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.
Posts
