Showing Up

St. Paul’s Church in Bergen & the Church of the Incarnation, Jersey City NJ

May 27, 2018

Year B: The First Sunday after Pentecost – Trinity Sunday

Isaiah 6:1-8

Psalm 29

Romans 8:12-17

John 3:1-17

Showing Up

            A few weeks ago, a very nice young couple got in touch with me about possibly baptizing their child.

            If you’ve been here more than a few times, you know that there are few things I enjoy more – that are more meaningful – than the privilege of baptizing someone.

            Unlike some of my clergy colleagues, I’m also pretty easy when it comes to Baptism – not requiring a certain amount of Sunday attendance before I’ll do a baptism – trusting that the Holy Spirit will do what needs to be done regardless if the newly baptized becomes a regular attendee at our church.

            Anyway, in this particular case the couple faced a bit of a dilemma because one parent is Roman Catholic and the other is Anglican.

            As you might guess, they were getting some pressure from others about which church would be the right church for their child’s baptism.

            During our very pleasant conversation, I talked about what we believe about Baptism, and how exactly we baptize people in the Episcopal Church, which I think is the main difference between Roman Catholics and us.

            Most Roman Catholic baptisms take place at a special Saturday service where usually the only people present are the parents and family members, and maybe some friends.

And, I get why they do it that way. The logistics are easier. Other people, who just want to go to church and be done with it, don’t get inconvenienced by a somewhat longer service. And, of course, Saturday is a good day for the families who probably will have some kind of celebration after the baptism.

            I get all that, but you won’t be surprised to know that I think our way is better.

            As you know, almost always, we baptize right in the middle of a Sunday service when we’re all here, getting reminded of our own baptism, and welcoming our newest members as they are reborn into the community of love.

            And, maybe most important of all, at each baptism we promise to “uphold” the newly baptized – to support them – to…show up when they need us.

            Today is the First Sunday after Pentecost – Trinity Sunday – the one day when we are encouraged to humbly turn our attention to the inner life of God – the One God in Three Persons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

            We could spend our whole lives pondering this great mystery - and certainly Christians have spilled a lot of ink and exhaled a lot of breath trying to describe – or, even worse, trying to explain – our three-in-one God.

            You’ll be glad that I’m not going to try that here today.

            I believe that all we need to know about the Trinity is that God’s very essence is community.

            God is the community of love.

            And that community of love would have been enough for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for all eternity but instead God has chosen to create all of us – and, even more amazing, God has chosen to invite us into the community of love.

            And, how we respond to that invitation makes all the difference.

            In today’s Gospel lesson we heard Nicodemus grapple with this invitation.

            Nicodemus is a faithful person and he recognizes the holiness of Jesus but he’s having trouble accepting the invitation. We’re told he comes to Jesus in the dark and misunderstands - even makes fun of - the whole idea of being born anew.

            Nicodemus has trouble accepting the invitation into the community of love – at least for now – and we can understand that because it really is a big deal – offering us many blessings but also plenty of responsibilities, too.

            This past week, after preaching about the power of love to a pretty tough crowd at the royal wedding, our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry took a kind of victory lap, appearing on lots of TV shows, including Good Morning America and The View, (he was even satirized on Saturday Night Live, you know you’ve made it then!) spreading the word more powerfully and effectively than decades of Episcopal advertising!

            My favorite line from his wedding sermon was:

            “Two young people fell in love, and we all showed up.”

            That’s a great line because, of course, love can only exist – can really only thrive - in community – love can only exist and thrive when we show up for one another.

            And, during his triumphant week, Bishop Curry didn’t just hobnob with TV celebrities.

            On Thursday, he put the power of love into action by showing up – showing up at the Capitol where he led Morning Prayer and then that evening, with many other Christian leaders, he showed up again and marched to the White House, protesting the rise of white nationalism, racism, and fear of foreigners, protesting the abuse of women, protesting the breaking up of families at the border, protesting all the corruption, all the cruelty, all the lies.

            As members of the community of love, Presiding Bishop Curry and the other leaders showed up  - they showed up for all of us, especially the most vulnerable.

            You know, whenever we have a baptism I always emphasize that God’s bond with us is forever – is unbreakable – is, the Prayer Book says, “indissoluble.”

            I believe that and I talked about it with the couple that came to see me, but the truth is that, although God will never break with us, we can get disconnected from the community - and the results can be disastrous.

           

            I thought about that during the search process for our next bishop.

            It was an honor – time-consuming but definitely an honor – to serve on the search committee and get to know all of the fine candidates and then to recommend the final slate of candidates.

            When Dave Hamilton was here he mentioned his unhappiness that I didn’t put my name forward for bishop. That’s very flattering, though, let’s be honest, he is a co-chair of my fan club!

            I will admit that I did think about it – for about ten seconds – and the main reason why I know I’m not called to that office is because I know how much I depend on being rooted in the community of love – and I know how bishops who visit a different church every week have to work hard to create the kind of community that you and I get so easily here.

            As some of you know, during the discernment retreat I asked one of the candidates, Lisa Hunt, about this, sincerely wanting to know how she thought she’d manage losing her deeply rooted community of love – and obviously it struck a chord with her because she brought up my question weeks later during the “walkabouts.”

            This week we begin formally praying for our Bishop-elect Carlye Hughes, and as she and her husband David say good-bye to their church and their friends in Ft. Worth, I’d encourage all of us to pray in particular that they will be able to discover and be supported by a community of love here in northern New Jersey.

            Hopefully we will always show up for them.

            Today is Trinity Sunday when we’re reminded that God’s very essence is community.

            God is the community of love.

            And that would have been enough for all eternity but instead God has chosen to create all of us – and to invite us into the community of love.

            Which brings us back to our friend, Nicodemus, who had come to Jesus by night, not really understanding and certainly not accepting the invitation he had received.

            Well, Nicodemus appears one more time in the Gospel of John, at the end of the story of Jesus - or, what had seemed like the end.

            After the crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea arranged to take away and bury Jesus’ body.

            We’re told that Nicodemus is there, too, and that he brought a hundred pounds of ointment - a lot of ointment - to anoint Jesus’ body before his burial.

            It seems that Nicodemus had accepted the invitation to be part of the community of love and, in the end, as part of that community, he showed up for Jesus, offering the best that he had, doing all that he could for Jesus at his most vulnerable, providing us with a model of what it looks like to say yes to God’s invitation, providing us with an image of what it looks like to be part of the community of love.

            Amen.

            

God's Holy Wind is Blowing

St. Paul’s Church in Bergen & The Church of the Incarnation, Jersey City NJ

May 20, 2018

Year B: The Day of Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21

Psalm 104:25-35, 37

Romans 8:22-27

John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

God’s Holy Wind is Blowing

            Alleluia! Christ is risen!

            The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

            Ten days ago, early in the morning, just a few of our fellow parishioners, along with Rev. Gary, gathered right over there in the chapel to celebrate the Feast of the Ascension.

            Always forty days after Easter and so always on a Thursday and so, here at St. Paul’s that mean it’s always at 7:30am, we never get a big crowd for Ascension.

            That day, I was at the monastery in Kentucky on retreat and, oddly enough, the Trappist monks seemed to completely ignore the Ascension – I kept waiting but there was no mention of it at any of the many services I attended.

            And, I don’t know, but maybe that’s as it should be because, as recorded in the New Testament, the Ascension is, yes, amazing, but it’s also a pretty small and almost private event, as Jesus disappears from sight, taken into heaven.

            It must have been a confusing and disheartening experience for the disciples, whose heads were probably still spinning from Jesus’ death and resurrection. Maybe they were just beginning to make sense of all of that - and now Jesus is gone again -gone, but not before promising to send the Holy Spirit to them – and to all of us.

            And, of course, that’s what we celebrate today!

Ten days after the Ascension – fifty days after Easter – the Holy Spirit was sent to those first disciples in Jerusalem two thousand years ago – and this is no private, personal moment – this is big and public and very loud!

            You can hear the author of the Acts of the Apostles strain to describe what happened on that first Pentecost – a sound like the rush of violent wind – divided tongues as of fire – and the disciples are somehow able to speak the Good News in foreign languages!

            And the bystanders in Jerusalem that day they were understandably confused, too – trying to make sense of this bizarre and unexpected scene, with some people falling back on my personal favorite explanation for the inexplicable:

            “They are filled with new wine.”

            And, let’s admit that Peter’s reply that it can’t be the wine because it’s only 9:00 in the morning, isn’t totally convincing!

            But, it wasn’t wine.

            It was – and is – God’s Holy Spirit.

            Our human language is limited and so we struggle to describe – to find the right words for the Holy Spirit.

            The advocate.

            The comforter.

            And, we try our best to come up with the right images of the Holy Spirit, too.

            There’s fire, of course.

            And, the dove.

            But, one of the most ancient images of God’s Spirit is breath or, maybe even better…wind.

            A holy wind blew through Jerusalem that first Pentecost two thousand years ago – and God’s holy wind continues to blow not just in Jerusalem but all over the place, blowing off the roof, uncovering all sorts of stuff that’s been carefully hidden for so long.

            Yes, God’s holy wind has been blowing fiercely through our land these past couple of years – especially these last few months - uncovering all kinds of rot that many of us couldn’t see, or chose not to see.

God’s holy wind has uncovered the rot of rampant sexual harassment and abuse – harassment that for so long has turned workplaces and homes and even just our sidewalks and streets into danger zones – harassment and abuse that has hurt so many, all of those women (plus more men than we might think) all declaring “me too.”

God’s holy wind has uncovered the rot of racism in our land – racism that we all knew still existed but maybe had dared to hope was slowly on its way out – that now in our “post-racial” society (remember that?) it was something that respectable people would never discuss in public – something that was reduced to merely “dog whistles” and winks rather than anything too blatant – but now we see our racism only too clearly, don’t we?

We see this rot in the lawyer (a lawyer!) in New York City (in New York City!) who was caught on video freaking out because people were speaking Spanish.

We see this rot in the white entrepreneurs beginning to profit handsomely off of marijuana, selling the same drug that has landed so many young men of color in jail, burdened with a criminal record, all but destroying their possibilities and opportunities.

We see this rot in Puerto Rico, much of which is still in shambles eight months after Hurricane Maria, a situation that would not be tolerated, would still be in the news every single day, if we were taking about any other place in America.

(I wonder why that is?)

We see this rot in a federal government that, more than ever, seems mostly interested giving the wealthy and powerful even more wealth and power.

After each school shooting (you probably saw the statistic that so far this year more students and teachers have been killed this year than active duty military personnel) – after each school shooting, God’s holy wind reveals the cowardice and insincerity of so many elected officials with their rehearsed and meaningless calls for “thoughts and prayers” – God’s holy wind uncovers the fact that some among us love our guns – or love the false security that comes from our guns – more than we love innocent kids and teachers.

And, God’s holy wind has been blowing strong through Jersey City, too – uncovering carefully hidden rot here at home.

Last Tuesday evening, the wind wasn’t even a metaphor – the wind really did blow as a big and powerful storm came through! We talked about canceling the Jersey City Together action about tenants’ rights but decided to take our chances and go for it.

And, sure enough, God’s holy wind blew through this old room that night as about 200 people braved the storm to learn about their rights and to hear from fellow tenants, all of whom live nearby and two who live right across the street, as they told disturbing and heartbreaking stories of life with crumbling walls and leaking pipes and infestation of roaches.

We learned that in at least one building right across the street, where some of our parishioners live, every single tenant is paying an illegally high rent.

These brave tenants told of disrespect and harassment by landlords, whose only interest seems to be squeezing as much money as possible out of their properties, no matter the human cost.

It’s hard to see all of this, hard to talk about it, I know, but fortunately, God’s holy wind doesn’t only uncover the rot, doesn’t just reveal our carefully hidden sinfulness.

Fortunately, God’s holy wind also reveals the good stuff – the blessings – that we might otherwise miss.

God’s holy wind certainly blew the roof off of St. George’s Chapel in Windsor, England yesterday when a descendant of slaves gracefully and confidently married into the royal family – who could’ve imagined! And our own Presiding Bishop, another descendant of slaves, brought the Black Church to the House of Windsor – and, man, he did us proud by preaching a dynamite sermon all about the power of love.

            And then just a few hours later, God’s holy wind blew through St. Peter’s Church in Morristown when another competent and confident woman of color was elected on the first ballot to be our next bishop – the Rev. Carlye Hughes, who will the first woman and first person of color to serve as Bishop of Newark.

And, finally, it’s clear to me that God’s holy wind has also been blowing right here as our two churches are coming together, moving towards unity.

God’s holy wind has uncovered how much we… like each other – how well we fit together – and, yes, I’ll say it, how much we love each other.

This was brought home to me a couple of weeks ago when we had our parish meeting about the future name of the unified church.

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect and I worried a little that our discussion about this important subject might get a little uncomfortable, a little heated – that it would undo at least some of the good progress we’ve made.

But, if you were here that day, you know that it was actually kind of a dull meeting. Right from the start, pretty much everyone was in agreement that the name should be some version of “St. Paul’s and Incarnation.”

It was such a non-issue that at least half the room wasn’t even paying any attention to what we were talking about.

This level of harmony would have been unimaginable even just a year or two ago.

Yes, God’s Holy Spirit – God’s holy wind – has been blowing strong, uncovering all kinds of carefully hidden rot in our society – and also uncovering unimaginable goodness right here in this place.

And, God’s Holy Spirit also gives us breath – gives us the courage and the voice to denounce evildoing and to speak up for the oppressed.

And, most of all, just like for the first disciples, God’s Holy Spirit gives us breath – gives us the courage and the voice to proclaim through our actions and words the Good News, the best news of all-time:

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Amen.

"Walking Around Shining Like the Sun"

St. Paul’s Church in Bergen & Church of the Incarnation, Jersey City NJ

May 13, 2018

Year B: The Seventh Sunday of Easter

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

Psalm 1

1 John 5:9-13

John 17:6-19

“Walking Around Shining Like the Sun”

            Alleluia! Christ is risen!

            The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

            A couple of weeks ago when The New York Times published a special section in the paper containing a series of photographs from 1978.

            There was a newspaper strike that summer and in order to scrounge up a little work some newspaper photographers approached the New York City Parks Department with the idea of photographing people using the city’s parks.

            Maybe surprisingly, the Parks Department said yes and so the photographers fanned out across the city, taking pictures of people enjoying a break from the city by hanging out or playing in parks, but the pictures were quickly forgotten and were never released, until now.

            The images of these people in the fashions and hairstyles of that time took me right back to those days – I could almost hear the pop music blaring from transistor radios!

            These forty year-old pictures are also a helpful reminder to not idealize the past.

            You don’t have to look very hard to see signs that these were not the best days in the history of New York City, or any city for that matter.

            There’s lots of graffiti and broken benches and trash – a reminder of that time when a broke city couldn’t keep its streets safe or clean and the subways were like something out of a post-apocalyptic nightmare.

            Yet, despite all of that brokenness – or maybe because of it – there is also something endearing and appealing about these pictures.

            I guess part of their draw is nostalgia for people my age or older, but there’s something else that I couldn’t quite put my finger on until a few days later the Times published a letter from a reader about these pictures.

            The letter-writer wrote,

            “What struck me immediately about the photos was that in each one, people are engaged with one another and their real-time activities. People looked at each other, spoke to each other, listened to each other, paid attention to their surroundings. No phones competed for their attention.”

            And, that’s exactly right.

            Thanks to these small but powerful computers that most of us carry in our pockets or in our bags we are able to access a world of information – but many of us have become addicted to this never-ending flow of stimulation.

            Probably we’ve all seen parents glued to their phones as their children vie for their attention or couples sitting side-by-side staring at their screens rather than into each other’s eyes – and, I’m not going to ask for a show of hands, but maybe we’ve been those people.

            And then some of us are actually required by our work to always be connected, to always be reachable, to always be “on.”

            This super-connection and over-stimulation has serious spiritual consequences.

As William Wordsworth wrote a couple of hundred years ago, “The world is too much with us.”

            You wonder what he would say if he could see us today!

            In today’s gospel lesson we heard part of Jesus’ long farewell prayer as recorded in the Gospel of John.

            And in Jesus’ prayer, we can hear his care and concern for his disciples – for us – who somehow must manage to be “in” the world without being “of” the world –his prayer that we are not to allow the world to be too much with us.

            In the case of both Wordsworth and Jesus, we should probably put “the world” in quotes – because they’re not talking about God’s good creation.

No, instead they are talking about the mess of a world we’ve created, a world stained by sin, a world that we can see so clearly, especially these days, is broken by greed, corruption, and lies.

            For centuries Christians have struggled to figure out just how to live in this broken world but not to be of this world – how to not fall in line with the priorities and values of the world.

            And some have even taken the radical step of withdrawing from “the world” – and going off to live and pray in a cave or in a convent or a monastery.

            One of those radical Christians was Thomas Merton, born in 1915, a highly educated and rather complicated guy, who in 1941 thought he was leaving the world when he entered a strict Trappist monastery in rural Kentucky, a place called the Abbey of Gethsemani.

            There’s a wonderful photograph of him at the monastery on his ordination day He’s holding a newspaper and laughing about how much he’s missed since he had left “the world.”

            But, if you know anything about Merton, you know that to his surprise stepping away from the world and living in the quiet of the monastery, cutting off much of the world’s stimulation, allowed him to see the truth – to see the world more clearly - both as it is and as it was meant to be.

            And so from his monastic isolation he began to engage with the great issues of the day – writing about atomic weapons and the Cold War, the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, and much more.

            Probably the most famous incident in Merton’s life occurred in 1958 when he was in Louisville running errands for the monastery.

            Standing at the corner of Fourth and Walnut he suddenly had a mystical experience, a vision of the world as it was always meant to be, a vision of the world as it really is.

            He saw, really saw, the people passing by, just going about their business at that bustling corner.

            Later he wrote, “Then it was as if suddenly I saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are.”

            And Merton added, “There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

            Wow, right?

            I’ve been interested in Merton for a long time and, since like for all or most of us, “the world” is too much with me – and since I am also very richly blessed – last week, as some of you know, I was able to drive to Kentucky and spend a week on retreat at Merton’s monastery.

            I was able to withdraw from “the world” for a few days.

            And, I have to tell you it was amazing.

            The monastery is in a secluded spot, more beautiful than I had imagined, surrounded by acres and acres of trees and farmland.

            It was so quiet – the Trappist monks don’t talk much and we were all expected to be pretty much silent. Just about all I heard were the birds chirping, cows mooing and roosters greeting the dawn, and the monks chanting during their daily services, the earliest of which is at 3:15am.

            I could only get a cellphone signal in a couple of spots, so, for the most part, I really was able to leave behind “the world” and appreciate the beauty of the world that God created, and always intended for us to enjoy.

            I’m so grateful for this wonderful time, but I have to admit that I didn’t have some big breakthrough profound spiritual experience at the monastery.

            For the ride home – about 700 miles – I had thought about trying to push through and drive all the way in one day, but after about eight hours my right foot started to hurt and I realized I was beginning to lose focus – kind of dangerous when doing 80 on the interstate, so reluctantly I pulled off somewhere in southern Pennsylvania and got a room at a Holiday Inn just beyond the highway exit.

            After I checked in, I was hungry and went looking for a place to eat. I looked around at all the motels and fast-food places and the stores selling discounted cigarettes and all the traffic and all the concrete and thought how ugly it all was, and how already the monastery was feeling a like a whole different world, almost like a dream.

            After dinner, back at the hotel, I noticed that a fair number of my fellow guests were bikers – middle-aged men and women wearing their leather jackets with lots of patches, bandanas, the whole uniform.

            I try not to judge, but let’s just say that I was wary.

            The next morning I got up early to take advantage of the complimentary breakfast – a good deal, by the way – and, sure enough, some of the bikers were already up and at it, already at tables with their food and coffee.

            I sat next to one table of biker women and couldn’t help overhearing their conversation.

            It turned out that they were on some kind of history tour and one of the women was talking excitedly about the chance to see the spot where Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.

            Judge not, right?

            But then, another middle-aged biker couple arrived – a man and a woman, dressed, like the others, in the full outfit. This woman, though, woman wore sunglasses and tapped a cane in front of her.

            She was blind!

            The first thing I thought of was how it’s scary enough to ride behind someone on a motorcycle, but how scary it must be to not be able to see what’s going on around you!

            Now, I have to tell you that the man – her husband, I assume – was so incredibly gentle and tender with his blind wife, gently holding her arm and guiding her along.

            “Here, sweetheart, there’s a chair for you.”

            “Here, honey, I got you a bagel. It’s right here. Is there anything else you’d like?

            “OK, I’ll leave you ladies to talk, but I’ll be right over there, honey.”

            The whole scene was so touching and beautiful. I didn’t want to be rude but I didn’t want to look away, either.

            I’m not sure I’d say that this loving man and his blind wife were shining like the sun, but it was pretty close.

            So, yes, the world we’ve created is a mess and may very well get a whole lot worse, but the world that God created and continues to create is still out there, still in here, and it’s still very beautiful.

            It’s as beautiful as people enjoying each other’s company in a broken-down park.

            It’s as beautiful as a biker lovingly caring for his blind wife.

            All of this beauty all around us, created by the God who loves us enough to come among us, and to die and rise again!

            Alleluia! Christ is risen!

            The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

            Amen.