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.
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