The Cheetah and The Dog

The Church of St. Paul & Incarnation, Jersey City NJ

July 28, 2019

Year C, Proper 12: The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Hosea 1:2-10

Psalm 85

Colossians 2:6-15

Luke 11:1-13

The Cheetah and The Dog

            One of the saddest consequences of sin is that any idea we come up with, any invention we create, can be used at least as easily for evil as for good.

            Take, for example, the Internet.

I think we can all agree that the Internet can be a nightmare.

            People can be so mean to each other online, posting the most horrible comments and pictures, just really ugly, ugly stuff.

            This week I was looking at the nj.com articles about the two most recent homicides here in Jersey City, two more young men whose lives were cut so short by gun violence. Tragic. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of looking at the comments posted by readers, many of which were just heartless and quite racist.

            The Internet can be dangerous.

            We can fall victim to scams. Children can be led into danger.

            And, since everything is now connected through computers, our whole country is at risk from misinformation and sabotage, as we were reminded by the former Special Counsel’s testimony last week.

            But, of course, the Internet can also be used for good.

            It’s great way to keep up with people we rarely, or even never, see in person.

            For example, thanks to Facebook, I learned that a woman I taught in high school “a few” years back is now in the same doctoral studies program with my wife, Sue.

            Small world.

And, apparently, I’m getting old.

            And then there are the adorable animal videos.

            I’m not usually an animal video person but the news has been so bleak lately that I’ve been looking at them to cheer myself up a bit.

            There was one video recently about cheetahs and dogs, which at first doesn’t really sound like such a great combination. But, it turns out that young cheetahs growing up in captivity without their mothers are understandably anxious. So, to help these young cheetahs relax, some zoos and animal shelters pair them up with… puppies – puppies who do what puppies do, play a lot and slobber the young cheetahs with unconditional affection.

            So, if you look online you’ll find these amazing pictures and videos of baby cheetahs and puppies happily and peacefully playing together. And you’ll find pictures and videos of adult cheetahs and dogs, who have known each other their whole lives, sitting happy and content side-by-side. There are pictures of the cheetahs carefully licking the dogs with their tongues, just like how our housecats clean each other on the couch.

            In the wild, a cheetah would see a dog as… well, lunch - but here they are the best of friends.

            The kingdom of God is like a cheetah and a dog who love each other.

            And, there’s another animal video that I’ve seen posted a bunch of times and also like very much.

            A duck is quacking away and pacing by the side of the road, agitated, it turns out, because her ducklings have fallen through a grate and into the sewer.

            Fortunately, some “good Samaritans” come along, figure out what’s going on, and carefully fish out the ducklings one by one.

            And, here’s the part I like best: the mother duck keeps quacking and pacing until every single one of her ducklings is rescued. It seems she knows exactly how many there are and she worries about, and cares for, each one of them.

            The kingdom of God is a like a duck who doesn’t rest until each of her ducklings is safe and secure.

            I’m sure all of you parents and grandparents in the room can relate to that duck, recognizing that fierce love, that wave of panic when your child might be in danger, that determination to do whatever is necessary to get your child to safety, that relief when everything turns out to be OK.

            Frankly, I’m in awe of the love and sacrifice of parents – my own parents, of course, who sacrificed so much for my sister and me – and parents here in our own congregation who I see all the time anxious about their kids, determined that they have the best shot at a good life – parents who manage to stretch limited resources so very far – parents who even figure out a way to get themselves and their kids to church on Sunday!

            I’m in awe of parents who leave their homeland, for many of our parishioners that means an island in the Caribbean, leaving the comfort and familiarity of home behind to come to a faraway and strange place like… Jersey City.

I’m in awe of parents who travel that great physical and emotional distance, searching for opportunity.

            I’m in awe of parents who sometimes send their kids away to live with other relatives, for opportunities they themselves can’t provide – or parents who sometimes leave for a while, all to build the best possible life for their kids.

            I’m in awe of parents who would never ever give their kids snakes and scorpions and somehow always manage to find fish and eggs.

            It’s so beautiful, right?

            It’s us at our best.

            But, if we’re really going to build the kingdom of God, it’s not enough.

If we’re serious when we pray “your kingdom come,” if those are not just some words we memorized as kids and don’t give a moment’s thought to, if we’re serious about God’s kingdom then we are called to even more – with the power of the Holy Spirit, we are meant to share our love with people who we may not see as “our own.”

            As the people of God, we are called to love even more boldly and generously – to love like, well, to love like the cheetah and the dog love each other.

            I’m in awe of parents but I’m even more in awe of people who offer that same kind of unconditional love to kids who are not their own biological children.

            We have a few people like that in our own congregation, people who have opened their doors and their homes – opened their hearts – to kids whose own parents couldn’t or wouldn’t care for them – people who are not biologically related but who love these kids as much as that quacking, frantic duck loved every single one of her ducklings, no exceptions.

            It’s one thing to give fish and eggs to our own children but we’re called to give fish and eggs to those who the world says are not our own but who God absolutely insists are in fact our sisters and brothers.

            In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus is asked to teach his disciples how to pray.

            The prayer that Jesus offers is of course the most familiar of all Christian prayers – and it’s a prayer that we can say on our own but is really meant for us to say together because we ask God for these good things not just for me but for us.

            And, so in a time when so many seem to have lost empathy for others, when we can’t or just flat out refuse put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, we need to begin by praying for one another and for our brothers and sisters out there, especially those the world wants to throw away as nobodies or those the world tries to convince us are our enemies – the kids hanging out on the street corners and the parents home worried sick about them – the kids who are shivering in ice cold US Government-run detention facilities warmed only by a flimsy aluminum blanket and the adults who are roasting in other government facilities, packed in cages, unwashed, and with not even enough room to lie down – the huddled masses yearning to be free.

            We need to begin by praying for them but that’s not the end.

            Just like in the story Jesus tells us today, our “friends”  - our sisters and brothers who so often we are taught to fear – our friends are knocking on our door asking for help, and, oh man, I’m already in my pajamas so it’s really not a good time, it’s really inconvenient, and my pantry is pretty bare and opening my door and my heart sounds kind of risky, and yet, and yet, and yet, God calls us to be as loving and generous as God is loving and generous to each and every one of us.  

            And, that kind of love is really possible thanks to the Holy Spirit.

            And, I don’t just believe that.

I know it’s possible because right here I’ve glimpsed the kingdom of God when some of you have lovingly opened your own doors.

            And, I also know that this kind of generous and surprising love is possible because…I’ve seen the cheetah and the dog.

            Amen.

            

Many Ministries, One Jesus

The Church of St. Paul & Incarnation, Jersey City NJ

July 21, 2019

Year C, Proper 11: The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Amos 8:1-12

Psalm 52

Colossians 1:15-28

Luke 10:38-42

Many Ministries, One Jesus

            A couple of weeks ago I had a meeting in my office with someone who had never been to our church.

            Since it was her first time here, I waited outside for her to arrive, both because I like to stand outside, and because sometimes people have a hard time finding their way around this place.

            Anyway, as she stepped out of her Uber, she looked up at the church and then looked at me and said:

            “After looking at your website and seeing all the activities that go on here, I expected the church to be…bigger.”

            I smiled and thought to myself, “I like you already!”

            And, you know, what she said about us is true.

            Pretty much every week, I begin the announcements by saying something like, “As usual, we have a lot going on…”

            Susan uses the smallest legible font for the announcement insert, trying to squeeze everything in, sometimes getting creative with abbreviations and punctuation to somehow make it all work.

            One time my own mother said to me that it feels like the Friday morning email gets longer and longer every week.

            I make no apologies for any of this.

            We’ve been given wonderful resources here – a great and beautiful (and air conditioned!) space, along with lots of talented, interesting, and devoted people.

            And, we’ve also been given a community around us that is hungry for good food in their bellies – hungry for beautiful art and music to inspire their souls – and, maybe most of all, hungry for human contact – hungry for the chance to have real conversation, to break bread with neighbors, to know and to be known.

            So, I make no apologies for our full schedule and I don’t see us slowing down much, at least while I’m rector.

            But.

            But, all of this activity comes with some dangers.

            There’s the danger of becoming overwhelmed. I’ve heard from some of you who’ve felt this way, that you just can’t keep with all that’s going on, that sometimes it becomes too much and you just shut down or tune it out.

            There’s the danger that, when we get the word out into the community, when we open our doors to absolutely everybody, when we do that, well, you never know who’s going to walk in, right?

            There are likely to be people different than us, people who have new ideas, and even, unfortunately, every now and then, people who might be unstable and disruptive.

            But, I think the greatest danger of all of this activity – of Sandwich Squad and homeless lunch and Swift Fitness and yoga and art shows and concerts and the dinner-dance Jersey City Together and feast days and craft guild and men’s group and Family Promise and youth group and Stone Soup and Triangle Park, and, and…

            The greatest danger of all this good activity is that we forget what all of this is supposed to be about.

            Right now, our vestry has begun working on a mission statement for our unified church. Because we do a lot, it’s harder than you might think to come up with a couple of sentences that really capture who we are.

            But, maybe the most important thing to remember is:

            There are many ministries, but only one Jesus.

            In today’s Gospel lesson we pick up right where we left off last week.

            If you were here then, you may remember that we heard one of Jesus’ best-known and most-loved stories, what’s usually called the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

            In that story, the Samaritan offers exceptional hospitality to an injured man on the road, pouring oil and wine on his wounds, letting him ride on his own animal, and then putting him up in an inn, where he could rest and recuperate from his trauma.

            And, now, today, the theme of hospitality continues when Jesus and his disciples are welcomed into the home of a woman named Martha.

            For some of us, probably especially many of the women, I’m sure that this story both rings very true and is also pretty exasperating.

            Martha is busy with her many “tasks” – it’s no small thing to have Jesus of Nazareth and his friends over to your house – but it’s not just that Martha is busy.

            Martha is “distracted by her many tasks.”

            Meanwhile, her sister Mary doesn’t seem to be lifting a finger to help. Instead, she’s sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening to the Lord, in the posture of a disciple.

            Apparently, Martha can’t take it any more, and so she says to Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all of the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.”

            Now, I assume that Martha expected that, of course, Jesus would agree with her and say something to Mary, like:

            “Mary, Martha’s right. Why don’t you go help your sister and we can talk some more later?”

            Very reasonable, right?

            But, no.

            Instead, Jesus gives a kind of cryptic, mysterious reply:

            “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

            And that’s where the story ends.

            And, I think we can all agree that it’s better that we don’t know how Martha responded to this, but I can almost hear the banging of pots and the slamming of doors…

            So, what to make of all this?

            As always, it’s important to remember that the gospels are written to operate on several different levels.

            Those include history: the gospels gives us accounts of what Jesus said and did, where we went, who he met, and so on.

            Another level is theology: the gospels tell us the meaning of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and what Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection mean for us today.

            Another level is one that’s harder for us to pick up on: at least to some extent, the gospels address what was going on some of the early Christian communities in the last few decades of the first century.

            In other words, while telling the story of Jesus, the Evangelist Luke and the others were also telling the story of their own times and places.

            And, this is part of what may be going on in this story of Martha and Mary.

            The early Christians didn’t have beautiful churches like ours in which to worship. Instead, they gathered in people’s homes, in what are called “house churches.” And, yes, some of those house churches were led by women.

So, you see where I’m going with this, right?

It’s possible that the first hearers and readers of this story might have recognized Martha’s home as a house church and they would have recognized Martha as the leader of that church.

And, like church people past and present, Martha is busy, busy, busy - distracted by her many tasks – and in the Greek the word used for “tasks” can be actually also translated as “ministries.”

So, like church people past and present, Martha is busy - is distracted – so distracted that she may have forgotten the most important thing:

There are many ministries, but only one Jesus.

And, Martha, he’s right there.

He’s right here.

Martha and Mary also appear in the Gospel of John where we learn a little bit more about them – they live in a town called Bethany and they have a brother, Lazarus, whom Jesus raises from the dead.

But, aside from that, we don’t know what happens to them after Jesus’s death and resurrection.

But, we can imagine that life was often hard.

It was hard to be part of the tiny “Jesus Movement,” when most everybody else rejected his message and denied his identity.

It was hard to live in a land occupied by a brutal empire, where life was cheap and any kind of resistance was crushed without mercy.

Since Martha had her own house, it seems like she was relatively well-to-do, but life was still hard when you had to cook and clean and pay bills and probably take care of others, maybe including her sister.

Life was hard with much ministry to do and it was easy to get distracted from the most important thing – it was easy to forget that the mission is to stick close to Jesus.

And, life is often hard for us today.

It’s hard to be part of a shrinking “Jesus Movement,” when most everybody else has turned away and is probably not coming back.

It’s hard to live on a planet that is getting dangerously hot.

It’s hard to live in a land with shrinking resources and a government that often seems bent on making the rich richer and hurting the poorest and most vulnerable.

Life is hard and there is so much ministry to do and it’s so easy to get distracted from the most important thing.

It’s easy to forget our mission is to stick close to Jesus.

There are many ministries, but only one Jesus.

Amen.

            

Real Life Mercy

The Church of St. Paul & Incarnation, Jersey City NJ

July 14, 2019

Year C, Proper 10: The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Amos 7:7-17

Psalm 82

Colossians 1:1-14

Luke 10:25-37

Real Life Mercy

            It was great to get away for a few days of vacation last week. And, although I wouldn’t have said no to a little more time off, it’s good to be back here with all of you.

            I know some people don’t like to travel. Maybe that includes some of you. There’s the hassle of traffic and long lines, the squeezing into tight seats on a plane, the discomfort of being in unfamiliar places, and all the rest of it. I get all of that but I really do like traveling.

            I even like the airport – by now Sue has adjusted to my need to get to the airport well ahead of our departure time, in part because I’m just like that, and in part because I enjoy the people-watching, seeing all of the sometimes excited and sometimes frazzled people as they prepare to travel across the country or around the world.

            And, while not deliberately eavesdropping, of course, sometimes you overhear a little bit of conversation that sounds funny or leaves you scratching your head.

            Since we traveled to a resort, our whole vacation was kind of like that – surrounded by strangers of all kinds – and overhearing snippets of what people were talking about.

            Of course, people being what they are, this was not always pleasant.

            For example, one afternoon we were having lunch while next to us there was a couple (from Scotland, it turned out), and next to them were two American guys who, it seemed to me, were well into a mostly liquid lunch.

            Anyway, these two guys struck up a conversation with the Scottish couple, telling them how great the Scots are, how they can take a joke about themselves (I guess unlike some unnamed other ethnicities…).

            At one point, the louder of the liquid lunch guys asked, “What language do you speak in Scotland?”

            Before the couple could answer, the quieter liquid lunch guy said with a hint of embarrassment, “English.”

            His louder friend nodded, saying, “I was going to say that your English was really good!”

            So, this was excruciating.

But, it got even worse because eventually the conversation turned to… politics and the current administration in Washington.

            I thought I could feel the Scots tense up.

But, that might have just been me.

            The louder liquid lunch guy began talking about the humanitarian crisis at our southern border, where, as you know, many thousands of children and adults are being held in very poor conditions, with severe overcrowding and limited or no access to showers or not even a toothbrush and toothpaste.

            The louder liquid lunch guy’s monologue about immigration went on for a bit and while I couldn’t hear everything that he was saying, his general attitude about this national disgrace was along the lines of “regrettable, but whadda ya gonna do, right?”

            But, here’s what he said to justify what we’re doing at the border – here’s what I heard loud and clear – here’s have been thinking about ever since. He said:

            “We can’t run the country like a church.”

            “We can’t run the country like a church.”

            I have to admit when I first registered what he said, I smiled a little bit, because anyone who’s ever had to deal with institutional church bureaucracy would never think it would be a good idea to run a country like we run the church.

            There’s no bureaucracy like a church bureaucracy!

            But, of course, loud liquid lunch guy wasn’t offering the poor Scottish couple a witty commentary on the inefficiencies of the church.

            No, what he was saying was that all of that nice Christian talk about welcoming the stranger and loving your neighbor as yourself and turning the other cheek, all of that “soft” stuff is just fine for behind church doors or in the pages of the Bible, but in the “real world” – in “real life” – we’ve got to be cold, and calculating, and, yes, sometimes even cruel.

            “We can’t run the country like a church.”

And, if we’re honest with ourselves, I wonder how many of us believe exactly the same thing – not just about how we run our country but also about how we run our lives.

            Today’s gospel lesson begins with a lawyer asking Jesus a not very good question: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

            It’s a not very good question because eternal life is not something that is earned by good deeds – and it’s certainly not something that is “inherited” – eternal life is a gracious gift from God.

            But, Jesus plays along with the lawyer, asking him about what is found in Jewish Law and the lawyer gives the correct answer: love of God and love of neighbor.

            Jesus congratulates him on getting it right but the lawyer doesn’t quit there. No, he asks another question, a much more interesting question:

            “And who is my neighbor?”

            And, if you think about it, by asking, “who is my neighbor?” he’s really asking, “who is not my neighbor?”

            In his usual Jesus-like way, Jesus doesn’t answer him directly but instead offers what is now one of his best-known and most-loved parables.

            Parables are stories that are set in ordinary places and familiar situations, but are meant to shock us and to get us thinking about the world and our lives in new and different ways.

            For us here today, one of the challenges with the best-known and most-loved parables is that it’s hard for us to be shocked by them anymore. We make the mistake of thinking that since we’ve heard this many times in church that we’ve got this story figured out, that we know what it “means.”

            But, for the Jewish people who first heard this story there would have been at least two big shockers – and, if you don’t mind, I’m going to talk about these two shockers out of order.

            They would not have been shocked by what happens to the poor man, presumably a Jew, on the road down from Jerusalem to Jericho, which was notoriously dangerous for travelers who could and often did fall victim to robbers.

            But, the second shocker in this story is that a Samaritan is the hero. As we talked about just a couple of weeks ago, although they were related to each other and read some of the same Scriptures, Jews and Samaritans had very different ideas about worship, about the Messiah, and about lots of other things.

            Like many family feuds, it was bitter and it lasted a long time.

            So, many Jews would have had a hard time believing that there was even such a thing as a “good Samaritan” and would have been shocked to hear about the great mercy he showed to the injured man on the road.

            It would have been shocking to consider a Samaritan a neighbor and it would have been shocking to consider that a Samaritan could treat a Jew as a neighbor.

            So, that’s shocker number two.

            Shocker number one is the behavior of the priest and the Levite, the first two people who encounter the half-dead man and, instead of helping him, they cross over to the other side of the road and hurry on their way.

            For centuries, Christians have heard this story and assumed that the priest and the Levite didn’t help because they wanted to maintain their ritual purity - that they didn’t want to be contaminated by blood or, even worse, a corpse.

            And, believing this, Christians have used the behavior of the priest and Levite as an example of how Jews supposedly prefer law over love.

            Wrong, wrong, wrong.

            The first Jewish hearers of this story would have been shocked by the behavior of these two religious men because Jewish law – God’s law – insists that helping a person in need takes precedence over all other considerations, including ritual purity, which was not an issue anyway since it seems that the priest and the Levite were heading from Jerusalem to Jericho.

            The shocker is that these two men of faith did not fulfill the law.

            And, I wonder why.

            I can easily imagine that they were concerned about their own safety. After all, the bandits who left the man half-dead might still be lurking around, waiting for more victims.

            Maybe they were on a tight schedule and couldn’t “afford” a delay.

            Maybe they just didn’t want to get involved.

            And, maybe, just maybe, these two religious people made the choice they did because consciously or unconsciously they thought that all of that love of God and love of neighbor stuff was fine when they were safely worshiping in the Temple or comfortably reading the Bible, but in the “real world” – in “real life” – where it will really cost us, we’ve got to be cold, and calculating and, yes, sometimes even cruel.

We can’t run the country – we can’t run our lives - like a church.

Right?

            I don’t need to tell you that we are living through difficult times.

            There is cruelty and suffering all around us: along the southern border and also closer to home in the Elizabeth detention center and in county jails, including our own.

            Of course, the cruelty and suffering is not limited to undocumented immigrants.

            Just take a walk down Bergen Avenue or through Journal Square.

            Or, just turn on the news anytime.

            And so just like the loud liquid lunch guy and the lawyer, just like the priest and the Levite and the Samaritan, we all face difficult choices.

            Do we see others as neighbors – especially the least and the lost - especially people different from us - especially people we don’t particularly like or even trust?

            Do we take the faith we say we believe and the Good News we receive safely right here – do we take that love out into the “real world,” out into our “real lives,” where it will almost certainly cost us something?

            Like the Samaritan, do we show real life mercy?