The Church of St.
Paul & Incarnation, Jersey City
September 18, 2019
Year C, Proper 19:
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Jeremiah 14:11-12,
22-28
Psalm 14
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10
God Does Not Lose Anyone
I
guess it comes with the territory of being in what’s called “midlife,” but
these days I find myself taking stock of my choices, thinking about roads taken
- and roads not taken.
At
most of our Wednesday healing services, I give a short homily on the saint of
the day, and very often these are men and women who were so amazingly bold for
Christ, people who left behind their old lives, left behind familiar places,
and gave everything away for Christ.
A
couple of weeks ago the Church remembered the pacifist bishop Paul Jones. In
the early 20th Century, when he was in seminary in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, the bishop of Utah visited and challenged Jones and his fellow
seminarians to go on a bold adventure building up the Church in what was still
back then a pretty wild West.
Jones
said yes to that invitation.
And that yes
changed the course of his life.
And
that story reminded me of my friend and predecessor, the 10th rector
of St. Paul’s, Frank Carr. A few decades after the bishop of Utah visited the
seminary and recruited Paul Jones, the bishop of Montana made the very same
trip and extended the same invitation and challenge to Frank Carr and his
classmates:
Be bold for Christ
and go West!
And a young Fr.
Carr left behind the comforts of home and went west, starting out on a journey
that would eventually led him to, of all places, Jersey City.
Pretty amazing,
right?
And
so, speaking as someone who lives and works about a mile from where I was born,
I wonder, you know?
On
the other hand…as I get older I appreciate the value of putting down deep roots
in a particular place – to be intertwined with people’s lives over the long
haul – to witness both the goodness and the horrors of change – growth and
decay, life and death.
Sue
and I have been rooted in Jersey City our whole lives and we’ve been associated
with St. Paul’s – and now St. Paul and Incarnation - for about twenty years
now.
Like
many of you, we’ve seen lots of change over that time.
We’ve
seen people be born and grow up.
We’ve
seen people get sick and die.
We’ve
seen people find their way.
And,
unfortunately, we’ve also seen people lose their way.
Like,
for example, a man named Gary.
I
bet most, if not all, longtime St. Paul’s members won’t remember Gary.
He
wasn’t part of our church for very long, but he did come pretty regularly there
for a while during the Fr. Hamilton days.
Like
everybody else, he had his preferred pew, and I can still see him sitting right
over there.
When
Gary came to church and when he came to coffee hour he always seemed to enjoy
the experience but there was always a kind of distance between him and the rest
of us, you know? It was kind of like he was wearing a pleasant-looking mask but
behind that there was his real face that he didn’t want to share – there was a
lot he wanted to keep private.
I’m
not sure how I found out about this, but at the time Gary was a recovering
alcoholic.
(Fr.
Hamilton’s openness about his own addiction and recovery may very well have
been what drew him to St. Paul’s.)
And,
as I think back to those days and the way Gary carried himself, and what he
said and didn’t say, and that mask that he seemed to wear, I wonder if on some
level Gary suspected – or even somehow knew - that he wasn’t going to be able
to hold on to his sobriety – that someday he would stray and get lost.
Anyway,
eventually I went off to seminary and was working at other churches and so I
wasn’t around at St. Paul’s much anymore – and I don’t think I gave Gary a
thought. But, Sue and I still lived in Jersey City. And, I remember one day
coming out of the Journal Square PATH station and for the first time in a long
time I saw Gary.
At
first I was going to say hi, but when I got closer I realized that he was
drunk, really drunk – like so many at Journal Square, then and now.
Rather than coming
to church, Gary was now among a different kind of congregation.
Fast
forward a bunch of years and I was back here as Rector.
In
one of my walks, I discovered that Gary was living in a row house over on
Jewett, with a bunch of guys who shared his addiction.
One
day when I was walking by, I saw him drinking outside with his buddies, looking
pretty disheveled but not unhappy. I worked up the courage to stop and say hi.
Not only did he remember me but he knew that I had come back to be rector. We talked
for a bit – he was an interesting and knowledgeable guy. As I said goodbye, he
made the familiar pledge to come to church someday soon, and as he said it both
of us knew that it was not likely to happen.
And
then about five years ago, there was a fire that destroyed Gary’s house and the
others attached to it.
I
scanned the news looking for his name, afraid that he was dead, but a day or
two later Gary called me at church, sounding very shaken, explaining that he
had lost everything, that the Red Cross was putting him up for a couple of
days, but he would need some help for a little while until he could scrape
together some money.
Sure
enough, somehow Gary landed on his feet, renting a room right around the corner
from here on Bergen Avenue.
Maybe
as a way of saying thank you for the help, he even cleaned himself up as best
as he could and came to church on Pentecost, seeming to enjoy it, but he was
never to return.
Instead,
I’d see him all the time: pretty early in the morning bringing back a newspaper
and a cup of coffee or later in the morning on his way to or from Royal
Liquors. He came back with a plastic bag looking like it had six or eight big
cans of high voltage beer.
A
few times I even saw him sitting at the bar in Carvao, drinking away.
Once
or twice I came outside here to find him examining one of the flyers in the
“take one” boxes, keeping up with what was going on at his old church.
Sometimes
we would stop and talk but it was hard (for me, and I think for him) because
his decline was so obvious – his hair was greasy and stringy, his clothes
absolutely filthy, his vision fading, his skin discolored, all pointing to very
bad health.
For
the past couple of weeks I was aware that I hadn’t seen Gary and so when I
spotted one of his roommates the other day, I asked after him, and he said with
no apparent emotion, “Oh, Gary died. He died three weeks ago.”
And
then he went on his way.
And
that’s the end of the story of Gary.
I
looked online and there was no obituary that I could find.
It’s
all very sad.
As
I’ve thought about Gary and I’m sure as you’ve heard me tell what I know of his
story, he sure seems like a lost soul – a bright and interesting guy, but a man
lost to his addiction, lost to a very small and unpleasant life, lost to a
death noticed by almost nobody.
But,
here’s the thing: God does not lose anyone.
So
then, what do we make of today’s parables?
In
today’s gospel lesson we heard Jesus tell two parables that have the same
theme: lost – found – rejoicing.
(There’s
a third parable in the set, the famous Parable of the Prodigal Son, which has
the same theme, right?)
Probably
ever since Jesus first told his parables, people have tried to turn them into
allegories:
“OK,
so in this parable, the lost sheep is a sinner and God is the sheep owner who
loses the sheep and then seeks out the lost sheep and celebrates after it’s
found and returned to the fold.”
“And,
in this parable, the lost coin is a sinner who is lost and God is the woman who
looks for it, finds it, and then invites her women friends over for a party.”
And,
if that’s how you read these parables, you’re in good company. And, if that
works for you, great!
But, God does not
lose a sheep or misplace a coin.
God
does not lose anything.
And, God certainly
doesn’t lose anyone.
So,
maybe the parables are actually about us.
Maybe
we are meant to recognize that everyone counts – whether life takes us to far
away places or if we barely leave home.
We
are meant to recognize that everyone counts – whether we conquer our demons or
if the battle proves to be too much for us.
I’m
sure the world viewed Gary as just another bedraggled drunk on Bergen Avenue:
someone who didn’t count, someone to be pitied and avoided.
Someone who was easily
lost and best forgotten.
But, that’s not
God’s way and it shouldn’t be our way, either.
God never lost
Gary, never forgot Gary – and when he was finally free of his suffering,
liberated from the chains of addiction, when Gary finally arrived at his true
home, I believe that there was great rejoicing indeed.
Amen.
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