors did and tell the old stories, where we gather at the table and remember Jesus blessing the bread and wine, offering himself to us, offering himself for us all.

I started today’s sermon with a quote from the great and wise Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh. He’s obviously not a Christian but he certainly gets it:

“The Kingdom of God is available to you in the here and now. But the question is whether you are available to the kingdom.”

And, as the church year draws to a close and as we find ourselves living during difficult days, days not so different from the 1920s, when people put their faith in other kings and other kingdoms, that really is the question for us Christians.

Do we make ourselves available to the kingdoms of the earth, the kingdoms ruled by the Caesars of today, by the many pretenders with their false and destructive promises?

Or, do we make ourselves available to the Kingdom of God, God’s kingdom that is right here and now, a kingdom ruled by Christ the King who doesn’t live in a palace or a mansion but dwells right here among us, most especially with the poor and the outcast?

“The Kingdom of God is available to you in the here and now. But the question is whether you are available to the kingdom.”

How we answer that question will make an eternal difference.

And, who knows, if we give the right answer, maybe some day we will be able to drop today’s feast from the calendar – able to drop it because it will be obvious to everybody that Christ is indeed our King – as obvious as the warmth of the sun.

May it be so.

Amen.

God's Holy Team

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

November 5, 2017

Year A: All Saints’ Sunday

Revelation 7:9-17

Psalm 34:1-10, 22

1 John 3:1-3

Matthew 5:1-12

God’s Holy Team

            On Wednesday night I watched a little bit of the seventh and final game of the World Series, between the LA Dodgers and the Houston Astros.

            If you follow baseball at all, you know that this was a particularly exciting World Series, with lots of twists and turns, but ultimately the Astros won, earning the first championship in the team’s history, and a good boost for a city that’s had a rough time of it lately.

            Watching the game, I thought about how much excellence was on display, as some of the best players ever to play baseball battled it out. Pitchers were hurling incredibly fast pitches, on average well over 90 miles per hour. Somehow, hitters were sometimes actually able to make contact with those balls, which must look like just a blur as they race towards them over the 60 short feet from the pitcher’s mound to the batters’ box. And, fielders were able to run, dive, throw, and catch, able to make exceptional and exciting plays.

            Thanks to extraordinary natural ability and a lot of practice, even the worst players on these teams are far more excellent than pretty much anybody else, at least when it comes to baseball,.

            In recent years baseball’s popularity has faded a little bit (for one reason, it’s probably too slow for a lot of people today), but when I was a kid it was still the “national pastime” and most of us boys played Little League baseball.

            Some of my teammates were really good, and a few even had dreams of playing in the big leagues. And, then there were others who were not so good at this at all. There were those who went out onto the field each game just hoping that they wouldn’t embarrass themselves too much.

            Want to guess which group I belonged to?

            Well, honestly, I think may have been the worst.

            I don’t think I had much natural ability but I did try, at least somewhat. I can remember playing catch in the park with my patient father, and practicing on my own in our backyard with a device called “Johnny Bench’s Batter Up,” which is a little hard to describe but was basically a ball tethered to a pole. The idea was you would whack the ball and then it would swing back in the opposite direction and you’d try again, and again, and again.

            But, despite giving it a try, and despite being told that I sure looked like I should be able to hit the ball (good stance, good swing), when it came time for a real game with another kid pitching to me, even at speeds much less than 90 miles per hour, my eye-hand coordination would fail me, and I just couldn’t hit that ball to save my life.

            And, eventually, with some embarrassment and regret, I quietly dropped out of Little League and put it behind me.

            Well, today is All Saints’ Sunday, the day when we give thanks for the holy women and men of Christian history, those who’ve been officially recognized by the Church, and also those unofficial saints who have been the holy people in our own lives, people whose saintliness may only be known to a few, or maybe even known only to us.

            And, you know, I love the saints. Growing up as a Roman Catholic, their images, their statues were all around me. I still love learning about them. I love preaching about them at our weekday services, sharing stories of their faithfulness, prayerfulness, generosity and their courage, awed by their excellence in Christian living.

            But, I wonder if there’s a bit of danger for us in honoring the saints – and that danger is thinking of them like they are kind of like the spiritual version of those major leaguers playing in the World Series, thinking of the saints almost like they’re super-humans, while meanwhile, you and I feel like we are the spiritual version of the uncoordinated kid in the backyard hacking away at Johnny Bench’s Batter-Up, trying, but with no chance of ever hitting the ball in real life.

            Honoring the saints is great, but there’s the danger of thinking that they are somehow in a different spiritual league, that their Christian excellence is beyond us, and, so we shouldn’t bother trying, and maybe even consider dropping out.

            But, the truth is, as children of God, we all have the natural ability to be saints.

            As children of God, we all have the natural ability to practice our saintliness in our everyday lives.

            And, the really good news is that being a saint is really about simply allowing God’s goodness and love – God’s excellence – to shine through us.

            You know, in baseball, or any other sport, or any other endeavor, our success is a result of some combination of natural ability and practice.

            And, that’s true in the Christian life, too.

            As children of God, we all have the natural ability to be saints. And, it’s through practice that we allow God’s excellence to shine through us.

            Practice when we’re on fire with our faith and, especially, when we’re not so into it.

            Practice in the good times and, especially, the not so good times.

            Practice is praying when God feels so very close and also when God feels very far away.

            Practice is giving of ourselves when we’re feeling full and generous and giving of ourselves when we feel like we have nothing worthwhile to offer and would really prefer to keep what we have for ourselves.

Practice is sticking close to one another, sticking close to St. Paul’s, especially when the foundations of our world seem to be shaking and cracking, even when violence and hatred are on the loose, even when we worry about health and money and work and our kids, and so much else.

            You know, this past week someone asked me about my vision for St. Paul’s.

            Although it’s a question I’ve been asked before, I don’t have a stock answer. But, I talked about the things most of you have heard me talk about a million times: a vision of St. Paul’s as a church that serves not only itself but offers itself in service to the community, a church that feeds people, feeds people with delicious food, good art, and a warm welcome for absolutely everybody.

            But, just like I used to replay my Little League strikeouts in my mind, I’ve been replaying that answer, too.

            And, if I could get a do-over, I would add that my vision of St. Paul’s is that we’re a team – a team with lots of different players each with our own strengths and weaknesses, a team where all of the players are encouraged and able to allow God’s excellence to shine through us, a team where we work together to build the downside-up kingdom revealed by Jesus in the Beatitudes, a team where all of us have the opportunity to be saints.

            So, today we give thanks for all the saints, the holy men and women who allowed God’s excellence to shine through them, the saints who’ve been recognized by the Church, and also those who have been saints in our own lives, people whose saintliness may only be known to a few, or even just by one.

            We give thanks for them and honor them and, yes, we stand in awe of them.

            But, meanwhile, we have all that we need to be saints.

            You and I.

            Right here and right now at St. Paul’s.

We have all we need to play in the spiritual major leagues

We have all we need to be on God’s holy team.

            Amen.