High Stakes

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

September 30, 2018

Year B, Proper 21: The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22

Psalm 124

James 5:13-20

Mark 9:38-50

High Stakes

            Last week’s amazing, beautiful, and, yes, exhausting, celebrations sent me into one of the highest spiritual highs of my life.

            If you were there, maybe it was the same for you.

            Last Saturday’s consecration of our new bishop, The Rt. Rev. Carlye Hughes, was over-the-top spectacular.

            NJPAC was nearly filled with happy and thrilled people from all across our diocese and from the Church beyond. The stage was filled with bishops in their colorful regalia and an enormous choir – so big that no one seems to know exactly how big it was – over 200 voices for sure and maybe even more than 300, including a good number of our own choir.

            Before the start of the service, the liturgical dancers – including our own Patrice Maynard – dazzled the crowd with their choreography.

            And, at the end our own Gail Blache-Gill finally took command of that huge choir and blew the roof off the joint with nearly overwhelming performances of “Total Praise” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

            And, at the heart of it all, there was Carlye Hughes: calm, confident, and joyful, ready to receive her blessings and to take on the heavy burdens of her office.

            That would have been more than enough.

            But, then, the next day, as you know, our brand-new bishop came and worshiped among us!

            It was a risky move to have an outdoor service in the middle of Old Bergen Road – and it was a ton of work, too, but my God, what a morning!

            Bishop Hughes is clearly a natural and I could feel – and I bet you could feel – a loving bond forming between and among us all.

            For me, the highlight of the morning was at the end of the service when the bishop invited us to turn and face out, to raise our hands, and to ask a blessing not just for ourselves but for that community – for the people gathered on the sidewalk, the people watching from the windows, the people who wanted no part of us, the people who had no idea who or what we are – or, at least, not yet.

            What a spiritual high.

            It’s a spiritual high that I can still feel, but, as always, we have to come down from the mountaintop.

           

I made my trek down the mountain on Thursday, and maybe you did, too.

I spent much of my day driving from one event to another, with my car radio on, listening to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing – listening to the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Dr. Ford was quiet, polite, obviously frightened, but also determined, and quite clear about the story of the long-ago assault that is still all too fresh in her mind.

And, Judge Kavanaugh was hurt and angry, fighting not only to salvage his Supreme Court nomination but also to clear his name of this charge.

Listening to all of this, I experienced a mix of powerful emotions: admiration, disgust, compassion, fear, sadness, anger – all of them churning in my gut and leaving me a little nauseous.

For the many, many people who have been assaulted and abused and for those who have been faced with the task of restoring their reputation, I’m sure Thursday was infinitely more difficult.

Over the course of that long day and since, I keep going back to how high the stakes were and are.

For Dr. Ford, there were the high stakes of losing her privacy and anonymity, subjecting herself and her family to scrutiny, abuse, and even danger - knowing that, just like Anita Hill, no matter what she accomplishes in her life, it’s for this that she will always be remembered.

High stakes.

And, for Judge Kavanaugh, there were the high stakes of keeping or losing the opportunity of a lifetime, the high stakes of holding on to a reputation, the high stakes of protecting his wife and children.

High stakes.

And, for the country there are the high stakes of somehow maintaining a democracy when our two political parties don’t just disagree on policy but openly despise each other, use underhanded methods to score victories, and no longer even attempt to understand any point of view other than their own.

There are the high stakes of a Supreme Court that has so much say over our futures.

High stakes.

This is all pretty obvious, I guess.

But, maybe less obvious – and even more frightening - is something else I started thinking about on Thursday:

For Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh – and for all of us – the stakes have always been high.

The stakes are high when you’re 15 years old and go to an unsupervised party with a bunch of other kids, even just a year or two older – and there’s drinking, maybe a lot of drinking.

The stakes are high when you drink too much – so much that you fall asleep or pass out or can’t remember exactly what you did, but you have the sinking feeling that it might have been something terrible.

The stakes are high when you write hurtful, slanderous and stupid things in your yearbook and the stakes are high when the yearbook moderator – the adult who’s supposed to catch that sort of thing - overlooks it, maybe because that’s the school culture, or “boys will be boys,” or just because he wasn’t paying attention.

The stakes are high when we hold our pain inside and the stakes are high when we pretend to be something – someone - that we’re not.

And, yes, we might have missed it in the midst of last week’s celebrations, but the stakes are high for the Church that Carlye has inherited.

The stakes are high for those of us who have committed our lives and entrusted our livelihoods to a shrinking and shaky church.

And, the stakes are high for all of us because the Church can have such a powerful effect on people’s lives.

There are times that people come here and they are basically ignored. I’m not blaming anybody and it’s not usually intentional, but imagine the effect that can have on a person. Imagine the effect of going into God’s house, into a supposed community of love and nobody pays you any mind.

And, more positively, imagine the reverse: you go into God’s house and you can really feel God’s presence among people who really seem to be what they say they are.

High stakes.

And, there are high stakes down in Triangle Park – a neighborhood so long neglected that only really strong people could hold on to a sense of self-worth, only strong people could keep faith and hope.

When we told one local resident that our new bishop had chosen to come to his neighborhood, to his park, on her very first day, at first he couldn’t quite absorb, couldn’t quite process this news. But, once it finally sunk in, he said that he was so excited that it felt like when he was a kid and his parents said they were taking him to Great Adventure.

High stakes.

And, on Sunday when we turned and blessed the neighborhood, we raised the stakes even higher, proclaiming that God loves that place and its people, and promising that we are going to show that love in and through what we do.

High stakes.

Of course, Jesus, recognizes with perfect clarity just how high the stakes are  – that what we do or don’t do right here and now has lasting, even eternal, consequences for the world and for us.

That’s why Jesus is always so concerned about what’s going on in our hearts – he knows it’s a very short trip from our heart to our eye or our hand or our foot.

Jesus recognizes how high the stakes are for us, and so in today’s gospel lesson he uses some graphic language to make his point:

Jesus tells us: the stakes are high, so cut off whatever it is that causes you to stumble.

This is hard work and we can’t and shouldn’t do it alone.

With stakes this high, we need God’s help and we need to stick close together, to support one another, to look after one another.

Obviously, back in the 1980s in suburban Washington, several communities failed their young people in some catastrophic and long-lasting ways.

Today in Washington and across our country, our government is failing young and old alike.

And, all too often, the Church has failed – failed to protect the vulnerable, failed to speak clear words of justice and hope, failed to share the Good News in word and deed, failed to be serious about our work and mission.

It’s easy to get discouraged, but, you know, last Saturday in Newark and most especially last Sunday morning, right in the middle of Old Bergen Road, I was lifted into a spiritual high because I could feel, really feel, God’s loving and powerful presence in and among all of us, together.

Which is a good thing.

Which is the best thing of all.

Because the stakes are so very high.

Amen.

Our Elevator Pitch: Jesus Is Lord

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.

            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.

           

           

           

           

            

In a Strange Land

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

September 9, 2018

Year B, Proper 18: The 16th Sunday after Pentecost

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23

Psalm 125

James 2:1-17

Mark 7:24-37

In a Strange Land

            Over the past few of weeks, a couple of events in my family have gotten me thinking about the passage of time and the sometimes surprising shape of our lives, the surprising shape of my life.

            The first event was celebratory: recently, my oldest niece went off to Florida to begin her first year in college.

            I think I can speak for my whole family when I say we can hardly believe that she’s already old enough for this big, momentous step. I know I still think of her as a shy and sweet little girl, but the facts are the facts and she is now a college freshman in a relatively faraway place facing the challenge and excitement of learning and making friends, and making – we hope and believe - good decisions.

            The other event was a sad one: last week, one of my aunts died after suffering with cancer.

            Maybe because I hadn’t seen her much in recent years, I still think of her the way I’m sure she’d like to be remembered: as young and healthy, welcoming me and other relatives to big parties at her family’s suburban home – especially welcoming us to their large backyard, which had what seemed like an almost unimaginable luxury: an in-ground pool!

            When milestones like the first year of college or the death of someone you’ve known your whole life come along, it gets you thinking about your own life – about how much time has already passed and how much is left before God calls us home.

            And, at least for me, it gets me thinking about the shape of my life – the twists and turns – the story that I could not have written, could never have imagined, no matter how hard I tried.

            For example, about seventeen years ago or so, when I began to seriously consider the possibility of becoming an Episcopal priest, when I finally worked up the courage to make an appointment with Fr. Hamilton and say out loud what I had been thinking and praying – back then I was absolutely, one hundred percent sure that God was calling me to be a city priest.

            After all, while other family members had moved to the ‘burbs, I had stayed in the city. This is what I knew. This is where I could really contribute to the building of Christ’s church.

            Although it was certainly a nice place to visit, especially to take a dip in the pool, I had no interest in the suburbs, no desire to minister to and with people living what I imagined as their comfortable lives in big, beautiful homes on tree-lined streets, some even with in-ground pools!

            But, as we know, God has a sense of humor and so when I was ordained a little more than ten years ago and began looking for a full-time job, there were no full-time positions in any of our city churches.

            In fact, there were few full-time positions anywhere, but there was one. It was a particularly plum position, actually: to be the assistant – or, “curate” in church-talk – at Grace Church in leafy, beautiful, affluent Madison.

            Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

I did not want to go there.

            Bishop Beckwith tried to convince me that Madison was actually pretty diverse for a suburb and there might be opportunities to work together with some city churches and clergy.

            I wasn’t really sold.

But the fact was I also really needed a job, so I went out to Madison and met with Grace’s then-rector – Lauren Ackland – and met with some of the parishioners – and drove around the town, and began to think, well, you know, this might be OK, for a while.

            And, so I took the job and Sue and I moved out to the suburbs. We found ourselves living in a strange land.

            The truth is that I went to Madison wanting to do a good job but also with kind of an attitude – or, maybe, a bunch of attitudes.

            I went into that place inclined to not particularly like people who I perceived as having pretty easy, pretty comfortable lives.

            It was kind of the reverse of the bias we’re warned about in today’s passage from the Letter of James. Rather than give them special treatment, I was quick to judge and mistrust, quick to make unkind assumptions, about the people wearing fine clothes.

            I think most of my attitude problem stemmed from the fact that I went to Madison with my insecurities raging: I would be living and serving among many who had attended much more prestigious schools than I had – people who were in some sense “better” than me and my people – or, at least people who I thought would think that they were better than me and my people.

            I’ve never been so wrong about anything in my life.

            Despite all of this negative stuff bubbling in my brain, we fell in love with each other almost immediately.

            In this strange land, I discovered kind and incredibly generous people who loved their families just as much as my people did – people who carried around sorrows and fears and insecurities and bore deep scars – just like we all do.

            But, here’s what cemented my love for the people in the strange land of Madison:

            A month or two after I started working there, an older parishioner pulled me aside and told me that his daughter – a little bit older than me - was in the hospital and he asked if I could stop by and see her.

            He explained that she wasn’t much of a churchgoer but he thought that the two of us would hit it off.

            So, I went to the hospital to visit this woman I had never met – the daughter of parishioners I was just getting to know and love – all in what was still for me a strange land.

            Her name was Elizabeth. And, after having been in remission, unfortunately and tragically, her cancer had returned with a vengeance.

            But, her father had been right. We did hit it off, immediately.

            In fact, in what remains one of the most amazing experiences of my life, as I sat by her bedside, we somehow managed to pack what felt like years of friendship into what turned out to be the last few days of Elizabeth’s life.

            And, as I sat in the hospital room with her grieving parents and husband and children, and as I mourned a close friend that I had just met a few days earlier, I realized that we were truly brothers and sisters – and that I was exactly where God wanted me, exactly where I was supposed to be, at exactly the right time.

            In a strange land.

            At the start of today’s gospel lesson, we were given a little, easy to miss, but quite important detail.

            We’re told that Jesus had gone to the region of Tyre.

            This is an important little detail because Tyre (which is in modern-day Lebanon) was not a Jewish place. No, Jesus has left his homeland, left the people with whom he was most comfortable, and has entered a strange land, filled with people he might not understand and, at least at first, might not even trust.

Jesus enters a strange land, understandably trying

to keep a low profile, perhaps trying to get his bearings. And, at first, Jesus seems not sure that his Good News, his healing power, is for absolutely everybody, Jew and Gentile alike.

            Enter the unnamed but oh-so-persistent and brave and, most of all, loving Syro-Phoenician woman who begs Jesus to heal her daughter.

            In one of the most shocking scenes in the New Testament, in probably the least Jesus-like moment in the Gospels, Jesus at first dismisses this desperate woman, dismisses her in fact with what sounds like an insult:

            “Let the children be fed first for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

            A less persistent – or a less desperate person – would have backed down, but not this this woman. She goes right back at Jesus:

            “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

            It seems that this woman’s persistent faith touches Jesus, opens up something inside of him, helps him to recognize that his gift is for the whole world – and, so, he heals the sick daughter.

            In a strange land.

            Even if you live in the same place you’ve lived your whole life, even if you haven’t just sent a child off to college, even if you haven’t just buried someone you love, today all of us find ourselves living in a strange land.

            Our neighborhoods are changing, with lots of new people – different kinds of people – moving in.

            Our church is changing – with lots of new people – different kinds of people – finding a spiritual home here.

            Our country is changing – with longstanding customs and norms being broken and discarded on a daily basis.

            I don’t need to tell you that living in a strange land can be quite stressful.

            As we see every single day, living in a strange land can provoke our insecurities, can stir up in us less than positive attitudes.

            So, my prayer is that we’ll remember that all of us - no matter where we live, no matter what kind of clothes we wear, no matter how much or how little money we have, no matter the color of our skin, no matter our political views:

All of us love our people.

All of us carry around sorrows and fears and all of us bear deep scars.

All of us need healing.

All of us are hungry for the Good News.

And, most of all, all of us are loved, so deeply loved, by the God we know in and through Jesus Christ.

            Amen.