Spiritual Urgency

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

March 24, 2019

Year C: The Third Sunday in Lent

Exodus 3:1-15

Psalm 63:1-8

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Luke 13:1-9

Spiritual Urgency

            On Thursday evening over 200 concerned Jersey City residents packed the First Wesleyan Church for a Jersey City Together action about the crisis – or, rather, the crises – facing our public schools.

            For me, as usual, the highlight of the action was when people told their stories.

Parents and students told stories of lead pipes and a limited supply of bottled water even during extreme heat and even for kids and adults with serious illnesses like diabetes – stories of broken bathrooms and flooded locker rooms and infestation of vermin – stories of a little girl with special needs who so wants to learn but whose desire seems not to be valued by the Special Education Department – stories of schools in some of our poorer and browner neighborhoods which have been neglected and maybe even nearly forgotten for decades – stories of a lack of municipal support and a quickly growing budget shortfall.

            There really weren’t any happy stories at this action.

            As is always the case with Jersey City Together, most of the action was carefully planned and scripted, including the demands made to the schools superintendent and the president of the Board of Education.

            Together they said yes (more or less) to all the demands made of them.

But, of course, that’s the easy part.

            The hard part is keeping after them – reminding them of their promises – holding them accountable – pressuring them to do the right thing for our kids and their parents.

            As I was watching and listening to this action play out, I was struck by the fact that for so long in our city there has been a total lack of urgency – a total lack of urgency about something that all of us at least say is important: the education – the future – of our children.

            After all, everything discussed the other night has been going on for years, for decades – the lead in the water didn’t just get discovered – the buildings didn’t just start crumbling – parents of Special Ed kids didn’t just start getting the runaround – and the city didn’t just start underfunding our schools.

            This has all been going on for years and years but there just hasn’t been any urgency.

            Of course we see this lack of urgency in other areas of life, too, like, for example, the environment and the scourge of gun violence.

            Just in the last week or two we’ve seen large areas of the Midwest drowned by floods and much of southern Africa was hit by a devastating cyclone that created giant lakes in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, forcing people to try to sve their lives by clinging to treetops and roofs.

            On the other hand, there was a story in the paper about how England – a land famous for its wet climate – is beginning to prepare for water shortages as summers become ever hotter and drier.

            And, yet, for most of our leaders – even those who acknowledge the reality of climate change – there is a real lack of urgency – and they and we seem to spend much more time addressing much less important matters.

            As for gun violence, mass attacks have become regular occurrences in our country – I’m tempted to say they’ve become routine - yet most of our leaders seem unable or unwilling to even examine why this keeps happening – why we seem to have so many armed-to-the-teeth men willing to slaughter as many people as possible - and our leaders certainly lack the dramatic urgency we’ve seen among the leaders of New Zealand in recent days.

            A lack of urgency.

            But we don’t have to look at the news to find a lack of urgency.

            We’re likely to find that same lack of urgency in our hearts – a lack of what we might call “spiritual urgency” - the issue that Jesus addresses in today’s lesson from the Gospel of Luke.

            Today’s passage is at least in part about the always-challenging topic of bad things happening to good people – or bad things happening to people no better or worse than most other people.

            First there’s what we might call a manmade disaster: the ruthless Roman governor Pontius Pilate killed some of Jesus’ fellow Galileans – and then, as if that weren’t bad enough, Pilate used their blood in sacrifices to pagan gods.

            And then there’s what we might call a natural disaster: the eighteen people who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them.

            Then as now when bad things happen to people – when bad things happen to us – we tend to wonder what they or we did to deserve such misfortune.

            But Jesus – an innocent Galilean who will also be killed by Pontius Pilate – forever proves that this is not the way the world works – not the way God works – bad things happen to people who are better than average and bad things happen to people who are worse than average – bad things even happen to the blameless Son of God.

            So, Jesus says that the point is not that some people get the misfortune they do or don’t deserve.

            The point is that we don’t know how much time we have.

 We don’t know how long we have until we are going to have to answer to God for how we have lived our lives.

So we need to repent and turn back to God.

So we need to love God and love one another not “maybe tomorrow” – not “maybe next month”  - not “when some time opens up in my schedule” - but right here and right now.

We need to have a sense of spiritual urgency.

One of the things I love about Jersey City Together is that it is really good at getting the attention of our public officials.

On Tuesday evening, bringing out over 200 people definitely created a sense of urgency.

Forcing the leaders of our school district to sit in front of the crowd and hear the terrible stories from parents and kids created a sense or urgency.

Making those same leaders publicly make promises – and even forcing them to pose for photos next to a poster listing those promises – that created a sense of urgency.

The whole thing is artificial but quite effective.

And, you know, Lent is kind of like that, too.

Lent is artificial – for forty days we change some things around here in church – we offer Stations of the Cross and our book study and daily reflections – we’re encouraged to give up what we don’t really need and take on what we really do need – we’re encouraged to take stock of our lives.

Lent is all quite artificial but if we’re open it can create for us a sense of “spiritual urgency.”

(And, to give us all a little extra urgency, this is a friendly reminder that we’re already entering the third week of Lent – Easter is less than a month away!)

We might like to think that it’s only the “bad people” who face misfortune, but we all know better than that.

So, we must not waste too much time.

We must ask God to help us to change our ways – to help us love God and to love one another.

May God give us urgency to fix our schools and to save our planet and to bring peace to our land, and, most of all, may God give us spiritual urgency.

Amen.

            

The Citizens of Heaven Need to Speak Up

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

March 17, 2019

Year C: The Second Sunday in Lent

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Psalm 27

Philippians 3:17-4:1

Luke 13:31-35

The Citizens of Heaven Need to Speak Up

            The story of God and us really begins with Abram – soon to be Abraham - a faithful man who was asked by God to leave his home and travel to an unknown new land – a man who thought he and his wife would never have children of their own, yet God says that his descendants will be as numerous than the stars in the night sky.

            The story of God and us begins with God making a promise – a covenant – a contract – with Abraham and his many descendants – a promise made in the strange story we heard in today’s first lesson from Genesis.

            It seems that in the ancient world contracts were made by doing what we heard today: killing animals and cutting them in half.

            Then the two parties making the agreement would “cut the deal” by walking between these pieces, indicating the bloody consequences if either side broke the contract.

            Kind of gruesome, but it does get the point across, right?

            But, what we heard today isn’t just any regular contract between two people about land or money.

            This is a covenant between God and God’s people.

            So, notice what happens when God makes this covenant with Abraham – only God “walks” between the animal parts, not Abraham, because God knows very well that Abraham and his descendants – that we - will not be able to completely keep our end of the agreement.

We will break God’s Law – we will turn to other gods – we will reject the prophets sent to us – we will, from time to time, lose faith in the God who called Abraham to a new land, to a new way.

            But, since God made a one-sided contract with God’s people, God doesn’t ever give up on us.

No matter what, God always keeps God’s side of the bargain.

No matter what, as Jesus says so beautifully in today’s gospel lesson, God wants to gather us together, hold us close, as a hen gathers her chicks.

God will not give up on us  - will not let us go, no matter what.

And, that’s very good news, but…it doesn’t let us off the hook.

In today’s second lesson, St. Paul writes to the church in Philippi that their “citizenship is in heaven.”

That’s a surprising word to use, right? Citizenship. It would have caught the attention of people living in the Roman Empire two thousand years ago where citizenship or the lack of it made a big difference in people’s lives – just as citizenship or the lack of it makes a big difference for us living in the United States today.

And, just like American citizenship, our heavenly citizenship comes with many benefits and also many responsibilities, not in heaven but right here and right now.

As “heavenly citizens” living on earth we are expected – with God’s help – to try our best to keep our end of the deal with God – to love God and to love our neighbor – our Jewish neighbor, our Christian neighbor, our Muslim neighbor, our Hindu neighbor, our atheist neighbor, our neighbor who we really don’t like or trust – we are to strive to love them all.

Unfortunately, if you turn on the news for just a minute or two or even just walk down Bergen Avenue, it’s clear that we’re not really doing such a great job of keeping our contract with God, not doing such a great job of meeting the responsibilities of our heavenly citizenship.

It’s easy to get discouraged.

But, God doesn’t give up on us, so we must not give up on ourselves.

As I’ve thought about how we can respond to the difficult times we’re living in, I keep returning to Baptism.

We Christians gain our heavenly citizenship through Baptism – that’s our own little citizenship ceremony – and at each Baptism we make and renew important promises, including the promise to proclaim the Good News of Christ in what we say and what we do.

I bet that most of us would say that deeds are more difficult and more important than words. Just think of the expressions we use:

 “Words are cheap.”

  “Actions speak louder than words.”

We criticize people who are “all talk and no action.”

There’s truth to all of that – and if you’ve been here more than ten minutes you know very well that I’m very much about doing – I’m always trying to get us to do more - to serve more people – and that’s not going to change – but I think, especially these days, words are at least as important – and at least as difficult – as deeds.

I began writing today’s sermon on Friday morning after the news broke of the terrorist massacre in New Zealand where, as you know, yet another angry and armed man opened fire on worshipers – in this case attacking two mosques – killing 50 people and injuring some 20 more.

This time it was New Zealand and mosques, while not long ago it was a synagogue in Pittsburgh and an African-American church in Charleston.

One of the things that these horrific incidents have in common is that before the unspeakable violence there were words – ugly words and hateful words and fearful words - words that in a civilized society should have been unthinkable and definitely unspeakable – but in the cesspools of the Internet and among hateful extremists here and abroad – and, yes, among politicians who know better but cynically stir up hate to win applause and votes – the unthinkable and the unspeakable are thought and spoken more and more.

It can be a really short trip from word to deed, so, no surprise, there are some twisted men who put these ugly words into terrible action.

I know most of would rather not – I know most of us would rather look away - but I don’t think anything is going to change – and, actually, things are likely to get much worse - unless we heavenly citizens start to speak up.

If we’re scared, we have one another and we know we have a God who always keeps promises.

But, it’s time – it’s long past time - for us to use our words – beautiful words and loving words and courageous words.

After all, as the theologian I live with reminded me, in the beginning was the Word.

So, we’re called to speak up about what we experience right here in our beautiful church.

We’re not perfect by any means and we’re not always as welcoming to people who are a little different – who rub us the wrong way – who don’t fit into our little church cliques – but, for the most part, this diverse group of heavenly citizens gets along pretty well, proving that it really is possible for us to love one another, despite our many differences.

We’re called to speak up – and now I’m talking especially to my white brothers and sisters – we are called to speak up when we hear people spewing racist and hateful garbage – this could be among our own families and friends or at work or school or on social media – but we are called to speak up and say this is wrong and this is disgusting and this is most definitely not the way of God and I want no part of it.

We’re called to speak up in our communities – to speak up with other people of goodwill.

After the massacre at the synagogue in Pittsburgh, I was asked to speak at the rally held down at City Hall, representing the Christian community.

I really felt the weight of this huge responsibility.

I speak in public often enough so I don’t usually get too nervous – but I was very anxious that day – worried that I wasn’t eloquent enough or wise enough - worried that my words wouldn’t be right for this somber occasion – worried that I would say the wrong thing and accidentally do more harm than good.

I agonized over every word in my speech. In the end, I think it went OK but the truth is all I really had to say was this:

 Hating certain groups of people and slaughtering innocents is never the way of God.

It’s really as simple as that. But it’s not enough just to think it or to believe it. We have to say it, too.

The story of God and us – the story of the divine hen and her human chicks - begins long ago with God making a covenant – a one-sided contract promising to never give up on us, to never let go of us, no matter what.

We are so blessed – but we are not let off the hook.

And today in our broken and angry and heavily armed world, as heavenly citizens it is our responsibility to use both our words and our deeds to love God and to love our neighbor, all of our neighbors.

May it be so.

No Shortcuts

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

March 10, 2019

Year C: The First Sunday in Lent

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

Romans 10:8b-13

Luke 4:1-13

No Shortcuts

            One of the advantages to living and working where I have spent much of my life is that I usually know the fastest ways to get around.

            For the most part, I know these streets and neighborhoods pretty well.

            I remember a couple of years ago I gave my father a ride somewhere here in town and at one point as I was cutting down side streets he turned to me and said, “You’re like a cab driver.”

            I don’t want to brag, but it’s kind of true!

            But, it wasn’t always so.

            Almost twelve years ago when I first started working at Grace Church in Madison I literally (and maybe figuratively too!) had no idea where I was going.

            It was a totally unfamiliar place and so, especially during the early days, whenever I needed to drive anywhere I would look up the address on Mapquest and print out the directions and place them on the passenger seat next to me.

            Sometimes if the route was particularly tricky I would summarize the directions on a post-it and stick it on the steering wheel.

            So there I would be driving around the suburbs, glancing down at the seat next to me or at my little post-it (which would sometimes fall off) – it’s amazing that I didn’t get into accident, though I made more wrong turns than I care to admit.

            At some point Sue suggested I get a GPS and, as usual, I was reluctant to have yet another gadget, some new piece of technology, in my life. But, I was also tired of getting lost so I went along with it.

            Having this little screen and its disembodied voice in the car with me took some getting used to and especially in those early days the technology was imperfect, sometimes taking me on roundabout routes or even in circles and also sometimes the GPS would be a second or two late, causing me to miss a turn – and I’d hear the robotic voice say with what sounded like just a hint of annoyance,
            RECALCULATING.

            But, over time the technology has improved so much and now I don’t even use a GPS device. I just open an app on my phone, and away we go – and now it even tells me which lane to be in – and, what’s my favorite feature, it even suggests shortcuts.

            SAVE FOUR MINUTES BY TAKING THE NEXT EXIT.

            Yes! Save four minutes! That feels like hitting the jackpot – what a joy to avoid some traffic and arrive at my destination a whole four minutes early!

            Seriously, shortcuts really are great when we are driving from point A to point B.

            But…when it comes to our spiritual life – when it comes to the Way of Jesus – shortcuts are in fact very dangerous temptations.

            As we do every year on the First Sunday in Lent, today we heard the story of Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness – forty days of temptation by the devil.

            We’re told three of the temptations that the devil offered to Jesus:

            “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.”

            “Worship me and I will give you all the glory and the authority in the world.”

            “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the Temple and let the angels save you, revealing to everyone your true identity.”

            You know, it’s kind of surprising, but when you stop and really look at these temptations you notice that there’s nothing bad about the ultimate outcomes.

            Bread is good, especially for someone starving in the wilderness.

            The world really would be a much better place if Jesus were given all glory and authority.

            And, wouldn’t it really be something to see Jesus caught by angels, proving that he is the beloved Son of God?

            There’s nothing bad about any of these temptations except that they are shortcuts – and when it comes to our spiritual life – when it comes to the Way of Christ – shortcuts don’t ever really work – shortcuts are dangerous - they wouldn’t get Jesus to his ultimate destination - and they won’t get us to where God wants us to be, either.

            The shortcut would be Jesus magically turning stones into bread, but the way of life is all of us giving away our bread and fish – sharing what we have – and Jesus taking those gifts, blessing those gifts, and making more than enough for everybody – making more than we could have ever imagined.

            The shortcut would be doing the wrong thing in order to achieve worldly power but the way of life is Jesus showing that true kingship, true leadership, isn’t selling your soul, isn’t lording it over other people, but is instead giving away your life in loving service.

            The shortcut would be some dramatic display of divine power – like jumping off the temple and being saved by angels, but the way of life is Jesus nailed to a tree, showing us more clearly than we could have ever imagined how much God loves us – showing us most clearly that even when we do the worst thing imaginable – even when we kill the Blameless One - God still doesn’t give up on us and, in the end, love defeats even death itself.

            If Jesus had taken these shortcuts we would have never made it back to the garden, never made it to the empty tomb, never made it to where the Risen Christ reveals himself to Mary Magdalene, and to us.

            Unfortunately, the temptation to take shortcuts is still very real for us Christians today.

            And that’s especially true during this holy season of Lent.

            There’s the always popular shortcut of living pretty much like so many people out in the world – looking out for our selves and our own and turning away from those who are suffering.

There’s the shortcut of loving and being kind to the people we love and like, but being mean and unwelcoming to those who are different or who we don’t like or who we don’t know.

There’s the shortcut of showing up here for communion and community just from time to time or just when we feel like it or just when it’s convenient.

There’s the shortcut of giving away a little bit but never really giving so much of ourselves and our resources that it hurts – that it causes us to sacrifice something we really like or want.

Taking care of our selves and our families - and saving our time and our resources - are all good things, right?

And, the truth is nobody would blame us for taking these shortcuts – look at all the time and energy and money and even love we would save!

But, for us these shortcuts are dangerous temptations because they won’t get us to our ultimate destination – won’t get us to where God wants us to be.

So, this Lent, I challenge myself and I invite you to take the long way.

Let’s walk together the Way of the Cross – let’s walk together the Way of Life – let’s pray and let’s sacrifice and let’s give.

It wasn’t easy for Jesus and it won’t be easy for us, but together we’ll reach our beautiful destination – an Easter that’s not just pretty flowers and tasty chocolate and fancy hats – but an Easter that is truly new life.

No shortcuts.

Amen.

           

           

            

Ora Et Labora

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

March 3, 2019

Year C: The Last Sunday after the Epiphany

Exodus 34:29-35

Psalm 99

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

Luke 9:28-43a

Ora Et Labora

            Some of you know that our new bishop, The Rt. Rev. Carlye Hughes, has been spending a lot of time getting to know the people of her new diocese and allowing us to get acquainted with her and her vision for our church.

            There have been several popular “Breaking Bread with the Bishop” events with more to come, and she has also been meeting individually with each member of the clergy.

            She came down to Jersey City a few months ago, giving me a strong incentive to finally clean my office – though to look at it now you’d never know!

            It was a relaxed conversation that lasted for more than an hour.

            She asked me about my background and how things were going here.

            She asked what role I saw myself playing in the diocese.

            And then she asked about my self-care, which, unfortunately, is not always my strong suit.

            But, I was able to tell her about my long early morning daily walks in the good weather – and I was able to tell her about the retreat I made last May, fulfilling a longtime dream of visiting the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.

            I was feeling pretty self-satisfied about these examples of superb self-care, but then she said something like, “OK, that was last year. How about this year? Have you scheduled your next retreat?”

            I stammered a little bit…um…well…uh…no – because to be honest I had thought about last year’s retreat as checking off an important box in my life, not necessarily as something that should be an annual event.

            Anyway, after our meeting I did book a retreat for this year, this time not as far away as Kentucky, but at another monastery in Upstate New York – and I’m already looking forward to it very much.

            If you know anything about monks and monasteries you know that the twin pillars of their lives are what is called in Latin, “Ora et Labora.”

            Prayer and work.

            In the case of the monks I visited in Kentucky, they spend their days and their nights gathering frequently in their chapel for prayer – eight different services every weekday – the first at 3:15 in the morning and the last at 7:30 at night.

So, monks get to bed early.

And the monks spend the rest of their time working to keep up the monastery and especially producing the products they sell to pay the bills, which in the case of the monastery in Kentucky includes making chocolate fudge.

            So, on top of the natural beauty and holiness of that place, there’s also the smell of chocolate wafting through the air.

            Not bad at all!

            Ora et Labora.

            Prayer and work.

            We tend to think of prayer and work as two different things, but the idea for the monks – and for us - is that over time prayer and work get woven together so that eventually you can no longer tell where one begins and the other ends.

            Prayer and work and work and prayer.

            Among other things, Jesus was very much a man of prayer.

            The Gospels remember him praying while surrounded by his disciples and other people and they also record him going off by himself for a while, climbing up a mountain, to spend some time in prayer.

            But, as the author of our Lenten book says, the mountains of Israel aren’t all that tall – Jesus doesn’t go very far – and, maybe to his disappointment, he’s usually found pretty easily by the people who go looking for him.

            So, in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus and his closest disciples – Peter, James, and John, went up on the mountain to pray – and there they have a most powerful spiritual experience – a glimpse of Easter – a taste of Resurrection - as the face of Jesus is transformed and his clothes are dazzling white.

            And then, as if that weren’t enough, Moses and Elijah appear – two figures from Israel’s past - figures who were believed to have been taken up into heaven.

            No surprise, Peter doesn’t want this moment to end and so he suggests that they build dwellings for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah – but before Jesus can respond to that the cloud appears and they hear the voice from heaven:

            “This is my Son, my Chosen; Listen to him!”

            After all of this, after what we call the Transfiguration, there are no words – and notice there’s no further discussion about Peter’s suggestion of staying on the mountain.

            No, instead, Jesus and his friends come back down off of the mountain, back to the large crowd gathered and waiting - and Jesus gets right back to work.

            Prayer and work and work and prayer.

            There’s yet another desperate parent – a father – who begs Jesus to heal his son, his only child.

            Jesus’ disciples had tried to heal the boy but had failed and Jesus seems irritated by this – maybe he wishes he were still up on the mountain with Moses and Elijah – or maybe he knows that the disciples aren’t working and praying as hard as they should - but he heals the boy and the crowd is astounded at “the greatness of God.”

            Jesus is a man of prayer, but more than that, he is the supreme example of someone for whom prayer and work are woven together, woven so closely that we can’t tell where one begins and the other ends.

            Ora et labora.

            Prayer and work and work and prayer.

            And, today it’s not just monks who are called to this way of life – we are all called to prayer and work and work and prayer.

            Easier said than done, right?

            But, as we begin Lent on Wednesday, more important than giving up chocolate or skipping meat on Fridays, the most important thing we can do – the best self-care we can do - is to set aside even just a little bit of time for prayer.

            (And, yes, I’m preaching to myself at least as much as I’m preaching to you!)

            We don’t need the perfect time and place – we don’t need a mountain or even a hill and we certainly don’t need a monastery, as nice as those places are.

Instead, as Jesus says, we can just close the door to our room and spend a few minutes with God – as the author of our Lenten book says, keeping it simple, keeping it short, keeping it frequent, and keeping it real.

And, the more we do that, we’ll find that our prayer and our work will become woven together – prayer and our job – prayer and going to school – prayer and going to the supermarket – prayer and spending time with family and friends – prayer and the ministries we do here together.

Our prayer and our work will be woven together – and we will all be astounded at the greatness of God.

Prayer and work.

Ora et Labora.

Amen.