The Gift and Responsibility of Community

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

January 27, 2019

Year C: The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

Psalm 19

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Luke 4:14-21

The Gift and Responsibility of Community

            Along with a couple of hundred other boys, in the fall of 1981 I arrived as a freshman at St. Peter’s Prep, the Jesuit all-boys high school in downtown Jersey City.

            For as long as I had been conscious of a thing called “high school” it had always been assumed by my family and by me that this was where I would go to school.

            That was all a long time ago now, but I can still remember at least some of the mix of emotions I felt in those first few days at Prep: excitement that this was finally, really happening and also fear that maybe I wasn’t actually smart enough to succeed in this competitive environment – and also the fear that maybe I wouldn’t fit in, wouldn’t be able to make new friends.

            I only have a few clear memories of those first few days of life at Prep.

            During freshman orientation, I remember learning about the many extracurricular activities and clubs that were available, including some things like a ham radio club (!) and a TV studio (!) that amazed me and captured my imagination.

            And, I also vividly remember a talk given by one of the administrators, the one in charge of student discipline.

            He told us that since we were now part of the Prep community, we were expected to represent Prep at all times and all places – on the way to and from school, at games and other school activities, even at home at night and on the weekends!

            And, as an illustration of the high expectations of our new community, the disciplinarian said that we were required to stay in dress code until we got home – and that he would be checking up on us by waiting at random bus stops and train stations to make sure our ties were still up and our suit jackets were still on.

            Over the course of four years taking the Number 9 bus (now the 80) back and forth to school, I never saw him at my bus stop and it may have been just an idle or maybe even humorous threat, but I haven’t forgotten it nearly forty years later.

            And, of course, all of us students fell short of this high ideal – our behavior at school and elsewhere was not always up to the highest Prep standards – but when we slipped up we knew that we had fallen short, and at least sometimes, we tried to do better.

            My classmates and I had been given the gift – and also the responsibility - of community.

            In today’s gospel lesson Jesus returns to what must have been an important community in his life: his hometown of Nazareth.

            At first everything seems to go just fine but, as we’ll hear next week, this homecoming isn’t going to end well.

            Since we will hear part two of this story next Sunday, for now I’m going to leave Jesus with his familiar neighbors in the synagogue, because today I’d like to focus on our second lesson, from St. Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth.

            Back in the first century the Greek city of Corinth was an important port in the Roman Empire, and like all port cities it was a diverse place, drawing people from all around the known world, lots of different kinds of people with their own languages and religions, including a very early Christian community that carried on a correspondence with St. Paul.

            One of the problems in reading Paul’s letters is that we only get one side of the story: Paul’s. We don’t have any of the letters written by the Corinthians so we don’t know how they saw things and what exactly was going on in their community.

            But, by reading Paul, we have some idea that the church in Corinth was a troubled community – one where at least some people had received what seemed like powerful spiritual gifts – such as the ability to speak in tongues – and perhaps had a sense of superiority over others who had been given more modest gifts, or no obvious spiritual gifts at all.

            Dealing with this trouble in his letters gives Paul the opportunity to remind the people in Corinth (and remind us here today) that as Christians we – all of us – form the Body of Christ in the world.

            And, just as our own human bodies need all of their many parts, the same is true for the Body of Christ – the Church needs all of its parts – we need all of our members – nobody is unimportant – nobody can be dismissed without the whole body suffering real and painful loss.

            And, just like those troubled Corinthians long ago, we have been baptized into the Body of Christ – we are the Body of Christ in the world today – and that is the most amazing gift and it’s also a heavy responsibility.

            The gift and responsibility of community.

            It’s true that sometimes we get on each other’s nerves, but while we’re here in church usually it’s pretty easy to be a Christian – it’s not so hard to be a member of this community - but it’s much more challenging when we go out into a world bigger and far more diverse than the Corinthians could have ever imagined – a diverse world where we represent the Body of Christ – a broken world where we are expected to be the same people we are when we’re in here.

            The gift and responsibility of community.

            And, of course, just like my Prep classmates and I, all of us Christians fall short all the time – though because of today’s instant communication and our overheated political environment, we may be failing more dramatically than usual.

In my sermon last week I mentioned in passing about the incident that had taken place a few days earlier at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.

Afterward, I regretted bringing it up because it turned out that we only knew part of the story – a story that turned out to have many sides.

Last week some of you had heard about it and others hadn’t but by now you’ve seen or read about the story of the boys from Covington Catholic at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

The boys – some of them wearing red MAGA hats and shirts – had been in Washington along with thousands of others to participate in the “March for Life,” an annual event calling for outlawing of abortion.

After the march, the boys had gathered at the Lincoln Memorial where they were to board their buses for the ride home. In diverse and tense Washington there were others there too, including some so-called Hebrew Israelites (a fringe African-American group that is notoriously confrontational) and also Native Americans, including an activist named Nathan Phillips.

Even if you watched the whole video it’s still not exactly clear what happened – and on TV and the Internet many different people have offered their own wildly different interpretations on what happened and have cast blame on the whole cast of characters: the Hebrew Israelites, the kids and their chaperones, and on Mr. Phillips.

There are lots of sides to this story and there’s probably plenty of blame to go around.

But one thing is for sure: from the start, this incident was a total breakdown of community, especially among the Christians – the Christians who were there that day and the Christians who have chimed in over the past week.

Even if they were provoked, the Covington Catholic kids should not have responded – and definitely shouldn’t have responded as they did - and certainly their adult chaperones should have taken control of the situation.

And all the rest of us shouldn’t have been so quick to judge based on just a few images – and some of the judgments were really harsh.

And, most of all, we should have remembered that Jesus warns us not to judge at all – that judging is really not our job.

This incident and its aftermath – and our first All God’s Children service this afternoon – and our delayed Martin Luther King service tonight – and our annual meeting next week has got me thinking.

We are the Body of Christ and we all – every single one of us – from the oldest to the youngest – from the person who seems to have their act together to the one who seems to be the biggest mess – we all have an essential role to play in this community.

And, as I’ve said before and believe now more than ever, because we here at St. Paul’s and Incarnation are extraordinarily diverse, I believe that we have a special gift and responsibility to show our city, and maybe beyond, that even in these bitterly divided and angry times it really is possible for us to live together in peace – it really is possible to love one another.

But, we can only live out that special and oh-so-important vocation if we are the same people out there as we are in here.

The gift and responsibility of community.

See you at the bus stop.

Amen.

God of Abundance

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

January 20, 2019

Year C: The Second Sunday after the Epiphany

Isaiah 62:1-5

Psalm 36:5-10

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

John 2:1-11

God of Abundance

“Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

            The other day there was a story in the paper about a church in Brooklyn called the New Utrecht Reformed Church.

            The church has been around a long time, founded in 1677 – just a few years after our friends over at Old Bergen Church got started - and they’ve been worshiping in the same stone church for nearly 200 years.

            Or, actually, a little less that that because for the past fifteen years they’ve been using their parish hall for church services – which they were forced to do because of repairs to the old church – repairs that were expected to take just a few months but then dragged on for years as contractors discovered one problem after another.

            As some of the church leaders said, “Old buildings have a lot of secrets.”

            Around here we know how that goes!

            The work is still not quite done, but the congregation recently – finally – moved into their sanctuary, which must feel amazing and a little strange after all of this time.

            Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, over the long years of parish hall exile, the congregation declined, probably in part because worship in the parish hall didn’t really inspire or attract people, but also because of the all too familiar patterns of older members dying or moving away, a changing neighborhood, and the smaller role that organized religion plays in the lives of people, especially the young.

            Reading the article, it’s clear that the congregation is so excited to be back in their sanctuary, and determined to try to grow their church – but reading between the lines, I’m sure there’s also a troubling sense of scarcity, of near emptiness, and real fear about the future.

            I imagine that those feelings will be familiar to anyone who has been around the Episcopal Church or pretty much any church lately - fewer people, fewer people willing or able to attend regularly, fewer people willing to lead, and, yes, fewer churches as more and more close their doors.

           

            At the same time, just as the church is declining, it’s obvious that many of our national institutions are in serious decline – words and actions from officials that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago are now shrugged off and forgotten by most of us because, really, we can sustain only so much outrage and have grown numb  – 800,000 government employees have been essentially laid off or forced to work for free and, at least so far, most of the rest of us continue life as usual while the people responsible for guarding our coasts and keeping planes in the air and keeping our food safe go unpaid – not to mention the government contractors who will never see any of their lost income.

            And, you may have seen on the news that just the other day about some kids from a Roman Catholic high school in Kentucky who were in Washington attending the March for Life. It's a little unclear how this all started, but on video we can see some of these kids boldly and crudely taunting and ridiculing Nathan Phillips, an Omaha Nation leader and Vietnam veteran, as he drummed and chanted in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the Indigenous People’s March.

            If we’re paying attention to what’s going on around us, we may be mourning the loss of our institutions and the loss of our way of life.

We may be feeling kind of empty – far emptier than the emptiness felt by partiers at a long-ago wedding in Cana, where the wine had run out and it seemed like the celebration was over.

            The miracle at the wedding at Cana – the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine – is found only in the Gospel of John.                      

            And, it’s important to note that John never uses the word “miracle” to describe the wondrous acts of Jesus. No, instead of “miracle” his preferred word is “sign.”

            And, that’s important because signs are not such a big deal in and of themselves. Signs aren’t that important themselves but it’s what they point to that’s important.

            Think of a Stop sign.

            The sign itself is not particularly important – just a piece of metal painted red with four letters - but it points to something very important – it points to the fact that you must stop at this intersection – that you must stop here or else you’re likely to get a ticket or, far worse, injure others and/or yourself.

            So, Jesus turns the water into wine not just to quench the thirst of everybody at the wedding – certainly not to become the most popular guest at the party – not even to make his mother happy – he turns the water into wine to reveal his glory and, most of all, to show his followers and to show us in a most delicious way the overflowing abundance of God.

            And just in case we don’t get just how abundant God’s abundance is, each of those six stone jars held about 24 gallons and I’ve done the math for you and 24 times 6 equals 144 – 144 gallons of the best wine.

            The overflowing abundance of God.

            Just when it feels like we’re empty, God pours out abundance.

            Back to that article about New Utrecht Reformed Church:

            In response to the obvious and pressing need and desire to attract new people to the church, the pastor (who has been there six years so, until recently, had never led worship in the sanctuary) said,

            “Is it my obligation to grow the church? No, God’s Spirit will do that.”

            I like the faithfulness and the honesty in that statement, because while we never know what the future will bring, the truth is that when we’re feeling empty, when we feel like we’ve run out of wine or, maybe better, run out of gas, God is ready to pour overflowing abundance into our lives.

            And, we don’t have to just believe that because like the first disciples we’ve seen it with our own eyes.

            Around here we’re in the midst of preparing for our annual meeting and it’s always a time to take stock of where we’ve been and to look ahead to the future.

            It wasn’t that long ago that attendance had really thinned out here at St. Paul’s – it wasn’t that long ago that this little congregation sometimes worshiped in the parish hall not because of construction but to save money on heat or to keep cool – it wasn’t that long ago that there was no Gail and no weekly choir and some feared that the St. Paul’s celebration was almost over.

            And, for Church of the Incarnation, after years of creatively and persistently and faithfully fighting to keep the church going on its own, it was a year ago that we began worshiping together.

            Back then I’m sure there was at least some sense among the Incarnation folks that the wine had run out - that the celebration was coming to an end.

But, while we’ve had a few bumps along the way, and we’re not quite there yet, it feels to me and I hope to you that Jesus has again turned water to wine – and those of you from the Incarnation side of the family have brought such delicious new wine to our unified community, through your leadership and your musical gifts and devoted participation in all areas of parish life and, I have to say, also your faithfulness in weekly worship.

            God’s overflowing abundance.

            So, yes, churches and denominations and even governments come and go – and, yes, that can be sad and frightening - but yet, through it all, God is always pouring out abundance – God is always turning death into new life.

Amen.

Mining the Water of Baptism

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

January 13, 2019

Year C: The First Sunday after the Epiphany – The Baptism of Our Lord

Isaiah 43:1-7

Psalm 29

Acts 8:14-17

Luke 3:15-17; 21-22

Mining the Water of Baptism

            Some of you may remember that last May I had the opportunity to fulfill a longtime dream of mine – to visit the Abbey of Gethsemani in rural Kentucky.

            In part that trip was a retreat – a chance to get away and clear my head and give God a little more room and a little more quiet than usual to speak to me.

            And, the trip was also a pilgrimage – a chance to visit the monastery where one of my spiritual heroes, the writer Thomas Merton, lived out his religious life as a monk.

            Since silence is kept at the abbey, I didn’t speak with the other guests at the abbey, but I know that many of them were also there as Merton pilgrims because I could see the covers of some of the books they were reading – which were either by Merton or about him.

            Now, I don’t know, probably for some people the whole idea of pilgrimage seems a little silly. After all, rationally I know that Merton has been dead for fifty years and is no more present in rural Kentucky than he is in Bayonne or anyplace else, but the truth is that for many centuries people have found great meaning in making pilgrimages to places associated with holy people or holy events – pilgrimages to places like Canterbury or Rome or, most of all, to the places where Jesus and his first followers walked the earth.

            If you’ve been around here lately, you know that I’ve been thinking about how hard life was in Israel back in the first century – how hard life was for Jesus and all of the people we hear about in the New Testament – how hard life was without the conveniences and the medicine that often we take for granted - and how hard life was under the brutal Roman occupation.

            It would be nice to be able to say that everything is swell these days in what we call the Holy Land, but even just a glance at the news shows that’s far from the truth.

            Yet, despite walls and checkpoints and flare-ups of violence, Christian pilgrims have continued to visit the holy places, have still trekked to Bethlehem, to Nazareth, to Jerusalem.

            But, there’s an exception.

            For the past fifty years, pilgrims have not been able to visit the site where Christians have long believed that Jesus was baptized – have not been able to visit any of the shrines there because in 1968 landmines were buried along the banks of the River Jordan.

            I only learned about that recently and I can’t get this image out of mind:

            Where Jesus was baptized – where he heard the voice of the Father – where he received the Holy Spirit – for fifty years that holy place has been off limits because of human violence and human fear.

            It’s the human story as old as the Garden of Eden and as new as the Friday night shooting at the Newport Mall: we are given beautiful gifts which we often poison with sin.

            Today is the First Sunday after the Epiphany and every year on this Sunday we remember the baptism of Jesus.

            The fact that Jesus was baptized has always been a little awkward for Christians.

            After all, John the Baptist preached and offered a “baptism of repentance” and we don’t believe that Jesus needed to repent of anything.

            So, why did Jesus go through with it?

            Why did he take the plunge into the water of baptism?

            Well, I can’t say for sure, but I think that our brother Jesus – yes, even Jesus – needed the grace of baptism – needed to know in a way that he hadn’t known before that he was God’s beloved child – needed to feel that bond with God – that bond that can never be broken – that bond that can never be dissolved, no matter what.

            That’s what I think Jesus experienced in baptism – and that’s what we’re promised in baptism, too.

            We are beloved children of God.

            God will never let go of us, no matter what.

            But, although God will always help us in every good work, what happens after our Baptism is up to us.

            For Jesus, baptism marked the beginning of his saving work.

            After his baptism, Jesus heads out on the road, traveling from place to place, offering good news, opening the eyes of the blind, healing the skin of the lepers, forgiving those burdened by sin, raising the dead, and telling stories that people never ever forgot, stories that people still tell – and puzzle over – to this very day.

            And, I think Jesus had the faith and courage to do all of this because of his baptism, because he remembered what he heard and felt that day in the River Jordan.

            How amazing that nearly all of us were baptized, too – although, unfortunately, most of us were infants so we have no memory of the big day.

            But, in the water of baptism we are told that we are beloved children of God.

            In the water of baptism, God makes an unbreakable, indissoluble, bond with us – no matter what we do or don’t do, God will never give up on us, never let go of us.

            But, what happens next?

            So many of the loudest Christian voices in our country – all baptized, every last one of them – they place explosives in the water of baptism by being quick to judge and condemn other people – they place explosives in the water of baptism by gathering great wealth for themselves while others go hungry – they place explosives in the water of baptism by supporting – even sometimes idolizing – cruel politics and politicians.

            And, most of us, we place smaller explosives in the water of baptism not by being especially bad, but really just by living pretty much like everybody else – signaling to the world that baptism doesn’t make much of a difference at all.

            But, you know, more and more, around here I see us living out our baptism in some very Jesus-like ways.

            I see so many of us baptized people not just sitting in here nice and cozy and well-fed, but going out into the world and offering good news – feeding the hungry – defending the poor and the vulnerable in our own city - opening our doors to the homeless – praying for our long list of the sick and the despairing – coming together as one church after a lot of unpleasant history - I see us living in such a way that people look at us and ask, what’s up with them – why and how are they doing this? 

              With God’s help, we’re living out our baptism to share God’s love with the world.

            So, you know, there’s good mining and there’s not so good mining.

            We can “mine” the grace we receive in baptism to do good or we can plant destructive “mines” of hatred and violence in our own lives and the lives of others.

            But, since God never gives up on us, until our last breath the not so good mining can be undone and healing and restoration are always possible.

            So, back to the River Jordan.

            Last spring, work began on removing all 6,500 landmines around the shrines where it’s believed Jesus was baptized.

            So far, about 1,500 mines have been cleared and the Israeli government expects to have the work done by the end of this year.

            And so, after a half-century as a no man’s land and a symbol of human violence and human fear, soon Christian pilgrims will return to this holy place, return to the River Jordan, return to the water of baptism and, with God’s help, remember that God loves us and will never let us go, no matter what.

            Amen.

The Search for Jesus

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

The Feast of the Epiphany

Isaiah 60:1-6

Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14

Ephesians 3:1-12

Matthew 2:1-12

The Search for Jesus

            Today is the Feast of the Epiphany.

And, although it feels like we just “greened” the church, Epiphany means that we’ve now reached the end of the Christmas season.

And, it was certainly a beautiful Christmas season here, wasn’t it? There were lots of people here in our church – a church that I don’t think has ever looked better - here for services that were filled with glorious music - here for Christmas joy and Christmas light.

And then…it was over.

And, the weeks after Christmas and New Year’s are always strange times, right?

I know that I’m usually pretty well knocked out and I bet many of you - especially those of you who are parents - are beyond tired.

And, maybe because this year both Christmas Day and New Year’s Day fell on Tuesdays, I had a hard time keeping straight which day of the week it was – and judging by the poor attendance at our weekday services, maybe other people had the same problem, too!

So, yes, it was a special Christmas but, to be honest, the days since have been kind of weird, sort of a let-down, and I found myself feeling a little worn out and maybe even a little sad.

And, this past Thursday night, all I really wanted to do was hang out at home on the couch, probably falling asleep a few minutes into some TV show.

But, I couldn’t do that because I had volunteered for a special assignment.

As most of you know, our friends from Family Promise found themselves in a bind last week because there was no congregation available or willing to host the homeless families.

The solution they came up with was to keep the families at the day center and recruit volunteers from other congregations to offer hospitality – and, of course, to stay overnight.

Since I’ve been talking nearly nonstop about Family Promise for the past couple of months, I felt I had to do something, so I volunteered to stay over Thursday night.

Feeling tired and maybe just a little bit irritated and even, I hate to say it, a little resentful, I left the house on Thursday evening – out into the cold, dark night, carrying my sleeping bag and pillow that I knew I’d soon be placing on an air mattress and then trying to get a halfway-decent night’s sleep.

I arrived at the day center, descended the short flight of stairs, rang the bell, and a volunteer answered the door.

And, standing behind her was one of the little kids who had stayed with us here, and when she saw me her eyes and her smile widened, and she cried out, “I remember you!”

Merry Christmas.

Well, in today’s gospel lesson, we reach the end of the Christmas story.

The Gospel of Matthew tells us that after Jesus was born wise men from the East – probably best described as astronomer-astrologers or, maybe even better, wizards – they go to the capital city of Jerusalem looking for the newborn king of the Jews.

The word about these visitors and their search gets back to the man who was the king – Herod the Great, who, no surprise, is extremely interested in this news.

Like many rulers past and present, Herod was ruthless - but he was also insecure (a dangerous combination, right?).

He was insecure because many Jews saw him as an illegitimate king – his Jewishness was questionable and everyone knew he ruled at the pleasure of the Romans.

He’s sometimes described as a Roman “puppet” king.

Anyway, even a popular and secure king would be at least a little concerned to hear news of the new king’s birth, but Herod was not popular nor secure so he immediately hatches a plot: he sends the wise men to Bethlehem to find the newborn king and then report back so Herod could also “pay him homage.”

The wise men follow the star and find the child and his mother, and present their famous gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh – really not such great gifts for a baby but appropriate for a king, for a god, and for one who was going to die for his people.

We’re told that thanks to a dream, the wise men outfox Herod by taking a different way home.

Today’s lesson cuts off there but you should know what happens next.

A furious Herod is even more determined to kill this newborn king and so he orders the death of the innocent children of Bethlehem.

But, before that happened, Joseph was tipped off in a dream and takes Mary and the child to Egypt – they become refugees, just like so many desperate people before and since, hoping for safety for themselves and their child.

For obvious reasons, the slaughter of the Holy Innocents and the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt never make into the Christmas Pageant, but these are important parts of the story – always important, but maybe especially these days.

The Epiphany story – the story of the wise men - has been traditionally interpreted as a sign that Jesus is for absolutely everybody, even some mysterious wizards from the East.

And, that is most definitely true.

But, as I listen to the story today I’m struck by how it’s also about a search for Jesus.

Herod is searching for Jesus because he’s insecure, threatened, and hateful – but, he’s a special case.

But the wise men are also searching for Jesus – have traveled such a long way – and they even practice a little civil disobedience by frustrating Herod – the wise men are searching for Jesus because they have some sense that Jesus is worth finding – that he has something special and valuable: a grace worth far more than gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

And, it’s that search that really speaks to me today.

Because today, just like the wise men long ago, in an often frightening and cruel world, and maybe without even realizing it, people are searching for Jesus.

That’s one of the reasons so many people came here over the holiday and it may very well be why we first walked through those doors and why we keep coming back – searching for Jesus.

And, I know Jesus is here – here in the word and the bread and the wine – here in our community.

 I know that Jesus is here, because I find him here all the time, and I sure hope you find him here, too.

But, a funny thing about Jesus is that we tend to find him most easily and most clearly when we’re not consciously looking.

We tend to find Jesus where we’d least expect.

It’s no surprise that the wise men first went to Jerusalem looking for the newborn king. Of Course! Obvious choice! After all, Jerusalem was the capital city – it was where the king should be most easily, most obviously found.

But, instead, in the capital they only found horrible Herod – and their search for Jesus took them to a small, out of the way town, their search took them to a couple of nobodies who had brought this extraordinary new life into the world.

And, sure enough, today we’re likely to find Jesus among the people huddling to keep warm on the steps of Old Bergen Church or looking for a meal at the homeless drop-in center.

We’re likely to find Jesus with the people frightened for their kids every minute they’re out of sight and the people staring at the stack of bills and wondering how on earth they will all get paid.

We’re likely to find Jesus among refugees leaving everything behind and with people in hospitals and nursing homes who feel like they also have left everything behind.

And, even if we’re not searching for Jesus, even if we don’t even particularly feel like searching for Jesus, we’re sure to find him on a dark and cold winter night, behind an open door at Family Promise, in the wide eyes and smile of a little girl, crying out:

“I remember you!”

Happy Epiphany.

Amen.