This file contains the sermons listed below

It’s warning, description and mantra; background noise and a choice. Most of you, including tourists and visitors, know it by rote, so feel free to sing along.

Ladies and gentlemen: This is an important announcement from the New York City Police Department. Keep your belongs in sight at all times. Protect yourself. If you see a suspicious package please tell a police officer or MTA official. Keep alert and have a safe day.

Now, there is nothing wrong with this announcement. It describes our daily reality. It is meant to be helpful, even life-saving. It tells the truth. But it is Pilate’s truth, Caesar’s truth; the truth always told by people with power to people under that power. Its stated goal is to make us feel, even be, safe. It is not meant to be subtle. But it has a subtext; a subtext not meant to be subtle either: It reminds us that there is power — good and bad power — above, among and around us. On the one hand, we are warned to be wary of that power — to be on the defensive — while on the other hand, we are encouraged to trust those in authority that use their power over us for our safety and in our best interests.

Lest I be misunderstood I want to say this again: There is nothing inherently wrong with this. It is the truth. We are under authority. It is “top down” authority. Other people do have power over us. It is “top down” power. In this country, those in authority, for the most part, use their power over us for our safety and in our best interests. That is the truth. But it remains Pilate’s truth and Caesar’s truth — one might even call it “God’s truth” — with lots of caveats and lots of care — because it is always based on fear of consequences or of punishment. As a general rule, when we are asked to “respect authority” — the authority of parents, police, politicians, professors or protectors — we mean “fear the consequences” if we don’t.

On Good Friday morning, when he meets the betrayed, bedraggled and already-arrested Jesus, Pilate embodies that kind of power in order to maintain safety, keep order and be, as much as possible, in everyone’s best interests. Jesus, however, proclaims a contrary authority — “bottom up” authority and a different power, “bottom up” power. Standing before Pilate, Jesus offers Pilate and Caesar and each of us another way to exercise authority for our safety in our best interest. His is the authority of self-giving service. His is the power of self-giving love. Pilate demands obedience or death. Jesus offers freedom and life.

The choice could not possibly be greater.

It is a choice you and I must make often, even daily, every day of our lives. Several times every day we must all choose obedience motivated by the fear of consequences or freedom motivated by love. That is the truth about the Christian life which we affirm and confirm today. Stated plainly, the Christian life is about choices; not choices between right and wrong or good and evil, because, quite frankly, life choices are hardly ever that simple. No, the Christian life is about choosing the right motivation. It is about acting because we fear of the consequences or acting because we are free and have life.

Jesus makes a choice as he stands before Pilate. He can choose to obey, to submit, to protect himself and to make that first Good Friday “a safe day.” He chooses to be free, not obedient. He chooses to believe that “the consequences” he knows he should fear will not be his consequences, will not be the last word. He chooses to trust a kingdom “not from this world,” that is, not from Pilate’s world, Caesar’s world, a world ruled by consequences and based on fear.

When Jesus takes his stand for freedom against obedience, there are fearsome consequences. John calls those consequences “the cross” and the “borrowed and stone-sealed tomb.” We call them “death.” And they seem to be the last word.

But three days later, God raises Jesus from that tomb and cancels the consequence of death on a cross. That is the last Word, the Word of resurrection, of life, of freedom. And that Word, into which we were all baptized, is the motivation for free and live-giving choice.

Today, as we all affirm our baptism and as these nine young men and women are confirmed, we commit ourselves to regularly make that choice, to choose Christ-given freedom rather than the fear of consequences as the motivation for our daily choices. Today we choose to say “Jesus is Lord” and not “Pilate or Caesar or anyone else who rules by fear” is lord. It is an awesome choice and today is not the last day we will make it because it confronts us every moment of every day for all our lives.

But here is the truth — yet another truth — and there is no denying it. The very last baptized person who had to make that choice alone and face those consequences alone and stand before the Pilates of this world alone was Jesus. And God raised Jesus from the dead! We were baptized into his death and resurrection so that whenever we act in freedom we never stand alone; the risen Christ and all the saints, and all the baptized of every time and every place stand with us. We are never left completely alone. One of the chief reasons Jesus created the Church was so that we would experience that companionship, that “never-aloneness” which is why he comes to us — the assembled Church — to nourish us with himself in the bread and wine we eat and drink together.

Throughout life, we — you, my young friends — will make millions of choices. As you make those choices this is what I want you to try to remember as baptized children of God. In whatever choices you make, Christ and his Church will always stand with you. We may not always agree with your choices, but Christ and his Church will always stand with you. Believe that. Trust that. Make every choice in your life knowing that. Let that be your motivation, because that is the way of freedom, life and resurrection. That is the way of Jesus Christ. Neither Christ nor his Church will ever wish you a “safe day.” But we will promise you a new day, and more than that, we promise you a “yet more glorious day,” a day we experience even now as we eat and drink with all the saints in the presence of Jesus, our sovereign and our great high priest.

Let that be your motivation and live freely in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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DAY OF THANKSGIVING — MIDTOWN INTERFAITH THANKSGIVING — CHURCH OF THE HOLY FAMILY — November 22, 2006

Isaiah 63: 7-9; Colossians 3: 12-17

In nomine Jesu!

Of all our holidays, sacred or secular, Thanksgiving is the most American. Rooted deeply in the each of our diverse faith and country-of-origin traditions — think Passover; think Eucharist; think Iftar feasting that breaks the Ramadan’s fast — it remains uniquely American — institutionalizing consumerism, celebrating conspicuous consumption and, lest we think too harshly of ourselves, reveling in neighborly sharing. Well before we became the United States of America, inhabitants of this land were the first to insist on an annual and national day of thanksgiving sometime on our calendar.

It is a giddy day, inviting us to revel in food, family, friends and football, in the best of our history, the noblest of our myths and in the least troubling of our traditions.

It is an altruistic day, when open-hearted and open-handed sharings breach every economic and social barrier.

It is a somber day, carrying us toward hope from the most tragic events in our history. Thanksgiving is one of those rare annual events that summons us to stand, shoulder-to-shoulder, arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand and look upward in gratitude, outward in sharing, backward in wonder, and forward in hope.

For seventy-one years our faith communities been doing most of these things together, but tonight I ask that we focus on just one; the one that’s been hardest to see and hardest to do for the last five years. Tonight, with these, my closest colleagues and finest friends, I invite you to celebrate Thanksgiving by looking forward in hope.

There is precedent for this; a precedent that first brought our faith communities together so many years ago. In his Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote these remarkably prescient words:

In traversing a period of national stress our country has been knit together in a closer fellowship of mutual interest and common purpose. We can well be grateful [today] that more and more of our people understand and seek the greater good of the greater number. We can be grateful [today] that selfish purpose of personal gain, at our neighbor’s loss, less strongly asserts itself. We can be grateful [today] that peace at home is strengthened by our growing willingness to common counsel…

But in our appreciation of the blessings that Divine Providence has bestowed upon us in America, we shall not rejoice as the [faithless]… War and strife still live in the world. Rather, must America by example and in practice help to bind the wounds of others, strive against disorder and aggression, encourage the lessening of distrust among peoples and advance peaceful trade and friendship.

The future of many generations of mankind will be greatly guided by our acts in these present years. We hew a new trail.

Can we strive to see that tonight — that new trail that leads where “America by example and in practice help[s] to bind the wounds of others, strive[s] against disorder and aggression, encourage[s] the lessening of distrust among peoples and advance[s] peaceful trade and friendship”?

Can hew to that new trail tonight — motivated, not by remembering the events that have brought us pain and fear, but by remembering the best of our history and the finest of our myths and letting them shape our present and future?

Can we have that kind of a vision — dream that kind of a dream — and anchor our actions and a hope that will draw us toward a future to which we aspire rather than repel us from a future we dread?

Can we use this Thanksgiving as we once did: to have new aspirations and not just survival; to be awed by a theology of abundance rather than limited by the myth of scarcity and the psychology of fear?

Can we dream again?

I think we can and here are some reasons why.

Because, frankly, these last years of paranoia, of “us and them,” dividing, of “red and blue” thinking have really been a blip on our otherwise normal and ebullient screen of optimism.

Secondly, because we’ve got an entire archive — hundreds of years — of forward-looking, visionary thinking — even during the worst times and crises: in the midst of the Civil War; in the wake of the robber baron era; in the depths of the depression; during the darkest days of the “missile gap,” the sixties, and the Nixon era. FDR’s “New Deal;” JFK’s “New Frontier,” Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream;” Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America” — each of these and so much more offer rich resources from more trying times that reflect optimism, hope and assume progress.

Thirdly, because the streams of faith that carry us — those divergent traditions, rituals and practices that all flow from the same life-giving Spring — each nourish us for this kind of forward looking visioning. Whether they were longing for the Promised Land or seeking to be led out of slavery to freedom; whether they were looking for resurrection or seeking to build the City of God here; whether they were struggling to be a single nation of obedient people or striving to make the haj — all of our faithful ancestors have, in their own way, looked for that “yet more glorious day.” Call it what you will. Once we called it “the American dream.” Once we dreamt it, for ourselves, for our children and for our neighbors, we weren’t afraid to sacrifice to reach it. It was about more than just me and mine. It was about more than just our getting ahead. It was about a “Great Society.” It was about being, for the sake of the world, that “city set on a hill.”

For a while, out of shock and in fear, we have strayed from that dream, but Thanksgiving is a time to rekindle it again. So together let us resolve to return to the dream and rekindle that vision giving thanks to the One whose presence delivers us and whose pity redeems us; sharing what we have with one another; and trusting that the One “who lifted up and carried them all the days of old,“ will still lift and carry us. “The future of many generations…will be greatly guided by our acts in these present years.” Together, as we did when we started, let us hew a new trail.

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER Pentecost — November 19, 2006

Daniel 12:1-3; Psalm 16; Hebrews 10:11-25; Mark 13:1-8

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My sermon today follows the structure of the Prayer of the Day. This Prayer is from 1639 and is from Sweden. I think it is one of the most perfect prayers we have. It says everything with a wonderful economy of words. There are four phrases, which we will consider one at a time.

The first of the four phrases is this: “so rule and govern our hearts and minds by your Holy Spirit…” Here we pray that God would so fill us with the Holy Spirit that we would simply and joyfully live according to God’s will. If the Holy Spirit does indeed “rule and govern our hearts,” then, praise God! we would be like the people of whom Jeremiah spoke – the people of the new covenant quoted in our reading from Hebrews today:

“This is the covenant that I will make with them

after those days, says the Lord:

I will put my laws in their hearts,

And I will write them on their minds.”

To have God’s laws in our hearts and minds means that those laws dwell right there in our heart and minds. They do not float around in the sound waves outside us, or in some dusty books on a shelf, but reach their divinely intended place: right in our heart, right in the very springs of our conduct. Then good deeds and loving conduct will be natural for us, springing spontaneously from our very being. This is what God has in mind for us. Our destiny is for a heart filled with the will of God. Then we will be at our best – most truly human.

And judging by this standard – that is, whether our hearts are ruled and governed by the Holy Spirit -- it doesn’t take much for us to see that we are not yet fully human – not yet the men and women, boys and girls that our Maker intends for us. Alas, obedience to God does not spring naturally from our hearts and minds. Any fool can see that. Sometimes we do get it right. Sometimes we do manage to love God and love our neighbors, but mostly we love ourselves. We are captive to our own desires and we forget or disregard God’s commands. That is why we pray and must continue to pray that God would rule and govern our hearts and minds with the Holy Spirit “that we may be stirred up to holiness of life here…” I’ll return to that phrase in a moment.

The second phrase is this: “keeping in mind the end of all things and the day of judgment…” On this penultimate Sunday in the liturgical calendar we can’t help but be reminded of “the end of all things and the day of judgment.” All four readings mention or allude to it, including the Psalm. I daresay few of us continually keep “the end of all things and the day of judgment” in mind. It’s too hard. Perhaps it’s too frightening! Even with all the myriad Biblical descriptions and predictions, we don’t really know what it is going to be like. It is much easier to put it out of mind and pretend as though life will continue as it is forever, that is, until we find ourselves facing our own mortality.

But I think we can say at least this much about the “end of all things and day of judgment.” It means that we will have dealings with Jesus. You and me! We are headed for a conversation with Jesus, the one who will come again “to judge the living and the dead,” as we say in the creed.

And that is quite a thought – that we are traveling in life toward Jesus. Ponder this same Jesus in today’s Gospel reading. As Jesus comes out of the temple he predicts its complete and utter destruction, to the amazement of the disciples. Then Jesus heads back to Bethany where he has been staying. Along the way he pauses and sits down on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple.

I’ve never been to Jerusalem but I imagine the scene like this: Jesus is sort of like the general of an army, surveying the landscape just before a battle. But there is this difference – a general would not sit down, but stand. All his faculties would be busy strategizing, calculating, envisioning, and planning every move of his army. But Jesus sits down and surveys a place that he loves; he gazes at the homeland of a people that he loves; perhaps he contemplates a life that he has grown to love. It seems as if he is meditating upon the terrible things that are about to happen here in this place. A battle will indeed be fought, the forces of good and evil, life and death will collide and it will seem that Jesus will lose, and all his friends will lose – but that is only how it will seem.

When all things come to an end and the day of judgment arrives, this is the man we will find ourselves facing. The same man who sat down on the Mount of Olives, where in only a matter of days he would be betrayed and arrested, and with sadness and love in his eyes contemplated all those for whom he was about to die. This man Jesus died for you and me. He willingly gave his very life so that we may live! He wants us to have life and to have it with abundance! It is this man who will judge us! Why on earth should we be afraid? If we fear anything at all on this old earth, it should be not be for the eternal destiny of our lives, for that question is safe with Jesus, but rather we should fear to be letting down such a good man. This is the fear to which love drives us: just as in our marriages or friendships, we fear to let down our beloved on earth. So let us fear, even now, to be letting down our Beloved in heaven!

And not only that, we do not want to be wasting these years granted to us in a manner of life that is out of kilter with reality as God will have it. We do not want to be “kicking against the pricks,” as was said of St. Paul in Acts when he was opposing Jesus. We do not want to be so mean to ourselves!

Again, the aim of keeping in mind the end of all things and the day of judgment is not that we should live in fear and anxiety about our ultimate fate, but so that: “we may be stirred up to holiness of life here…” This is the third and my favorite phrase of our prayer. May the Holy Spirit stir each and every one of us up to holiness of life!

What is that like -- this “holiness of life”? I propose that we take our lead from this morning’s Second Lesson, from the Tenth Chapter of Hebrews:

Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Holiness of life includes at least these things: first, “hold fast to the confession of our hope…” No matter what trials and tribulations come our way – and surely they will come – we must join the psalmist who sings:

“I have set the Lord always before me;

because he is at my right hand I shall not fall.

My heart, therefore, is glad, and my spirit rejoices;

my body also shall rest in hope.”

Holding fast to the confession of our hope is important in a world that sometimes dismisses or even despises the Christian faith. We can no longer count on the things that our parents could count on – things like Sunday being a day set aside for worship and family. If we want our children to grow up in the faith and share the blessings that we have received we have to be much more intentional about teaching them. We need to “hold fast to the confession.”

That is one of the reasons that we are so excited about the Godly Play Sunday School curriculum for our children here at Saint Peters. Godly Play gives the children a chance to enter into the stories of the faith and learn them from the inside out. This is also why it is so important that they are with us for worship, even though sometimes it’s hard for the little ones to sit still. They are here, with us in the presence of Jesus who loves them just as much as he loves us older folks! In any case we need to hold fast to what we believe and not let the slings and arrows of life or the stress and craziness of our troubled world tear us away from our Lord and our hope. As Jesus tells Peter, James, John and Andrew about the troubles to come, he says, let “no one lead you astray,” and, “do not be alarmed.”

Second, holiness of life calls us “provoke one another to love and good deeds...” What a wonderful phrase that is. Usually the word “provoke” is connected with anger, but this is just the reverse. Holiness of life means provoking one another to do the sorts of things that would be pleasing to our Lord Jesus and make life better for our neighbors. I can think of several of you who do that and do it well! May the Holy Spirit also stir us up to respond to the provocations of others – to love and good deeds for the sake of others!

Third, holiness of life includes “meeting together,” that is, coming together for worship on a regular basis. In our visioning process we have acknowledged and affirmed that it is our corporate worship that anchors us as the family of Saint Peter’s Church. It is also the most important thing we do as the people of God in this place. Our worship tells us again and again who we are – beloved children of God for whom Jesus died and rose again. As we come together to celebrate and give thanks and praise to God, the Holy Spirit is busy stirring us up to increased holiness of life!

Finally, holiness of life includes “encouraging one another,” within the family of faith, especially as the end draws near. The mutual support and love that is shared within this community is extraordinary, but we could always do better! Whether or not we think we see the day of judgment approaching, there is not a man, woman or child among us who does not at some time or other need a word of encouragement, a friendly welcome, an understanding ear, a sympathetic embrace, or to be held in prayer.

You see, holiness of life is not beyond us. It is not only for the ones we call the great saints of the church – it is the stock in trade of all the Baptized, including you and me.

The final phrase of the prayer is: “and may live with you forever in the world to come…” It’s time now for me to stop talking so that we can come to the table where we are blessed to receive a foretaste of the feast to come. When Jesus speaks of “birth pangs” we know and we hope that something new and wonderful is being born. What that new life will be we can only imagine. We have, however, this feast – bread and wine – the body and blood of the very One who is our Lord and Savior and Judge.

Jesus is here now, for you and me, that we may hold on to him and he to us, come what may, forever and ever. To him be the glory with the Father and the Holy spirit, now and forever. Amen.

The Rev. Carol E. A. Fryer

Vice Pastor

Saint Peter’s Church

in the City of New York

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THE TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — November 12, 2006

Our guest preacher was The Rev. Gary A. Grindeland. We do not have a copy of his sermon.

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ALL SAINTS’ SUNDAY — THE TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — November 5, 2006

Isaiah 25: 6–9; Psalm 24; Revelation 21:1-6a; Saint John 11:32-44

In nomine Jesu!

On any given Sunday, a vast array of saints marches through Saint Peter’s. All are dead — having died with Christ in the waters of Holy Baptism — and all are living — having been raised with Christ from those baptismal waters to new and unending life in Christ. All are saints: Each life nothing less than a holy and precious offering, made blameless and acceptable to God for all eternity by the dying and rising of Jesus Christ. On any given Sunday, a vast array of saints marches through our sacred spaces. Consider the ones we have recognized in the just past fifty days.

There’s been Bach the composer and Schmidt the musician; John Gensel, the pastor and Dale Lind and Ike Sturm, his successors; Martin Luther the reformer and Jared Stahler still reforming; Luke the Physician and Bill, Ginnie, Kathy and Melinda, still healing. There’s been squealing and delightful, newly washed and anointed children of God named Spencer and Agustin Leonardo and a venerably refreshing octogenarian child of God named John Silber Damm; the victims of terror, either named or unreported; the sick, the weak and the struggling and those who continue to live, serve, work and remain in harm’s way. Some are in Bukoba, some are in Ramallah, one each in Istanbul and Rome. Some are famous clerics, some just hard working laity; some have worldwide recognition, some are known only to God. On any given Sunday, a vast array of saints marches through our sacred spaces. Some shine in glory; some feebly struggle yet all have this in common: We have died. We are living. We share a holy vocation. On any given Sunday, all the saints are one with us.

Yet today, in a more communal and deliberate way, we particularly remember those separated by death from us. Together, all of us remember all “those most dear to us who now rest from their labors,” “whose good works follow them,” and who “have passed through the grave and gate of death,” even though many of them are known only to one or two of us gathered here today. Both Scripture and tradition assure us that they are neither resting nor waiting to be perfected but are gathered, according to God’s Promise, into God’s nearness, untiringly worshiping God and unceasingly praying for us, their prayers joining our and those of Jesus our great high priest. Those who “shine in glory” have a continuing vocation. We who “feebly struggle” have one too.

And we miss them and, today as their names are read, we will weep for them too. We will weep for them together. And Jesus will weep for them with us.

That’s one of the comforts we experience as we participate today in one of the stories of Christ. Today we see Jesus coming among us to stand, not apart or aloof, but with the people he loves. He weeps with them. He weeps with us. Even as he exercises the power of his resurrection, he weeps over the loss of a friend. As we weep today, even in sure and certain hope of resurrection, he weeps with us.

He weeps with us as we weep whenever we are separated from a friend for any reason. When one leave to join another family or to take a job or to find an easier place to live. He weeps with us as we weep over future separations; for instance, as we prepare ourselves for Pastor Lind’s retirement and when we anticipate the sorrow and uncertainty that will surely follow. Jesus weeps with us, and by his weeping, he reminds us that it is less than human — less than Christ-like — to suppress our sorrows and refuse to weep.

On any given Sunday, as Christ meets us at the font, he weeps with us as he wept close by to Lazarus’ grave because this font is our grave and the grave of our dear ones; and the grave of Christ Jesus himself.

Remember what always happens here, at the font? Remember what always happens here at Lazarus’ and our and Christ’s sealed tomb? Saint John reminds us that

When Jesus had said all these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” And the dead one came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in cloth.

At every baptism, at every funeral, at every occasion when we affirm our faith and at every occasion when we confess our sins, Jesus weeps for us but then calls us back from death to a new life and a new way of living. We come out, still bound, our hands, feet and faces still covered and tangled in the anxieties of death. We come out, rejoicing in the resurrection, giving thanks that our new life will never be lived alone.

But Jesus isn’t through with us yet. He still wants to give us a vocation. He still wants our lives to have meaning and purpose. And so he turns to his disciples, that is, to us, and give us all this one command:

“Unwrap ‘em! I raise ‘em, you unwrap ‘em!”

That is our calling! That is our mission, here where we “feebly struggle.” “Unwrap ‘em! Unbind on another’s bonds that make us hopeless or joyless, or fearful. Do whatever we can for each other, so that all — raised by Christ — we might all experience and be and remain truly free!

On any given Sunday Christ weeps with us, raises us, summons us to mission and — lest we forget our destiny or miss “the others“ who are and have been and are always with us, Christ welcomes us to his table to nourishes us with himself.

On any given Sunday, we weep, we loose and we remember. On any given Sunday, Jesus Christ weeps and looses and remembers us too. And so we expect that “yet more glorious day.”

On any given Sunday — on every given Sunday — all this happens to us with them — until that last and final day. And then we shall see all who weep and loose and remember, and with them see God face to face.

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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RECONCILIATION/REFORMATION SUNDAY — THE TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — October 29, 2006

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 46; Romans 3:19-28; Saint John 8:31-36

In nomine Jesu!

“Not everything that exists in the Church must for that reason be also a legitimate tradition; in other words, not every tradition that arises in the Church is a true celebration and keeping present of the mystery of Christ. There is a distorting, as well as a legitimate, tradition.… Consequently, tradition must not be considered only affirmatively, but also critically.”

I stumbled across this quote in one of my summer reading projects. It has become a favorite. To me, it sounds like a modern incarnation of Jeremiah who tackled the keepers of “the tradition” at the royal temple in Jerusalem twenty-eight hundred years ago. But it’s too “Churchy” for that tenacious Hebrew prophet—though its author could certainly have turned to Jeremiah for scriptural support. Perhaps he did. Write the Vatican, because the person who considers the possibility of “the tradition” having a legitimate as well as a distorting characteristic is Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, Bishop of Rome, Patriarch of the West.

Jeremiah knew something about distorting traditions. But instead of the Church and Jesus—the heart of Cardinal Ratzinger’s statement—the central concern for Jeremiah was the temple in Jerusalem and God’s covenant with the Israelite people. In Jeremiah’s day, those two things—the temple and God’s promises— had become opposing traditions.

At the temple, the ruling dynasty sought religious sanction for political activity, equating ritual participation with ability to gain protection from an increasing number of enemies. (Jeremiah 7:4) Security became the byword and byproduct of temple worship. And the oppression of the alien, the orphan and the widow, the shedding of innocent blood, and the pursuit of other gods ran rampant and unrestrained, if not encouraged by temple authorities. (Jeremiah 7:5-6)

Jeremiah held the Promises of God in contrast to such selfish indulgence: Promises fulfilled to childless Abraham and Sarah; Promises kept by God to wandering slaves led by Moses from bondage to freedom, from desert wanderings to the flowing gift of the Promised land. Promises that in their purest sense are about individual and communal justice and fairness.

No doubt about it: the temple lacked the “true celebration and keeping present” of God’s Promises. Justice and fairness were over-run by what Father John last Sunday labeled “selfish service.” Me-focused living was everywhere. Jeremiah called it what it was: horrible injustice and false hope for national security at the expense of the vulnerable.

Beloved, you don’t have to look far in the Church and in the world to see the maladies of Jeremiah’s day alive and at work in our own time. Think of the news these past few weeks. Selfish service—we might even say selfish non-service, and worse yet, malicious systematic engineering of oppression—surrounds us. We live in a world marred by the excessiveness of religion and live in a Church more set on justifying itself than listening for the Holy Spirit, more anxious to preserve its identity than to be transformed—dare I say reformed—by our reconciling God. To use the Cardinal’s phrase, we sinful human beings continuously distort the clarity of the mystery of Christ.

To his people of old God spoke through Jeremiah a word of Promise which prevailed over a royal temple system run amuck. God turned the system on its head, and Jeremiah prophesied destruction of the temple, deportation to Babylon, and called for the return to the undistorted Mosaic tradition of justice and fairness. He speaks to us that same word of Promise. A word of Promise that will triumph over all held similarly captive in our world and our Church. Beloved, hear those words again, let them sink into your hearts:

This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.… I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:33, 34b)

To judge tradition to be distorting when it supports injustice, and to affirm it when it speaks the truth of God’s Promise, is to join with Jeremiah. But be forewarned, it’s dangerous business. In his vocation, Jeremiah encountered a number of enemies and nearly lost his life. Yet when we latch onto the perfect clarity of God’s Promise, we receive the ultimate gift of God—the Gift of the Cross. A Cross that will make us more like Jeremiah and more like Jesus who endured it for us. A Cross that ensures the only truly necessary security: God’s abiding presence in despair, pain and likely persecution, as well righteousness, joy and the righting of wrongs to which he calls us. God with us in our weeping and God with us in our laughing. A Cross that calls us to speak truth even if it is unpopular, distressing or in some ways devastating. A Cross that is the reconciling and reforming work of God in Jesus, the Word made flesh and here for us in the simplicity of word and water, bread and wine, and in gathered, nourished community.

Beloved, hear those words of Jeremiah—in the context of their time and ours today. Enjoy them as the countless gifts of God that will always be yours—in you, with you and for you. Live them in all your sorrow and in all your joy. Feel them run over you as the gift of death and new life in the waters of Baptism. Feast on them as the gift of Christ’s body and blood. Be those words of Jeremiah—those countless gifts—all you children of God as you go about the reconciling and reforming work of God in Christ Jesus. Let those countless gifts, which daily infect the very core of your humanity, motivate your Christ-driven life. You are the bearers of Christ to our Church and to our world. Thanks be to God.

Jared R. Stahler

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — CELEBRATION OF THE MINISTRY OF JOHN S. DAMM — October 22, 2006

Isaiah 53:4-12; Psalm 91:9-16; Hebrews 5:1-10; Saint Mark 10:35-45

In nomine Jesu!

Some time ago our Senior Pastor reminded me that the 25^th anniversary of my installation at Saint Peter’s Church was coming up in October. “The congregation wants to celebrate it appropriately,” he said. “You should preside and preach and because it’s your special day use any sermon text you want.” As I recalled my installation on the eve of the Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, I remembered my anxiety. Except for the Call Committee, I really didn’t know the congregation. Could we work together successfully to tackle the serious problems we faced? Twenty-five years later, what would be an appropriate text? I think the Holy Spirit was being a bit mischievous with me because the first text that popped into my mind was from the Book of Proverbs (26:13). “A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool’s back.” Obviously, I’m not going there!

You all know I’m a liturgically oriented preacher, so my choice would be to follow the Church Year. This is the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost and, as it turns out, the readings are tailor-made for a day like this. In my preparation, the first thing I do, especially in the case of the gospel, is to check and see if another Evangelist records the same event. Yes, Saint Matthew reports it too. He places the incident just before Christ’s triumphant Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem (20:22ff).

In Matthew, it’s not James and John who ask Jesus for preferential treatment; it’s their mother. This seems a bit unusual. When Jesus called the Twelve, he referred to James and John by their nicknames, The Sons of Thunder (Mk. 3:17). That doesn’t sound like reticence was their trade-mark. I mention this because some of you knew my mother in her prime and would appreciate this Matthean twist. But I’m not going there either. I simply affirm what another John, the Revelator, reveals: “’Yes’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labors, for their good works follow them’” (Rev. 14:13). Amen!

In my preparation, I let the readings speak first to me. Then I take into account the audience, and I do what I was taught in Homiletics 101 in the Spring of 1946 in the Holy City. I ask three questions of the readings. First: what goal for faith and life do these inspired texts set before us? Second, what prevents us from reaching the goal? Third, how do we move from the problem to the goal? I call them my trinity: Goal/Malady/Means.

In the Gospel our Lord describes the goal of the Christian life: practice selfless service to others. Our problem is that we live in a world that has turned the divine standard of selfless service upside down. The key operative service word becomes selfish not selfless. How do we overcome that problem and reach the goal?

It’s important to realize just how demonic a thing selfish service can be. Selfish service always turns in on its chief beneficiary, the self. “What’s in it for me?” is the common question we are taught to ask when we evaluate the worth of the service we might offer. The problem is compounded for us because selfish service comes in so many disguises. Often we do not even recognize the crafty Foe until it’s too late.

In the first few years of this new century we already had more than our share of selfish-success-driven human tragedies. Many of these scoundrels were models of moral rectitude in their communities. An example: I’m thinking of Bernard J. Ebbers, Chief Executive of WorldCom. He masterminded an eleven billion dollar accounting fraud. Unfortunately, the malady I label selfish service never stops with the perpetrator. Selfish service creates a ripple effect that touches hundreds or thousands of innocent people with the loss of their jobs in a job-tight-market and the evaporation of their retirement security.

The malady of selfish service is not confined to the personal or corporate worlds. Our Lord finds his illustration in the political world of his day. He tells the Twelve: “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them” (42). This sounds like our Lord just visited the General Assembly of the United Nations or read the book, The Confession, by the former governor of New Jersey, James McGreevey. It’s a brave book, the tale of a man who lost everything and is willing to relive the pain in the hope of serving others and healing himself. To quote his own words: “It’s hard to describe how it feels to surrender your soul to your ambition.”

If we shift our gaze from the banks of the Delaware to the Potomac, we would have no difficulty identifying the “rulers” and “tyrants” whose lust for success has become a way of life that fuels their selfish service to others.

That way of life doesn’t stay in the world. A lot of what the world is and does becomes a good export item to the people of the church. In today’s Gospel, to whom is Jesus addressing his words? In particular to the request made by James and John, but also to the Twelve, who will shortly assume major leadership positions in the early Church. At the moment, they are in the final phase of their three years of seminary education and internship with the Master Teacher. I mention this because Saint Peter’s has six women and men who are in various stages of their seminary preparation right now. It is important to remind them and all the ordained clergy that from the beginning of church history rank and greatness and success have plagued those aspiring to be leaders. No one in the ecclesiastic structure is exempt, not even a bishop! But neither are the lay people. The same malady infests every baptized member of the Church. I think it would be safe to take any congregation in our synod to analyze the dynamics at work in a parish council or committee meeting. We would discover the same mixture of selfless service given to others in love and selfish ego-building service given to others.

Our human frailties and failings do not appear in their true light until we contrast them with the actions and demeanor of Christ, whom Isaiah identifies as the Servant of the Lord. During his earthly ministry, he completely reversed the usual order of the world: “…whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all” (43-44). Notice how in that one sentence the Lord switches from “servant” to “slave.” Our service, like his, must be a “slavish” giving, a total dedication. Then Isaiah raises the stakes, not simply slave-like service but the service of suffering and death. Indeed, the Church has always had a noble army of confessors and martyrs. We Americans may not realize that the last century “produced” more martyrs than all the previous centuries combined. We are only at the cusp of this new century, but the rapid rise of fundamentalism and fanaticism may be a sign of what is to come – what Jesus describes to the Twelve as “…the cup which they would drink and the baptism with which they would be baptized” (39).

Probably a word of caution would be helpful here. It is important to distinguish between the suffering and death of Christian martyrs and the suffering and death of the King of Martyrs. His suffering and death were unique. We give witness to that uniqueness every time we confess the Nicene Creed. When we view what happened on the cross through the lens of that ecumenical creed, then the uniqueness of the selfless service of the Suffering Servant of the Lord becomes clear. It was truly God who came down to earth and in the womb of the holy virgin became truly human. That is the unique mystery of the cross – on its holy limbs God died for us! Who but the God who fashioned us in Eden could come down to re-fashion us on Calvary? Only the Suffering Servant of the Lord was able to offer an atoning, sinless sacrifice to God on our behalf. It was that service of Jesus Christ, worked out on the cross, that brought the human family back to God and made it possible for the redeemed children of God to lovingly address God with open, receptive hands as “Our Father.”

Hebrews identifies this selfless service of the Suffering Servant as the service of the high priest: One who “…according to the order of Melchizedek…” (10) offers himself as the sacrifice which becomes the “…source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (9). On the cross Christ is both priest and sacrifice. To help us remember and appropriate the blessings that flow from Christ’s priestly sacrifice, a former member wrote an icon of Melchizedek for us. Those who use it as a focus of devotion light a candle and unite their prayers with those of their great High Priest who pleads the merits of his sacrifice in the heavens until we mortals are no longer bound by time and space.

Until the Day of Glory, we use Christ’s cross of sacrifice as the bridge that leads us from the malady of selfish service to the goal of selfless service. Every time we enter this house of God we are surrounded by the signs and sacraments that equip us to cross that bridge and accept the responsibility of a life of service. Upon entering, we encounter a substantial font designed to celebrate the Paschal mystery as fully as possible. Here we are plunged into the water: we die and are buried with Christ and raised by him to newness of life.

As we live that new life, our Lord gives us a new standard for measuring how successful we are. Indeed, our Lord bids us compete with one another to see who can be the greatest and most successful. But the greatness and the success for which he bids us strive is the greatness of service and the success of dedication. But we are not always up to the competition. We discover that trying to live by this new standard is not easy. Old habits can be difficult to break. Every self-examination of conscience makes that clear. That’s when God’s gracious gift of forgiveness moves in and wipes our slate clean. The Spirit urges us to try again and again until we get our selfless service to others right.

It takes discipline and persistence and practice. It takes regular participation in doing what Christ commanded us “to do.” Here at the altar we re-member the model for measuring success in service to others. Here the Suffering Servant serves the servants with the price of his sacrifice, his body and blood. At every Mass, Christ demonstrates his greatness by serving us and then invites us to share in his greatness by serving one another.

Notice what happens next. We throw open the “red doors” and our public ministries continue to celebrate what we began at the Font and the Table. That’s the model God urges us to use every day, in every way: at home, at work, at play and as we reach out, to use our Senior Pastor’s Lukan phrase, to the last, the least, and the lost.

I think you can tell that I like anniversary celebrations. By God’s grace I’ve had three of them this year: my 80^th birthday, the 55^th anniversary of ordination and now this silver anniversary. One reason why I like them is because each one gives me the opportunity to reflect on the ways my life has been shaped and changed over the years. Those of you who know me the longest realize that 25 years ago I was not what I am today. A quarter of a century with the diverse people of this evangelical-catholic communion, in this building, and at this intersection of the city, make me who I am and what I am still able to do.

There is a contagious joy I experience week and week as the community gathers. I want you to know how thankful I am to be able to be with you and to continue to share our new life of service together. Now I invite all of you to join me in giving praise and glory to the God who ultimately is responsible for whatever we are able to be and to do: the God we have learned to name as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

John S. Damm

Senior Pastor Emeritus

Saint Peter's Church in the City of New York

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THE FEAST OF SAINT LUKE, PHYSICIAN — THE NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — October 15, 2006

Isaiah 43:8-13; Psalm 124;

2 Timothy 4:5-11; Saint Luke 1:1-4, 24:44-53

Grace peace and mercy to you, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is, to use old language of the Church, my “duty and delight” to be with you this day. The “duty” is that I come to you representing your seminary in Philadelphia — an institution that has been a partner in ministry with this congregation and this synod for many years. And in recent years in particular, YOU have been a particularly vital partner with us, as you’ve welcomed interns from our campus like Darryl Kozak, who then go on to serve the church in such exotic lands as Brooklyn…

But the “delight” this morning far outweighs the duty. I am delighted to stand in the pulpit of a congregation that I have admired on so many levels throughout my 20 years of ministry. I remember being brought here when I was in seminary, to “see how it’s supposed to be done”! I’ve attended here often enough as a visitor that I sometimes feel like an “associate member.” And I am blessed to count among my dearest friends two of your pastors — Pastor Fryer, whom I have known back to seminary days, and Pastor Derr, who has been a trusted colleague for nearly as long.

I bring you greetings this morning from the Rev. Dr. Philip D. W. Krey, our President, from the Rev. Dr. Paul Rajashakar, our Dean, my fellow administrators, the faculty, and most important, the students of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. They all join me in thanking you for your prayers, for your partnership in our mission through such things as the internship program, and most recently through providing us with a new BOARD MEMBER in Pastor Fryer. And we thank you as well for your greatly needed financial support — support that comes to us through your benevolence dollars, which helps to sustain our day-to-day operations, AND for this congregation’s willingness to be a LEADER in our current capital campaign, a campaign to raise at least $1.5 million in the Metro New York Synod.

I come to you this morning, as you know, from Philadelphia. But where I literally COME FROM is a little corner of the world known as “Central Pennsylvania.” It is a place that bears little resemblance in most ways to Manhattan. It is a place that’s filled with sweeping hills and fields of wheat and corn, and where farmers in those fields on a Sunday morning can still be assured of hearing church bells ringing during the Lord’s Prayer — a lovely tradition that allowed those farmers to stop what they were doing for a moment and join with their brothers and sisters in worship. It’s a place where we jokingly say that “Lutherans are the densest,” and where there is also another Lutheran seminary, familiar to Pastor Fryer and me….

And it’s a place that’s normally not used to getting much attention. Until the past few weeks that is, when the focus of not just the nation but the WORLD turned to a quiet, peaceful group of Christians known as the AMISH.

It is a sad irony on one level that the Amish have become such a point of focus. Because, as most people known by now, they are a people who are intensely private, viewing the “spotlight” as contrary to the humility and modesty that they believe the Christian faith demands.

But like it or not, they were THRUST into that spotlight, suddenly, and violently, as the result of a crime of almost unspeakable horror — a crime that took the lives of a roomful of school-girls who seemed the very definition of “innocents.” It was an event that shook our little community — just 20 miles or so from my home — to its core, just as the events five years ago in THIS city shook this community. Our tragedy was on a smaller scale of course, and wholly different circumstances. But the depth of agony and grief for those both directly and indirectly affected was not so different.

The crimes committed in Lancaster were unspeakable. But frankly, by the standards of today’s world, it SHOULD have been a pretty quick story, from a national or international perspective. After Columbine and the scores of other school shootings like it, Lancaster County’s tragedy should have been little more than a sad blip on the screen.

But it turned out to be more than that. WHY? Well, at the beginning, the seeming peculiarity of the Amish may have had something to do with it — that striking contradiction between a people that look like they’ve stepped out of the 19^th century, and a crime that feels distinctly contemporary.

But the world-wide fascination has been about more than this. No, the world’s fascination has been not so much on the crimes themselves as on the RESPONSE and REACTION TO those crimes by the Amish community. For as the members of this intensely private, little known sect of the Christian faith went about dealing with this tragedy, the WORLD looked on in what seemed to be complete and utter disbelief and awe.

It began when the local Amish leaders, who normally refuse outside assistance in times of trial, acquiesced to the outpouring of help, but ONLY UNDER THE CONDITION that the widow and children of the KILLER be treated equally with the families of the murdered girls. The fascination grew as it became known that families of the murdered girls were actually reaching out to the murderer’s family, even inviting them to attend their funerals. Expressing compassion rather than hate, and charity rather than vengeance.

The world — and I mean the WORLD — was, for a brief while at least, utterly spellbound. Seems they had never seen anything like it. Dr. Phil even weighed in, expressing his expert psychological opinion that such extraordinary forgiveness and the absence of rage might not be entirely “healthy.” I suppose Dr. Phil would posit that Jesus was just in denial too, when he said: “forgive them Father, for they know not what they do…”

Others reacted differently though. A letter from a listener to National Public Radio may have caught the world’s reaction best: A woman wrote: “As a nation and a world our response to violence against us is usually to seek revenge. As I listened to the way of the Amish, I was moved to tears thinking that the lesson they are bringing our nation is a blessing in this time of anger, fear and the violence such responses bring.”

Let us be clear here for a moment: The Amish are not perfect. No more so than any other group or denomination within or outside the Christian Faith. But that said, what the world witnessed in the Amish these past few weeks was nothing less than the GRACE and FORGIVENESS of God EMBODIED. In spite of their abhorrence of the spotlight, the reality is that this tiny little sect of Christians in this tiny little corner of the world became, for a moment at least, a WITNESS to what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about. They demonstrated to a perplexed but intrigued world how life CAN actually work: how EVIL can be met with LOVE; how the dark abyss of this world can be filled with the gentle but relentless light of Christ.

Today, the Church celebrates the feast of St. Luke, the writer to whom the third Gospel and the book of Acts are attributed, and who is also himself identified as a physician — which is why here, and throughout the world, Christian Churches today will offer liturgies and rites of healing.

But while Luke may have been a physician, what HE would undoubtedly remind us of today is that it is CHRIST who is the GREAT HEALER. In setting down his “orderly account,” Luke wants us to know, not information “about” Christ, but CHRIST HIMSELF. He wants the world to know in the fullest sense of the word, the Christ who came and lived and taught and healed others. He wants us to know that the Christ who opened the minds of the disciples before his ascension is STILL opening minds TODAY… still BLESSING, and SENDING POWER; still HEALING — even wounds of unfathomable depth.

Which is why we are HERE this day, and every Lord’s Day. It is why the church keeps gathering, in places like this, and in tiny villages like Lancaster, in Lutheran communities of faith and Amish communities of faith and ALL the rest. We come to listen again to Isaiah’s vision — that the eyes of the blind will opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped, that the lame will leap like deer, and the tongues of the speechless sing for joy. And we come hoping that, as we wait, we might catch an occasional GLIMPSE of that vision’s fulfillment; a foretaste of the feast that is to come.

Foretastes like the one the world got in the witness of a tiny, unlikely group of Christians in Lancaster County. Foretastes like WE receive today, in this city, at this altar, in the bread and wine that will soon feed us, in the hands and oil that will soon anoint us, and in the community of faith that sustains us.

And the remarkable thing is that, such foretastes are enough… enough until that day comes when Isaiah’s vision is finally fulfilled in its completeness, and there is no more sorrow or grief, in this or any other place. Thanks be to God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. AMEN

The Rev. Glenn D. Miller

Director of Development

The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia

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THE EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — October 8, 2006

Genesis 2:18-24; Psalm 8; Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16

In the Name of the Father and of the U Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

O Lord our Lord,

How exalted is your name in all the world!

Out of the mouth of infants and children

Your majesty is praised above the heavens (Psalm 8: 1-2)

When our children were young my husband and I used to love taking them to the zoo. Wherever we were we’d would always go to the local zoo. It gave us such pleasure to see our little sons’ delight in seeing all the different animals. Our younger son especially loved to study the creature of his current obsession. On one trip to the Philadelphia zoo he waited two hours for the otters to wake up just so he could watch them play. Maybe they never voiced praise to the Lord for the wonders of creation but you could see it in their eyes and feel it in their joyful enthusiasm.

Sad to say as we grow up we lose much of that sense of wonder and awe that we had as children exploring the world with wide-eyed excitement and trust. We become jaded and cynical as we find out that our world is not what it ought to be – not what our Creator intended it to be. For example, in the last few days the following reports appeared in the New York Times:

+ Three days after a grisly attack on an Amish schoolhouse here, funerals were held Thursday for four of the five girls killed by a gunman who wrote of being forever changed by the death of his newborn daughter and driven over the edge by fantasies of sexually assaulting young girls. A truck driver, he was paid to collect the milk of local dairy farmers. Instead, he took their children.

+ Mr. Foley, 52, who resigned Friday after being confronted with sexually explicit instant messages he had sent to pages, released a statement saying he had entered a rehabilitation clinic for treatment of “alcoholism and related behavioral problems.”

+ How that slick, a highly toxic cocktail of petrochemical waste and caustic soda, ended up in Mr. Oudrawogol’s backyard in a suburb north of Abidjan is a dark tale of globalization. It came from a Greek-owned tanker flying a Panamanian flag and leased by the London branch of a Swiss trading corporation whose fiscal headquarters are in the Netherlands. Safe disposal in Europe would have cost about $300,000, or perhaps twice that, counting the cost of delays. But because of decisions and actions made not only here but also in Europe, it was dumped on the doorstep of some of the world’s poorest people.

Comparing Psalm 8 to these news reports I can’t help but think – this is not what God has in mind for us! Where is our sense of wonder and awe in the magnificence and beauty of creation? How can we believe that God would care for the likes of us at all, let alone that God made us just a little lower than the angels and adorns us with glory and honor?

In so many ways our world is not what God means it to be – and we are not yet what God intends us to be. We fail again and again to live up to the nobility that God has given us. One particular way in which we are not yet what God intends us to be is in the matter of marriage and divorce. Though I am hesitant to speak about this matter, which has touched so many of our lives, I feel compelled by our readings to do so. I hope to give all of us some encouragement as we seek to be loving and faithful in all our relationships.

When the Pharisees come to Jesus and ask his opinion about divorce there are a few things of which we should be aware. First, they are trying to trap Jesus into saying something that Herod would deem as a treasonable offense. Remember that John the Baptist had been imprisoned and later beheaded on account of his criticism of Herod’s divorce and subsequent marriage to his brother’s wife. Jesus was in a sticky situation here!

Second there is the matter of a long-standing dispute regarding the proper interpretation of a certain text of scripture – the text the Pharisees refer to in this morning’s reading. It comes from the Twenty-fourth Chapter of Deuteronomy and reads like this:

¹Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house…(Deut. 24:1, NRS)

The troubling word in this verse is the word “objectionable.” Sometimes that word is translated “unseemly”: he finds something unseemly about her.

To our modern ears, this whole ancient way of speaking of divorce is strange and unjust because it so favors the man. It does not even contemplate the possibility of the woman divorcing the man, and indeed, that seems to have been very rare in those days.

Now, at the time of Jesus, there were two competing schools of Biblical interpretation, connected with the two leading rabbis of the day: Hillel and Shammai. Both rabbis served as president of the Great Sanhedrin, Hillel first, followed by Shammai.[1]

Of the two, Shammai was more conservative in his interpretation of the text, and Hillel was more liberal. It is hard to tell which one was more God-pleasing, but Shammai, the conservative, seems more compassionate toward women. On Shammai’s interpretation, the word “objectionable” refers to adultery. If a man’s wife commits adultery, he may divorce her.

Hillel, on the other hand, focused more on the clause “she does not please him…” and inclined toward a much more unlimited concept of that which was objectionable or unseemly to the man. Some of these more liberal interpretations are unjust, even flimsy. Let me give you some examples:

Some of the rabbis boldly taught that a man had a perfect right to dismiss his wife, if he found another woman whom he liked better, or who was more beautiful (Mishnah, GiTTin, 14 10). Here are some other specifications taken from the same book: “The following women may be divorced: She who violates the Law of Moses, e.g. causes her husband to eat food which has not been tithed. .... She who vows, but does not keep her vows. .... She who goes out on the street with her hair loose, or spins in the street, or converses (flirts) with any man, or is a noisy woman. What is a noisy woman? It is one who speaks in her own house so loud that the neighbors may hear her.” [2]

It is hard to understand this. Why should a woman who spins in the street be subject to divorce? That’s what children do, to express their joy and energy. They spin. Like Mary Tyler Moore spinning there in Minneapolis. It’s hard to see why she could be divorced for that.

With this background in mind perhaps we can see why Jesus answers as he does – not by speaking of the grounds justifying divorce, but by referring back to Genesis – to what God had in mind from the beginning of creation. Here the emphasis is on that tender observation God makes, “It is not good that the man should be alone…” We are not created to be alone but to be in community – and marriage is the most intimate and precious of communities. God has in mind that men and women might enjoy being cherished by their beloved until they are parted by death.

Since Jesus is quoting the beloved Moses, no one can dispute his answer! It is only later when he is alone in the house with the disciples that he speaks more firmly about divorce and adultery. Then he is not afraid to call a spade a spade. And yet the motive behind his firmness in this matter, I believe, is two-fold. First, Jesus wants to hold up the nobility of the estate of marriage as God intends, and second, to protect women and children – the most vulnerable members of society and the ones most likely to suffer as a result of divorce.

At least one thing is clear: Jesus cares for and defends the little ones of this earth. This should be born in mind when thinking of marriage and divorce. It is a Christ-like thing to care for, even to suffer for the little ones, including that little one who might be your spouse.

We must always keep in mind that, though Jesus clearly opposes divorce and adultery, he also spoke with great gentleness, compassion and forgiveness to those whom others would condemn. For example, recall the story of the woman caught in adultery whom Jesus saved from stoning. And there is the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, who admitted to having had five husbands and presently was living with a man who wasn’t her husband. Jesus offered her “living water!” and she became the first evangelist among the Gentiles!

Sad to say, divorce has made its way into many of our lives, yours and mine. Because we do live in community the break up of a marriage affects all of us and is almost always a cause for sorrow and grief. Nevertheless, we must all remember and never forget that Jesus laid down his life and bore the cross for outcasts and sinners, and for people who are divorced too!

In all circumstances Jesus continues to call us to better things – to live more and more fully into the abundant life of love and faithfulness that God has in mind for all of us! We humans are noble creatures, made just a little lower than the angels! But there is one more noble than all the rest – the One who, as the writer of Hebrews puts it, “Is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.” Even now he is drawing us into that nobility that God intends for us.

If ever a man had a right to speak of love and faithfulness, that one is Jesus. If ever a man knew what it meant to love with patience, kindness, and forbearance, that one is Jesus. If ever a man knew what it mean to love with the kind of love that uplifts the beloved and makes that one better, Jesus is the one. And if ever a man knew what it meant to love “till death do us part,” to go on loving with his every breath and to the very last beat of his heart, Jesus is the one.

Dear brothers and sisters, Jesus loves you to the very last beat of his heart, and with this glorious addition: his heart shall no longer stop beating, for he has overcome death! No wonder, then, that in the great tradition of Christian teaching, the Church is called “the Bride of Christ.” Jesus loves you with love like that of marriage – a true marriage in which he will never harm, discourage, reject, or lose you.

May his love and faithfulness be a cause of encouragement for you. Let his love be a model for your own loves, till that day when he comes again to claim you as his own.

All glory and honor be to Jesus Christ our Lord, who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns now and forever. Amen.

The Rev. Carol E. A. Fryer

Vice Pastor

Saint Peter’s Church

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THE SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — October 1, 2006

Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29; Psalm 19:7-14; James 5:13-20; Saint Mark 9: 38-50

In nomine Jesu!

Robert Frost began one of his most evocative poems with the words, “Something there is that doesn't love a wall.” Yet every biblical somebody who shows up in today’s liturgy — with the exception of James — appears anxious to “cut-off” or “wall-out” someone or something. The Israelites, egged-on by “the rabble among them [who] had a strong craving” (clearly refugees from the food channel), long to cut themselves off from freedom. Moses, fed-up with whiny followers, begs God for the ultimate cut-off, death. Joshua, clearly anxious to secure his midlevel leadership position, wants to cut out Eldad and Medad. John the Apostle, clearly anticipating our obsession with apostolic succession, wants to cut out those who don’t “follow us.” The psalmist invites us to sing of our relative security within the laws’ confines, cut-off from the insolent in the world. Even Jesus waxes eloquent about “cutting off, tearing out, and throwing someone or something into hell.” Only James appears anxious to stay connected, but Martin Luther, our confessional mentor, cuts his letter off as “an epistle of straw.” What’s a preacher in an “evangelical-catholic communion of diverse people and communities” to do?

Well, I’m going to start with the ultimate cut-off; I’m going to start with hell, with all its medieval images as a place of punishment for those cut out of our afterlife. Although Jesus doesn’t even use the word, much less the concept, even once today — we’ll get to the translation and its resultant faith issues in a moment — hell appears three times in today’s Gospel and, as a place of punishment for those cut out of our afterlife, it has become the most popular piece of real estate in contemporary American culture. Listen to this article by Steven Waldman and Laura Sheahen in Beliefnet from the June 26^th edition of NEWSWEEK:

Conservatives are more confident than liberals that they'll avoid hell — and that they know someone who won't. Liberals are less confident about their own chances of escaping hell and less sure they can identify the damned. These are a few results from an unusual online survey Beliefnet conducted this month among 10,000 of its members.

Asked to rate their "chances that you might go to hell," 46% of self-identified conservatives said "not a chance" — compared to 28% of liberals. Born-again Christians were the most upbeat about their odds: 55% said "not a chance" compared to 21% of Roman Catholics. Fifty-six percent of those who filled out the survey thought they knew one or more people who were "probably" headed south, with 64% of conservatives saying yes and only 47% of liberals. Conservatives, and men, are more likely to believe in hell as a physical place with fire and demons, as opposed to a spiritual state of separation from God.

Do you know the doomed? Sixty-one percent of men said they knew some hell-bound folks, compared to 54% of women. (It's unclear whether the results show that men are more judgmental, better judges of character, or hang out with more evil people.)

Most people said the doomed are "acquaintances," but almost 25% said the hell-bound are members of their own family. Women were more likely to consign family members to hell, quite possibly because they spend more time with the family.

And why are these people going to fry? The answers reflect one of the oldest theological debates: which matters more, faith or good works? For instance, 60% of born-again Christians (almost all of them Protestants) said the unfortunates were going to hell because they didn't have the "right beliefs," compared to just 19% of Catholics who said that. Eighty percent of Catholics said it was because of the person's immoral actions, compared to 40% of born-agains. The same split persisted politically: liberals said damnation was determined by bad behavior; conservatives, by a smaller majority, thought beliefs mattered most.

In what may be a worrisome sign of the state of family relations, those who thought their family members were headed down were very likely to think of hell as a place of fire and torment. Oh, and eternal. It was unclear whether the respondents were expressing a prediction or a wish.[i]

Is this what Jesus is talking about, that, if we live this life cut-off from others we can spend eternity enjoying their flaming, eternally cut-off state? That is the majority’s point of view.

But the word Jesus uses — rendered “hell” by some enterprising translator — is, in fact, the word Gehenna which in the Bible is a very real, down-to-earth place that one didn’t have to die to enter. Gehenna is a valley near Jerusalem where ancient idol-worshiping religionists practiced human sacrifice and forced children to walk through fire. The practice was abolished 600 years before Christ by Judah’s King Josiah who defiled the valley and made it unusable for such practices, but the valley remained, and its stories of death, fire and punishment became indistinguishable from its name. In Jesus’ day, Gehenna was associated with these unspeakable horrors and remained a powerful metaphor for a place where those who cut themselves off from God live.

Jesus’ message is that it is better to cut off our hand or foot, or gouge out an eye, if doing so prevents us from living in the desolate valley of refusing God. Jesus is trying to save us from the perpetual punishment which is the state of those who reject God. So if some part of us causes us to reject God, Jesus says, get rid of it! Don’t mess with it! Don’t give it a chance to even tempt you to enter the valley of death! In Jesus’ day, temptation and sin were located physically in the offending body part. So if you steal with your hand, then cut it off. If your foot moves you to associate with evil people, then amputate it. If your eye causes you to desire something you shouldn’t have, then you’re better off without your eye. Do anything in your power to rid yourselves of that which can separate you from God and can cast you into the fires of perpetual punishment.

Jesus’ words may indeed be hyperbole. I don’t think he ever meant to be taken literally such that he really wanted anyone to cut off their limbs. However, the strength and meaning of his words are not to be underestimated. He is pointing out to us what it takes to be his disciple. Out of love for us, Jesus is warning us in the strongest possible way to rid ourselves of anything that can cast us into the outer darkness because it takes us from the light of God. If money incites us to selfishness, then give it away — all of it. If our stake in our house moves us to violence to protect it from a burglar, then sell it. If keeping up with the Joneses or the kids at school leads us to feel ashamed of ourselves, then eliminate the source of envy that produces such attitudes. If food tempts us to gluttony, then eat bread and water alone. If we desire to be powerful by spreading lies and gossiping, then take a vow of silence. If success on our jobs or even with hobbies makes us egotistical about our accomplishments, then quit. In short, Jesus would say that it is better to be poor, homeless, bored and a nobody than to live in the fiery punishment where we are devoid of God because of wealth, desire, egotism, pride or fame.

With this challenge, given all we’d have to rid ourselves of, we’d all live as hermits in a desert. In the fourth and fifth centuries, some tried this, leaving their homes and families to live, as hermits with the fewest possessions in the desert, hoping that people would come and share food with them in exchange for spiritual words of wisdom. The problem, they learned, was that they couldn’t cut off, that the realities of life went with them. Even after removing themselves from the objects of their desires, they imagined the relations they would still like to have with them. They learned that the only way to live faithfully is to be dead, which is precisely Jesus’ point, because, by virtue of our baptisms, we are, and we cannot be cut off from God because we died with Christ and were raised to eternal life with him. That is God’s promise to us, the beginning of our life in God and our end. Yet we know that we do not live that way. We know that we live with a foot in both camps: one foot planted permanently in the kingdom of God, and the other foot planted in Gehenna often by our own volition. With that foot we feel our way around in the darkness, wondering what we can get away with, how much we can still have things our own way. When we try, we discover we cannot draw back our foot in Gehenna by our own effort. We do not have the strength to pull it out by ourselves. We cannot be healed by our own efforts, as the desert hermits learned. We cannot practice enough disciplines, take on enough ascetical practices, and cannot rid ourselves of all the outward trappings of our disease. We cannot pull ourselves up by our own spiritual bootstraps, or give ourselves enough lectures so that choosing God’s way is automatic. It was Jesus who died on the cross and got us out of sin and its consequences to begin with. It will be Jesus, who, with our consent, and only with our consent, will draw back our foot from across the line to allow the whole of us to live in the fullness of God’s presence.

The desert hermits left us a legacy: disciplines that are ways to offer our consent to be healed by Christ. We can take on the discipline of fasting and consent to be healed of gluttony. We can take on the discipline of tithing and consent to be healed of fear and selfishness. We can take on the discipline of praying for our enemies and consent to be healed of hatred. We can take on the discipline of forgiving ourselves and consent to be healed of treating ourselves as less than a beloved child of God.

There are innumerable disciplines and ways to consent to Christ so that our foot in Gehenna may be drawn back and our whole selves can rejoice in the freedom of God’s kingdom. Jesus waits only for our consent and forgives us in the meantime. Robert Frost, you see, is correct. God is that “something there is that does not love a wall.”

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — September 24, 2006

Jeremiah 11:18-20; Psalm 54; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Saint Mark 9: 30-37

In nomine Jesu!

Two questions leap out from our experience with Jesus Christ today; two really big questions. They are as current as our gathering this morning. They have been asked for as long as the stories that make up our Bible have been told. They are neither uniquely Christian nor Judeo-Christian, but are universal at least among those who believe that there is a God and that there is reason and purpose in our life. These questions are related, short and simple — as are Jesus’ answers. It’s only because we don’t like the answers, and find their implications so difficult, that we’ve made them complicated and seemingly impossible to do.

Here are the simple questions: What does God want of us? What does God want for us?

And here are Jesus’ simple answers.

What does God want of us: That we be “last of all and servant of all.” That’s what God wants of Jeremiah; that’s what God wants of Israel; that’s what God wants of Jesus; and that’s what God wants of us.

What does God want for us: To be last of all and servant of all of us. Jesus teaches this to us in this way: That “the Son of Man must be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.”

We’ve never liked that answer, not about our God and not about us.

We want a God who is in control, on top of everything; invincible, worthy of honor, demonstrably superior, demonstrably more powerful than all the other ‘gods and powers and principalities’ in life and we want exactly the same things for ourselves. So when Jesus speaks of his dying, and of our serving and equates a helpless little child with himself and with God and with us, we say with the disciples that we don’t understand.

Poppycock! We understand just fine, we just don’t want to live like this. And not wanting to live like that is, after all, only natural.

It is only natural: to want to be the alpha bull or dominant cow; to want to be the top dog, the leader of the pack; to want to be served and not to serve, to want to be first and not last, to want to be a winner, to be on top; to be right. It is only natural, at the very least, to want to be on the side of those who are served and first; who are winners, who are right. It is only natural and that’s what makes living in relationship with the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ so incredibly difficult; so difficult, in fact, that we regularly undermine that relationship and ourselves. The trouble with all these aspirations that are only natural is that they always result in competition, always devolve into conflict and, at least among us humans, always end in war.

It is only natural that Jeremiah and his listeners, Jesus’ disciples, James and his readers, the Church of history and we, the Church of today, have divided and competed and sought dominance over others, even over one another because that is the way of the flora and fauna, the nations and kingdoms and the people of the world. But the way of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is anything but natural.

Last of all and servant of all: How would things be different if we lived like that?

Last of all and servant of all: How would the world be different if our nation would act like that?

Last of all and servant of all: How would the Church be different if we organized like that?

Last of all and servant of all: How would your partner, your family, your work, the city, this Church, your life be different if we wanted — really wanted — that?

I can guess what you’re thinking. I can imagine the first thoughts that have sprung into your head. We’d be losers. We’d be crushed. We’d be nothing. We’d be wiped out. We’d be annihilated. We’d be dead.

A loser, a nothing, annihilated, wiped out, dead: That’s what God became in Jesus; that and one little thing more.

We call it “resurrection.” We were immersed in it — at our baptism. We are nourished on it — in the Eucharist. And because we are, we are more than just natural. We are the risen People of God, we have nothing left to earn, and nothing left to lose.

Last of all and servant of all: That’s what God gets from Jesus; that’s what God wants from us; that’s what God is for us and for all the people of the world.

Last of all and servant of all: The answer, like the questions, is simple. The living, however, is hard. It takes faith. It takes courage. It takes discipline, from self and from others, because its life not the natural way.

For faith, God gives us the Spirit; for courage, the model of Christ; and for discipline the saints and each other — we call that “the Church” — to challenge and question, to forgive and make bold, to support, to encourage and to strengthen.

Last of all and servant of all: That’s what God give us in Jesus; that’s what God gives the world in us. It ain’t natural; but is the way of justice and wholeness and peace.

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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HOLY CROSS DAY — September 17, 2006

Numbers 21:4b-9; Psalm 98:1-5;

1 Corinthians 1:18-24; John 3:13-17

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It’s all foolishness that’s what it is, in the eyes of the world. We gather here week after week to do things for which the world sees no purpose. We’re used to it and it makes sense to us because we believe in a God whose beloved Son was crucified for us, indeed for the world. It makes sense to us, but to the world it’s all a bunch of foolishness.

Think about it. Many of us come here on Sunday morning and spend at least 3 or 4 hours of our precious weekend to do what? Sing some songs, many of them as old as the hills, listen to someone read to us from an ancient text, listen to somebody else preach to us about those texts, and then pray to a God we cannot see and cannot prove exists. Then we take some of our hard-earned money out of our pockets as some of us wander around and collect it. And then we share a tiny snack we call a meal – no, a feast – of a morsel of bread and a sip of wine. And we say that our God is intimately present to us in, with and under it all.

In addition, some of us wear very funny clothes and we behave in ways that are unique to this particular gathering. We parade around behind someone who carries the symbol of an ancient instrument of torture – the cross, which we lift up today with special reverence. We make the sign of the cross to indicate our allegiance to a Jewish male who died on that instrument of torture 2000 years ago. Sometimes, like today, one of us gets into a pool of water – fully clothed – and dunks a naked baby three times in the water. We mark the sign of that same cross on Zachary’s forehead, indicating that he too now belongs to that same crucified One. And finally we proclaim to one another and to the world that that crucified man is indeed risen from the dead and now lives and rules all of heaven and earth.

It’s all foolishness, I tell you, in the world’s eyes, for what do we get out of it? Granted, a few of us get paid but as far as I know no one here is getting rich! We don’t get to sleep in on Sundays or have a leisurely morning with our coffee and the NY Times. We get nothing really practical – no practical advice about how to succeed in the world or anything like that. Very often we don’t even get our needs met! On top of that, we find ourselves rubbing elbows with people we don’t know, don’t like, and don’t agree with, not to mention those who trouble us in one way or another. And finally, some of us expend a tremendous amount of energy to bring our children here only to be scowled at if they fuss and make too much noise. Been there, done that! So looking on, I say the world thinks us foolish.

I must say that it’s hard for me to talk about our worship in this way – very hard. And maybe it’s hard for you to think about it in this way, for to us what we do on Sunday mornings, and at various other times during the year like Holy Week, is the wisest and most important thing we do – ever. We know what we get out of it and you can’t always name it or describe it. We believe and know in our hearts that when we gather here around the table and the Word that our Lord Jesus comes to meet us. In this encounter Jesus sustains and nourishes us with his own power and strength and courage and grace for the journey of life.

On Friday I went with my husband, who for those of you that don’t know is the pastor of another Lutheran church on the Upper East Side, to visit one of his members who has recently moved to a nursing home way far away in Utica, NY. She was a cradle member of that church and has never in her life lived anywhere else. Now at the age of 93 she told us with tears in her eyes how lonesome she was up there in Utica. She missed her friends in New York but the thing that brought her the most sadness was that she missed her church. She missed that Sunday morning time with her Lord. It was the mainstay of her life for 93 years. I daresay many of us would feel much the same way.

This year, Saint Peter’s is offering two new opportunities for you to engage in some more foolishness – or as we see it and St. Paul says it – the power and wisdom of God. If you have read the September Intersection you already know something about OASIS: a time and place to rest in the wilderness. Beginning on Monday evening, September 25 at 6:30 PM, you will have an opportunity to come and share in an experience of the ancient Christian practice of Lectio Divina – which is Latin for divine or sacred reading. The world may think us foolish but we will sit together and listen to readings from the Bible and take the time to allow God’s Word to enter into our minds and hearts and to allow our responses to arise from deep within us. Like a living spring of water in the midst of the desert, God’s Word quenches the thirst of our deepest desires. I invite you to join me and others in this foolishness, even if you don’t think that sort of thing is for you! OASIS also includes an hour for engaging more deeply in the matters of our faith through discussion with the pastors. I think it will be a lot of fun and hope you will come!

In addition we are offering a parallel opportunity for our pre-school and elementary school age children. “Godly Play” has been called “Lectio Divina for children.” Beginning on Sunday, October 1 at 10:00 AM (the Sunday school hour) we invite the children of our parish to gather together as a storyteller tells them a story from the Bible and leads them in wondering about it. Look for a more expansive description of “Godly Play” in the October Intersection. And if you are really feeling foolish and want to be one of our storytellers, please let me know!

Now that I’ve plugged these two new opportunities to be foolish in the eyes of the world, let me turn to a story that I’d like to tell you. This could be called “A Tale of Two Christians.” Both stories are true.

The story of the first Christian comes from the most recent issue of Time Magazine, the cover article entitled “Does God Want You to be Rich?” The lead article started out with the story of a man who had lost his job and so he moved his family to Texas in order to join the church of a TV preacher he had been drawn to. He claims that this preacher inspired him to go out and get a good job with a good salary and to be a success at it. He is now looking forward to a 6-figure income and is already making plans to buy a large plot of land and build a big house for his family. He also anticipates building a schoolhouse where his children would be home schooled and having horses. He gives the credit for all this success and fortune to the TV Preacher and to the God he proclaimed.

The second Christian is also a man and a father and is the subject of a book I read on my vacation in August. Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations…One School at a Time tells the story of Greg Mortenson. Mortenson doesn’t talk about his own faith in the book except to say that he was born of Lutheran Missionaries who were serving in Tanzania near Mount Kilimanjaro. (In fact, his father founded Tanzania’s first teaching hospital, KCMC, where our dear friend Pastor Lermy was working last year.) Still, his faith is more than evident in the things that he has done and continues to do.

Mortenson climbed Mount Kilimanjaro when he was 11 years old and the experience hooked him on mountain climbing. In September 1993, Mortenson was part of an expedition climbing a mountain in the Karakoram segment of the Himalayan Range called K2. It lies on the border between Pakistan and China and is the second highest mountain in the world. One of the climbers got into trouble near the summit and Mortenson and another man overextended themselves in rescuing him so that they never reached the summit.

On his way down the Mountain, Mortenson took a wrong turn and ended up in a little village in that region of Northern Pakistan. He was so weak and disoriented that Haji Ali, the chief (nurmadhar) of the village, took him in and nursed him back to health. Mortenson stayed with Haji Ali and his family for several weeks and they became good friends. Just before leaving to come back to the states, Mortenson asked Haji Ali to show him the children’s school. The dignified Haji Ali hung his head in shame but agreed anyway. He took Mortenson up to a vast open ledge, 800 feet above the Braldu River, where 78 boy and 4 girls were kneeling on the frosty ground and scratching in the dirt with sticks. A teacher cost a dollar a day which was too much for the village so they shared a teacher with a neighboring village. On the day the teacher didn’t come the students went up to that cold ledge and practiced their lessons on their own.

Mortenson couldn’t believe what he saw and he felt outraged by it. He placed his hands on Haji Ali’s shoulders, looked him squarely in the eyes and said, “I’m going to build you a school.” It took him three years and he had to build a bridge over a gorge first but this white Lutheran American man managed to build a school in that Muslim mountain village. In the process he started a foundation – the Central Asia Institute – which has raised money and built schools all over Northern Pakistan. Mortenson continues to build schools, now also in Northern Afghanistan – you know, in the mountains where Al Queda terrorists hide out. He goes there for months at time leaving his wife and children back home in Montana.

In this “Tale of two Christians,” the first one might be considered wise in the eyes of the world and the second one foolish. We might say that the first lives by a theology of glory, though that doesn’t automatically follow from material success. Many of us are blessed with success and wealth, especially compared to much of the rest of the world, and I know that we do not only think of our selves. We might say that Mortenson lives by the theology of the cross. He has made friends in the Muslim world of Pakistan and Afghanistan and he has devoted his life to them, even risking his life to help them. If that is foolish, then let us be fools too.

We honor and revere the cross because we follow a crucified Lord. We make the sign of the cross to remind ourselves that in following Jesus we follow someone who willingly laid down his life for his friends. We remind ourselves, yes, but also pledge that we will follow him wherever he leads us, as best we can, knowing that even though the world may think us foolish or even despise us we have the power and the wisdom of God on our side.

To the One who on the cross laid down his life for you and me and for the world be the glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen

The Rev. Carol E. A. Fryer

Vice Pastor, Saint Peter’s Church

New York City

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THE FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — September 10, 2006

Commemorating the Fifth Anniversary of September 11, 2001

Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 146; James 2:1-17; Saint Mark 7:24-37

In nomine Jesu!

So Pilate, after flogging Jesus, handed him over to be crucified. Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace and they called together the whole cohort. And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. And they began saluting him, "Hail, King of the Jews!" They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him…Then they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull). And they crucified him. [ii]

This story, known to us all, is about an act of terrorism — State-sponsored terrorism, to be sure, but terrorism, none-the-less. Its purpose was more than the death of its victim. Its purpose was to create and sustain a climate of fear. And so it was public. It was humiliating. It was ghastly. And it worked. Boisterous crowds who, but days earlier, had thronged the streets, reveled in his presence, and exulted as he bested the scribes and the priests who collaborated with Rome to sustain them in their misery, had vanished. His followers, so eager that his reign of love should commence, had fled, but only after one had betrayed him and another feigned ignorance of him. Public, humiliating, ghastly and effective: this act of terrorism worked.

And then they found his empty tomb.

…As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were terrorized. But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, here is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.[iii]

What a difference this young man’s words made! His followers no longer feigning ignorance, acknowledged his presence with them and publicly called him both “Savior” and “Lord!” The crowds no longer hid themselves, but publicly gathered and eagerly consumed their bold words. And they formed a new community — public and fearless, peacemaking and peace-filled, outreaching and including, healing, caring, sharing — as a later writer put it,

All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distributed the proceeds to all as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together…they broke bread…and ate their fill with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.[iv]

They believed the young man’s message to be stronger than crucifixion’s terror and they publicly shaped their life together accordingly.

Five years ago today, we experienced several concerted acts of terrorism. Their purpose was more than the death of their victims. Their purpose was to create and sustain a climate of fear. So they were public, humiliating, and ghastly. And they continue, just often enough to be effective, to be public, humiliating, and ghastly. These acts of terrorism work and we and our city, our nation and our world have been changed.

For the rest of our lives, there will never be a moment when September 11, 2001 will not be with us, part of us, and part of our history. Acts of terrorism are designed to do that, to be indelible, to create and sustain a climate of fear and provoke us to act accordingly, to be reactive, defensive, and insulative; to be private and not public, to be anxious, and joyless and always afraid; to have what Isaiah calls, “a fearful heart.”

In the five years since September 11, 2001, I, and others who have stood in this pulpit, have proclaimed one consistent message, namely that faith, the primary gift of the Holy Spirit, is the opposite of fear. We have relentlessly exhorted you to “feast on faith and fast on fear” and we have been merciless — at least I have been merciless — in critiquing everyone — politicians, the media, government officials, religious leaders, who, mostly for their own interests, continue to sustain, enhance and even re-create a climate of fear. Let me tell you why.

September 11 and the other dates of terror that followed are very much a part of our past. They may be very much a part of our future. All that is absolutely true. The danger is, and until many things change in those who despise us and in us, the danger will remain, true and present and real.

Yet that other terrorist act — the one I began with: the public, humiliating, ghastly crucifixion of Jesus Christ — is also part of our past and of us too — even more so, since we were baptized into it, making its terror and death our terror and our death too.

But then there is the empty tomb, making our death and the terror that inevitably accompanies it to be only in our past; making the Risen Christ’s presence among us to be our overarching present; and making unending community with the Risen Christ and with all the saints our indelible future! With the only death we have to fear in our past; with the terrorized, crucified, risen and victorious Christ as our nourishment, our present and our future, the only message we can proclaim is the message of Isaiah: “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God!” And that message, more than the other, must mold our lives and shape our acts so that they are characterized, not by anxiety, depression and inertia, but by hopeful, energizing joy without fear.

James tells us what that looks like: It shows no favoritism. It welcomes the stranger. It embraces as equals, the hungry, naked and the poor. Isaiah tells us what that looks like, not only in the life to come, but in a very public community where the lame, the blind, the deaf and the mute — in other words, the ones we label “society’s burdens” are accorded equal treatment with the valued. And Jesus shows us what that looks like, responding to and praising and nourishing a despised woman from a hostile community of faith, responding to and praising and nourishing each of us as we publicly gather within this “primary terrorist target,” and commit ourselves “to creatively shape life in the city.”

Five years after September 11 we still need to remember, lament, and mourn just as 2,000 years after Golgotha we need to do the same.

But then there is the empty tomb — Christ’s, ours and all of terror’s victims. And thus there is one message: “Be strong, fear not! Here is your God!” And now there is a job to do.

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — August 27, 2006

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18, Psalm 34:15-22; Ephesians 6:10-20; Saint John 6:56-69

In nomine Jesu!

When I was in college — at Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne — I had a room mate who, as a child, had not been allowed to have any pets. He decided to remedy that deprivation during our senior year. He started out in September with fish. By January, along with the fish, we were raising gerbils. Just before Easter, he came home one afternoon with two ducks. We named them “hetero” and “ortho.” For the most part they ignored my room mate, but they thought I was their father. They followed me around the campus — fortunately, there was a large lake in its center —which is where we left them when we graduated that summer. Just so you know: My former room mate is now the pastor of a major congregation in Fairfax, Virginia. He and his wife have two wonderful children — and no pets! So it was that I completed my senior year of college living in a 12 by 16 room with one room mate, about 300 fish, I don’t want to guess how many fast-reproducing gerbils, and a pair of ducks. But I learned a lesson from this experience: I learned to live with a paradox. And paradox is very much about of our fifth and final Gospel experience of the feeding of the five thousand today.

“I am the Bread of life,” Jesus says. For two millennia the Church has recognized those Eucharistic words — and our Eucharistic practice — for what they are, namely a paradox. It’s not a paradox we like and, over time, we’ve tried valiantly and unsuccessfully (thank God) to resolve it. Jesus fed the five thousand with real bread. It was real enough to satisfy their very real hunger. The same can be said of the bread of the Eucharist. It’s real bread to satisfy real hunger. Then Jesus identifies that bread — the real bread that fed the five thousand — with himself. Following his lead — the Church makes the same identification with the Eucharistic bread, and that’s when all the trouble starts. The Evangelist reports this as a “dispute” beginning with the question “how can this be?” We haven’t stopped asking that question since.

In today’s Gospel, the Evangelist wants to make clear that Jesus is not speaking metaphorically, since metaphor is one of our primary ways to resolve a paradox. No, please don’t resolve the paradox, John tells us. Jesus is talking about flesh and blood as well as real bread when he says “eat me.” So there are those in the Church over the years who have sought to found other ways of resolution beyond metaphor. “Ah,” some have said, “the bread represents Jesus Christ.” “No,” others have countered, “since everything Jesus says must be absolutely true, this must no longer be bread but must only be Jesus Christ.” Representation, consubstantiation, trans-substantiation and more, all these attempts to resolve a paradox we don’t want to live with it.

But here’s the thing, and it’s bigger than this bread box: As we live in this real world trusting in God, we must learn to live with paradox, because everything about living by faith — everything about Jesus, everything about the Word, everything about the sacraments, and everything about us — is a paradox. Last Sunday I called this a “parallel reality.” Everything we say is a paradox.

Think about it. Christ is our Lord and our servant. God’s word is both judgment and promise. Baptized into Jesus Christ, the only death we have to fear lies behind us, yet the grave or a niche still yawn before us. We are simultaneously sinners and saints. Our Eucharistic food is both bread and wine and the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Paradoxes all. Parallel realities. Both are true and both are real.

For Jesus’ contemporary critics, John’s later readers, and for all too many around us, “this teaching is difficult.” Better to have things cut and dried, right or wrong. Oh, how we hate a paradox!

But Jesus has one more paradox for us to deal with as we experience the Gospel today, and that is the paradox of us. And I must confess to those of you who have assembled at the 11:00 A.M. mass each Sunday that, over this summer, I have deliberately ratcheted up that paradox in our liturgy.

At every Eucharist, as we receive the bread, we hear these words, “the Body of Christ for you” and, eating and drinking, we participate in a paradox. Simultaneously, however, one more paradoxical thing becomes true. We become the Body of Christ ourselves. We remain, as our mission statement puts it, “a … communion of diverse people and communities,” with all the conflicts, dynamics and tensions inherent in that diversity. We still disagree on a raft of things. We still have different likes, dislikes and interests. And we remain a very human institution — the dreaded “institutional church” — with all the flaws and foibles every institution normally exhibits. But we are also the Body of Christ, living out Christ’s mission, methods and priorities in our families, communities and in the larger world, and using Christ’s ministry and mission as our mold, continually attempting to “creatively shape life in the city.”

For the last seven weeks, we’ve been praying that about ourselves every Sunday, comparing ourselves in the Offertory Prayer to the grain and the grapes, asking the Holy Spirit, in the Eucharistic Prayer, to “gather us” so that “all may be fed with the Bread of Life.” What we are affirming, verbally in the 11 liturgies this summer but regularly at every Eucharist throughout our lives is that, like Jesus Christ, we are “flesh and blood” and simultaneously “bread” sent by God to nourish one another and the whole world.

And that, dear friends, is a great definition of our mission: We are bread sent by God to nourish one another and the whole world. There are a thousand different ways we do that — we nourish one another and the whole world: Physical feeding of others, to be sure. But our presence, our words of comfort, forgiveness or encouragement, our acts of solidarity and compassion with one another, our shared laughter and tears — all these things and so many more are us being what God made us to be: Bread sent by God to nourish one another and the world: Flesh and blood, bonded to one another, offering ourselves as nourishment to a starving society and a hungry world.

Grain is gathered, and milled, missing ingredients are added, and the whole batch is pressed and pummeled, pulled and patterned to become nourishment for the whole. So it was with Jesus Christ. So it is with us, which is why forgiveness, healing and renewal must be intrinsic to our life together. Yet all of this is for one purpose, that we might be nourishing, and not toxic, in our world.

Pressed, pummeled, pulled and patterned, that’s what’s been happening to us, in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, as we live in this world. Pressed, pummeled, pulled and patterned; not perfect, and still a paradox: that’s what Christ gathers us to be in this world.

Jesus says, “I am the Bread of life.” Try saying that about the Church. Try saying that about yourself. It won’t make us right or wrong, but neither will we be cut and dried. We’ll just be a paradox, living a parallel reality with a God-given purpose, to nourish the world!

Amandus J. Derr

Senior Pastor

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — August 20, 2006

Proverbs 9:1-6; Psalm 34:9-14; Ephesians 5:15-20; Saint John 6:51-58

In nomine Jesu!

Be careful then how you live, not as unwise but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.

Due to my travels over the past month, I’ve made a fascinating discovery. It’s not something new — I think the writer to the Ephesians knew it when he wrote the words that are our second reading — it’s just that it’s new to me. As a matter of fact, I think it’s something I already knew, but simply refuse to take seriously. What is “it,” you ask. It’s simply this: We live in a different universe, a parallel reality. Out there, a lot of people see things in a totally different, completely opposite way.

I’m not just talking about Saint Peter’s Church. And I’m not just talking about New York — although I have learned how different we New Yorkers appear to be. I’m not talking about all Christians and I’m not even talking about all Lutherans. But somewhere within that matrix, I’m talking about us (you know, or else you soon will know, who “we” are). We live in a different universe, a parallel reality. It is evident in our life together. It is attested to by the readings we hear and the Gospel we experience today. And it happens among us — quite consistently — every time Jesus Christ comes into our midst to nourish us with himself. But make no mistake about it: It is a parallel reality. It is a different universe.

The writer to the Ephesians says, “the days are evil.” We don’t need the writer to the Ephesians to know that! It is our experience, ratcheted up to levels previously unknown by the realities of our post–9/11 life. Those of us who are news junkies are all too aware of those evil realities. And those of us who are not news junkies because we can’t stand hearing any more bad news jolly well know it too. “The days are evil;” the times are trying. In the promotional words of one of our media giants, “What happens there, matters here.” Alright! We get it! We’ll take off our shoes and walk barefoot through security; we’ll repack our suitcases and throw away our liquids, gels and aerosol spray. “The days are evil.” There really are bad people out there, out to get us. That is our reality. The dangers are real. But that’s not the only reality we know. And when Jesus Christ comes among us, that is not the only reality we experience.

But for far too many people out there, these evil days are the only reality. It is the only reality that molds them, shaping their attitudes and determining their actions. It puts them always on the defense and often on the offense. It causes them to separate into smaller and smaller groups, to trust fewer and fewer people; to become more and more insular and more and more intolerant of others. To use Pastor Bill Eschen’s language, that reality “drives them into their ‘reptilian’ brain,” where the only possible ways of living are to collapse, freeze, attack or flee. For all too many “out there,” these evil days are the only reality they experience or know and this ‘reptilian’ reaction is the only possible way they can be.

Now don’t get me wrong! These evil days are our reality also and, more times than we want to admit, we react in this way too. Whenever we stand at the font to confess our sinfulness, that’s exactly what we are confessing — that we have succumbed, as all human beings readily succumb — to that reality and to those responses in our daily life.

And it was no different for Jesus’ twelve disciples either. We’ve been watching that reality and their apostolic first response in the story of the feeding of the five thousand for four Sundays now — and there’s one more left to go! “The days are evil;” more than five thousand people are hungry, the apostolic first response is classic. “Send them away” — I’d call that either attack or flee. Then, “how are we can pay for this” — that’s either freeze or collapse. And then, although the Evangelist doesn’t report this, some of the Twelve must have thought, “lets get the heck out of here” and that, absolutely equals flee. And let’s be honest here — in the same situation that would be, and often is, our first reaction too. It certainly was true for the beleaguered congregation at Ephesus, because that’s why they receive an apostolic letter!

But here’s the thing. The Twelve, the congregation at Ephesus, and you and I gathering in this place actually experience an alternate reality, a different universe, where Jesus Christ is physically present and we are gathered around him. In that reality — around the Lord Jesus — all that makes these days “evil” is vanquished. In that reality — around the Lord Jesus — the lowly are lifted up, the hungry are fed with good things, and those who would hurt, divide or exploit us are sent empty away. In that reality — this reality — in this place and at this table — there is nothing to fear and no need to flee. In that reality, “sing[ing] psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” is not folly, but makes perfect sense.

That is our reality — I’ve been away long enough to have missed it — and it is a reality created right here and right now as we sing and make melody and give thanks and are nourished by Jesus Christ himself.

And this is what happens when we live out — as we do — that reality as a community and as individuals. “What happens here, matters there.” We become, not merely passive receptors of evil days; we become active transformers of every situation. We become those who can walk right up to all the pain and trouble in our own lives and outside these doors and down at the UN and over in Bukoba or Ramallah or Beirut and proclaim that that is not the only reality, that Jesus Christ is present in those places too, and that every one of those situations, whether they are personal or local, national or international, can be — no, has already been — changed and all we need to do is recognize it.

You see, as far as we’re concerned, the feeding of the five thousand is not something that once happened. It is our ongoing experience, not only here in this place as we gather around the Lord Jesus, but in that other place where Jesus gathers us with all our loved ones and with all the rest of the saints in light. What happens here, matters there too.

So, thank you, sisters and brothers, for living that alternate reality, although you didn’t create nor do you sustain it. Jesus Christ does. And he is present right now for us to taste and see and touch and live. That’s why we can pray with confidence what we prayed as this gathering began:

Almighty and ever-living God, you have given great and precious promises to those who believe. Grant us the perfect faith, which overcomes all doubts, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

And that’s why we can say with confidence a glad and thankful “Amen.”

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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MARY MOTHER OF OUR LORD — TENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — August 13, 2006

Isaiah 61:7-11; Psalm 45:11-16; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 1:46-55

In the name of the Father and of the … Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today we honor the mother of the boy who saved the world! You know, if she were Tanzanian, she would be called “Mama Jesus” just as I would be called “Mama Samuel” or Maria would be called “Mama Hector.” Instead the church knows her as “Theotokos” which means God-bearer or Mother of God. We celebrate Mary, not so much for what she accomplished but for what God accomplished through her.

It’s quite a title, Theotokos, and it caused quite a stir in the early church. The controversy actually had more to do with Jesus than Mary. The question was this: Is Jesus truly the Son of God? Is he divine or human? That the church continues to call her Theotokos – or as we put it, Mother of our Lord – means that we believe in the two natures of Christ – God and man, fully human and fully divine. Jesus Christ – Son of God – was indeed born of a woman. This is the great miracle of the incarnation. We honor Mary because she is the woman whom God the Father chose to give birth and be the mother of this miracle – God’s only-begotten Son. God has honored her in this tremendous way; God has highly regarded her, blessed her and filled her with grace. Just so it is fitting that we too honor her and regard her very highly indeed. As one of our most glorious hymns in the LBW honors and even addresses Mary:

O higher than the cherubim,

More glorious than the seraphim,

Lead their praises, “Alleluia!”

Thou bearer of the eternal Word,

Most gracious magnify the Lord:

“Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!”

We also honor Mary and give thanks and praise to God for her because she is our mother in the faith. She is the first to believe in the good news about Jesus and she shows you and me and all the baptized what faith in Jesus is all about. Let’s think for a moment about her life.

We first encounter Mary when the angel of the Lord comes to announce to her that God has chosen her to bear a son. She is not married, not yet, and I think we can safely presume that she was still a virgin. This strange announcement must have made her think, “I’m not married yet and you say I’m going to become pregnant – and that rather than being disgraced and abandoned or worse that I am blessed among women?” It’s no wonder that her first response was to raise a question. It was the same with Moses and many of the prophets when God called them to bear his Word – “who am I that you think I can do this?” “I don’t know how to speak!” “Behold, I am a man of unclean lips.”

Very quickly, however, Mary’s hesitation turns to willing acceptance. “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be to me according to your Word.” I want to linger a moment with these words of hers and what they exemplify for us.

I have just finished reading a book, which was recommended to me by one of our members, Pastor Jonathan Linman, by Eugene Peterson, a Presbyterian Minister. As I was reading one section where Peterson is talking about his experience learning Greek, I had one of those “aha” moments and thought to myself – this is what Mary is like. Peterson is talking about Greek grammar and the trouble he had understanding what is called the middle voice. We know what the active voice is and the passive voice – but in Greek there is also this middle voice. The grammar book explained, “The middle voice is that use of the verb which describes the subjects as participating in the results of the action.”

When Mary says to God’s messenger, “let it be to me according to your Word,” she expresses her willingness to participate in the results of an action initiated by someone else – in this case God. God is the actor/creator here. Mary is the object of those actions but we can easily see that she is not simply submissive and passive. She is the one who is bearing the child! She carries him in her womb for nine months, doing the things that mothers do to make sure the baby is born healthy and strong. She goes through the pains of childbirth, away from the comforts of home I might remind you, not to mention the lack of the benefits of modern medicine.

There was the exhaustion of those sleepless nights and the constant vigilance involved in raising a child. You see, Mary’s faith was not simply an assent to God’s Word – it involved her complete and utter participation in God’s project – body, soul, mind and spirit!

By her assent Mary became a willing and active participant in the saving work of God! This is what faith is! This is what you and I and every one who emerges from the waters of baptism are called to – active participation in the ongoing saving work of God. We do not initiate the action, God does. Nor are we merely passive couch potatoes. Like Mary and like the middle voice we participate in the results of the action – we will to participate in God’s will.

For Mary willing participation in God’s will and work meant nine months of pregnancy and 30 some years of motherhood. No doubt every step of the way was filled with wonder and awe but also dirty diapers, tears, worries and fears and finally terrible gut wrenching sorrow. Mary was there and she was active – bringing the infant Jesus to the temple where Simeon blessed him; looking for him when he stayed behind in the temple in Jerusalem; attending the wedding at Cana and asking him to help when the wine was gone; standing at the foot of the cross; and all the while pondering everything in her heart.

Let me pause now that we might as ourselves: what does willing participation in God’s will mean for you and me? What does it mean for us as a congregation? What does it mean for us as Christian people? As Americans? Could it mean making the commitment to pass on the faith you have been given to a younger generation by teaching Sunday school? Could it mean valuing in a more loving way the people at work who drive you crazy? Could it mean giving something up for the sake of someone else? Could it mean taking time to really listen to the person in your life you would rather avoid? Could it mean letting go of a grudge and forgiving someone? Could it mean learning to talk to each other instead of resorting to threats or violence? Could it mean making a sacrifice to lift up the poor and defend the innocent? Could it mean changing some of your habits in order to help preserve our planet?

How do we know; how do we discover what willing participation in God’s will and saving work means specifically for us? Again I believe Mary shows us the way by her attentiveness to the Word of God. She paid attention to Jesus and the events of this life to which she had given her assent. She listened, she observed, she followed. She pondered all these things in her heart. I suspect that all that Mary was and did flowed from that place in her heart where she held everything that was precious and sacred and true.

I see in this is a beautiful picture of Christian prayer and discernment. By attending to God’s Word, by actively listening to and opening ourselves up to what God is saying to us, pondering, and reflecting we may be moved to do those things that God needs and wants us to do for the sake of our poor beleaguered world that Jesus was born to save.

Learning to be more like Mary – to be an active and willing participant in the saving work of God – may well be a lifelong project for us for the simple reason that we prefer our own will to God’s. We prefer to do things our way. We prefer to devote our time and energy to our own projects whatever they may be. Sometimes we prefer to stay too busy to stop and ponder anything at all. And we all know that no one likes to change! Letting go of our own agendas in order to sign on to God’s is not an easy thing for us to do!

But I have news for you! It’s too late! You have already been plucked from the water and set on the path. You’re in the boat and it’s already heading downstream! After all, you are not the one who was there in the beginning moving over the face of the waters and creating order out of chaos. You did not give birth to yourself. Most of you, I would guess, did not bring yourself to be baptized, and even if you did it was because you were responding to the movement of the One who calls all of us out of darkness and into marvelous light!

Still, you do have a choice. You can go with the flow – God’s flow – you can pick up an oar and begin paddling! Or you jump out of the boat and try to swim upstream against the current of God’s love. Mary and I recommend the former. Stay in the boat. Pay attention to where she is going! Listen, ponder, open and respond!

So today we honor and celebrate the mother of the boy who saved the world! Mary went with the flow – she agreed to God’s plan and thereby became a willing participant in the work and will of the One who lifts up the lowly, fills the hungry with good things, and remembers his promise of mercy. We honor Mary and we give praise and glory to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

The Rev. Carol E. A. Fryer

Assistant Pastor

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THE NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — August 6, 2006

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; Psalm 78:23-29; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35

In nomine Jesu!

Late this past Monday night a seven-month old mystery was solved at about 76^th and Central Park West. It happened aboard a party bus chartered for the Al Raja Folkloric Dance Troupe from Ramallah, Palestine: the eighteen teenagers and three adults from Hope Church and School who at that point had spent the previous fifty days touring the United States. They were here to promote the ELCA’s “Peace Not Walls” strategy for engagement in the Holy Land. In dance and music, they brought a message of peace, justice, reconciliation, and hope to this City both here at Saint Peter’s Church and at the United Nations. The party bus was meant to be a celebration of their work and a send-off for their two-day journey back to Ramallah.

The younger people confined themselves to a small room in the rear of our sleek, high-tech dance floor on wheels. They played Arabic pop music on a state-of-the-art sound system and danced in ways not unlike their American counterparts. The older of us sat in the front of the bus. We enjoyed a relaxing trip and engaged in conversation that I, for one, will treasure for a long time to come. The Palestinians wanted to become more familiar with life in New York City. I wanted to know about Ramallah, the School and Church there, and the always-changing conditions in Palestine.

The mystery we solved related to my visit to Israel-Palestine in early January. More specifically, whether the Saint Peter’s Christmass cards and Paschal Candle I took with me had arrived at Hope Church. I had given everything to Jean Zaru, the head of the Quaker community in Ramallah. Our delegation spent the morning with her, and she agreed to pass along the cards and the Candle to a member of Hope Church. You can imagine my surprise to learn that David Tannous, the Emissary of the Bishop and representative of the congregation traveling with the Dance Troupe, is Jean’s cousin. He received the cards and the Paschal Candle, but the accompanying note had become detached. For seven months the Church has known only that the Candle came from a Church in the United States and that it was delivered by a seminarian traveling with Yale University. Thanks to David and our relaxed time together aboard the party bus, they now know the Candle came from Saint Peter’s Church (incidentally, David thought our Paschal Candle looked rather familiar) and the seminarian was me. We were all delighted.

I tell you this story so that you might share in our joy and because it is about much more than delight. Every Sunday, an assembly of Arab Palestinian Christians lights our candle not as a Paschal Candle, but as a sign of mutual prayer. They light the candle as a liturgical gesture. A gesture that signs the communion of people physically removed by miles of ocean, a whole continent, a sizeable sea, a patch of some of the earth’s most fertile land, and a rising separation wall. It signs a commitment to mutual ministry. It signs a common confidence in the triumph of Christ on the cross.

Candlelight is inescapable in Palestine—it has been for many millennia. Even though modern Palestine is equipped for electricity, electric lights are few in number and rather dim. There is always a need to conserve electricity. In Jesus’ time oil lamps and candles provided light in the darkness of night. In these days of a muted Manhattan skyline, blackouts throughout the City, and conservation at work and home, we are a bit closer to the Palestine of the twenty-first and the first century—a Palestine where the contrast between light and darkness is stark.

It is no wonder the author of the Gospel of John writes: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it” (John 1:5). Jesus is light and stands in contrast to the grim darkness that surrounds John’s community. Light is Jesus’ promise to be with humankind until the end of all ages and as an ultimate sacrifice for sin. Darkness is the community’s experience of persecution, unbelief, and separation from family and friends. Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness of the world, a light that will never become dim.

There are other contrasts. Think of the distinctiveness of John’s baptism and Jesus’ baptism: John baptizes with water, Jesus with the Holy Spirit (John 1:26ff). The story of the wedding at Cana exploits the contrast between water and wine (John 2:1-11). More than that, it draws a strong distinction between good wine and the best wine—a distinction, I might add, certainly not unappreciated by the faithful of Saint Peter’s Church. Consider the woman at the well. She draws natural water, Jesus provides life-giving water (John 4:7ff). Getting a bit more person-oriented, Saint John contrasts those who are sick with those who are no longer sick (e.g. John 5). In every instance, ordinary is set next to extraordinary. With Christ, indispensable “things” and “people” of everyday life—domestic goods, furnishings and earthen-wares—are given the greatest significance.

Take today’s Gospel—a continuation of the feeding of the five thousand men and countless women and children. The contrast is obvious: on one hand perishable food, on the other, life-giving food (John 6:27). Perishable food cannot nourish unto everlasting life. Though it can provide some daily sustenance, it is incomplete. Perishable food is sometimes plentiful, other times scarce. The food Jesus will give is of a different sort. Jesus provides food that nourishes fully and is always in great abundance.

The challenge to discern such contrasts is the same for us as it was for our first-century sisters and brothers: contrast between regular water and life-giving water; contrast between good wine and the best wine; contrast between perishable bread and bread of life. And just as John’s community faced contrast between fear and security, violence and peace, and oppression and justice, so too it is with our world. All are contrasts we actively discern.

If you are like me, your heart has been especially heavy these last few weeks. Discernment has consumed me. I have been awake into the early morning hours, my mind unable to escape the political and military conflict devastating the Middle East. A number of my friends are scattered throughout the region. They are Arab and American Christians and Muslims, and Israeli and American Jews who live, work, excavate or study there. This past week one of my closest friends and colleagues escaped fighting in Lebanon and is now in Ireland. Day by day Palestinian farmers, business people, and school children struggle to navigate a life made hard by oppression and separation. The pillage Israel experiences from Hezbollah militia grows stronger and more absurd daily. Men, women and children living on the boarder fear for their lives. Lebanese families, villages and cities struggle to withstand two onslaughts: the militia that uses their land by intimidation and the Israeli weaponry shouldered in response. All people experience the central contrast of war: the loss of innocent life and some perceived greater purpose. My heart is indeed heavy as I work to discern this particular contrast.

In my prayers, at least one thing is certain. For me it arises most clearly from John’s Gospel. It is the food the crowd ate. It is the food they crave. It is the food we crave—Jesus, the bread of life. Yet I am aware of Jesus’ caution. Think of the crowd. They recall the Passover story of manna in the wilderness and wrongly identify the source. They believe it came from Moses. Jesus redirects the crowd’s thinking to point to himself. Like the bread of life consumed on the hillside, the manna in the wilderness was food from God. Surely the crowd is right to seek out more of what they ate if only because they knew it was good. But mark this well, this food is good because it is Jesus, Jesus who promises, “I am the bread of life. Drink and never be thirsty. Eat and never be hungry.”

The candle burning today in Hope Church is that promise of Christ. It burns in contrast to violence, oppression and hatred. It burns in contrast to fear and despair. It burns as a beacon of nourishment beyond even the best grains of the earth. It burns to hold every human life as a treasure. It burns as a prayer—the prayer of God’s people gathered around an altar in Ramallah and the prayer of God’s people gathered around this altar—a prayer that peace, justice, reconciliation, and hope might rain down on the Middle East. It burns not as some imposed Christian solution, but as a confidence in which people of all faiths might share.

In Ramallah and in New York City we crave that bread of life, indeed we need its nourishment. When we share it we become the body of Christ. And despite a sizable physical expanse between Saint Peter’s Church and Hope Church, our spiritual connectivity is near and sure because of Christ. Even in this contrast between near and far, together our prayers and our work rest in the promise that no matter how heavy our hearts, or how dark the world might be, what we eat and what we share is the bread of life, indeed the light of the world, which will never go dim. Thanks be to God!

Jared R. Stahler

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — July 30, 2006

2 Kings 4:42-44; Psalm 145:10-19; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21

In the Name of the Father and of the … Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Today’s sermon is intended as a celebration of the magnificently bountiful providence of God and as a reminder of our proper response to it – gratitude, praise and the practice of generosity in the Spirit of Jesus. As the psalmist proclaims:

The eyes of all wait upon you, O Lord,

And you give them their food in due season.

You open wide your hand

And satisfy the needs of every living creature. (Psalm 145:16-17)

Consider the lavish and easy providence of God expressed in this simple phrase of the psalmist: “You open wide your hand!” It’s a simple gesture; it takes very little effort to open one’s hand. Try it! It’s a very easy thing to do. But it is a gesture that communicates willingness – well, more than that – eagerness to give. It takes a liberal heart – a generous heart – even a heart filled with gratitude and love for others. God’s heart is like that – it is a heart that holds nothing back but is always pouring itself out for the sake of those who are beloved and precious – and I mean you and me. The opening of God’s hands is a beautiful expression of God’s earnest desire to give us so much – indeed everything we need!

So, let’s linger a moment with the beauty of God’s creation – the way he opens his hand and satisfies our needs.

Earth is crammed with heaven,

Every tree and branch afire with God,

But only those who see take off their shoes

The rest?

They just sit around and pick blackberries. (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

I love summertime! I love the long days; the light lingering way into the evening. I love summer rains like the one I got caught in after the Philharmonic concert in Central Park a few weeks ago. And yes, I must confess, I actually like the heat. I like the warmth of the sun beating down on my skin. I’ll complain about the heat and humidity like everyone else but I’ll tell you a secret – I really like it while it lasts. The truth is I love all the seasons.

I love the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables at the markets during these summer months. I love picnics and salads and sitting at a sidewalk café with friends. And best of all I love to get out into nature – even if it’s just Central Park. I love having time to rejoice in the beauty and grandeur of God’s glorious creation. I also love having some time off, some time to do something different from the usual routine, like going on a retreat or learning something new. And I love having some leisure time to spend with my family and with friends. And of course, vacation!

In the summertime it is easy for me to really appreciate the many tremendous gifts that God has given - not just me - but all of us: the gift of life – each breath we take and every beat of our hearts a constant reminder of the God’s sustaining presence – the gift of love – what can be more important to us than the love we share with the dear ones God has placed in our lives – the gift of beauty – “the world is charged with the grandeur of God”[3] – and the gift of rest – a time apart; time to just be! All these and more God gives us with wide open hands, but even greater yet is the ultimate gift of Jesus who feeds us with himself, the very bread of life and who comes to us in the midst of our troubles.

Our proper response to all this bountiful generosity of God is first of all gratitude and praise to the One who gives with hands wide open.

All your works praise you, O Lord,

And all your faithful servants bless you (Psalm 145:10)

In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther quotes from today’s Psalm in the table prayer he offers for our daily use. He gives this plain and lovely instruction to Christian families regarding grace before meals:

When children and the whole household gather at the table, they should reverently fold their hands and say:

“The eyes of all look to you, O Lord, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; and satisfy the desire of every living thing.”

…Then the Lord’s Prayer should be said, and afterwards this prayer:

“Lord God, heavenly Father, bless us, and these your gifts which of your bountiful goodness you have bestowed on us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Let me take this opportunity to recommend the practice of saying grace before meals if it is not something that you do regularly. It may seem like a small thing but to deliberately stop and take time to remind ourselves and each other that everything we have in this life comes from God – including the food and drink that sustains us day after day – the food and drink without which we would waste away and die. Sure, it comes from the grocery store and we buy it with our hard-earned money. But we would have none of it if it weren’t for the wide open hands of the One who created everything that exists in all creation! Remembering this simple tenet of our faith cultivates within us an attitude of gratitude which is pleasing to God and leads to a more generous spirit within us.

So far I have focused on the Psalm for today with some slight references to our Gospel reading. But now I want to focus on something from that familiar story about Jesus feeding of the five thousand. We know the story so well and it has been interpreted and preached on in many different ways over the years. With regard to the feeding story I want to point out two things.

First, notice that Jesus took the five barley loaves and the two fish – he took them into his hands and he gave thanks. (There’s a reason to say grace if for no other – Jesus did it! We simply follow his example.) After he had given thanks he opened wide his hands and fed each and every person gathered there on the hillside. And there was so much food that they gathered up 12 baskets of leftovers! Do you see how this story tells us that the very One that the Psalm proclaims is this man, Jesus of Nazareth? He is the same one who gave the prophet Elisha the ability and power to feed the hungry people in Israel when there was a famine in the land. This Jesus is the very One who satisfies the needs of every living thing, every living man, woman and child. He is the One who stands with hands wide open offering an abundance of gifts that we may have life in all its fullness. Of him the prophet Isaiah foretold:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples

A feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,

Of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. (Isaiah 25:6)

Come, eat and drink, says our Lord Jesus. Come to the table! Receive life!

Second, I want to draw your attention to the boy who had the five barley loaves and two fish. Who was he and where did he come from? It wasn’t much food, barely enough for a few people. Was he tempted to hide what he had and keep it for himself? How many of us would have done that? It seems however that the boy either offered the food – or at least he did not resist when Andrew pointed him out to the Lord. In any case, he was just a boy and he didn’t have much. Still he gave what he had, meager as it was, he placed it in Jesus’ hands.

How often do we find ourselves thinking we don’t have much to offer? I’d like to help but what can I do, I’m just one person? What I have to give wouldn’t even make a dent in face of the world’s needs. Or, I don’t have any gifts to offer – there’s nothing I can do.

The example of this boy with his five loaves and two fish is a good one for us. He places what he has in the hands of Jesus and Jesus blesses them and multiplies them for the sake of many! I wonder what Jesus can do with all the gifts represented in each and every one of you! The world has needs – you know that well. Our city has needs – our community has needs – our congregation has needs! If you don’t know what they are ask me and I’ll tell you! And you do have things to offer, each and every one of you, for the Lord has called you though baptism, into service for the Kingdom! Listen to the words of an old-time preacher:

Those barley loaves in Christ’s hands become pregnant with food for all the throng. Out of his hands they are nothing but barley cakes; but in his hands, associated with him, they are in contact with omnipotence. Have you [who] love the Lord Jesus Christ thought of this, of bringing all you possess to him, that it may be associated with him? There is that brain of yours; it can be associated with the teachings of his Spirit: there is that heart of yours; it can be warmed with the love of God: there is that tongue of yours; it can be touched with the live coal from the altar: there is that [humanity] of yours; it can be perfectly consecrated by association with Christ. Hear the tender command of the Lord, “Bring them hither to me,” and your whole life will be transformed.[4]

In response to the wide open hands of our God we too can offer with wide open hands all that we are and have and can be. (In the iconography of the church the position of prayer is with hands wide open and oriented to Jesus.) That is, we can mirror the generosity of God toward us by practicing generosity towards others in the Spirit of Jesus. As the saying goes – practice makes perfect! Well, we may not become perfect but at least we will be heading in a godly direction! And the transforming power of God is capable of miracles!

Finally, let me say a word about the storms of life which afflict us in so many ways and tempt us to think that God is not providing for us after all. Jesus comes walking across the water in the midst of the storm saying, “It is I; do not be afraid.” In the scary times, in the dark valleys and the shadow of death; in times of uncertainty and insecurity, weakness and desolation – Jesus is there in the midst of it all urging us not to be afraid and to place all our hopes in him who with wide open hands provides everything we ever really need.

“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:20-21)

Rev. Carol E. A. Fryer

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SAINT MARY MAGDALENE — THE SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — July 23, 2006

Ruth 1:6-18; Psalm 73:23-28; Acts 13:26-33a; John 20:1-2, 11-18

In nomine Jesu!

There is no other Saint—no other Christian personality—no other ecclesial mover and shaker any more misrepresented in contemporary society than Saint Mary Magdalene. She is well known as the center of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code, and the movie of the same name. Sure the book is entertaining. Lots of people have enjoyed reading it. Sure many of the quote-unquote “facts” are captivating. But it is a work of fiction, a fascinating dreamy expansion of some well-researched accounts. Bottom line, it is not all factual; it is certainly not all truthful. In the gap between truthfulness and Mr. Brown’s fictional expanse, the real import of Saint Mary Magdalene is surely blurred, if not completely lost.

Regardless your opinion of the whole enterprise, it goes without question that Mr. Brown’s work has incited vibrant and plentiful dialogue. Book and film have sparked a public conversation about things of the past. Though scholars and scholarly students have studied early Christianity for a long time, the group of participants has rightly expanded. Conversation once almost exclusive to the academy has surfaced in churches, homes and bars around the world. From “The Ivory Tower” to “Pig and Whistle” there is a lot of interest in early Christianity. Scholars are sharing in public the complexities of first century Christianity. Everyone is benefiting from the conversation.

Take one aspect of this complicated web: women, specifically, the role of women in Christian communities—Saint Mary Magdalene among them. Early on women played very large roles, roles more significant than any of us can imagine. We know that they were important figures in the life and ministry of Jesus. We know that women were leaders and financers of communities. But sometime around the turn of the century and shortly thereafter, female leadership waned. Before long, public leadership in the community was entrusted exclusively to men and complex theologies developed that vested the person of Christ in male clergy only.

At nearly the same time, the Gospel of Saint John took its present form. Even as the roles of women were reduced, Saint John raises up Mary. He gives her a place of supreme importance with a series of firsts. It was Mary who came to Jesus’ garden tomb first; Mary who experienced the resurrected Jesus first; Mary who announced the news to the apostles first. Despite an inevitable shift away from female leadership, the author of Saint John’s Gospel inexplicably maintains Mary and all her firsts. Mr. Brown’s story may be entertaining, but this story—this Gospel story—is much more than entertainment, it has momentous consequence.

Almost two millennia after Saint Mary Magdalene was witness to the resurrection, Lutheranism in North America acted on years and years of honest, open, and public discernment. Lutheran inheritors of scripture, tradition, and evangelical thinking (that is, Gospel thinking), addressed the discrepancy between a several-thousand-year old pattern and a contemporary understanding of gender, the absurdity of female subservience to men, and a pressing need for female clergy in the church. On June 29, 1970, the Lutheran Church in America officially sanctioned women as public ministers of Word and Sacrament. For the first time, women canonically exercised this public ministry as equals along side their male counterparts. No, the church was not all of one mind. At the time the action was described as “tradition-shattering.” There was much talk of seeing “what would happen,” how the decision would be received, and how—and if—it would transform public ministry and the church.

Transform the church, it did. We predicated, not only for women, but for all people seeking ordination, the Apostolic Tradition as set out in the Book of Acts.[5] The action established the precedent to uphold but two necessities for Apostolic Ministry, namely 1) that one accompanies Jesus from the beginning of his baptism by John until the day he ascended, and 2) that one is witness to his resurrection. Make no mistake about it, Mary Magdalene was the first to meet those requirements. They are met today, because we hold that to walk with Jesus from his Baptism to his Ascension to God the Father, means to walk with Jesus from our Baptism to our entry into the nearer presence of God.

Despite claims to the contrary, the ordination of women was not and is not “tradition-shattering.” Rather, it is “tradition-discerning”—“tradition-discerning” because the central principle of our theological work has never changed. Jesus on the cross remains our guide. “Tradition-discerning” is theological work at its finest—deeply and profoundly Evangelical, profoundly Gospel-based. At its finest, because the ordination of women set into motion a public healing words cannot adequately express. Healing that applies to Saint Mary Magdalene and all leaders in the church, both women and men.

Thirty-six years later, we have the hindsight to see that Saint Mary Magdalene symbolizes our “tradition-discerning” action. Thirty-six years later, we see more clearly—with the fruitful ministries of Pastor Fryer and others as testimony—that what we “shattered” was nothing other than antiquated theology piled atop tradition.

Today’s celebration of Saint Mary Magdalene is particularly solemn. We celebrate her life, we celebrate the victory of Christ, and we celebrate the place of women in the life of the church. And so on this eighth day we gather with Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb. We gather as broken people, a broken church. Broken in mind, body or spirit. We gather as grains of wheat and fruits of the field to witness again the wounds of our Lord, to celebrate his resurrection, and to walk closer with him.

Beloved, with Saint Mary Magdalene come to Christ’s tomb. Come receive the touch of Christ, be anointed with oil, and receive prayers for healing and wholeness. Beloved, with Saint Mary Magdalene come be witness to Christ’s resurrection. Come receive the ultimate healing in the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Come, be fed—fed with heavenly nourishment, nourishment for the body and soul. Most of all, come be fed with nourishment to discern those who still wait to be healed, still wait to be lifted up by Christ himself. Nourishment to discern those who wait to celebrate the fullness of the church: the Mary Magdalene’s of our present age. Come, for Christ’s gifts are for you.

Jared R. Stahler

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — July 16, 2006

Amos 7:7-15, Psalm 85:8-13, Ephesians 1:3-14, Saint Mark 6:14-29

In nomine Jesu!

This is a plumb line. It is used to keep horizontal structures level and vertical structures perpendicular. Plumb lines have been used in the building of virtually every structure since the pyramids. Their purpose is to prevent those structures from internal collapse. In the 8^th Century BCE, as the Judean prophet Amos – at God’s command — wanders around Israel and its religious center at Bethel, brandishing God’s plumb line and surveying its religious and political structures, that’s what he discovers: that those structures are neither plumb nor level and are bound for inevitable collapse. For identifying the components of God’s plumb line and preaching the inevitability of structural collapse, Amos had to flee Israel for his life.

John the Baptizer was not so fortunate. He brandished a plumb line too, in his case, holding it over the lecherous behavior of Herod Antipas and his trollopey second wife, Herodias. For identifying the components of God’s plumb line and preaching the inevitability of that structural collapse, John the Baptizer lost his head.

Because we Lutherans use a lectionary — that is a series of readings appointed by the wider Church and not chosen at the whim of the preacher — these two readings, along with the Psalm and Second Reading, are the readings assigned by the church for us. In every lectionary, the First Reading, Psalm and Holy Gospel always go together every Sunday, no matter what the liturgical season. In Ordinary Time — what we call the “green season” for obvious reasons — the second reading does not necessarily go with the others. But as far as the First Reading, Psalm and Holy Gospel are concerned, our first question must always be: What do these readings have in common?

The answer, I think, is fairly obvious. In both the First Reading and Holy Gospel, a preacher brandishes some evaluatory tool ( Amos calls it “a plumb line;” the Psalmist identifies it as “what the LORD God is saying”), uses that tool to evaluate people in power and the structures that support their power and then publicly announces how these “measure up.” Every time preachers do this — and Amos and John are but two examples — their lives are threatened. You know the old adage “don’t shoot the messenger?” Well, in the Bible, that is never true.

So what is this evaluatory tool, which, given today’s readings, this public preacher is supposed to hold up before us? Do Amos’ evaluation of the structures during the reign of Jeroboam II and John the Baptizer’s evaluation of Herod Antipas have anything in common, and does what they have in common have anything to do with us today in July 2006?

Let’s look at Amos’ context first, using the notes in the Oxford Annotated New Revised Standard Version of the Bible:

During the long and peaceful reign of Jeroboam II (786-746 BCE) Israel attained a height of territorial expansion and national prosperity never again reached. The military security and economic affluence that characterized this age were taken by many Israelites as signs of the LORD’s special favor that they felt they deserved because of their extravagant support of the official shrines.

Into this scene stepped the prophet Amos… He denounced Israel, as well as its neighbors, for reliance on military might, and for grave injustice in social dealings, abhorrent immorality, and shallow, meaningless piety.

Now listen for a moment to Amos’ evaluation of “those who are at ease…and feel secure.” (We’ll take the men first):

…they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals —

They who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth

and push the afflicted out of the way; (Amos 2:6-8)

Now, the women, who “oppress the poor, crush the needy, who say to their husbands ‘Bring something to drink!’” (Amos 4:1)

If you want to read more, just read the Book of Amos; it’s a short book. Whether you read it all or just what I’ve read to you, please ask yourself this question: Does any of this ring true for us today?

What about John the Baptizer’s context? In John’s day, the real power and the real power structures belonged completely to the fast-disappearing Republic and fast-appearing Empire of Rome. Herod Antipas, and other power brokers like him, compromised with that power and with those structures — doing everything not just to cooperate but to support them — in order to themselves maintain their level of comfort and power. They explained and excused themselves by saying, “we’re only following orders!” Along with these political power brokers there was also a comfortable, wealthy, observant religious elite — wealthy enough to pay for their elaborate religious rites, comfortable enough to afford all kinds of strict religious observance, and self-interested enough to piously support the power brokers and structures that denied the very faith their religion professed. Stability was essential to their comfort and so, while they privately criticized Herod and the Romans, they made accommodations. Who suffered? I know I don’t need to spell that out, but I will: those who could afford neither religious rites nor political accommodation. Those who the elite labeled as “unclean.” Women, most of the time. The sick and the poor, all of the time. It is to these that John the Baptizer publicly preaches hope, good news and deliverance while simultaneously calling for repentance from the pious and powerful and reform of the structures they accommodate and support. For this he was arrested.

But he was murdered for something more. He was murdered for getting personal. He was murdered for accurately connecting Hero Antipas’ unfaithfulness to his brother and his brother’s wife with the unfaithfulness of the power wielders and structure supporters to the very people that God established the power and the structures to protect. You see, Herod’s wife was already married to Herod’s brother, Philip. Philip and Herodias were not divorced. They were simply unfaithful. And Herod participated in their unfaithfulness. John accurately equated unfaithfulness in human relationships — familial, romantic, economic and political — with unfaithfulness to God. For getting that personal, that’s why he was killed.

You’ll have to decide for yourself how much these two situations — mid 8^th Century BCE northern Israel and early 1^st Century CE Judea — are reflected in our America today. And then you’ll need to decide what to do about it if, as I believe, such similarities exist. As you make these decisions, please remember this: God’s “plumb line” remains consistent from Amos to our day, and excuses like “I was only following orders” or “we can’t disrupt ‘good order’” or “we’re too powerless to make a difference” are never a biblically acceptable option. Courage, not fear, justice, not order, reform, not accommodation are always the biblical way.

And, on behalf of Christ’s Church, I can offer you one, and only one useful gift, to strengthen your faithfulness, increase your discernment, build up your courage and instill in you a public passion to stand with the marginalized and to reform the structures which marginalize them. That gift is the Holy Spirit, given to us by God through Jesus Christ, whose preaching, teaching, healing, living, dying and rising fulfills all that Amos, the prophets and the Baptizer proclaimed, namely that no structure — good, bad, just or oppressive, and no power broker, no matter how strong, no matter how chosen, can ever have the final word. That Word is always Jesus Christ, it is always “resurrection,” for exiled prophets, headless Baptizers, and for all who are nourished and made one in the faithful, active, courageous and living Body of Jesus Christ the Lord.

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

in the City of New York

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THE FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — July 9, 2006

Ezekiel 2:1-5; Psalm 123; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Saint Mark 6:1-13

In nomine Jesu!

We’ve had a remarkable — I’d say, unique — experience at Saint Peter’s Church these past three Sundays. Three dramatically different preachers have invited us to examine our own experiences and faith journeys from three dramatically divergent points of view. Pastor Damm — three weeks ago — looking backward over 55 years of ordained ministry and 80 years of baptized life; Pastor Lermy Lwankomezi of Bukoba, Tanzania — two weeks ago — gazing outward from a divergent culture and over several thousand miles; and Seminarian Mark Erson — last Sunday — peering forward from a ministry that already is to a ministry that is yet-to-be. Their perspectives are as different as these preachers are different from each other; and as different as each of them is from each of us. Yet from widely divergent biblical texts they have each identified three commonalities — Pain, Power and Presence — common to them, common to distant prophets and diverse apostles, common to Jesus, common to us. One is inevitable, another is inexhaustible and the third is invaluable. On the basis of today’s readings and from my own perspective, I’d like to underline these three for us today.

When I was a boy, the Ringling Brothers/Barnum & Bailey Circus visited Wilkes-Barre every year. I saw it every year. I never liked it. I do remember, however, that the show began as a group of clowns rolled in each riding on square board balanced on a large rubber ball. That’s exactly the way I picture the journey of faith — mine, yours, Father John’s, Pastor Lermy’s, Mark’s, as well as Ezekiel’s, Paul’s, Jesus’ and all our other “heroes” of the faith. We are on a journey from baptism to God’s nearer presence, but it’s not a stroll down the avenue nor even a desert march. It is a constant balancing act, maintaining equilibrium while simultaneously rolling forward, dealing — constantly dealing — with the drops, dips and detours in our path and, at the same time, constantly balancing all the aspects of our complicated lives. I’ve observed myself doing that for longer than I care to remember. I’ve watched John Damm, for 35 of the 55 years of his ministry, balance his roles as son, mentor, pastor, professor, institutional preserver and institutional reformer. I’ve watched Pastor Lwankomezi balance home and family, profession and vocation, cultures and conflicting values; Mark Erson balance avocation with vocation, leading with serving, constantly doing with occasionally being, and parishioners like each of you, whose families and relationships, needs and desires, consciences, experiences and quirky personalities all call for an incredible sense of balance. Inevitably, we fall. Inevitably we experience real pain.

Ezekiel has the same experience: Respected priest, exiled without a temple for priestly sacrifice; called prophet, to whom no one will listen. Patriotic Jew, without a homeland. Pain is inevitable.

Paul has the same experience: Today he speaks of an ecstatic experience “caught up to the third heaven” and in the same breath speaks of his “thorn in the flesh.” He speaks of boasting of the Gospel and simultaneously boasts about his credentials, his work and himself. Jesus himself does the good work of healing, but on the unlawful day of the Sabbath; and in his own hometown where the balancing act is always hardest “he can do no deed of power” with a few exceptions.

There are so many times when we lose our balance, when we are in pain, when we lash out at others, when we ask what we’ve done to deserve this, when we’re ashamed that we’ve fallen and can’t get ourselves up, when we’re infuriated because we’ve lost the illusion of control.

Yet rather than shame or reasons or blame or anger, we need to realize that pain is inevitable, we can’t always keep our balance, there are too many variables and we delude ourselves when we think we are “in control.”

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

For people like you and I, Lermy, John and Mark, Ezekiel, Paul, Jesus and our co-heroes of the faith, that is God’s response, the Gospel: Grace! Inexhaustible grace embodied in Jesus who takes our pain himself, bears it eternally into the presence of God, embraces our weakness and vulnerability and, rather than trying to avoid it, confronts it and, by nourishing us with his own wounded self gives us the power in our imbalance and in our own weakness to continue on our way. At Saint Peter’s we celebrate the Eucharist ten times each week, not so that we can be “different,” but so that God’s sufficient grace, perfect in weakness, is available to us insufficient people every day. Because God’s sufficient grace — God’s power — is inexhaustible.

Those clowns on their balance boards, riding on those big rubber balls were least entertaining when they linked their arms together and moved as a unit usually — I think — to make way for the elephants! Too often we envision Ezekiel and the other prophets, Paul and the other apostles, Jesus — especially, and the other heroes of faith as singular saints, boldly standing alone, keeping their balance in stoic solidarity. You might even be so foolish as to think of Pastor Damm or Pastor Lermy, Mark or me or anyone of us preachers in the same way. We might be so foolish to think of ourselves in that way too, or to piously proclaim that it’s “you and me, Jesus” against the world.

That’s never been true. The presence of companions is invaluable. Ezekiel balanced his life within an exilic community. Paul’s balance came from companions — Barnabas, Silas, Luke, Mark, Dorcas, Phoebe — at every point on his way. Jesus sent disciples two-by-two with no resources except each other. John, Lermy, Mark, you and I are continually surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses,” some having arrived at their destination, now cheering us on; some balancing their lives alongside us, yet all traveling to the same joyful place together. Their presence is invaluable. Together we are a gift from and an offering to our God.

“Send us as peacemakers and witnesses” we prayed, and God in Christ does that. But God doesn’t send us alone. God doesn’t expect us to be in control. And, God knows in Christ as well as we do, that pain will be inevitable. But at the font and at the table, through the Word and by our weak arms firmly linked together, God keeps us moving forward to our inevitable destination. When we fall, God lifts us up. For God’s grace is sufficient and made perfect in our weakness. Whether we wobble, fall or roll on steadily, in Christ we keep on rolling along.

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — July 2, 2006

Lamentations 3:22-33; Psalm 30;

2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Saint Mark 5:21-43

In nomine Jesu!

Lord Jesus Christ, lover of all: trail wide the hem of your garment. Bring healing, bring peace.

But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him and told him the whole truth. (Mark 5:33)

Henry is a Rastafarian Jew (his self-description). He is a patient at Bellevue. I met him when they moved him from a psych ward that is served by one of my fellow interns in what I call chaplaincy boot camp but is formally known as Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). Henry (names have been changed to protect the innocent) was moved to one of the medical units that I serve. This ward is officially labeled Geriatrics, but it is actually a catch-all kind of ward proven by the fact that Henry is just a couple of years older then me. During his temporary stay on the 16^th floor he loved to hang out in the day room. There, much to the staff’s chagrin, he had an audience to express his opinions and tell stories of his past. His monologues, often tear-filled, meandered from topic to topic with barely a break for a breath so that it was near impossible for me to perform the task of a good chaplain that is referred to by my supervisor as “shaping the conversation.” It was best to just let Henry speak and provide him with the ministry of listening. The only times he was quiet was when I would lead singing with my guitar. For this reason, the nurses’ aides who worked in the day room were constantly asking, “When are you coming back to sing?”

One of my favorite topics to hear Henry speak on was his participation on the Homeless Soccer team and his game saving performance in the Homeless Soccer World Cup. It took all my acting training in concentration and a bit of lip biting to keep a straight face, because he was serious. One day he explained to me that he was not getting the care that he needed from his primary care physicians. I asked him what kind of care he was looking for. He said, Sports Medicine, of course. Didn’t I understand that his right foot (foot lifted in the air so I could see it) was the property of the United States because it is such an asset to the Homeless Soccer team. Of course, I understood. Shortly after this conversation, during a break in the music, three young medical interns come into the day room to speak with Henry. I took this rare opportunity of being free from his dominating discourse to speak with another patient. I couldn’t help but give half an ear to the conversation that was going on between Henry and his physicians when I heard Sports Medicine mentioned. I looked at one of the physicians who looked at me as if my collar some how signaled that I could explain the unexplainable. Feeling no sense of responsibility for saving the trio of interns I simply shrugged and smiled and went back to my conversation with the other patient.

After a week of listening to (not conversing with) Henry, he was moved back up to his psych unit. I found the staff of 16 North glowing with smiles on the Monday following his weekend departure. The next day I was heading to a meeting after a day at the hospital. There was a homeless man selling the paper like Big News. He said he was a Viet Nam vet. Having spent a couple of weeks now hearing patients talk about everything from voices in their heads to getting a job with IBM upon departure from Bellevue, I was sad to see myself be so skeptical of this man’s story. But something in me told me, buy a paper. I hardly ever buy a paper. But I bought a paper. And when I looked at it, I almost fell over. There was the banner across the top “EYE ON HOMELESS SOCCER.” Inside was a story about the upcoming 4^th Annual Homeless Soccer World Cup in Cape Town, South Africa.

Like Father John two weeks ago, I have found myself revisiting the Passion of John as presented on Good Friday evening but, in the wake of discovering Homeless Soccer exists, the moment I thought on was when that searching question of Pilate’s is asked and then followed by a healthy pause. What is truth?

But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him and told him the whole truth. (Mark 5:33)

What was the truth that this woman told as she knelt before Jesus? Was it a truth that was too hard to believe?

Of all the recipients of Jesus’ miracle-working, healing power that we read about in the Gospels, this unnamed woman has got to be one of the most broken of people, one who is in the deepest of need. How many ways can one person suffer? Most obvious is the physical ailment that has plagued her for 12 years. This condition, according to the law, has kept her outside of the community; for the truth that her forebears testified to while wandering in the wilderness centuries before held that the tabernacle — the dwelling place of God that was the tent, would be defiled (if not God himself) by contact with unclean people. Not to mention the fact that this is a woman, limited in contact even on a good day. But not only was she to have no contact with the worshipping community, she was not to be in contact with anyone. For anyone whom she touched or who touched her, was also unclean. She would have been judged guilty of grave sins; for in Jesus’ day illness was thought to be the manifestation of sinful behavior. She was also probably judged lacking in faith because she had gone to physicians — herbalists at best, quacks most likely, and she had put her trust in their magical ways rather than in the power of God. To make matters worse these ineffective medicine men have brought her to financial ruin.

She was ill, expelled from worship, forbidden any human contact, condemned as a faithless sinner and materially, she has nothing. As if to make sure we understand just how deep her suffering goes, when Mark writes that “she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease” … the word that for us has been translated as disease would be better translated “torment,” for in Greek it is a word that is typically used to describe scourging and torture. Who is more justified in lamenting? Who knows better the depth of the grave and the emptiness of place of the dead? Her night of weeping has been lingering for 12 years. How many times has she asked herself, where is my morning of joy? But like Jeremiah in the agony of his lamentations, she holds out that the Lord is her portion and she continues to hope in him. So much so that she approaches Jesus. Her hope is so great in the belief that God’s steadfast love never ceases that she breaks the law in touching him. Like one, who though unclean reaches through the Levites to touch the presence of God in the tabernacle, she reaches through the disciples to touch the very presence of God who is Jesus. She proves herself to be a good Lutheran — for she sins boldly. But her Lutheran expression goes on when, having been healed, she responds. She responds by telling the whole truth. And we are back to the question: what was the truth she told? Did she tell of her 12 years of suffering? Did she joyfully proclaim the life-changing truth that she had just been healed? Perhaps she had been suffering in silence. Perhaps she finally told everyone the truth of her condition. Perhaps she had kept all in hiding so as not to suffer all of that public disgrace and punishment that would accompany her ailment. If that was the case, would her torment have been any less? She told the whole truth. And the truth that the crowd witnessed was that Jesus, in the middle of being summoned by a religious leader. A man. A man with a name, in fact. A man who’s precious child was at death’s door stopped to deal with this unnamed, unclean woman who merely touched the dusty, frayed hem of his garment. Paul talks about those with abundance and those in need. But are we not all in need: everyone from the leader of the synagogue to the unclean woman who cannot even set foot in the synagogue? For certainly, it is the love-filled healing power of God that is poured into all hearts that is our abundance.

But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him and told him the whole truth. (Mark 5:33)

The chant that I sang at the beginning is used by the Iona Community at their Tuesday night healing services. The lyric’s plea to “spread wide the hem of your garment” took on a new meaning at the bedside of Jose, a patient on the 19^th floor of Bellevue. That is the prison unit. Like his two roommates and numerous fellow patients on the unit, Jose is a resident of Riker’s Island who has been brought to Bellevue for medical care. I pass through four locked gates to reach the ward. Last week, I entered his room because I knew one of his roommates from earlier visits. After chatting with the man I knew, I turned to meet the two new patients. Jose saw the books and papers in my hand and asked if I had any pictures. I wasn’t quite sure what he had in mind so I pulled out what I did have, my Bible and a book of psalms. The psalm book is the only printed matter we have to give. It is a paper back so it is permissible for me to give these out in the prison ward. He was eager to receive it. He asked me if I knew which psalm had the line “Out of the depths I cry.” I couldn’t think of it off the top of my head. (I have since learned that it is Psalm 130 in case you need to know.) I suggested that he look at Psalm 31 (a good robe rending lament) while I looked in my Bible for the psalm he had requested. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him lay the book down on his lap and I looked up to see that he had begun to weep. I said nothing. I offered him my hand and he grasped it tight and continued to weep. The other two men were reverently silent as their roommate continued to weep. He wept like I had never seen someone weep before. A good five minutes had gone by before I even tried to speak. He was still clutching my hand. “We can talk tomorrow maybe.” I said knowing nothing else than there was no way this man was going to be able to put into words the emotions that were flowing now as tears. “I don’t need to talk. I just need your presence.” At that I had to do everything possible not to cry myself. He continued to weep, at one point taking my hand in both of his hands, and then almost pawing at my hands as if he wanted to reach in deeper. As I watched his weeping, I asked myself, ‘Who am I, the one who should be wailing over my own unworthiness, who am I to stand in for the one whose hem this man was so desperately reaching out to touch?’ I finally left the room with promises of coming back. As I thought on that scene it hit me that I, who in my brokenness must touch that hem daily for wholeness and healing, I have been gracefully woven into the hem that I touch and have become a conduit of God’s healing power. Each one of us in this place, each one of us — through the covenant of our baptism and who have experienced the healing power of God are now threads, water-woven together. And this welcoming and ministering community is joined to the greater hem that is the church — called to spread wide the saving grace of God so that those who reach out and those we touch may be healed by God’s power and may tell the whole truth and find peace in His presence.

As you come to the table to touch, not the hem of his garment but the Lord himself, to feed on his body and blood, rise up as one who has was dead but now is alive, for the whole truth is you are, and following Jesus’ instructions to give you something to eat, take and eat, and then walk about telling the whole truth that “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.”

Seminarian Mark Erson

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — June 25, 2006

Job 38:1-11; Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32;

2 Corinthians 6:1-13; Saint Mark 4:35-41

In nomine Jesu!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen

“Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?”

I like Pastor Derr’s phrase: “It is about us.” It is really about us. Listen to the words of the prayer of the day: “storms rage about us and cause us to be afraid.” These words have intrigued me to give a testimony as regards the storms that rage about us and cause us to be afraid, despaired, lose hope and cry for our Savior who stills the storm, brings a great calm and restores our faith. My testimony goes like this:

On the 9^th of June 2000 the parsonage at the Bukoba Cathedral Parish caught fire due to the electrical fault. It was around 4:20 in the morning, my kids and I were deeply asleep. I can say the Holy Spirit awoke me up and I awoke the rest. We all escaped but out of my notice my nephew, eleven years old who was living with me went back into the burning house for his clothes. He couldn’t find the way out; my endeavors to save his life were futile, smoke suffocated him and he died tragically.

At that time my words were not different from those of the disciples: “Lord, don’t you care that Jesse is dying? Don’t you care that the Parish house is burning? Lord, don’t you care that four motorcycles, mine and of my colleagues who were in Seminary are burning?” “Don’t you care, don’t you care?” was my litany.

But I thank the Lord for he was with us. In the midst of all this he did not let our small boat of faith sink. That experience taught me that it is even safer to be in a kayak, in a turbulent sea with Jesus, than being in the big ship without Him.

Let’s go across to the other side of the sea: the Lord initiated the trip meant for testing, learning and giving the new knowledge of Him to the disciples. So sometimes storms, winds, and water spilling over our boats of faith are meant to teach us and strengthen us in our faith journey in a mysterious way.

It is mysterious because: the rest of the world can see the storm on the sea, but they cannot see the harbor in which the believer rests secure, through the grace and merits of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The world sees the winds howling, the waves lashing the craft, the Christian's boat is tossed up in the sky and sent hurtling to the trough of the waves, the believer gets tired to paddle, from the pulling on the sail lines and trying to control the rudder, and the believer's body gets bruised as it is knocked around. But what the world might not be able to see is the safe harbor in the midst of the sea created by our Lord Jesus, the believer's Savior and the Master of the Sea.

I love the Apostle Paul for sharing with us his paradoxical suffering experience. He says: “We are treated as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see – we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed” etc. Why? Because we have the Lord. We have the Lord!!

The Psalmist, having experienced the power of the Lord, he invites us saying: “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever.”

Thank God that we have the Savior who initiated our faith’s journey and sails with us. I also commend the disciples because when they were afraid and angry they expressed their emotions to their Savior as a sign of trust, genuine love and intimacy.

Some of us, when storms rage, we never remember calling the name of the Lord. It will be easier to reach the phone and call 911. It’s okay; but sometimes we never even share our feelings with our spouses, peers or workmates.

The same thing when storms rage about the marriage boat; our excuse is: it didn’t work out. We forgot that it is the Lord who initiated the journey of marriage. And when storms rage about the teenagers’ boat they forget God’s promises for their lives.

My dear brothers and sisters, Jesus calms all types of storms so let us not be lazy in faith thinking that we can coast on the accomplishments of our past. Each day in our faith journey is a new day and needs our trust and good work TODAY, not just yesterday. God does not demand us to have great faith, but as small as a mustard seed; enough to call upon His name!

My friends, Jesus also calms the storm we suffer in fair innocence. I say "fair," because none of us is entirely innocent, and therefore it is hard to say that any trial in life is one of which we are entirely undeserving.

Still, some troubles in life are mysterious. It is hard to figure out what in the world did we do to deserve that! The waves quickly rise, they heave and toss, suddenly you become sick and you lose your job due to physical disabilities, suddenly your plans are dashed, your hopes and dreams begin to sink. But here too, let us try to remember that He who laid the corner stone and the heavenly beings shouted for joy, knows you and is near you. Call to him and surely your faith will not perish.

This morning I would like also to remind you the communal aspect of faith. The communal aspect of faith is very important because faith is strengthened when we stand together as believers and support one other.

There is a common story of a couple that did not have a child for 15 years; later they had a boy and he grew up very well until age 17 when he fell sick and died after two days. It was terrible! The father angrily took his spears, bows and arrows and went out in the yard cursing God and calling him to come for a battle. Some members of the clan were gathering and one wise old man asked him what was wrong; and he replied: “God has killed my only beloved son and I want him to come so that I could kill him.” The old wise man said: “That guy is very strong, so you better wait until when all the members of the clan are gathered so that we could attack him together.” The angry man took a breath, and went back in his house to wait for the clan to gather up. After a short time a man who had recently lost his wife and his only son in a car accident came to console him, sat closer to him holding his hand; and the angry man whispered to him: “I wanted to kill God today, but if you did not kill him I will not kill him either; His will be done.”

Faithful people of Saint Peter’s don’t forget to support one other especially in times of trouble for our support for each other also calms the troubled faith.

Again, thank God that we have a Savior. This holiness and calmness we see in the midst of the storm reflects the calmness and majesty of Jesus before the Cross, reflects the presence of the Holy Spirit – our Helper, Comforter and Advocate. Even as we are dashed about and hammered by the storm, we know that we are ultimately in the hands of the One who majestically faced the Cross and overcame everything!

Our fears, cries, and “why me?” litanies in times of trouble, are not a sign of unbelief but an expression of trust, intimacy and a door to faith.

So, as we meet our Lord in the bread and wine; as we meet our defender, our deliverer in times of fear and unbelief; let us know him in a special way and be bold to say: Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia. Amen

Lermy Lwankomezi

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — June 18, 2006

Ezekiel 17:22-24; Psalm 92:1-4, 11-14;

2 Corinthians 5:6-17; Saint Mark 4:26-34

In nomine Jesu!

This year the Second Sunday after Pentecost falls between two personal milestones of my life: my 80^th birthday and the 55^th anniversary of my ordination. The Scripture readings for this Sunday seem tailor-made for the occasion. For example, I’m taking my first cue from Saint Paul who writes to the Christians in Corinth describing his life and theirs: “…we walk by faith, not by sight” (7) and “…we make it our aim to please him (Christ)” (9). Note how inextricably bound together faith and life are for the Apostle and the Corinthians, and for you and for me. So that’s going to be the focus today: our journey of faith and the kind of life we live as we make that journey.

For all of us, life is a journey of faith. The particulars of your lives of ministry as the People of God are different than mine, but our goal is the same. Every Sunday we confess together: “We look for the life of the world to come” (Nicene Creed). I hope you find as much joy in your particular ministries as I do in mine. The mercy of God continues to amaze me when I realize that at 80, thanks to the action of the congregation, I’m still here at Saint Peter’s doing, as age and health permit, what I like to do best: a Ministry of Word and Sacraments. So I take special comfort in today’s psalm (92): “They (the righteous) shall still bear fruit in old age; they shall be green and succulent.” Webster informs me that succulent means “full of vitality and freshness.” Debatable! So I would amend the psalm to say: the juice of God’s life still surges through me.

And what a life it has been! In his letter to the congregation last month, President Mark Erson reminded us that “…the details of our lives are constantly changing…” He speaks from the vantage of living most of his life, as we all did, in the 20^th century. Those who know more about these things than I do tell me that more significant life-changing events took place in the last century than in all the 1500 years that preceded it. We are the products of all that change. How well did we fare in our journey of faith through those years?

When I raised that question with myself, I recalled the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau’s motto 60 years ago: A Changeless Christ for a Changing World. In the ensuing years, I came to appreciate the thrust of that catchy phrase. The essence of the Gospel Jesus came to proclaim has not changed, but, in my case, the person on whom that Gospel works has continued to change. Unlike the Apostle to the Gentiles, I never had a Damascus Road experience. For me, getting to know the Gospel was an ongoing learning process with frequent surprises, unexpected insights, and course corrections.

What did help, although I didn’t always realize it at the time, was the sometimes gentle persuasion and sometimes vigorous blowing of the Holy Spirit as I searched for the Gospel of Jesus in whatever I was doing. Probably the Holy Spirit deserves more credit than I sometimes was willing to give her. Let me illustrate with two examples of those Holy Spirit moments that have informed, strengthened, and sustained me through all the years of my life and ministry.

The first one begins across the river in my beloved native state. Twenty-one days after my birth, my parents and Godparents brought me to Saint Matthew Church to begin what I now call my baptismal journey of faith. According to Saint Paul (Romans 6) on that day Christ’s death and resurrection became mine. I died with him, and I was raised with him to a new resurrection life. Naturally, at the time I did not know what God the Holy Spirit was doing to me and for me that hot July day. (It’s always hot in New Jersey in July.) And it wasn’t pointed out to me in the religious education that followed in my Sunday School or catechetical years.

It took an elective course in Luther’s theology at the seminary to help me make the vital connection between my baptism and every step of my life’s journey from that moment on. My term paper assignment was “Luther and Baptism.” In my research I stumbled onto Luther’s sermon for the funeral of the elector of Saxony. Luther reminded the congregation that from the moment of the elector’s birth he began a sure and certain march toward death. If you are reading Philip Roth’s latest novel, you know precisely what Luther meant. Roth’s “Everyman” begins his story and ends it at the grave as family and friends shovel earth on his coffin. There is nothing “Everyman” can do to change his destiny. But at the elector’s funeral, Luther reminds the congregation that what the elector could not do God did for him in the death and resurrection of Christ. God reversed his march: no longer from birth to death but from baptismal rebirth to “life everlasting” as the baptismal creed puts it. This baptismal intervention of God is so drastic that it radically changes the orientation of our daily life. We become what Saint Paul calls “…a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new” (5:17). And, with God’s help, I have never let go of that assurance!

The second Holy Spirit insight that has guided the way I live my life was prompted by an English theologian, Ronald Knox. During World War II, he served as chaplain at a girl’s boarding school in England. One of his pupils asked him for a recipe for making the sign of the cross. He said: you’ve only got to write a capital I on yourself and then scratch it out. The capital I stands for self – something we think is more important than anything else in the world. We are determined, at all costs, to keep that self safe. That is our natural instinct ever since Eden: to set up a great big capital I and worship it. And our Christian faith tells us that the point of our journey through this world is to do the exact opposite. We want to cancel that capital I, by drawing a line across it, by drawing a cross across IT.

I have discovered that the physical act of making the sign of the cross on my body aligns me with the spirit of Saint Patrick’s Breastplate: “I bind unto myself today (Christ’s) cross of death for my salvation” (LBW, 188, 2). Listen again to how Saint Paul puts it: “The Love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them” (5:14-15). For Paul and for us, everything we do in our baptismal journey of faith toward eternal life is a reflection of and a drawing upon the power of the cross. Anything less than that is not Gospel living!

Now let’s consider our baptismal journey of faith as it relates to our Gospel living, or as Saint Paul puts it: “…as we aim to please God” (5:9). To bind myself to Christ’s cross became for me a source of freedom. I’m thinking particularly of the “Seminex experience” because of what I heard from the prophet Ezekiel. Like him, we heard the Word of the Lord speaking an allegory to our beleaguered remnant. The symbol we adopted was a tree stump with a fresh green sprig sprouting from its side. It was a sign that we were finally free from the need to put our trust in assembly resolutions and constitutional by-laws, and counting on institutions for survival. This was no child’s play; we were risking “house, goods, fame, child and spouse.” It demanded the ultimate in humility and courage. That’s the way the kingdom of God works. We have to choose weakness and vulnerability to become strong with the strength that comes from the cross.

I want to be careful here because sometimes the strength that comes from the cross does not endow every story with a happy ending this side of the grave. Sometimes we come face-to-face with an evil so radical that we seem utterly powerless in its grasp. I had just such a “vicarious experience” at the New York Theatre Workshop earlier this month. I saw its production of Columbinus, based on the Colorado high school massacre. Using the apparatus of the stage, the play tries to gather together all the contributing elements that ultimately led these two teenagers to carry out such horrific murders and then commit suicide. It was viscerally wrenching. At its conclusion, the actors who portrayed parents and students turned to face the audience and asked: WHY?

Riding home, I wrestled with what my response would have been. I decided that I would have to affirm my belief in the presence of the power of evil in our world – a power that we cannot always control – no matter how hard we try. I would have told them about what happens here at Saint Peter’s on Good Friday evening when we stage a dramatic reading of the Passion of our Lord according to Saint John. Early on, we are in the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas approaches Jesus and seals his cruel death with a tender, friendly kiss. When you ponder that scene, you begin to understand what Saint John means when he says: “Satan entered into him” (John 13:27). There is a power at work in this world that is demonic and in the crucifixion of Jesus it has its supreme moment.

If the cross is proof of the power of darkness in our world, it is also proof of the over-riding power of God’s love. Life wins out over death. That’s the paradox involved in the divine economy of our salvation, the instrument of death becomes the tree of life. And to testify to that truth, God gives us the Holy Spirit, Saint Paul says, as our guarantee (5). The Spirit assures us that God is faithful and trustworthy and, contrary to all appearances, God’s kingdom will prevail.

We don’t have to wait until we get to heaven for that to happen. We get a foretaste of the coming of the kingdom right now. Isn’t that the thrust of Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of God in Saint Mark’s Gospel? Think about a mustard seed, he says. It’s the smallest of all the seeds on earth but, when planted, it grows into the greatest of all shrubs. I have always found that to be true in the lives of God’s saints, and you know how fond I am of them and our daily commemorations of them in the noon mass. Most of them were mustard seed planters.

I don’t have to go back to ancient history to see how this mustard seed parable takes root. I’m living in the midst of mustard seed planters right here at 54^th and Lexington. All of you, in your unique ways, are mustard seed planters of the Good News of the Gospel, and you are making a difference. As I say that, I’m thinking of John Garcia, of blessed memory, Gensel reaching out with the Gospel to the New York jazz community, people who were ignored and shunned by the religious establishment. Some 40 years later we’re still nourishing that shrub and, given the action of the congregation last Sunday, we shall continue to do it for many years to come.

I’m thinking of Eugene, the mustard seed planter, Brand, a member of our congregation. Thirty years ago, his work with the Lutheran Book of Worship restored the liturgical dignity and centrality of Baptism to the way we live out our baptismal life in the world. Again, the action of the congregation last Sunday, validates his work as we begin to use a new worship resource that builds upon the foundation he provided. And there’s Peter, the mustard seed planter, Avitabile. Because of his work here at Saint Peter’s, we became the first religious institution in the city to respond positively to the AIDS crisis in the early 80’s. The momentum of that program has grown into a multi-faceted, inter-faith outreach that can be described as a very large kingdom of God shrub.

I cannot forget the mustard seed kingdom work accomplished by our pastoral staff. They exercise their Word and Sacrament ministry among us at a very critical time in our journey of faith, because so much of the religious and political rhetoric we hear tries to motivate us with fear. Fear of terrorism, fear of our immigrant neighbors, fear that the gay community will destroy the fabric of marriage and the catholicity of the church. Name any hot-button-issue and you will discover that its motivating companion is fear. But the Gospel of our pastoral staff proclaims and celebrates presents us with an alternate reality to fear, the reality of the love of Christ that flows from the cross and casts out fear (1 John 4:18).

Of all the things I’ve talked about, nothing is more important to me than the hour I spend with you in the presence of the “majesty and mystery” of the blessed Trinity. Nothing gives me greater joy than to stand with you between the font and the altar and, as God’s “new company of priests,” do what priests are supposed to do: offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in union with our great High Priest. We do it with confidence because we aim to please God in whatever yet remains of our baptismal journey of faith toward eternal life. And we do it joyfully: in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

John S. Damm

Senior Pastor Emeritus

Saint Peter’s Church in the City of New York

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THE HOLY TRINITY — FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — June 11, 2006

Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 29; Romans 8:12-17; Saint John 3:1-17

In nomine Jesu!

Ten days ago, while Jared, our vicar, and I were attending a required meeting at our seminary in Philadelphia, I was reunited for the first time in three years with one of my closest friends and colleagues from New Jersey. She now serves a parish in Connecticut where her daughter, son-in-law and, more importantly, her two grandchildren are members. Within the predictable catching-up and reminiscing, she related the following snippet of conversation with her four-year-old granddaughter:

“Grammy,” the little girl said, “I wish I could see God.” To which my friend replied, “So do I.”