Spiritual Tidying Up at Starbucks

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

February 10, 2019

Year C: The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

Isaiah 6:1-13

Psalm 138

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Luke 5:1-11

Spiritual Tidying Up at Starbucks

            Sometimes after a long day of teaching and priesting, Sue and I just want to veg out in front of the TV and watch something that’s entertaining and not too challenging for our tired brains.

            One show we sometimes watch is called “Tidying Up” with Marie Kondo.

            It’s gotten a fair bit of attention so maybe you’ve seen it or at least heard about it.

            Marie Kondo is a spritely, extremely pleasant and seemingly deeply spiritual Japanese woman who is self-proclaimed expert on…tidying up.

            She’s written best-selling books teaching people how to organize their dresser drawers and closets, how to “tidy up” – how to de-clutter - their homes.

            The core of her teaching and method is taking a moment to look, really look, at each piece of clothing in our dresser, each object in our closet, really look at each one of them and ask, does this spark joy?

            If there’s joy, it stays.

            If not, it goes.

            On each TV episode Marie Kondo and her interpreter (Marie only speaks limited English but truthfully she communicates most clearly through her eyes and smile and joyful presence) arrive at the home of people whose stuff has taken over their lives.

            At least in the episodes I’ve seen most if not all of these people are middle class, but it’s an unfortunate truth of our society and its cheap goods that even people who struggle to make ends meet often live in homes absolutely filled with stuff.

            Anyway, Marie begins the process by sitting on the floor to make a spiritual connection with the home. Then she gives some basic instruction and encouragement (she never shames the people in their cluttered homes) and then it’s up to them to begin emptying their dressers and closets, to begin tidying up.

            It’s not an easy process but on each episode, as the piles of stuff get smaller, as people really do tidy up, they discover (or rediscover) the joy of what really makes them happy.

            I don’t have a whole lot of clothes or other things but I do have a lot of books and music CDs. (The last few times we’ve moved, the movers have looked at the many boxes of books and asked the same question: why have so many books when you can only read one at a time? Fair enough but kind of misses the point, right?)

 Anyway, Marie Kondo has inspired me to (very slowly) start weeding out these collections, keeping what gives me joy or has some special meaning.

Tidying up.

I love today’s gospel lesson because it’s a Peter story – Simon Peter the leader of the apostles, the fisherman who follows Jesus and usually means well but so often doesn’t really get it, so often messes up and falls short – Peter who gives hope to all of us who also mean well but often don’t really get it, who also mess up and fall short more often than we’d care to admit.

But today is a special Peter story because this time – this time – Peter gets it exactly right.

We’re told that Jesus is at the Lake of Genessaret (otherwise known as the Sea of Galilee) and when the crowd starts to be too much Jesus sees the fishermen’s boats. The men have been out all night fishing unsuccessfully and are now involved in the hard work of cleaning their nets – what must have been a grueling and not very joyful daily chore of “tidying up” – made even more difficult and frustrating after no catch, meaning for today no livelihood for themselves or their families.

Anyway, Jesus in his very Jesus-like way just invites himself onto Simon Peter’s boat and orders him to set out a little from shore.

Notice there’s no protest from Simon Peter – no “Lord, we’re all really tired so maybe some other time” – no “Lord, we’re kind of in the middle of cleaning our nets here, if you don’t mind” – no, Simon Peter simply does what he’s told.

Then Jesus issues a second command, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”

Here Simon Peter does push back a little, saying, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.”

Now, I think if I were Peter – Peter who must have known these waters as well as anybody and certainly better than a carpenter from Nazareth – if I were Peter I’d say something like, “Please, Master, we’re tired. We know there are no fish today.” Or, if I were feeling particularly tired and cranky, "Master, please leave the fishing to us and we’ll leave the teaching and the healing to you.”

But, Peter doesn’t say anything like that. Instead, despite being I’m sure very exhausted and kind of doubtful and reluctant to soil the nets again, he says, “Yet, if you say so I will let down the nets.”

And, as we know, Peter was rewarded with abundance – so many fish that the carefully washed nets began to break – so many fish that the boats began to sink – so much abundance that Peter who, this time at least, had said and done exactly the right thing, begged Jesus:

“Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

Since Lent is now less than a month away, I’ve started to turn my attention to that holy season – started reflecting on how I might take advantage of this special opportunity to repent – to change my ways – to do a little spiritual tidying up.

And, I think most of all I want to tidy up my assumptions and my expectations of some of the people I encounter.

More often than I care to admit I judge people on superficial traits or on first – and often faulty – impressions.

Unlike Peter, too often I don’t really trust Jesus when he says lower the nets, don’t really trust Jesus that there is abundance – abundance of goodness and love all around me, all around us, even in some pretty unlikely places.

As some of you know, in the past few years I’ve gone away to California right after our annual meeting – not because there was any particularly bad news at the annual meeting, not because I needed to run away, but just to get away for a few days in the middle of winter to clear my head.

It’s quite a luxury and I’m very thankful for the opportunity.

I’m very much a creature of habit so each time I stay in the same place and follow pretty much the same routine which includes getting up first thing in the morning and going to the Starbucks just a block from my hotel for my first cup of coffee and for something to eat.

On Monday morning I was a little surprised that the same homeless man – a youngish guy, maybe about 40 years old - who I had seen at this Starbucks last year was still there every morning as the place opened – with his suitcases and bags piled in the same corner of the small store.

I also recognized one of the baristas from last year, too.

She was perfectly pleasant and professional but there was something in her manner and appearance that suggested that she’s had a hard life – that she was what in the past might have been called a “tough cookie.”

On my last morning I actually got to Starbucks before it opened and I waited outside with this barista who was having a last before-work cigarette with a man who seemed to be her boyfriend.

Before she went in to start her day serving coffee, the boyfriend handed her a dinner plate covered in aluminum foil. I thought, that’s nice, it looks like maybe he prepares a lunch for her, and then I immediately followed her into the store, ordered my coffee and forgot all about it.

About a half hour later, as I was getting ready to leave I looked over at the corner where the homeless man was sitting with his bags and saw that he was eating.

I looked a little closer, trying not to stare, because I saw that he was eating what looked like homemade beef and noodles and vegetables.

And I realized that the plate that the boyfriend had handed over to the “tough cookie” barista wasn’t for her, it was for the homeless man.

The hard-seeming barista could easily and reasonably have shooed away the homeless man as a nuisance and a possible danger to business and maybe even her job.

We’ve all seen it happen – it even might have been the wise thing to do - no one would have blamed her.

But instead, before dawn, at the start of a long day, she served this man a homemade meal.

And, my guess is that this is an everyday event.

There is so much beauty and so much abundance out there, just beneath the surface.

Our work is to do the needed spiritual tidying up to clear out our assumptions and expectations so that when Jesus invites himself onto our boat, like Peter, we’ll find our nets filled with grace and goodness, filled with so much joy, just bursting at the seams.

Amen.

Excellence in Nazareth - and Jersey City

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

February 3, 2019

Year C: The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Psalm 71:1-6

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Luke 4:21-30

Excellence in Nazareth - and Jersey City

            Today’s gospel lesson is part two of the story of Jesus at his hometown synagogue in Nazareth.

            After beginning his ministry, after traveling around to different towns, teaching and performing wonders, Jesus has now come home – home to the place where many had probably known him since he was a boy – home to where his relatives and neighbors had undoubtedly heard what he had been up to lately.

            So, you can imagine it must have been a kind of electric atmosphere in the synagogue that Sabbath day when Jesus arrived – with everyone looking at him and wondering what he would say, what he would do.

            Luke tells us that Jesus stood up to read and he was given the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah.

            And then Jesus read, or perhaps recited:

            “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

            And, that’s where we pick up today.

After Jesus finished and while all eyes were on him, Jesus delivers the kicker:

“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

            At first everyone seems quite pleased but the mood changes quickly.

            They ask, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”

            And then Jesus admits that he won’t or can’t do the same wonders that he had done elsewhere and then things go from bad to worse to terrible when Jesus mentions Bible stories about God healing foreigners and then we’re told they chased Jesus out of the synagogue and out of the town, aiming to throw him off of a cliff.

            Welcome home, Jesus.

            Mark, Matthew, and Luke all tell this story in somewhat different ways, but the bottom line is the sad and still pretty shocking truth that Jesus was flatly, and even, as we heard today, violently, rejected by the people of his hometown.

            But, why?

            Well, I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it had something to do with what we might call today the low self-esteem of Nazareth.

            Back in the first century, Nazareth was a small town in the country – we don’t know exactly how small, but it may have had as few as 400 people.

            Nazareth is so small and insignificant that it’s never once mentioned in the Old Testament and no Jewish source mentions it until 300 years after Jesus’s earthly life.

            And so, I’m guessing that the idea that this little backwater town could somehow produce the One who fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah – the idea that Jesus, the one they had known since he was a boy, who seemed pretty much like all of the other kids in the town – maybe a little different somehow, but still - the idea that “our” Jesus could be the one to fulfill the Scripture was just too much - preposterous and even insulting and, apparently, even infuriating.

            The idea that such excellence could arise in their town was absurd, just not possible.

But those Nazareth people were very, very wrong.

            “Is not this Joseph’s son?”

            Well, we know the answer to that.

            And, in another hint of Nazareth’s low status and perhaps its low self-esteem, in the Gospel of John, Nathaniel asks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

            Well, we know the answer to that, too, right?

           

And, you know, in some ways Nazareth reminds me a little of Jersey City.

            More than two centuries ago, Alexander Hamilton famously predicted that a great city would arise on the left bank of the Hudson, but, while many of us love Jersey City and it certainly has its charms, I think it’s safe to say that we’re not quite there yet.

            (I’m from here so I can say that.)

            Of course, part of the reason we haven’t yet achieved the greatness predicted by Hamilton is because we sit in the shadow of the world’s greatest city.

But, I think another reason why we’re not there yet is because of a kind of communal low self-esteem – a low self-esteem that says “good enough” is as good as it’s going to get – a low self-esteem that shrugs and says our politics will always be corrupt and our schools and roads will always be falling apart.

            And, I think this Jersey City low self-esteem has sometimes even infected the church, where we have too often settled for “good enough,” too often failed to dream big, and too often failed to pursue excellence.

            (I’m from here so I can say that, too.)

            But, you know, the people of Nazareth were wrong – really wrong – our most excellent God chose their little backwater town – a town overshadowed by greater, more famous cities – God chose Nazareth as the incredibly important place where Jesus was raised.

            Something – Someone – amazingly excellent came out of Nazareth.

            And, as I’ve reflected back on the past year here in our beautiful and diverse congregation, I’m struck by how much excellence I see – excellence that we make happen by opening our hearts to our most excellent God.

            I think of the excellent hospitality that we offered just a few months ago when we welcomed four homeless families – eleven people – into our spiritual home – excellent hospitality offered by over seventy of us – excellent hospitality offered by creating a warm and homey environment, by taking the time to play with the kids and get to know the moms, by preparing and serving delicious food, and by giving up a night or more of sleeping in our own beds.

            I think of the excellent fundraiser dinner-dance back in June – such a beautiful affair, carefully planned from the beautiful new logo on the coffee mugs and bags to the diverse music played by the DJ – the excellence of all different kinds of people united by a love of this church coming together and having one great party – and actually making some money for the church!

            I think of the excellence of Jersey City Together, which has done wonders for our Jersey City low self-esteem – teaching us that things don’t have to be this way – that, yes, we deserve decent and affordable housing, quality schools, and safe streets – and Jersey City Together has taught many of us that we have the excellent talent right here to push for what we deserve.

            I think of the excellence of one of my favorite ministries – our monthly lunches at the homeless drop-in center. When we started we agreed that we would serve food at least as good as what we provide at coffee hour, at last as good as what we put on our own table. And that’s how it’s been with Sonia and Eric and the small band of volunteers, month after month.

            I think of the excellence that many of us saw here last Sunday – first at the launch of our All God’s Children service – a project not driven by me – not run by the priest – but by Patrice and a team of talented and generous lay people.

All I had to do was come up with a two-minute homily!

            Truthfully, we didn’t know how it was going to work out, but it was excellent – offering a joyful, sincere, and loving welcome to everyone who was there – a powerful reminder that God loves each and every one of us.

            And then, that evening at our Martin Luther King service: excellence yet again.

            Not that it’s a competition, and not that I’m competitive at all, but I would put that service – with the powerful sermon by Canon Jacobs and the over-the-top music made by Gail, the choir and musicians, and with the spirit here in this room that night – I would put that service up against worship absolutely anywhere.

            Excellence – right here in Jersey City.

            Excellence – right here.

            Among many other things, Jesus is the supreme example of faithfulness – of opening his heart to our most excellent God.

Long ago, the people of Nazareth couldn’t quite accept that God had chosen their town to produce such excellence.

In a similar way, we may think “good enough” is as good as it’s going to get.

But when we truly open our hearts to our most excellent God, we know what’s possible: excellent service, excellent worship, and excellent love.

Here’s to another year together.

Amen.

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.