The Church of St. Paul and Incarnation, Jersey City NJ
October 25, 2020
Year A, Proper 25: The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46
“Prophets of a Future Not Our Own”
For many weeks now we have been hearing the central story of the people of Israel – their great exodus from slavery in Egypt – led by God and Moses on a forty- year adventure through the wilderness.
It was a journey filled with many twists and turns.
The people got hungry and grew impatient – they even got a little nostalgic for their days of enslavement!
The people gave into the familiar temptation of turning away from God and choosing instead to worship the gods of the world.
Moses was in the unenviable position of trying to keep the peace between God and this troublesome people – but Moses also had the great privilege of entering God’s presence, learning God’s name, and receiving God’s law.
And now, this long and eventful journey is drawing to a close.
At last, the people of Israel are approaching their long-promised land.
But, as we heard today in one of the most poignant moments in all of Scripture, Moses will stand on a mountaintop and get a glimpse of the Promised Land off on the horizon, but he will not live long enough to enter it.
Instead, it will be Moses’ successor, Joshua, who will lead the Israelites on the last leg of their journey home.
It’s hard for us to hear this final Moses story without thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr., right?
On April 3, 1968, Dr. King spoke to an overflowing crowd in Memphis. He was there to support striking sanitation workers.
Maybe with a sense of premonition, and most definitely echoing the story of Moses, Dr. King said, “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t really matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop…I’ve seen the Promised Land.”
Less than 24 hours later, Dr. King was assassinated.
As I was thinking about Moses and Dr. King, these two prophets who led so many on the way but were not able to reach their much longed-for destination, I was reminded of words that were attributed to the great El Salvadoran bishop and martyr Oscar Romero. It turns out that he didn’t say them actually, but they’re still beautiful and important. Here’s part of it:
“We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
We are prophets of a future not our own.”
We are prophets of a future not our own.
If you’ve read the last couple of my weekly messages, you know that I’ve been thinking even more than usual about history – about my history – about the history of Incarnation and the history of St. Paul’s – and about our history together.
The other day I was flipping through the pages of our parish register, the big old book where we record all of our baptisms and funerals.
I love looking at all of the names and admiring the beautiful penmanship of days gone by.
I think about how each of the names listed, each of the services recorded, carried so much meaning – the hope of new life in baptism and also the hope of new life in a funeral – new life that we can’t really see as the water is splashed into the font – new life that we can’t really see as a casket is lowered into the grave.
And, yet.
And, I can’t help looking at the signatures of all of my predecessors – including the first, Fernando Putnam, who came here all the way from Vermont to start a church in what was then the countryside – there were sheep just down the road - and my good friend Frank Carr – each of them added their own gifts into the mix, building up the church for their own time, yes, but also leading the people toward a future that they knew they would not live to see.
And, that’s what we’re meant to be about, too.
We are also called to be prophets of a future not our own – each of us contributing our gifts for the here and now, yes, but also laying the foundation for a future that we can maybe just glimpse over the horizon.
Can you see it?
It’s over there, beyond Election Day and the healing of our plague.
It’s over there, beyond political partisanship and selfishness and deceit.
It’s over there, where our weapons have been beaten into plowshares, where we practice war no more.
It’s over there, in the place where the poor and the mournful really are blessed, and the mighty have been cast down from their thrones and the lowly have been lifted up.
It’s over there, in the place that to which God has been leading us, the place that God has intended for us, all along.
Even in our time of trouble, even though we are so tired from our long journey and are so frightened about what is yet to come, even with all of that, if we look and maybe squint a little, we can see that promised land off in the future.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
That sounds, I know, a little grandiose.
And, let’s face it, we’re not Moses and we’re not Dr. King.
We’re just plan folks, right?
But, even if we’ll never be famous and no one will ever write books about us, we really can be prophets of a future not our own.
And, in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus shows us how.
For the past few weeks we’ve been hearing about the conflict between the religious leaders and Jesus.
They’ve been asking Jesus questions, trying to trip him up, hoping to weaken his support among the people and maybe even get him into hot water with the Romans.
Each time Jesus has swatted them away, and now today we’re told that one of these leaders, a lawyer, asks Jesus a question “to test him.”
“Teacher,” he asks, “which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
Now, there are a lot of commandments in the Jewish Law – 613 to be exact – but like other rabbis Jesus has no trouble distilling all of that law into its essence.
Jesus replies by quoting Scripture, by offering commandments that are in fact two sides of the same coin:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind.”
And,
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
There’s nothing easy about any of that – like the Promised Land, it’s beyond our reach.
It’s only with God’s help that we can try to give all of our love to God – it’s only with God’s grace that we can even hope to love our neighbors as ourselves – to love especially the people who drive us up the wall, the people who look and think, and, yes, vote differently than we do.
But, it’s only when we live lives of love that we can lead one another to the Promised Land.
It’s only when we live lives of love that, like Moses and Dr. King, in our own small way, we become prophets of a future not our own.
The death of Moses is an important part of Israel’s story so it’s no surprise that for thousands of years sages and rabbis have studied it very closely.
And, over time, they’ve discovered some gaps in the story.
What exactly was the cause of Moses’ death?
Who buried him? Was it God?
Why was this most important gravesite not remembered and honored?
And these gaps led many to conclude that Moses hadn’t died in the usual way and that, in some sense Moses was still alive.
That was certainly a common belief by the time of Jesus in the first century.
But, setting aside the supernatural possibilities, the truth is that Moses is still alive. He lives on in the law and he certainly lives on in the stories that Israel and we continue to tell to this day.
In the same way, Dr. King lives on, alive every time people stand up for people like the striking sanitation workers in Memphis, every time someone insists the Black lives really do matter.
And here at church, I’ll tell you that I feel the presence of Fernando Putnam, who came from afar to do the hard work of starting a little church in the countryside.
The sheep are long gone but his legacy lives on in us.
And then, there’s Frank Carr.
You old timers know that I was very close with Fr. Carr in his last years when he was living just across the street, blind but still very engaged with the world and the church.
I spent many hours with him when he would tell so many stories from his life, especially his time as rector here in the 1970s and 1980s.
I have to tell you that, long before I was ordained, he was absolutely convinced that someday I would serve here as rector.
And he would – I was going to say, make suggestions, but, honestly it was more like giving orders – he would tell me in that booming voice of his what I should do when I was rector of St. Paul’s.
At the top of his list was making friends, and working closely with, my clergy colleagues here in Jersey City.
Fr. Carr did not live to see my return. But, when I finally took up my work here, in my first week or two, with Fr. Carr’s “orders” echoing loudly in my head, I began calling around to local clergy, introducing myself, hoping to set up times to meet.
Not long after that, I walked over to Old Bergen Church to have lunch with Pastor Jon Brown.
As I stepped off their elevator (yes, they have an elevator and a parking lot, and no, I don’t want to talk about it!) – as I stepped off the elevator, there was an old man waiting.
He looked at me in my black shirt and clergy collar and he asked,
“What church are you from, Father?”
I said, “St. Paul’s, over on Duncan Avenue.”
And, he kind of looked off into the distance, and said, “St. Paul’s? I haven’t met a minister from St. Paul’s since…Frank Carr!”
For a moment, it felt like I had stepped into the Promised Land.
“We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
We are prophets of a future not our own.”
But, by loving God and loving our neighbor - by following God’s lead into the Promised Land - we play our own small part in creating that future.
Amen.
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