This file contains the sermons listed below

It was relatively recent when I began to know anything about “queer” communities or issues. I had a gay friend all throughout college (one!) and didn’t even realize it until my senior year. I’ll never forget when he came out to me: he was terrified to bring it up, so I had to be the one to ask (which I only did because my mother insisted that we “get this over with” and end my “ridiculous period of denial.”) I remember that when I finally asked him, I didn’t think it would be a big deal. I was sure that my mother was wrong, and that my friend was straight like the rest of us, and so I asked him very matter-of-factly. I was shocked to hear his answer, completely unprepared to have been wrong (that’s a theme in my life…) but I loved him, and when he gratefully opened up the truth of the world he’d been living in – with places he went and people he knew in a life entirely parallel to the life he lived with me – I was delighted to help him to merge these two worlds.

As my life unfolded, I began to have literally countless similar experiences, though, over time, I believe that I learned to be more observant and less naïve. In fact, I came to experience these conversations as holy. Following the spirit of the Psalmist that we heard today, I began to pray that my words and actions might be “acceptable” in God’s sight, that I might help others to tear down the walls between parallel worlds. It is so hard to live multiple lives. It is so wrong to ask – or to force – people to lead them. Yet that is exactly what most of the church today does.

There is a lot of talk of “unity” in the church. For the sake of unity, the argument often goes, let’s hold back on pushing this issue, let’s not make the other folks upset by celebrating that victory, let’s remain quiet on this or that justice concern so we don’t hurt anyone’s feelings, or so that they will remain in the church a little longer.

The concept of “unity” is very often applied as an excuse for inaction.

And what’s at stake? God summons us, presents us with moments of injustice that require a response from the faithful. Folks on the gay spectrum wind up being the only group that can be openly discriminated against worldwide, but “for the unity of the church” let’s say nothing about it. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) essentially decides to open the closet doors, allowing folks on that spectrum to be who they are in public. Months later, the church has done very little about legalized execution of homosexuals in Uganda. Why not? There can be several answers, but my guess is that a major piece of it is the noisy group of churches who want to leave the ELCA because they would prefer to keep folks in their closets. “For the sake of unity” the national body focuses on other things. Less controversial things.

Or, try this one: millions of people languish in medical-care limbo. Tens of millions can only access the care they need in emergencies – and even then, their possibilities are even limited. These are matters of life or death – theological and ethical concepts that matter – and what is the church doing? Have churchwide organizations, have Christians across the country had meaningful mobilization to increase the possibilities for care? Have the people of Christ, called to follow a healer, made it clear that blocking the possibilities for healing blocks the hands of God? Oh, yes, Christians have weighed in on this issue, en masse. But it’s been the Christians who base policy decisions on abortion-related issues who have had the impact. Why have Christians who think differently not had the same impact? Perhaps it’s too politically-charged. Maybe it would disrupt the “unity of the church.”

Or how about this one: neighbors just a body-raft’s distance from our southern shores lived in some of the most dire and abject poverty in the world. The people suffered extensively from the consequences of poverty well before January 12^th. How much were they on our minds before now? How much were worldwide issues of poverty foremost in our minds in the way that they were for our very own savior, who ministered to the poor at every turn of his life, and then some?

As much as I hate to admit it, the truth is that the body of Christ is big and wide enough for Christians to believe different things on these and so many more issues. To be a “true Christian” is not necessarily to be pro-national health-care, or anti-war, or a member of the Human Rights Campaign. Likewise, to be a “true Christian” is not necessarily to oppose these things. (Please, when you hear people talk this way, resist it!)

To be Christian is to profess faith in the one True God we know in the person of Jesus Christ and continue to experience through the Holy Spirit. It is our faith that holds us together, that is what locates us on Christ’s body. Much like the earliest Christ-following churches we can track, there have always been and will always be many issues on which we will disagree. Have you ever heard of Peter and Paul? Guess what? They weren’t exactly the best of friends. Each represented different sides of a pretty hotly contested set of issues, even as the church was being founded! The New Testament records several of these controversies (circumcision, anyone?) and the history of the church chronicles several more.

In the fullness of time, Christ’s church will be of one accord, the body will move in unison, the marriage between God and God’s people will be honored on both sides rather than just on God’s side, as happens now. We await this time.

In the meantime, I would ask us what it means when one part of the body moving while the other part languishes in a form of “unity” paralysis? To fail to act is to act!

This week, we celebrated the birthday of a prophet. I wonder when we will take his words seriously? When he said that “we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” have we listened? When one part of the body has held a gun to someone’s head or a knife to someone’s neck, have we effectively pulled back the hand? It’s one thing to join the others in trigger-happiness. It is another to know it’s wrong and to fail to act. Inaction equals, again, quoting King, “monologue rather than dialogue” and that monologue comes from the voices of the most powerful.

People of God – let us never allow the church to be “merely a thermometer that record[s] the ideas and principles of popular opinion”. Let us be the boiling fire that transforms habits of injustice into practices of justice for each and every one of God’s creatures. Let us tear down the walls between parallel lives, making room for lives of wholeness. Let us set aside the shameful litany of inaction and boldly step into the places we understand God to be calling us. Let us speak and act and pray that our words and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to our God. Let us trust God to be God and to hold God’s Church – the body of Christ – together, even through our age-old traditions of disagreement.

And when it gets tough, let us trust God to be God and to make all things right, just and new. Through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Kaji R. Spellman

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

All King quotes taken from: King, Martin Luther, Jr. Letter from a Birmingham Jail. 16 April, 1963. Birmingham, AL.

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50^th ANNIVERSARY OF EUGENE L. BRAND — FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY —
January 24, 2010 — Morning

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Saint Luke 4:14-21

In nomine Jesu!

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

Dear Sisters and Brothers, especially dear Gene:

I greet you on behalf of the 212 other congregations of the Metropolitan New York Synod.

I also greet you, especially you, Gene, on this extraordinary occasion on behalf of Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson the entire Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. And, I would be remiss if I did not greet my friend and much older brother, Amandus, on the thirty-fifth anniversary of his ordination. Thank you, Gene, for the invitation to preach this morning, a bit of a daunting task given all that I could say, my great affection for you, and my thanks for what you have meant in my life. But, daunting as it is, preach I will!

“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” The day St. Paul was inspired to write that, comparing the church to a human body, he gave us an image of ourselves that we are still growing into. It is a strong image. It is an image which you, Gene,

have helped to shape and celebrate for the worldwide Lutheran communion and the entire Church. But I think it is much more than just an image, so stick with me and I hope we will get there.

I’m assuming that you, my friends, have read Dr. Brand’s biographical sketch in the service folder; you know of his remarkable ministry; and you have some idea of our relationship

which goes back to the grand days when Lutheran Book of Worship was being birthed.

You may think I will talk today about Gene’s impact on the worship of God in thousands of Christian churches, not only Lutheran, and there certainly will be reference to that. But last Tuesday I had lunch with Archbishop Timothy Dolan and in the course of our conversation

we reached the conclusion that the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification Dr. Brand, to say the least, helped bring into existence is the most significant ecumenical achievement of the last hundred years. Carrying St. Paul’s body-metaphor forward – I see Gene’s fingerprints all over that document and I can only imagine the legwork he devoted to bringing it to completion. So in this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity I want to preach about this superbly human Body of Christ we call the Church, this image we are growing into.

In order to pick up a glass of, it is not enough to have an arm and four fingers; without an opposable thumb you are lost. Don’t even think about walking with your inner ear all messed up; you need that gyroscope to tell you which way is up. I do not even know the names of half the things that keep me alive, but that doesn’t bother them. They go right on keeping me alive in spite of my alarming ignorance.

So St. Paul knew how to get our attention. “You are the Body of Christ.” What he was trying to do was persuade people that what was true inside their own skin was also true outside of it; that wholeness was a matter of many different parts all being themselves and doing their jobs. Unity and diversity were not contradictory terms; they were two true words for one paradoxical reality, namely, that our survival depends not on our sameness but on our infinite variety. The ecumenical achievements which have been at the heart of your ministry, dear Gene, with their strong-hearted Lutheran identity that welcomes an equally strong-hearted Roman Catholic or Baptist or Orthodox or Reformed identity, point to this wonder.

The problems of the Corinthian congregation were not unique then nor are they today. The difficulty we have living with St. Paul’s metaphor begins when you put me in community with other people who look, smell, think, talk, and act differently from me. I have to be careful here; I’m a bishop, after all. But I know one guy who is perfectly cheerful who can talk for thirty minutes straight without stopping to breathe. Another member of this Body of Christ I know has been so beaten up by life that everything she says comes out as a sneer. One speaks so intimately of God that everyone around her feels like a spiritual slouch and another is a complete imposter who goes home from mass and beats his wife.

“Now you are the body of Christ,” St. Paul says, “and individually members of it.”

But, I do not handle the infinite variety outside of me nearly as well as I handle the infinite variety inside of me. Do you know what I mean? I’m OK with parts of me working together, but this Body of Christ is more challenging. Now, this may not be the case here at St. Peter’s,

but I’ve noticed this in other places. You join a congregation looking for community, closeness, support, some measure of safety, and nine times out of ten what you get instead

is this holy struggle to live and work with people who are just as angular and rough-edged

as you are. The brains want everybody to act like brains and the hearts want everyone to act like hearts and there is always a hangnail who brings out the hangnail in everyone else.

In his book The Company of Strangers, Parker Palmer defines community as “that place where the person you least want to live with always lives!” and, he adds, when that person moves away someone else always arrives to fill the empty place.

Most of us have a notion of community that gets in our way, because the real purpose of community is not to retreat someplace with other like-minded people, but to give ourselves up to the working of the Holy Spirit by learning how to live with people we may not like at all. What better way to open ourselves up to the God beyond our knowing than to begin with the neighbor beyond our knowing? What finer way to learn about the reconciling power of Christ than to test it in a body of infinite variety? I said this is a superbly human body, this Body of Christ, and if it is true on the local level, the smaller scale, imagine what ecumenical work on the international scale is like.

One difficulty with St. Paul’s metaphor, for me, is that I cannot feel it, not the way I can feel my own fingers and toes. He says that when one of us suffers we all suffer together, and when one of us is honored all the rest of us rejoice – but it does not seem to work that way in this superbly human body of Christ. Oh, we may feel sorry for each other or glad for each other, but if someone hits you, my skin does not bruise, and when you get a promotion, my standard of living does not go up. For all of St. Paul’s good intentions and excellent theology, his metaphor really does not work. One member suffers and the vast majority does not even know about it, much less feel it. One member is honored and the rest of us may applaud, but we rarely experience the joy as if it were our own.

But. . .think of this: what if St. Paul was not speaking metaphorically when he wrote this letter to the Corinthians? What if he was speaking metaphysically instead? I think the greatest gift of Lutheran Book of Worship – some will disagree, but I’m in the pulpit – I think the greatest gift is the strong and clear placement of Holy Baptism as central to our life as the church. That’s why speaking metaphysically is the way to go! Lutheran Book of Worship’s multi-faceted understanding and experience of Holy Baptism has shaped a church that now takes more seriously the baptismal identity of individuals and of congregations. Oh, to be sure, we are still growing into that identity, but that is precisely the point. This Body of Christ is a growing, changing body and I think it helps us all to realize that St. Paul is not making a comparison at all but stating a solid reality. He did not say, “You are like the body of Christ,” after all. “You are,” he said. “You are the body of Christ.” Whether you realize it or not, whether you feel it or not, whether you like each other or not, whether you are Orthodox or Baptist or Roman Catholic or Lutheran or not, you are the Body of Christ, baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and inseparably joined to all those thus justified. And there is nothing you can do about it but act like it…or not.

God is not waiting for any of us to decide who is in or out of Christ’s body, not even ourselves. This truth is beyond our consent or liking. We are the body of Christ and individually members of it. Whenever anyone laughs, cries, lives, or dies in this Body, we are all affected by it whether we know it or not. When one suffers we all suffer and when one is honored all the rest of us rejoice.

Most of the time we live as though this were a fond illusion, but thank God there are people like my friend and father, mentor and teacher, colleague and brother – you, dear Gene –

who have faithfully called us to realize that it is our separateness which is the illusion instead. For fifty years you have called to Church, one holy catholic and apostolic, to be one,

to remember that God is turning me and them into us, the Body of Christ. And so today we make Eucharist, we give thanks with and for you and for the great gift you are to us and to the whole church, this superbly human Body of Christ.

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

Bishop Robert Alan Rimbo

Metropolitan New York Synod

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

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SECOND SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY — January 17, 2010 — Evening

Isaiah 62:1–5; Psalm 36:5–10; 1 Corinthians 12:1–11; Saint John 2:1–11

In nomine Jesu!

For those of you who’ve been coming to church the last few weeks, you might’ve picked up on a theme. Each of the gospels has told a different perspective on how people came to understand who Jesus was.

Otherwise put, the theme of the past few weeks has been about how we recognize Jesus.

The bible gives us clues. A star shone over Bethlehem, summoning an unlikely set of visitors – the magi. Jesus was baptized in the river Jordan and as he came out of the waters, the heavens opened, and a voice from heaven proclaimed him God’s Son, God’s beloved, in whom God was well-pleased. And this week, we have Jesus’ first documented miracle at a wedding in Cana.

When you think of Jesus’ miracles, what comes to mind? Healing the blind, the lame, the lepers? Casting out demons? Calming wild spirits? Feeding hordes of the hungry? Raising the dead? We so commonly think of these astonishing miracles, where he dug deep into the most pronounced needs and made things better, bearable, blessed.

But I love this first miracle, because it’s different. It’s so much more common, so much more ordinary. It was a big celebration, and they’d run out of wine at the party. And, at his mother’s suggestion, Jesus fixed the problem, making wine out of water. On the grand scale of things, running out of wine wasn’t a huge problem. And yet, Jesus responded with a little miracle that someone found worthy of sharing.

I’m grateful that this story endures, because it is incredibly important to see that Jesus’ miracles were not always so dramatic, nor were they always in response to destitution or desperation. The miracle at the Wedding at Cana shows us that miracles could occur in everyday life, too. Miracles, then, are extraordinary instances in divine intervention, even in what was otherwise ordinary, like the case of buying too little wine for the party.

Of course, not everyone saw the miracle. You’ll notice that in the gospel, it was only the servants and Jesus’ inner circle who noticed. Everyone else credited the host. And, of course, this is a common mistake – crediting good things to the wrong sources, while ignoring God’s intervention. But it’s not a mistake that you and I need to replicate.

It makes me sad to talk to folks who think that miracles ended after the first century, as if miracles could only apply to the time Jesus walked the earth. To think so is a grave error, because these instances of divine intervention happen all of the time. Not just for people facing extreme hardship or illness. But for other instances, too, where God decides to intervene.

Seeing life through the proper lens, we might even be able to see the little miracles, the Cana-like miracles that we’ve witnessed in our lives. Some of us have escaped imminent danger. Others of us haven’t escaped it, but find ourselves alive nonetheless. Some of us have encountered the kindness of a stranger who provided us just what we needed for that moment.

Never forget God’s persistent ability to bring the extraordinary to the ordinary. Even in our own lives.

Through Jesus Christ, whose miracles would one day save even the likes of us…

Amen.

Kaji R. Spellman

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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SECOND SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY — January 17, 2010 — Morning (2)

Isaiah 62:1–5; Psalm 36:5–10; 1 Corinthians 12:1–11; Saint John 2:1–11

In nomine Jesu!

Ever since the news broke, she’s been a wreck. She didn’t even realize how, with every new image of the wreckage, she’s been holding her breath. She hadn’t quite acknowledged how grateful she was not to hear too much news – in her case, no news was good, sortof.

She found herself wondering how and where they’d been just before it all happened. Had they eaten lunch? Later, that would matter, of course. Were they getting ready for dinner? Had they charged their phones? Were they dressed comfortably, with good shoes? That would matter, too. She played out a matrix of possibilities in their before-time, and prayed that they’d just happened to have chosen correctly.

It’s not as if they could’ve known.

And so each relative and friend and concerned person thought in the aftermath of the disaster. Along with these questions, so many wondered the following:

And where was God in precious Ayiti this week?

Where was God in the waiting-time, in the wondering without news of loved ones? Where was God amongst the ramshackle construction, the crumbling concrete, the foodless and waterless streets? Where was God in the stench of the decay? Where was God amongst the missing?

Otherwise put, the theme of the past few weeks has been about how we recognize Jesus.

The miracle at the Wedding at Cana shows us that miracles could occur in everyday life. Miracles, then, are extraordinary instances in divine intervention, even in what was otherwise ordinary, like the case of buying too little wine for the party.

Would God not offer a miracle in an extraordinary moment, too?

She was amongst the lucky – or I’d call her blessed. Eventually, her parents got word to her that they had survived. Her father is an MD, and her mother is a medical technician. They have work they can do, and they’re doing it in a makeshift tent in Port-au-Prince.

It is a miracle that they survived, and the help they’re offering is a miracle, too, with each wound they tend, each hand they hold, each leg they set.

And for the others, laying stuck beneath the rubble? Or for the ones who haven’t or won’t survive? Where is their miracle?

I think that the key to these sorts of questions – questions of what we call “theodicy”, the way that God is at work even amongst the tragedy of calamity – the key is to learn to recognize God more clearly.

Here’s what I believe:

We can recognize Jesus in the men and women and little children clawing away at the rubble.

We can recognize Jesus in the cries of the distressed who can’t escape.

We can recognize Jesus in the aches of the wounded, and the burns and sores and breaks of the survivors.

We know Jesus in the faces of the hungry and thirsty.

We can hear Jesus in the frustrated voices of the rescuers.

For the truth is that a God who would care enough to walk the earth, who would care enough to bother to give more wine to the party guests who’d run empty, this very God would give everything to save everyone in need – especially in Ayiti. In fact, this God already has.

In order to conceive of this, we’ve got to give up on the common image of the wrathful God who controls everything that happens. When we think this way, we might be able to come to the ridiculous conclusions of some of my regrettable colleagues in the ministry who claim that calamity befalls the accursed. You’ve heard their words, and I need not repeat them.

When you believe that God makes all things to happen (like earthquakes in one of the poorest places in the world), then perhaps you can reach such a problematic conclusion.

Or, you could see it the way we do here at Saint Peter’s. You could listen to the scriptures that talk about Jesus Christ – God incarnate – who wept for those who mourned. You could read the scriptures about God incarnate giving his life so that we could all have eternal life, and then you could see that this God – our God – would never kill the innocent.

You could read the scriptures that proclaim the salvation of our Lord and know that even when the little miracles we look for are hidden from our view, even with the ones who we’ll bury over the next sets of weeks, even with the ones who faced death from suffering – even for them, we can still count on the greatest miracle of all: salvation. Resurrection.

God’s miracles did not end in the first century.

People of God: never forget God’s persistent ability to bring the extraordinary to the ordinary. Even in our own lives. Especially to those who need God most.

Through Jesus Christ, who would turn the water of baptism into the wine of salvation. In Jesus Christ, whose miracles would one day save even the likes of us…

Amen.

Kaji R. Spellman

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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SECOND SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY — January 17, 2010 — Morning

Isaiah 62:1–5; Psalm 36:5–10; 1 Corinthians 12:1–11; Saint John 2:1–11

In nomine Jesu!

On the day the exiles from Judah gathered in Babylon to hear the prophet, or prophets, scholars now call “Third Isaiah” address them, five hundred miles of Syrian desert separated them from their beloved Jerusalem. Five hundred miles of desert between these exiles and their city, which lay in utter ruin. God’s Temple, the crown of Mount Zion, stood roofless and crumbled, its courts, once filled with chanting priests and singing people now the haunt of jackals; its pillars and cornices, where shining seraphim had spread their wings, now the place where swallows nested and sparrows raised their young. On the day the exiles from Judah gathered in Babylon to hear Third Isaiah, fifty years of exile and five hundred miles of desert separated them from their beloved, ruined Jerusalem, and this is what they heard:

You shall no more be called Azubah — Forsaken,

but Hepzibah — My Delight Is in Her,

…you…shall no more be called Shemamah — Desolate;

[but] Beulah — Married.

Which begs the question — the first question that must be asked by any prophet, preacher or child of God before addressing any audience with a Word of the Lord — and that question is:

Who’s Shemamah?

I’m glad you thought that was funny, but I’m very serious. In order to proclaim the Word of God to comfort the afflict or afflict the comfortable — as the old saw goes — every preacher better know who’s comfortable and who’s shemamah — desolate, forsaken and afflicted — before he or she or they open up their mouth.

Those who address us today — prophets from the Fifth- and psalmists from the Fourth Century BCE, Paul from the First Century CE and Jesus, who comes among us today to reveal the new creation, are unanimous as they ask, and answer that question:

Who’s shemamah – desolate, forsaken, afflicted?

We all are! And I’ll bet we all agree!

The spokespersons for our society surely agree. From Washington to Albany, from media to shining media, with unanimous voice they cry out that things will not get any better so don’t hope for something more.

The spokespersons for the churches agree. They can barely take a principled stand on anything, including pressing matters of injustice, because resources are dwindling and people who are mad about something are leaving and things can’t ever get better.

Ecumenists agree. Ten years after the monumental breakthrough between Lutherans and Roman Catholics called “the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” virtually every player — and prayer — for greater unity has publicly declared the ecumenical movement as comatose if not dead. Thins won’t get any better, not in my lifetime, these are heard to say.

Who’s shemamah – desolate, forsaken, afflicted?

Virtually everywhere we turn, we hear the same answer. We are.

Today, we’re in good company.

The members of the Christian congregation in First Century Corinth who wrote asking Paul for assistance certainly agreed. Those who weren’t hoarding their resources — the more fortunate eating and drinking before the less fortunate, were competing in spiritual athletics — speaking in tongues without interpretation, expounding a wisdom that no one could use — without any regard for the gifts of others or the unity of all. Who’s shemamah? We are.

The exiles gathered amidst the splendor of the hanging gardens of Babylon certainly agreed. Rubbled Jerusalem a “crown of beauty”? Arid Judah a shining jewel? The ruined temple a “diadem of gold”? Leave the security of Babylon, its bazaars, brokerages and brothels for that, just because God says so? Who’s shemamah? We are.

Jesus’ mother certainly agreed, at least according to Saint John; at least at the wedding feast at Cana: Who’s shemamah, Jesus? We are. “They have no more wine.”

We’re in good company today as we believe ourselves to be forsaken, afflicted and desolate. We’re in good company today because within this company we also find Jesus who comes among us to show us the new Jerusalem, the united community, the people on whom God lavishes an abundance of gifts and an ongoing feast where there is plenty of the best of everything for all, including the guests who are already drunk. You see, there is no discrimination against any who drink deeply from what the psalmist calls God’s “well of life.”

Every one of today’s audiences — the exiles on Babylon, the quarreling congregants of Corinth, the impoverished community to whom Saint John addressed the Fourth Gospel, the peasant villagers of Cana, all struggling to celebrate new life in the face of crushing poverty and grinding oppression — everyone of today’s varied audiences including us has undeniable evidence that life can never be better, that joy can never be full, that unity is no longer possible, that justice can not roll down like waters and righteousness can not flow like an endless stream. Every one of today’s audiences has undeniable evidence that the party, once boisterous, is over for ever; that “they have no more wine.”

Everyone but Jesus and, to exiles, quarrelers, partygoers, his mother to you and me and all the other shemamahs of the world, Jesus gives but one command: “Fill the jars with water.”

Then – surprise! – Jesus does all the rest!

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD — January 10, 2010 — Evening

Isaiah 43:1–7, Psalm 29, Acts 8:14–17, Saint Luke 3:15–17, 21–22

In nomine Jesu!

Imagine what it would be like to be Jesus. Imagine what it would be like to be God incarnate, God become as one of us humans. Word made flesh. Emmanuel. God with us. Imagine what it would be like to be God fully human and fully divine, to be Jesus Christ in a world where Imperial Rome decides what taxes you will pay and at what rate, in a world where humans rights are granted or denied by a few people in power a few people who are not like you, a few people who may even despise your existence, a few people who send foreign armies to bend your will toward theirs. Imagine what it would be like to be Jesus Christ in a world where most people’s wages have stagnated, but others — a few others — are higher than ever. Imagine what it would be like to be Jesus Christ in a world where systems increasingly drain the hard-earned income of the people who pay prescribed premiums, while the system itself pockets so much gain, creating the sort of poor care that leads to an unsustainable unhealthy welfare state.

Imagine being Jesus Christ in a world like this. First century Palestine where you were born under occupation. First century Palestine where you were raised under incredible hardship and within a society that frowned on your parent’s committed relationship. First century Palestine where you grew into adulthood, confronted by institutions — religious and civic — in utter disarray.

Imagine being Jesus Christ — God incarnate, fully human, fully divine — amidst a people that thinks you have abandoned them, in a world believes you are no longer there to provide the same tender care you had provided from before the beginning of creation. Imagine being Jesus Christ in a world so turned inwardly on itself it cannot believe you exist. Imagine being Jesus Christ in this world, our world; our time, our place.

The Word that comes to us this evening is the same Word present throughout time. The Gospel proclaimed in our midst is the same good news proclaimed in first century Palestine. Jesus Christ at work in our presence is this: God goes in the water to be baptized. God becomes like one of us in Christ Jesus, so much like one of us, that God trudges through the mud of the banks of the Jordan River, the banks of our lives to join in this long procession of people wading in the water.

Waters that renew and refresh in the midst of a world gone amuck. We who are filled with longing. We who are filled with anxiety. We who are filled with confusion. We who are filled with despair. We cling to these renewing and refreshing waters because only something outside of ourselves will transform us and make us whole; because only in Jesus Christ — God joining in this long procession, God wading in the water with us — only in Jesus Christ do we know that there is no place God will not go.

Precisely when we think God has abandoned us, God claims to always be with us. Precisely when we think God does not exist, God comes as one of us to remind us we are made in God’s image. Precisely when we have exhausted our humanity, God restores it to reflect God’s perfect design for human nature. A design that is transformed by God. Transformed so as to freely transform the world.

God enters our lives in Jesus our brother. So that God can enter our sorrow following earthquake and famine. So that God can enter our confusion following disaster. So that God can be near us in times of terror and trouble. Not far, not abandoned. But here with us right now. Wading in the water just like us.

Notice I said us, not you. So many people think God is concerned only about them: “me God, me!” Bless me. Give me wealth. Give me health. Give me grace. And if you absolutely have to, give these things only to people like me. Wars have been waged, justified by this sort of thinking. Prejudice and hubris hurled discriminately. Rights and freedoms guarded for some.

Yet the Gospel proclaimed in our midst is quite the opposite. God in Jesus Christ obliterates this thinking with winnowing fork in hand. Ready to clear the threshing floor, to burn away this awful thinking. With all people, all the world gone amuck in front of him, God in Jesus Christ wades into that water and claims everyone. And by claiming everyone obliterates the “me” and claims the “us” of this world. Saint Luke is clear: Now when all the people were baptized. All people and then Jesus Christ.

The Word that comes to us this evening is the same Word present throughout time. The Gospel proclaimed in our midst is the same good news proclaimed in first century Palestine. Jesus Christ at work in our presence is this: God goes in the water to be baptized. To claim and proclaim there is no place, no thing, no event in our lives God in Jesus Christ leaves without claim, allows to be unheard, or passes by without joining in our tears as well as our joys. God goes in the water to be baptized to claim and proclaim no person, not one single person, is left unclaimed by God. Not me. Only us.

God is that present, that transformative, that, well, Emmanuel — God with us and for us.

Imagine what it would be like to be Jesus. Imagine what it would be like to be God incarnate, God become as one of us humans. Imagine what it would be like to be God in Jesus Christ claiming and proclaiming these things in a world such as ours. Imagine God saying, to you: “with you I am well pleased.”

Jared R. Stahler

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD — January 10, 2010 — Morning

Isaiah 43:1–7, Psalm 29, Acts 8:14–17, Saint Luke 3:15–17, 21–22

In nomine Jesu!

Maybe we know what it’s like to look in the wrong places for a savior. “Filled with expectation,” the quick of the breath, the culmination of so much longing, so much waiting, so much pain – they were ripe for change they could believe in.

What was it like?

More and more people were hungry, homeless, unemployed. The government kept taking more and more. For many, circumstances might’ve felt pretty bleak, and there was even talk of revolution. Faced with growing needs and fewer means to fulfill them, the people turned to the next charismatic leader – one of many – hoping he might deliver them.

The voice crying out in the wilderness heralded change, and that change was irresistible. Looking to him, to his unconventional demeanor, the unusual and seductive nature of his message, the people thought, perhaps, that they could set aside their own responsibilities, pull away from their world, (“flee!” as Pastor Derr put it a few weeks ago), hide their heads in the sand, and head out into the desert to this man who would solve things for them.

The people looked to the wrong leader. Mind you, John was indeed chosen by God, appointed for this work of preparation, gifted in his own right. But he was not their savior.

Maybe we, too, know what it’s like to look the wrong way for salvation. But on this side of the messianic history, it is different.

The difference lies with the Holy Spirit.

The people were looking at John when Jesus was baptized. But the Holy Spirit changed all that. Because it’s hard to miss the Holy Spirit descending like a dove from the heavens that opened and the voice that spoke of The Beloved – the one they had been waiting for. It’s interesting – if you read the Lukan narrative, you see that, up to this point, it’s always about John and Jesus. John’s birth is foretold, then Jesus’. John is born, then Jesus. Fast forward several years, then John’s out baptizing, then Jesus comes, and this is where today’s Gospel picks up. John & Jesus’ lives are held in parallel.

Until they’re not.

That changes with the Holy Spirit.

And I love that dramatic image, the Spirit descending in bodily form – it’s an image we can conjure in our own minds, it’s evocative, and it’s important. Because the Holy Spirit made it clear that John just wasn’t the one.

I’ve often wondered why Jesus was baptized. Why would he need it? Why bother? He was, after all, God’s Son. He wasn’t made beloved in baptism – he already was.

Well, I’m not the only one who’s wondered this. Beyond the usual suspects asking these questions (you and me, theologians and preachers alike) even John himself wondered why Jesus would need to be baptized, and asked him as much (we learn this from Matthew). “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness,” Jesus answered.

Which, I believe, means that Jesus’ baptism was, then, a major component of the unfolding divine plan for us.

Think of it this way: in the church, the words “O Come, Emmanuel” – Emmanuel, God with us – are just off our lips. We celebrate the Baptism of our Lord on the heels of the visit of the magi – an Epiphany – God with and for us all – Jews and Gentiles alike. And now, Emmanuel, God with and for us all, whose actions we are invited to follow, is baptized.

If we’ve learned anything in Christmas, let it be that God was made Incarnate to share in our human lot, for the sake of our salvation.

So, to ask why Jesus would bother with baptism is really to ask why God would bother to be born in human form?

The answers are connected.

In the Incarnation, God comes to live as we live, walk as we walk, face what we face, all the way, setting a model for us. Jesus’ baptism is the hinge of that model – allowing us, inviting us to participate in what has already been taken care of – our salvation. It is through this act that God proves that God asks nothing of us that God hasn’t already experienced.

Baptism isn’t the end of the story. It’s just the beginning. It’s the formal acknowledgement that we – or someone on our behalf – are inviting the Holy Spirit to point us, again and again, in the right direction. It’s the sign and seal that says a repeating and resounding “yes!” to God, even when our actions will say no. It’s the time in which we receive the divine promise to, again and again, send us the Holy Spirit to turn us away from the wrong leaders and to, again and always, turn us back towards the right one – the true Messiah, even Jesus the Christ.

On this side of the Messianic story, it has so happened that even the baptized have looked the wrong way for what they thought might save them. Maybe we have, too. Maybe we’ve found ourselves putting too much trust in powers and principalities. Maybe we’ve expected too much from the possibilities of wealth. Maybe we’ve caught ourselves working too hard for stability or security. Maybe we’ve put too much faith in the things of this world, forgetting that, in ultimate terms, none of those things will save us.

Maybe Christ saw all this, and even anticipated it from us. And maybe Christ was born and baptized…and crucified…and resurrected…precisely because of that anticipation.

Friends in Christ: you and I – we can’t do a thing God hasn’t seen before.

Baptism – our baptism – puts the power of those things to death, so that the real power – God’s power – reigns eternal.

Amen.

Kaji R. Spellman

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE EPIPHANY OF OUR LORD — January 3, 2010 — Evening

Isaiah 60: 1-6; Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Ephesians 3:1-12; Saint Matthew 2:1-12

In nomine Jesu!

This is not the first time God set a thing in the sky for people to follow — set a thing in the sky for an unlikely set of people to follow, these magi three. Unlikely people on an unlikely journey. God had done something like this before. At Vespers we remember God doing something like this in a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. At Vespers we remember that God chose an unlikely group of people to become God’s people. God brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt into the freedom of the promised land. And God set a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night before them, to lead them into this freedom. An unlikely freedom for an unlikely people on an unlikely journey to the promised land.

An unlikely people without any sort of power, no army of their own, all the while being chased by Pharaoh’s powerful army, his chariots and horses. An unlikely people without any means to establish a cohesive nation of their own, all the while leaving a nation that at very least provided them food and clothing and shelter. An unlikely people without any freedom, all the while giving up everything in order to take up this freedom promised by God. A pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night led these unlikely people. The journey was strenuous and strained their resolve.

Yet God provided the most unlikely of gifts along the way. Their one-time masters chased them and cornered them at the Red Sea. Yet, God provided a means across the sea and captured the enemy. For the unlikely journey, they had taken some food, but only some unleavened bread. There was no time to let it rise, nor time to make very much. Yet, when bread ran out, God provided food in abundance. They had failed to account for drinking water in the desert. Yet, God provided that, too. It wasn’t an easy journey, but every step of the way, God provided.

Now God sets a star in the sky, a very bright star seen from a great distance. And an unlikely set of wise people do what some might call an unwise thing. They drop everything. The star appeared in the sky and somehow they knew they should follow it. So they stopped their daily work, their means of survival, and mounted their camels for a journey. Not a journey within their own lands, but far outside their borders — an unlikely journey made by some unlikely magi to an unlikely hill country, to of all places, Bethlehem.

The road was treacherous, circuitous, twisting from here to there. The journey was far from attractive and the destination no more desirable. The road headed west, toward a land occupied by Rome. Soldiers had taken this land. Rome’s economic might imposed on its people. Would a visit by these migrating Magi, these people from far off lands provoke the very same armies to trample the lands of these Magi, as well? They had no interest in provoking shield and sword. They had no interest in provoking economic plunder. Surely these three would have preferred an alternate journey to a different land. Yet this star led them into the thick of it, led them to a marginalized people under Roman occupation. First stop, Herod — an unpleasant ruler with an unpleasant reputation. Next stop, Jesus — with Herod on their heals.

This is not the first time God set a thing in the sky for an unlikely people to follow to an unlikely place. First the Israelites, then these Magi, three, now you and me. Unlikely people on an unlikely journey following an unlikely beacon set forth by God — on this night, in our own time and in our own place.

Truly, we are unlikely people. Most unlikely people. We’re not as cohesive as a business or a bureaucracy. We have no membership card with special powers or privilege. We’re not a homogenous people, a people of identical mind. We have no command structure. Yet, we are a people of drive, a people of passion. We have seen a great light. The light of Christ burning in front of us. Light from light. The light of Christ that always burns love, burns everlasting life.

And somehow with this great light, God draws us together. An unlikely people. To an unlikely place. To behold and experience Christ’s love. And to proclaim that love to all the world. God calls us to be at the center of that love, at its locus. And much like a star, God calls us to radiate it to the whole world — an unlikely calling, for an unlikely people. Yet our call, our journey, no matter how unlikely.

Ours is not a journey of certainty, unless by certainty you mean rocky and circuitous. Ours is not a journey plowed by force, but like the Israelites and Magi, accomplished by unwavering dedication. Ours is not a journey filled with plenty, yet along the way God always provides.

Provides even God’s very self in the broken body and poured blood of Christ. An unlikely meal for an unlikely people on an unlikely journey. A meal that feeds and nourishes like no other meal. Feeds the radiance God places within us. Feeds us so that we might feed others on the margins of a world in great disorder, a world scarred by violence and oppression, a city plagued by homelessness and hunger, homes struggling to make a go at it in a world like this, children uncertain what the future might bring. In this unlikely meal, God feeds us to radiate God’s love in the midst of all this.

This is not the first time God set a thing in front of an unlikely people to follow to an unlikely place.

The Israelites.

The Magi.

You and me.

Set apart by God to show that God is not abandoning this world, but renewing it; to show that God is not tearing apart this world as we are want to do, but healing it; to show that God is not excluding people, but claiming all people to be light for the world, to reveal God’s glory to all nations, to bring peace on earth in a most unlikely way: from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to a road to Emmaus; birth to death to new life — the design of God’s great love for you and me, and all God’s people now, in the year to come, and always.

Jared R. Stahler

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE EPIPHANY OF OUR LORD — January 3, 2010 — Morning

Isaiah 60: 1-6; Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Ephesians 3:1-12; Saint Matthew 2:1-12

In nomine Jesu!

The celebration of the Epiphany of the Lord is not only a commemoration of the divine nature of Jesus as disclosed to the Magi but is also a celebration of the belief that we, as Christians, share in our knowledge that God does not make distinctions among peoples, races, cultures, or nationalities. He is the Lord of the Universe, and Father to each and every person who is willing to let in the light of the wonders His son made to all of us, which in turn provide the most marvelous and wonderful salvation that each of us could ever hope for.

If you pay attention to the back cover of our bulletin, you´ll read that here, at Saint Peter´s, we are working to make that certainty a reality. To paraphrase: Saint Peter’s is a catholic evangelical communion of diverse people and communities actively seeking God´s guidance and support for helping us to live happier and more fulfilled lives in this city . Our life here together reflects and respects the diversity of our members. Reconciling in Christ, we are drawn together and support and encourage one another to seek ways to live out our faith in our daily lives and offer our God-given gifts to the service of others, especially those less fortunate than ourselves.

The Word of God reveals His plan for salvation through the ministry of the prophets, but we learn in the New Testament that God´s plan is realized through Jesus Christ. What does this mean in our daily lives, and who are its forebears in the Bible?

The prophet Isaiah, for example, is a voice, among many, that announced that salvation is universal. Like many other servants of God, Isaiah was constantly beseeching the elected people to abandon sectarian and xenophobic behavior so they could fulfill their call to be the instrument of salvation for all humankind. No one was to be excluded.

Indeed, the book of Isaiah shows Jerusalem--in which, through our Christian perspective, we see the Church — as the light that triumphs over darkness because the glory of God shines on it, which is to say that the Lord dwells in it. So His presence draws all peoples together, each of them wanting to get closer to Him, along with the people of Israel coming back from exile. This is the universal idea that permeates the prophecies, which is fully realized, for the first time, in the New Testament. The Hebrew text says: “Be light,” which means that every human being may indeed become light. Therefore, in the New Testament we see that we, as Christians, are the light because we walk in the light of Christ, and so does the Church.

The second reading, taken from the letter to the Ephesians, describes God´s plan as realized through Jesus Christ and revealed to the apostles by the Holy Spirit. Paul says that not only are the Hebrew people worthy of salvation, but so too are pagans, since Jesus Christ has torn down all barriers. Therefore, gentiles and Hebrews alike are a unique human family and partake in the fulfillment of the promises made to the forefathers of the old alliance.

On the other hand, the New Testament reveals Christ as the perfect and unique instrument to reveal the Father, as we have heard in the last weeks in the Gospel according to John and in the Letter to the Hebrews. Matthew, unlike Luke, does not provide as detailed a description of the birth of our Savior but instead focuses on the idea that the breadth of salvation extends to the gentiles, and attracts them as a star.

Significantly, the starting point of this encounter is not Jerusalem, the seat of the priests, or with the Pharisees — who hold the knowledge of the law and precepts, and who are the interpreters of the law — but is in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus and the Gospel, where the realization of the law, and of God´s love and our neighbors’ love, reside. Upon reminding us of the fulfillment of the prophecies, Matthew wants us to understand that Christ not only provides the perfect continuity of the revelation of God in the Old Testament, but He goes far beyond that, and surpasses the revelation, because salvation is not the exclusive privilege of one people, race, or culture. Rather, it belongs to all who love and seek the truth. For “. . . in his flesh He has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall.”

And the great mystery announced by Paul is clearly stated in the epistle we have just read: The mystery made known to me by revelation . . . which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God´s holy apostles and prophets.

What is that mystery?

It is that Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members who share one body, and who share together in the promise in Christ Jesus. This is wonderful news!

In the light of the Word of God we can certainly say that today´s celebration is a call for faith. The Magi–perhaps we should say “astrologers”--represent all those who seek the true God and are open to the signs that He is willing to show. As for the Magi, that sign was the star, which was the most natural and wonderful sign in their experience. They responded in a positive and loving way to that call--contrary to what Herod and his unenlightened priests did. We must never forget or underestimate this.

The Magi, those wise men who came from Asia, may be from present Iran or Iraq. We do not know for certain. But whatever their origin, what we do know is that they, like others, had learned from the Jews, who were migrating to other lands, and from Gentiles, who were traveling with Jews to attend celebrations at the Temple of Jerusalem, that a prophecy from the Old Testament bespoke of a star that would rise from Jacob´s tree. That is the origin of the star, and as remote as this may be from our existence, it is an origin that summons respect. The Temple of Jerusalem is also the place where it had been announced that a king would be born from David´s lineage, which is also Abraham´s lineage, and that He would be born in Bethlehem.

We, as individuals who are an integral part of our Church, have many diverse signs that encourage and guide us in accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.

First, we have the Word of God that we receive as the Meal, especially as part of the Sunday Holy Sacrament of the Altar. We also have personal experiences, large and small, every day, that allow us to grow very close to God; in these experiences, with our accomplishments, our failures and problems, our pain and sickness—all of these, from the perspective of faith, bring us closer to God.

And all of this enables us to be worthy beacons for those who still don´t believe and for those who wander in the midst of the confusion the mundane paths foment. We are part of a continuum of a long and rich heritage of believers in God, which we bring to new heights with our trust and love for Christ. We are, each and every one of us, ministers to humankind because of our testimony to God. As members of the Church, we bear witness to unity in charity when we share what we are, what we know and what we have, all in the midst of the huge diversity of race, cultures and social status.

In conclusion, let me reaffirm what I stated at the beginning of this sermon, from the back cover of our bulletin:

Through ongoing conversations with God, one another, and a variety of partners in the business, arts, and religious communities, we seek to creatively shape life in the city even as our lives are being shaped by the Good News of Jesus Christ risen among us.

Jesus Christ is born to save all the peoples, and, therefore, He extends his umbrella of love over all humanity and make Himself known in the spirit of the Epiphany. This is the meaning of the celebration of the Epiphany: the revelation of God so that human beings may adore Him, recognize Him, and await Him, because only in Him shall we find salvation.

Yes, indeed, the glow of this celebration reverberates in the diversity of peoples throughout this country and the world and, in our personal community, for every person who finds a home at Saint Peter´s. This is the Epiphany.

Today´s readings mirror our present life and, therefore, like a "pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night", the Word of God, sheds light on our path through history.

Deo Gratias.

Demos gracias a Dios.

Thanks be to God.

Héctor E. Ribone

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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NEW YEAR’S EVE — December 31, 2009

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13; 12:1-8; Psalm 8; Revelation 21:1-6a; Saint Matthew 25:31-46

In nomine Jesu!

Ten year’s ago, on this same date at this same hour, we gathered in this same place for this same mass: Same readings, same prayers, same hymns, same everything. Looking back, these are virtually the only things that haven’t changed.

It was a “Mass of the Eve of a New Millennium” back then, celebrated in a time of virtually unparalleled — at least in my lifetime — prosperity in an America that felt itself unchallenged and, in every way, strong. I said this on that night:

For millions of people tonight is a not to be repeated experience, a night and a date to remember for the rest of our lives, a chronological point in their ever changing experience of time.

…

For millions of people, tonight is also a night to fear – Y2K, Armageddon’s chaos, terrorist attacks, the end of the world.

The worries we had that night — I particularly remember the City’s frenzied fear that forced Y2K fears forcing the cancellation of the wildly successful “First Night” celebrations and the irrational fear that the then owners of the then CitiGroup Tower were ranting about — seem sadly comical, given all the chaos this first decade of the Third Millennium has brought. The Tower has a newer, friendlier owner; the nation, and the city, has a newer, friendlier government, to be sure, but America, and particularly Americans, are feeling anything but unchallenged and strong tonight.

Ten years ago — and several times since — I talked about the way three kinds of people dealt with time:

As Anemophiles, who strive to ‘liberate’ the future from the past [because] they firmly

believe that time is infinite and they are not interested in how much of it has already passed.

Chronists, who are not sure of the future, nor are they sure time is infinite. However, they are sure of the past, and hence strive even more to liberate the past from the future, which brings changes.

and us, who I called

Kairoticists who lives, always striving to discern the liberating, loving, dynamic presence of God not only in every time and every place, but in their own time and their own place [and] who acknowledge that, when God is present now so are all those we have ever, or will ever love of every time and every place.

There are not many past sermons that I feel comfortable repeating, or even quoting from, again. Yet, given all the changes and all that has happened in the past ten years, those words still remain true as does our calling: too be kairotocists, always striving to see the liberating, loving, dynamic presence of God everywhere we look. Then and now, though our context has radically changed, our mission remains the same. And so does our vision, a vision we see more clearly as we gather in the Eucharist where God most clearly reveals “heaven and earth in a single peace.”

Tonight, together in God’s presence, we are at one with those of every time and every place, who see God face to face. Whom ever else we are with tonight, whatever else we do tonight, whatever else is done tonight, this remains certain. Tomorrow we will all awake, and in God’s presence, the company will remain the same.

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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DAY OF SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST — December 27, 2009 — Evening

Genesis 1:1–5, 26–31: Psalm 116:12–19; 1 John 1:1—2:2: Saint John 21:20–25

In nomine Jesu!

Dead Christmas trees. They’re out on the street already. Dead Christmas trees — some with discarded lights — already littering most Manhattan streets. As far as many are concerned, the December holidays with their festivals of lights – lights on Advent wreathes, Hanukah menorahs, Christmas trees and soon, even Qanzaa lights will be, as they say in Pennsylvania, “outened” and will all plunge back into dreariness until daylight savings time, Passover or Easter, whichever comes first. Lights out. Symbols discarded. By the time we get to the middle of January, the city, the nation and the world will descend into gloom. Dead Christmas trees and discarded lights on the streets already are portents of the days to come.

But not in the Church! Hard on the heels of Christmas the Church refuses to settle for gloominess and instead keeps on lighting the lights. Not just symbolic lights — advent wreathes, Christmas trees and vespers lights — but living lights who shine with the brightness of Jesus Christ. Living lights, like John the Evangelist whom we celebrate today, Stephen the deacon and martyr we celebrated yesterday, and the Holy Innocents of first century Jerusalem and of every time and every place whom we celebrate tomorrow, more and more lights — Martin Luther King Jr. in three weeks, Valentine in six, Patrick in ten — just to name a very few — all of whom proclaim, not only with their words but with their lives, that “[God’s] light [the light of] the new heavens and the new earth shine[s] forth from age to age. No cursing the darkness here — as if darkness was something to hate of fear, despise or deny — but enlightening the gloom with their own unique reflection of God’s evening light, the One John the Evangelist calls “the Light of the world.”

Nothing cursed and nothing discarded, nor even recycled, either. Redeemed, renewed, revived, re-born and resurrected. That’s what these post-Christmas holy ones point us to: New heavens and a new earth where “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream;” where the poor and the hungry, the homeless and those most easily forgotten are not discarded but included and seen by all as what they really are, bearers of God glorious light.

Tonight, while dead Christmas trees begin to litter our streets and discarded lights are sidewalks, paths and ways, we look to those who reflect God’s light and pledge ourselves to mirror them as they mirror Christ. And rather than discarding or recycling, we apply the light of God’s presence to make us, our city and our world, whole and well.

Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way, and the words of that great saint are good enough to sum up the message of all the saints who bear the light of Christ to scatter the gloom:

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Every [one] must decide whether [to] will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Whole and well and strong, walking in the light of Christ and all God’s saints, let us commit ourselves to walk as children of the light.

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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SAINT JOHN, EVANGELIST AND APOSTLE — December 27, 2009 — Morning

Genesis 1:1-5, 26-31; Psalm 116; 1 John 1:1-2:2; Saint John 21:20-25

In nomine Jesu!

At some point, Saint John, the disciple Jesus loved, died. The prevailing thought within Saint John’s community, the rumor circulating widely enough to be captured in this epilogue to Saint John’s Gospel, was that Saint John would not die. Exactly why so many believed this to be true is unclear. Perhaps it was that Jesus loved him, loved him in such a way that he is named by scripture as the beloved disciple — singled out as the one Jesus loved and thereby singled out to enjoy some status beyond all others. Perhaps it is that no one was expected to die between the time of Jesus’ ascension into heaven and his return to bring final fulfillment, to usher in the new heavens and the new earth. Perhaps it is that Saint John’s insistence “that God so loved the world that he sent his only son, so that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life,” was taken to mean that one would live forever, and that Saint John himself was the only one who would or could achieve this eternal life.

I suppose no one will ever really know what led so many people to believe that Saint John would never died. But it seems to me this once-prevailing notion, this rumor is not the point at hand. Because we know that at some point, Saint John died. More than that, we know that at some time, probably when Saint John’s community was in mourning over the loss of their beloved leader, a faithful disciple remembered Jesus’ words. According to that faithful disciple, Jesus did not say to Saint John that he would not die, but, rather "if it is my will that he remain until I come.” And then there is this critical notion: whether Saint John lived or died, is not a factor on which to base following Christ Jesus, is not a factor on which one followed the way of everlasting life; whether or not Saint John lived or died is not a factor on which to believe that God keeps God’s promises.

Instead, we know that because God in Christ Jesus was born, we are born. Instead, we know that because God in Christ Jesus died, we too will die. Instead, we know that because God in Christ Jesus rises from the dead to eternal life, we too shall be raised to eternal life — reborn Children of God. In fact, in the waters of baptism that eternal life is ours now and always.

Yet, this truth that eternal life is ours now and always does not escape the fact that Saint John died. In fact today is the day on which the Church celebrates his death, the third day of Christmas, three days after we read and celebrate and receive Saint John’s poetic thesis that God’s eternal Word became flesh and lived among us full of grace and truth, we mark his death.

Saint John’s death is not the only death we mark this Christmas. We mark the deaths of other beloveds as well. Their names and faces, their traditions and their spirit are in our hearts and always before us at festive family meals, in the sharing of gifts, carrying out their memory even in our own lives and in our own time. Precisely because we do these things, because we do not forget our beloved but because we remember them in love, our hearts are saddened. For our beloved are indeed no longer with us here — not knocking on our doors, not gathered around our tables, not seated in these pews — rather they gather on another distant and far more glorious shore.

It is that far more glorious shore which makes death into something we embrace rather than something we fear, into something we celebrate, as we do today, rather than something we deplore.

Yet, we mourn. We cry. Our hearts turn sad because our beloved are pulled from us. From the cross, Jesus admits as much. Of the painful separation death would bring between Jesus and his mother, Jesus was fully aware. Of the painful separation death would bring between Jesus and the disciple he loved, Jesus was fully aware. And that is why from the cross Christ Jesus says to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” And then says to the disciple, “Here is your mother.”

To be separated from mother or father, partner or spouse, sister or brother, friend or mentor. To be separated from our beloved by death is the most painful event of the whole human life, second only to re-living that separation, day in and day out, heightened during these holy days when such people would otherwise be so close, so near.

Much in the same way Jesus calls Saint John beloved, much in the same way we call our loved ones beloved, God in Christ Jesus calls us beloved, too. And that name, that call, is trustworthy and true. True because God insists we never be alone or abandoned. True because God insists we never be separated from God. True because God insists our relationship vis-à-vis God never be dead.

Being called beloved shapes our lives of faith even now, for this is the beginning of living eternal life: eternal life with God now and eternal life with God forever. Saint John went to his grave proclaiming Christ as Word of God incarnate. And by that he means Christ with us now. Christ with us always. In life. In death. Throughout eternal life.

God’s promise is not that we will not die, but that in life and death God is with us and will never abandon us, will never let us go. God with us in our joy and in our sorrow, and God with all for whom we love, care and pray now and always on this and that distant and far more glorious shore.

Don’t take my word for it. Or Saint John’s word, for that matter.

But take God’s Word. Take it. Feel it. Taste it. See it. Experience it. In this mystical communion in which we all — you and I, and all our beloved — gather together in God’s presence, gather around this Table as with gather around our own tables to claim and proclaim God with us and all our beloved now and always.

Jared R. Stahler

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD — CHRISTMAS DAY — December 25, 2009

Isaiah 52:7-10; Psalm 98; Hebrews 1:1-12; Saint John 1:1-14

In nomine Jesu!

This season the Metropolitan Opera is staging a new production of Jacques Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann. Hoffmann is of course the author E.T.A. Hoffmann, the man who gave us, among other things, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King as well as these Tales. Three tales covering three defunct loves, joined together in a single narrative emerging from the tap room of a favorite local tavern. One tale per woman. Many drinks per tale. With an ending far from high spirits.

Hoffmann’s first tale is of his love for the stunning Olympia. She is regarded as the paragon of beauty, with an ideal body, gorgeous hair and eyes to die for. She can dance. She can sing. Hoffmann is head over heals for her. He and others go so far as to declare her perfect. Yet Hoffmann fails to appreciate a key point. Olympia is a robot. So blinded by the perfect beauty he desires, Hoffmann rejects the warnings of others that his pursuits are folly. Only when at long last he secures time alone with her, does he come to see he has been smitten by a love that cannot be. Sabotaged by the man who made her eyes, Olympia’s circuitry literally falls apart in Hoffmann’s hands. The only thing Hoffmann has to show for this, the first of three failed loves, is the shame of his pathetic blunder.

Tales of Hoffmann is nothing shy of a comic opera, yet it points to a sobering point, a troublesome epidemic within nineteenth century society, and yes, a troublesome epidemic within our twenty-first century society. Hoffmann’s obsession with Olympia, the perfect beauty; Olympia, the robot believed to be better than human, mirrors our society, our culture’s insatiable fascination with things like glamour and stardom, power and privilege, perfection and excess. Commentator after commentator has pointed to this increasing shallowness within society.

I think the epidemic is worse than this, an epidemic invented just as Olympia the robot was invented, an epidemic perpetuated just as Olympia the paragon of perfection was perpetuated, an epidemic invented and perpetuated by religious people, by people who claim (in some cases with militant zeal) the word Christian.

The troublesome epidemic plaguing our society, our church and our world is the tendency to moralize faith, the tendency to moralize religion, the tendency by Christians to moralize the Gospel. Jesus becomes the perfect example of what we ought to be and do. Jesus becomes the perfect example of how we ought to live life. The tendency to moralize the Gospel leads to a Hoffmann-like search for the perfect Olympia, acting, talking, living, being just as Jesus would. And how best we conform to Jesus’ perfection, becomes the mark of how Christian we are, a measurable status on a sliding scale toward heaven or hell, or perhaps purgatory. Commenting on this trend in his Brief instruction on what to look for and to expect in the Gospels, Luther writes: to live life with Christ as example does not make Christians, it makes only hypocrites.

People and societies built in such a way are perilously fragile. Truth is no one is that perfect. To make this quest for Jesus-like people, Olympia-like robots, into God’s ultimate goal, as so many Christians have, is to drive you and me and all people who cannot attain it into self-deception, lies and disappointment. To moralize the Gospel is to drive us into despair.

Saint John tells us the eternal Word of God became flesh. Lived among us. Full of grace and truth. God in Christ Jesus becomes as one of us, human like one of us. And we Christians believe that in this action God does something for us. The prayer puts it this way: Almighty God, you wonderfully created and yet more wonderfully restored the dignity of human nature. In your mercy, let us share the divine life of Jesus Christ who came to share our humanity.

God becomes incarnate to restore our dignity. Where we try to create dignity by assembling perfect bodies. Where we try to create dignity by covering ourselves with things. Where we try to create dignity by moralizing Jesus. Where we inevitably fail to create dignity, God restores it just as God created it.

God restores the dignity of human nature in a way we otherwise would not expect. Restores it in a way we Christians often neglect to hold central to our theology. Restores it in a way we Christians either mask with baroque representations or diminish with child-like simplicity.

Truth is God restores the dignity of human nature in a way many of us find embarrassing, humiliating, or often times in a way we simply do not understand. God restores the dignity of human nature in a manger, a feed trough for some cattle. God restores the dignity of human nature through an unmarried homeless couple. God restores the dignity of human nature by eating, resting, talking, and yes, even crying, empathizing with, people society would rather shun. God restores the dignity of human nature by allowing God’s son to be crucified under imperial Roman authority. God restores the dignity of human nature by exposing the ugliest of human nature, by claiming it, and by renewing, restoring it to its more wondrous state. Saint John emblazons God’s work this way: The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. The dignity of human nature restored in God’s Word made flesh. The dignity of human nature restored by this perfect gift.

Christian theology, authentic evangelical theology makes a distinction between Christ as example and Christ as gift. This distinction is especially critical for Luther. God gives us Word incarnate in Christ Jesus as gift long before Christ Jesus becomes example. Luther follows by calling Christ as example the least important way and Christ as gift the most important way.

The distinction is pivotal and fundamental to faithful living. Pivotal and fundamental so that when we see Christ doing anything, suffering anything, being anything, being even like us, that is being incarnate, we know and trust with absolute certainty that Christ is just like us in these actions. Word of God incarnate as gift means — Christ being just like us in these actions is as though we do them ourselves, as though we ourselves are Christ, especially when we are Christ for others.

Word of God incarnate, Christ as gift, claims you and me — claims us for God’s use. Some of us homeless, others of us with rooms to share. Some of us married, others of us waiting patiently for that right. Some of us forgotten, others of us remembering the forgotten. None of us perfect.

Yet, God gives us Christ as gift, so that when we freely live as gift of Christ for others, we do so confidently, in bold conscious and in peace and joy.

Wondrously created. Yet more wondrously restored.

This is Gospel recognized correctly.

This is God’s greatest love for us.

Jared R. Stahler

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD — December 24, 2009 — 11:00 p.m.

Isaiah 9:2–7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11–14: Saint Luke 2:1–20

In nomine Jesu!

God is with us. God is one of us. God experiences all that we experience; feels all that we feel; knows all that we know. This is the never-changing message of Christmass; the indispensible story that begins with God’s birth in a manger, proceeds with a God’s death as a criminal on an imperial Roman cross and concludes — and begins again — with God’s empty tomb; a story which makes us God’s children, constitutes the Church, and offers all God’s children nourishment for life and hope for the future. God is with us. God is one of us. God experiences all that we experience; feels all that we feel; knows all that we know. God is made visible and tangible in Jesus Christ — God, “truly human,” “born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, risen, ascended and publicly present through Word and Sacrament to nourish us always, everywhere and forever.

But we are a restless people. Every so often, we find it necessary — or maybe just convenient — to put distance between God and us. To view God not so much with us as outside us; not so much a part of our joys and sorrows, as beyond them; not so much as an active and specific participant with us in every human experience, but as an unspecific spiritual force outside us that is somehow imbedded in heaven and nature.

There is overwhelming evidence — in learned articles, political pronouncements, popular media and, of course, in those ubiquitous public opinion polls — that this is just such a time.

In an article in the December 11^th Wall Street Journal, Boston University Professor Stephen Prothero, quoting philosopher George Santayana, puts the latter point this way:

“American life is a powerful solvent” capable of “neutralizing new ideas into banal clichés” This solvent is now melting down the sharp edges of the world’s religions, bending them toward purposes other than their own. . . The store managers in our spiritual market place seem a bit too eager to sell us whatever they imagine we want.

The current box office smash, Avatar, the popular Twilight series of novels and movies, and innumerable computer games support this analysis.

In an article entitled “The Right Hand of the Fathers” in last Sunday’s New York Times magazine, David D. Kirkpatrick illustrates the former, citing Princeton Professor of Jurisprudence Robert George, a Roman Catholic, “this country’s most conservative Christian thinker,” who interprets what moral behavior should be on the basis of a rather unique and, it seems to me, selective re-use of “natural law.” Innumerable articles in TIME, Newsweek, the Christian Science Monitor, London’s Economist and nearly every news outlet, respectable or otherwise, support this analysis.

We are living in a time when world religion and American culture in general and popular American Christianity in particular assert that God is either so distant and demanding as to require an intermediary or so diffuse and disembodied as to require an avatar or so disinterested and disengaged as to be of no earthly use at all.

That’s why we need Christmass this year! Christmass affirms exactly the opposite.

Christmass affirms a God who is anything but distant; a God who is intimately involved in every human experience, birth and death and all those little births and deaths — our joys and sorrows and all that the years bring — that happen in between.

Christmass affirms that God is with all humanity and that, to get to God, God’s people do not need an intermediary because God comes in tangible form — in flesh and blood, in bread and wine — to them.

Christmass affirms that Jesus is not an intermediary, a good between, teaching us what we must do and how we must live to receive God’s love. In Jesus’ living, dying and rising, Jesus shows us what God does for us. Jesus is God’s will. Jesus is what God is. Jesus does not come to teach us to live by the law, natural or otherwise. Jesus comes to live with us under the law, that is, under judgment, natural or otherwise, without fear, so that we might have unfettered courage and the same risks God-made-flesh in Jesus takes for others.

Christmass affirms the lived reality of our daily experience. It affirms what we already know: that there is real evil in this world. Christmass does not explain that away. Christmass does not transport us to some virtual world of imaginary bliss; Christmass does not place blame for evil on one particular person or group or race or “unnatural” practice. It’s not so much that we are individually evil, Christmass says, but that the world is a mess and we need, not the illusion of eventual escape, but presence of God with us with power to transform. The first Christmass occurred in a time of political and social unrest. Judah was once again a conquered country, living under a skewed system of archetypical imperial domination, ruled by Herod, an archetypically cruel and self-interested man. There was hunger and social injustice and war visited upon innocents, all in the name of ideals like truth and justice and national security. Then, as now, the old values had become skewed, obscured and unrecognizable, and no one knew who to trust. Then, as now, learned well-reasoned, well-present arguments justified every action as just and right and necessary because of real evil in our real world. Into that real, self-justifying world, identical to ours in every way, God became fully human, a Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger whose name is Jesus Christ.

The message then is the message now: That, in the midst of this very real world, where evil runs rampant; where good people justify their actions with well-reasoned arguments, impeccable logic and inspiring rhetoric; where others get the blame and suffer the consequences; in the midst of this world where everyone is to blame for everything but us, we are not alone. God has become one of us. God is with us. God takes the consequences of evil and blame, of seemingly uncontrollable power, of our paralysis in the face of that power; experiences them, submits to them and in so doing transforms them and, in the process, transforms us, giving us power to live faithful lives in a real world without paralysis or excuse because a real God who is really human is with us.

A lot of people are longing singing a bygone song from the bygone days of over-commercialized Christmases long ago: “I’m gettin’ nuttin’ for Christmas cause I ain’t been nuttin’ but bad” ( or inattentive, stupid, or greedy (or I know someone else to blame who has.) Well, we’re still getting something for Christmas. We’re getting God in the midst of our distress. We’re getting God to be with us In the midst loneliness, powerlessness, paralysis and despair. We’re getting God, not an intermediary, not an avatar, not an indefinable “force.” Into a world filled with substance-less, we’re getting God, who comes to us with new life and new birth.

For unto you is born this day a Savior who is Christ the Lord: God with us here and now.

Amandus J. Derr

Senior Pastor

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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CHRISTMAS EVE — SERVICE OF LESSONS & CAROLS — December 24, 2009 — 5:00 p.m.

In nomine Jesu!

We all have it in common – you and I, the characters and protagonists of this story, and even with the

ones we’ve never heard of, too – we all have this in common: we share in this unraveling tale of

promises fulfilled – some already, some not yet. It is our common lot as humans to live and watch and wait for something better, to look around us and see beauty with all that ugly lurking near, to take in all that is good and wonderful, wondering why everything else can’t just join in on the good. To observe this is to tie us in closely with the ones we hear about today – from Genesis to the Gospels. We live and watch and wait holding so much but waiting for so much more. This is the spirit of Advent, this time of the already and the not yet.

Well, it’s been Advent in here, but outside it’s been Christmas. (I don’t know about you, but I’ve had my tree up since November.) The Christmas displays have brought people to the city for weeks now, the sales, the lights, the action have all shouted “Christmas!” long before today. And yet the church hunkers down with its Advent Blues – holding back the Christmas spirit by the bit. “Just wait!” we say. But in many ways, I am thankful to the secularized Christmas season that has already begun – not just for the stunning resplendence of the city these days, but because it gives us the perfect illustration of the Christmas season that the world began already but that the church reminds us had not yet begun. Except today it does.

As it turns out, I agree that it’s the most wonderful time of the year. And I’ve been eating up all of those Christmas movies with that famous reindeer, or with the mean one, or (my favorite) with the Griswolds or just about any of the wonderful Christmas stories many of us watch around this time. But this year I noticed something different. I noticed that so many of these stories center around the question of the true meaning of Christmas. What’s it all about? Is it the presents? The trees? The snow? The mistletoe? Perhaps many of us share in this question.

To my utter delight (for I hadn’t seen it in years) I discovered that Linus answered it best. Charlie, befuddled by the hustle and bustle of the people around him, suffered. “I’m depressed,” he shared. “I can’t seem to get anything right,” he sighed. Surrounded by the joyous revelers, Charlie just couldn’t join in on their joy. As a last cry of frustration, he shouted “isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” And Linus, with his blue blanket in tow, walked on stage, took his thumb out of his mouth and answered Charlie’s question.

…and the angel said unto them, “fear not! For behold, I bring you tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you: you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest. And on earth peace, good will toward men.”

“That’s what Christmas is all about,” he said. And that is what Christmas is all about. For today the star glows, the angels sing, heaven and earth are united with this new thing – this new moment in which God would choose to trust God’s creation enough to be born vulnerable. Not in the palace he deserved, not with the coat of armor he might’ve needed or even with the cadre of soldiers it would’ve taken to protect him from his enemies. No, he wasn’t born with all that. Rather, he was born homeless, then wrapped in swaddling clothes. He was born headed into exile to live as an illegal immigrant in a foreign land.

And so, on this day, God as God’s own self joins our common, human lot. God joins our lot in the experience we’ve all shared, in the gorgeous coupled with the shameful. For the beauty of that shimmering moment of birth was coupled with the ugliness of a people unwilling to offer hospitality to the one who was their king. It’s a miracle that they survived. Quite frankly, it’s a miracle that we all have survived.

Friends, that is what Christmas is about. It’s about God opting to share our common lot. God delivering on God’s promises – already. God completing the fulfillment of God’s promises – not yet.

For both, we give our humblest thanks as we listen to the miracles of this story anew. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Kaji Rosa Spellman

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT — December 20, 2009 — Evening

Micah 5:2–5a, Luke 1:46b–55, Hebrews 10:5–10, Luke 1:39–55

In nomine Jesu!

How do we know a prophet when we see one? The Bible is full of texts deemed prophetic – they make up much of what we call the Old Testament. We can name prophets, in fact, one of tonight’s texts is from the prophet Micah. So how do we know they’re prophetic? One answer is that we can recognize a prophet because the prophecy comes true. But there’s more to it than that, because many charlatans offer a good predictions from time to time.

So how do we recognize a prophet?

One of the foremost scholars on the prophets was a rabbi named Abraham Joshua Heschel who was based here in New York City during the Civil Rights movement. His study of the prophets informed his understanding of the revolution taking place in American culture as the oppressed challenged the oppressors. Heschel read the prophets and couldn’t help but to align himself with the movement. (In fact, the famous picture of King and many other religious leaders linked arm-to-arm marching in Selma, Alabama includes him standing in the front row.) In his seminal book on the prophets, Heschel took up this very question of what constitutes a prophet.

He described prophets as people who “combine deep love with powerful dissent, painful rebuke with unwavering hope.”[i] Heschel catalogued the qualities of a prophet. His list includes:

§ Sensitivity to evil

§ Luminousity

§ Concern with the highest good

§ Austerity and compassion

§ Loneliness & misery

§ A messenger, witness

Due to the deep contrast between the prophecies they proclaimed and the cultures that heard them, prophets lived pretty miserable lives. They were homeless wanderers, deeply sensitive to the injustices they witnessed. And yet, the prophets always had hope, always delivered a corrective to draw God’s people back in, to pull their cultures closer to the God who beckoned them – beckons us.

And so we encounter tonight’s Gospel.

In some ways, we can be distracted by the beauty of these words. And they are beautiful. Mary says “my soul magnifies the Lord.” She sings a song of praise and rejoicing, giving thanks to the God who has chosen her for such an important role. These words are indeed beautiful, in fact, I treasure their poetry more than any other part of the New Testament. I’m not alone – the church has played out its love story with this text – called the Magnificat – for ages. Through her words, Mary is exalted for her devotion, praise and remarkable faith.

Many of us picture Mary as the pious mother of Christ. We imagine her as the maternal figure holding her son as a babe, and later after his crucifixion. Through the generations, in many traditions, Mary has become the tragic quaint mother, gentle in her love, tearful in her devotion.

But to see Mary as purely quaint is to fail to hear her words.

“The mighty one has done great things for me, and holy is His name,” she says.

But then the song changes. It switches key. We can hear her words and imagine her voice getting louder in deep, dramatic crescendo, because it just makes more sense to shout than to say:

He has shown strength with his arm!

He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts!

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones!

and lifted up the lowly!

he has filled the hungry with good things!

and sent the rich away empty!

These are not the words of a quaint little woman. See Mary as the figure in the Madonna and Child, or even the pietas, sure. But I like to imagine Mary with Rosie the Riveter’s fist, too. Because Mary’s words are the words of a prophet – strong and true.

She was not a popular woman. As a direct result of her faith, she was an outcast – sent away for her pregnancy to her cousin Elizabeth. With her husband, she wandered to Bethlehem. She bore her child in homelessness, then fled into exile to live the life of an illegal immigrant.

Heschel said that prophets are sensitive to evil (“he has brought down the powerful”), luminous (“My soul magnifies the Lord”), concerned with the highest good (“he has helped his servant, Israel, in accordance with his promises”) austere (“he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant”), lonely (mother of the crucified one), messengers.

Good friends, we need the message of Mary, the prophet. We need to trust her prophecy to be true. We need to hear her words, learn from her strength – a strength so profoundly great that she could give birth to the Emmanuel – God with us, the Christ-child, the Word made flesh, God incarnate born to a homeless family who lived in exile. We need these things because we are broken, our world is broken, people hurt, suffering endures. We need these things because we need God. When God chose to take human form, not as a wealthy king, but as a man who was homeless and poor, God made Mary’s prophecy true. The lowly and poor are lifted up in the person of Christ Jesus. Our own hunger is filled by the bread of life, given for you, me and everyone else.

And so, people of God, when we sing Mary’s song, let us sing her words as our own. Let us trust her prophecy. Let us await its perfect fulfillment, through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Kaji Rosa Spellman

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT — DECEMBER 20, 2009 — Morning

Micah 5:2–5a; Saint Luke 1:46b–55; Hebrews 10:5–10; Saint Luke 1:39–45–55

In nomine Jesu!

Every Sunday in every liturgy — every day in every liturgy —the People of Saint Peter’s Church make two profound and prayerful statements of faith. We say these so often; I wonder if we know what we are saying.

The first is that God has a mother. The second is that God’s will is to hold heaven and earth in a single peace by the design of God’s great love. Taken individually, each of these affirmations is as historically orthodox, thoroughly catholic and as confessionally Lutheran as it can be. Taken together — as publicly, we always do — they speak volumes about who we believe God is; what we believe God does; and how we believe God does what God does. I dare say that, in the current milieu of 21^st Century, post 9/11 world religion and in what is viewed, at least popularly as world Christianity, these prayerful affirmations, taken together, are a distinct minority view. Yet I believe, and the Church has always confessed, at least with our lips if not always with our actions, that these are the heart of Christian faith, the core of Christian worship and, not to put it lightly, the “reason for the season” we call Christmas.

God has a mother. That is, at a minimum, the heart of today’s Gospel, regularly and publicly affirmed today by over a billion Christians and by countless millions of others for at least 1700 years. We say it here nearly every Sunday: We believe in God “truly human,” “incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.” That’s what millions of Christians regularly say and, historically, have publicly said but our actions often say something quite different: that we’ve crossed our fingers and hedged our bets. To publicly affirm that God has a mother and that her child — the helpless Babe in a manger, the crucified criminal on a cross, the embalmed corpse in a borrowed grave — is God is to affirm that God is fully vulnerable and mortally engaged in “the waste of our wraths and sorrows” in every way, just as we are. Yet we hedge our bets, or so it seems, by continuing to act as if this is some passing fluke about God; as if God remains far above, far removed, unmoved, untouched, unaffected and unscarred by “the waste of our wraths and sorrows.” This leads us, on the one hand, to wonder how our remote and all-powerful God can sit up in heaven and “allow” bad things to happen or, on the other hand, to expect God to come with spectacular — and probably violent — power to make all things right, now or in the end.

You don’t need to be Christian to hold that point of view. In the 21^st Century, that is the point of view and the motivation for action held in common by fundamentalist Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, fundamentalist Hindus and fundamentalist Jews. It has nothing in common with those of us e who confess, God has a mother, and therefore confess that God exerts transformational power not from above, but in, with and under “the waste of our wraths and sorrows.” It is that point of view that gave us Crusades, pogroms, and terrorist bombings. It is that point of view that gives God an empire and an army – ours today, the British in the beginning of the last Century, the Germans, French, Spanish and Arabs in times now past. It is that point of view that encourages our annual “Christmas wars” which assert our religious/cultural dominance on the basis of the public prominence of a crèche or a cross, both of which are supposed to be symbols, not of domination but submission to power.

God has a mother. God is in, with and under the muck and the more of the waste of our wraths and sorrows. That is not a temporal state for God, from year 0 to 33 C.E. That is who God is and what God wills and how God works.

Again, we regularly pray it, that God brings peace to the Church, among nations, in the city, our homes and our hearts, not by the remote application of spectacular might but by the “design of God’s great love” born into the world as a weak and helpless human infant, living in the world as poor, itinerant, probably illiterate, Jewish preacher, dying in the world as a condemned Roman criminal and present in the world — with us — as bread and wine whom we honor and worship even as we consume.

God has a mother. Which means God is in with us, with and under “the waste of our wraths and sorrows” and not remote, untouched and distant from us. God has a mother and she has a song. We say she leads us in singing it and we say she leads us in living it.

Every Sunday — every day — in every liturgy, with minor occasional variation, we pray as we do today that: “led by Mary, Mother of God and with all the saints and angels, we magnify and rejoice in you.” Her song, we say, is our song. Her song, we say — our song — is the way, the will, “the design of God’s great love” that “holds heaven and earth in a single peace.”

Is Mary’s song really our song?

“My soul magnifies the Lord…” [who] “scatters the proud…, puts down the mighty…, lifts up the lowly…, [and] fills up the hungry…”

That is the God Mary leads us to worship, not only with our songs, but in the daily lives we live: A God unblinkingly focused on justice — on equality — in our time and this world as well as in every time and every place. A God who makes —and keeps a promise — a promise of equality — generations before Mary’s conception and generations after Mary’s death. A God who does all of this, not remotely, with a wave of an arm or spectacular strength and might, but vulnerably and humbly as one deeply enmeshed in the real world of our daily lives; the rough world of business, politics, economics and human feeling; the world where human actions, no matter where they take place, are never done apart from God. I hear that all the time and it concerns me: That in the real world the design of God’s great love has and should play no part.

God has a mother. God works in, with and under “the waste of our wraths and sorrows.” God is passionate, ever passionate, about equity, equality and justice. God is here for us and among us and with us and, in the world, through us right now.

But what is this equity, this equality and justice of which Mary so beautifully leads us to live and to sing?

This past week I read an article by, of all people, a New Jersey rabbi (Jack Bemporad) in what appears to be a Roman Catholic bulletin on ecumenical matters (Centro pro unione) that Dr, Brand recently loaned me. See if this helps, as led by Mary, Mother of God, you sing — we sing — and live her song:

…for the Bible, equality does not refer primarily to those of equal rank, or those of the same class, or those with equal possessions. …equality is more than justice in the sense of rectification of wrong. It is something positive and refers to those who are weaker than oneself… Equality means bringing up or raising those who are vulnerable, [or] disadvantaged, to the status of those who are secure.[ii]

“Equality’ is “something positive,” “refers to those …weaker than oneself,” and “means the bringing up or raising of those who are vulnerable to the status of those who are secure.” I want to say this in a slightly different way: the way we say it when we pray it.

For the God who has a mother is truly human, incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, equality is something positive and refers to those who are weaker than himself. Equality means coming down and being vulnerable to raise up all to be equally secure.” This is the promise made to our forbears. This God has a mother. And this is the design of God’s great transforming love which holds heaven and earth — and every one of us — in a single, perfect peace. We call his name Jesus.

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT — December 13, 2009 – Evening

Zephaniah 3:14–20; Isaiah 12:2–6; Philippians 4:4–7; Saint Luke 3:7–18

In nomine Jesu!

What then should we do?

That is the question the crowds ask of John the Baptist. Like anyone who knows they have done something wrong, the crowds ask: What then should we do? Children often pout in protest: But I don’t wanna. Clever adults eschew the question by exerting lots of energy to avoid the corrective altogether. Yet the crowds that flock to John the Baptist ask What then should we do?

If tax collectors, soldiers and crowds of every day people gather to hear this person who spends his days trudging through the mud of the Jordan River, John the Baptizer must be persuasive: a gifted preacher, a compelling voice in the wilderness. I am certain these accolades are true. Just as certain as I am that these tax collectors, these soldiers, these crowds of every day people are in the mud with him.

Saint Luke offers only a partial picture of their muddiness. Many people are without coats. Some have two coats. Yet they are not sharing. Tax collectors are operating outside their mandate. They are collecting taxes not prescribed by law. Phantom taxes yielding extra cash in their not so phantom pockets. Soldiers seemingly abuse their power, their authority. Unsatisfied with their wages they have set up a system to fill the gap. Some are making threats and false accusations against common folk. Backing those common folk into a tight corner by exerting their might. We call this trick extortion. None of this is praiseworthy. All of it is deplorable. John the Baptizer’s rebuke puts it best: You brood of vipers.

A sting from a single viper can be deadly. Confronting a brood of vipers is terrifying. The poison of multiple vipers is so potent, so intense that death may be inescapable. The sting of people concerned only with themselves is no less potent. A brood plagued by this sort of selfishness can bring a painful death to anyone on whom such venom is unleashed — a painful death to anyone outside the pit just as readily as such selfishness would bring death to anyone inside it.

This potent venom must have been the blight of first century society: broods of people concerned with getting something for themselves, having more than their neighbor, denying the humanity of other humans.

I have come to call this venom the “me venom.” And it is indeed the most deadly venom because this venom is so overly concerned about the self that infected life rapidly moves beyond self preservation into extolling the self. Extolling the self at the expense of the neighbor. Infected life is not simply having as much or more than the neighbor, but asking, demanding — either by force, authority, coercion or prestige — something, if not everything, from neighbor.

In such a venomous pit there is no escape. No inner way for someone to see exactly how dangerous they have become to themselves. People poison themselves and collapse inwardly on themselves. So too do the communities and societies in which they subsist. Communities and societies cannot sustain “me venom” very long.

John the Baptist points to a way outside this vicious cycle, to the promise made by God in Christ Jesus who came among such a brood of vipers, who died the death consigned to him by that brood of vipers, and who God raised from that death. John the Baptist points to a way outside this vicious cycle, to a promise made by God in Christ Jesus, a promise that you and I, the brood of vipers consigned to a death of our own making, might not have such death as our final end. God provides the antidote to the venom. God sets before us a different way. God offers life abundant.

John the Baptizer summons us to God’s abundant life in the waters of baptism. Ever flowing waters that clean and renew us. Waters that pull us from that venomous pit. Waters that pull us from being turned inward on ourselves. Waters that turn us outward toward God and toward one another — receiving God’s abundance and sharing such abundance with others.

John the Baptizer describes such life in the sharing of coats, in treating others with equality, and in living justly, that is righteously, just as God is just. God who loves you more dynamically and more wondrously than any love you might have for yourself.

If you are like many of us, trying to get ahead of your neighbor, find renewal in these waters. If you are like many of us, taking for yourself what is really someone else’s, find renewal in these waters. If you are like many of us, having turned inward, wondering “what is in it for me” or “what is wrong with me,” find renewal in these waters.

For in these waters God frees you and me — all of us — to be exactly that: all of us. Bound together in love toward God. Bound together in love toward one another.

So many people search for peace this time of year, search for joy, search for hope, search for merriment, search for love pleading what then should we do? If you are looking for these things as we approach this Christmas, find them not where you might have always looked, but in the waters of baptism. Cleansing and renewing: something outside yourself, something to which you can return every day, something in which to be confident, something to bring healing and wholeness to you and the whole world.

Jared R. Stahler

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT — December 13, 2009 — Morning

Zephaniah 2:14-20; Isaiah 12:2-6; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; Saint Luke 3: 7-18

In nomine Jesu!

“Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come?”

I don’t know how the crowds listening to John the Baptist responded to that question, but I do know how we respond. “Everyone! Everyone is warning us to flee from the wrath that is to come,” because “the wrath that is to come” — the wrath that is — permeates every aspect of our lives.

Watch the news — CNN, MSNBC, Fox — 24/7 — “the wrath that is to come.”

Go to the movies. Entertainment media will give you wrath’s date: 2012.

Talk to your stockbroker. Listen to your co-workers. Listen to your boss. Eavesdrop on a subway, at a restaurant, concert, museum, sports event, synagogue or church. Everyone, everyone, is warning about the wrath that is and is to come. TIME magazine’s recent cover story described the last ten years as “The Decade from Hell.” NEWSWEEK countered with “The decline and fall of the American Empire.” If you do any browsing, blogging or tweating or googling, you know, better than I, that we are inundated by warnings about “the waste of our wraths and sorrows.”

“Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come?”

Everyone. Everyone.

“What then shall we do?”

Flee. The ubiquitous answer from everyone everywhere is “flee.” Probably then. Certainly now. The crowds who encountered John in the wilderness would feel quite at home among us today. Their context and ours are precisely the same. More precisely, their crises and ours are both very, very real. The wrath — that is and is to come.”

We’ve never needed preachers or prophets to tell us that.

In First Century Judea, the Roman Imperial domination system was obviously at a breaking point. Prices were up. Taxes were up. Jobs were few. Wages were down. Matthew, Mark and especially Luke catalogue a whole spectrum of players in that crisis; we heard them named last week: The dominators — Emperor Tiberius and Governor Pontius Pilate. The sycophants — Herod Antipas and his brother Philip. The collaborators — “Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests that year;” their toadies — the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the soldiers — each with their own agendas, to be sure, but all striving to maintain the status quo against the swelling throngs demanding justice for themselves and improvement in the lives of others, all of which threatened the stability of the status quo. As more soldiers poured in, resentment built up and a vicious cycle began spinning faster and faster, devouring everyone in its spiral and feeding on it self. The throngs spun off the zealots — the extremist opposition to domination and collaboration. Zealots spun off the — sicarii” — the terrorists of that day. Caught in the middle, simultaneously sympathetic to the poor and supportive of the status quo, was a huge swath of people feeling alternately victimized and powerless and guilty and responsible, all waiting in fear for the powder keg to blow. Implied by Luke but never mentioned, were, last but not least, the Essenes, who fled to the desert, crying “a pox on all your houses,” giving up on all attempts, meaningful or otherwise, to engage society and shape life in the community. Everyone in First Century Judea knew that their world was in freefall. They knew “the wrath to come” was coming and all they could think to do was flee.

How real was their crisis? Within 40 years, the wrath did come and their freefalling world collapsed. The city was leveled, the Temple destroyed, and the priesthood and the people were no more. Their mantra in the Gospel is the same as ours. “What then shall we do?”

In popular imagination, we imagine the crowds in today’s Gospel, running out to the desert to seek John and his rite of baptism out. I know how that image has been perpetuated, but it is unsupported by the biblical text. The text seems to indicate that the throngs running to the desert were, in fact, running from the conflict, looking out for number one, fleeing “the wrath that is to come.” They weren’t looking for John and John wasn’t waiting with open arms for them.

No, in the picture that is the Gospel, John seems to be standing there with arms outstretched to halt their flight not welcome the flee-ers. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee the wrath that is to come.” Repent – that is, turn around and go back — and confront the crisis head on.

Notice that John doesn’t tell the soldiers to stop being soldiers or the tax collectors to stop being tax collectors or the crowds to stop being crowds. But John does tell them that in the very way they do what they do, soldiering, tax collecting, crowding, they have power. They don’t need to feel victimized or powerless or guilty or responsible, they have power. By looking out for the other, by sharing, not hoarding, coats, food and resources; by being an honest tax collector and an honest soldier; by stopping their little games of using the very methods of the very system they detest, they can change the imperial domination system and (here it comes) “creatively shape life in the city” and in the world. I don’t think it’s necessary for me to be specific about what lawyers and bankers, administrative assistants, teachers, retirees, doctors, students, consultants, musicians and pastors should also do.

The two greatest temptations in times like these are a) to use the very methods of the very system we detest or b) to flee. It was John’s job then, and it is the Church’s job now, to propose, and to embody a different way. God’s way, the way of authentic, active engagement that steadfastly refuses to believe that in the teeth of crisis we have no power. Repent – that is, turn around and go back — and confront the crisis head on because “one…, more powerful than I, is coming; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

Given the chronology of this story, some thirty years after Christ’s birth, John could have said then what I say now, that “the one more powerful than I, who is coming is, in fact already here.

What John could not say then is this:

· That Jesus — head on — would confront the crisis; that by being just who Jesus was — a poor, homeless, itinerate preacher, Jesus would take on the players in the crisis face-to-face.

· That Jesus would reach out to include the excluded, restore the discarded, lift up the lowly and go head-to-head with the sycophants, collaborators and toadies face-to-face.

· That Jesus would not regard his poverty or position or lack of great office as a sign of weakness but would regard it as a sign of God’s power.

· That Jesus in all his authentic weakness would take on all the glory and gory and might and power of the Roman domination system and, by himself being put on humiliating public display on a cross outside the city would put on public display the inherent flaws and weakness of domination’s power.

· That God would proclaim the immanent end of exploitation and victimization and domination by raising this same crucified Jesus from the only power we really fear and that is the power of death.

· That, baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection we have nothing to fear and nothing to flee because we have been given the Holy Spirit and we are on fire!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. “What then shall we do?”

Think Christ!

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT —
THIRTY-SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF THE CONSECRATION OF SAINT PETER’S CHURCH —
December 6, 2009 – Evening

Malachi 3:1-4; Saint Luke 1:68-79; Philippians 1:3-11; Saint Luke 3:1-6

In nomine Jesu!

“Prepare the way of the Lord! Make his paths straight!” John the Baptist proclaimed a “baptism of repentance” helping us to understand that this time of preparation – Advent, is a time for us to make some changes. Last week, I preached about how we could all stand to “clean house”, get things ready, clear up those things that clutter our spiritual homes. This week, it’s good to be with John the Baptist, who tried to do what he could to prepare the world for the coming of its Lord.

As we ask ourselves what preparations might need to be taken, notice that John (who quotes Isaiah) is directive. It’s like he’s pointing fingers – you! me! – we need to do some things, we have work to do. We need to prepare the way of the Lord, perhaps because when the Lord comes it would be helpful to know it, to recognize him, to not let Christ’s return pass us by. Don’t get me (or John) wrong – God’s return is God’s work, and it doesn’t depend on our individual action by any stretch of the imagination. But what I hear in this prophetic text is that it calls us to take a look at our spiritual landscapes – the mountains, the valleys, the obstructions, if you will, that would act to keep us – and others – away from God. (In the church, we call those obstructions sin.)

And so I’ll share but three ways that we might follow John’s lead.

1. Make the paths straight, John says.

If the walk of faith takes place on a path, if the walk that brings us into closer relationship with God is on a path, then we have an opportunity to recommit to that path. Perhaps you’re like me, and you struggle with the many, many demands on your time that might veer you off the path. In many ways, I have it easy because I’m a pastor, and so my work is always supposed to be centered around God. That’s a luxury, but don’t think that it means that I don’t veer. Because I do come across people from time to time (ok, probably every day) who test my godliness! Sometimes I catch myself thinking something, or, more likely, talking to someone in a way I know is just as far from godly as I could possibly be (especially when I’m mad) and bam! I’m off the path. Again and again, you and I have to recommit ourselves to letting God put us back on the path that draws us closer to God.

2. Make the paths straight, John says, because sometimes it is our responsibility to do that for others, too.

Have you ever asked yourself what you might be doing, as a person, or even culturally, to prevent someone from experiencing God? Put another, more actionable way, what might you do – better yet, what might we do – to shed light on God’s goodness and mercy in real and tangible ways? Like taking away a moment of someone’s suffering? Like sharing gracefully? Like working to eliminate the injustices that lead to poverty? This is how the church works, moment by moment, day after day, to prepare the way of the Lord, but like our first point, it takes constant refinement and recommitment.

3. Make the paths straight, John says.

Never forget that John was a baptizer. The baptism in which many of us share and to which every one of us is invited is at the center of this process. I don’t take for granted that everyone here has been baptized, but whether you have or you haven’t, understand this: we are baptized because it sets the path. It affirms a desire to wash away sin. And it seals us with the promise that, in God’s time, the path will be straight, the sin will disappear, and we will – each one of us will – arise redeemed and purified by God’s love. Could anything be more beautiful? If you haven’t been baptized, come talk to us, talk to your pastor, take that step onto the path of your faith, remembering that baptism puts us on the path and God will make it straight, God will fill every valley, level every mountain, remove any impediment that might turn us away or block us from the God made, loves, and cares for us, because that is what God does.

You may have been receiving our Advent devotionals (if not, please sign up with the receptionist so that we can get them to you). You’ll see that this week’s reflections written by Pastor Stahler are, in large part, based on God’s action in leveling our personal and collective spiritual landscapes, restoring God’s creation to its original, unsevered, perfect relationship with our Creator. We bend towards that perfection in our brokenness. God mends that brokenness in God’s perfection.

Christians, we prepare the way of a Lord who’s coming, anyway. So as we shout our alleluias and sing our antiphons, let us face forward on the path God sets us on and say:

Yes, Lord.

Come.

Kaji Rosa Spellman

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT —
THIRTY-SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF THE CONSECRATION OF SAINT PETER’S CHURCH —
December 6, 2009 – Morning

Malachi 3:1-4; Saint Luke 1:68-79; Philippians 1:3-11; Saint Luke 3:1-6

In nomine Jesu!

I. “Prepare the way of the Lord.” With Isaiah, John the Baptist cries out: “Prepare the way of the Lord.” In the midst of wilderness they both cry out. Wilderness located on a map as well as the wilderness of life. Wilderness along the banks of the Jordan River, and the amalgamated wilderness taking root “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod the ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.” John the Baptist cries out in deep wilderness, uncertain terrain, engulfing mires, wildernesses of all sorts: the wilderness of Roman rule and occupation of first-century Palestine; the wilderness of a high priesthood of family in cahoots with the occupying force. Not some imagined wilderness, but an experienced wilderness. Not a story-book wilderness, but the storied wilderness of people’s lives. Not a wilderness with a limited locale, but a wilderness that stretches over the known world — geographical, political, sociological, ecclesial. In the midst of this multivalent wilderness John the Baptist cries out with Isaiah, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

He cries out in confidence. John the Baptist, with his forerunner Isaiah, has absolute confidence in God’s plan to restore all things, to make all things new, to bring the whole world — all its peoples, all its civilizations, all its inhabitants, all flesh (as Saint Luke interpolates Isaiah). John the Baptist has absolute confidence that God will bend all the world into absolute unity and harmony with God. An absolute confidence that is bold. An absolute confidence that is sure. An absolute confidence that is as large as creation itself: “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, the crooked shall be made straight, the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” “Prepare the way of the Lord.” With Isaiah and John the Baptist we cry out: “Prepare the way of the Lord.” From the wilderness of our lives, we cry out: “Prepare the way of the Lord.”

This Wikipedia entry reads much like the text of Saint Luke’s Gospel: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, abbreviated ARRA (Pub.L. 111-5), is an economic stimulus package enacted by the 111th United States Congress in February 2009. The Act of Congress was based largely on proposals made by President Barack Obama and was intended to provide a stimulus to the U.S. economy in the wake of the economic downturn. The Act followed other economic recovery legislation passed in the final year of the Bush presidency including the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 which created the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).” All this came to pass in the multi-year reign of Ponzie and his brother Madoff, ruler of the region of Wall and Street; during the high priesthood of the house of Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Fannie, Freddie, and a certain AIG. Not some imagined wilderness, but an experienced wilderness. Not a story-book wilderness, but the storied wilderness of people’s lives. A wilderness experienced as 60 degree weather in December. A wilderness with consistent consequences across all time: unrest within the human family, where some eat lavishly, some enjoy full protection under the law, some have unquestioned place within church and society while others want for just about everything. Not a wilderness with a limited locale, but a wilderness that stretches over the known world and across all things — geographical, political, sociological, ecclesial. A wilderness out of order. A wilderness so disordered that it is unable to justly support all of human life, all of creation, all that God created and all that God called good. Some of creation out of order with other parts of creation; some people out of order with other people: out of order, out of harmony with God.

In the midst of this multivalent wilderness we cry out with John the Baptist and Isaiah and all the prophets across time and space: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. We cry out in confidence. Absolute confidence in God’s plan to restore all things, to make all things new, to bring the whole world into absolute unity and harmony with God, absolute unity and harmony with one another, absolute unity and harmony with all of creation.

While we cry out in absolute confidence, Ours is not a naïve confidence. You and I, all of us together as church proclaim this day and everyday “prepare the way of the Lord,” fully aware that we are not, the church is not immune from disorder, from sin, from disunity with God.

While we are aware of our failings at least in part, we have an even greater awareness of God’s faithfulness. Ours is not confidence in ourselves, but confidence that God will never separate God’s self from God’s family. Ours is a confidence that God will be at work in the world despite the church’s failings, despite the failings of synagogues and mosques, despite our own failings. Ours is a confidence that despite all this, God continues God’s work of renewal and rebirth beginning with you and me, and all God’s children, so that the whole world might know God and be in harmony with God; and we might be in harmony with one another.

II. Today we mark the 32^nd anniversary of the consecration of Saint Peter’s Church. Thirty two years of ministry in and through this building, joined with 100 or so more years to yield nearly 150 years of being the Church in New York City. Before this particular building was even conceived, the faithful of Saint Peter’s Church place faced this question: is there a mission in this city, at this Intersection, in the heart of Manhattan’s new business center? In the heart of the wilderness, is there mission? Is there confidence that God can speak in the wilderness? Is there confidence that God will do what God says God will do? Is there confidence that God would renew God’s creation through a people gathered together at the Intersection of Lexington Avenue and 54^th Street called Saint Peter’s Church? The answer then was “yes.” The answer then was, “we’re a people on the move.”

I wasn’t around 32 years ago. (I hadn’t been born.) But I have studied some history. My reading of history says life in our world, our country, our city, our church — the reality of our wilderness has become more pronounced, more readily and severely perceived, more maze-like than in was 32 years ago, to say nothing of five years ago, even two years ago. We face our disunity and our disorder with one another and with God daily, and because of 24-hours news and the internet, we face it constantly and in painstaking detail.

III. I think the same question that faced faithful members of Saint Peter’s Church some three and a half decades ago, is before us yet again. The details are different, but the question is the same: is there a mission in this city, at this Intersection in the heart of Manhattan’s new business center? Is there a mission in this new City of New York, this new New York that is rising up around us. In the skyscrapers of Twitter and Facebook, an ever-expanding digital age? Is there a mission in world where the divide between “have” and “have not” is inescapable, if not baffling? Is there a mission in a world where icecaps are fast melting, unrestrained consumerism fast yielding species on the verge of extinction, entire civilizations — peoples, languages, cultures nearing death? Do we believe that our City is as big as the world, and that our human family includes more than those most like us?

I think the same question that faced faithful members of Saint Peter’s Church some three and a half decades ago, is before us yet again: Is there confidence that God can speak in this wilderness? Is there confidence that God will do what God says God will do? Is there confidence that God would renew God’s creation through a people gathered together at the Intersection of Lexington Avenue and 54^th Street called Saint Peter’s Church? God says “yes.” God still calls us to be “people on the move.”

I refuse to accept the notion that God has abandoned the world, that the Church is a backward and dying institution, that our fatigue reflects God’s fatigue. Where the world is corrupt let it hear God’s “yes.” Where the Church is backward let it see God’s straight path forward. Where we are tired, let a breath of God’s life-giving Spirit revive us. “Prepare the way of the Lord.”

IV. Prepare it with solid rock, deep solid rock. The skyscrapers, houses streets and sidewalks of Manhattan sit atop deep, solid bedrock. Our subway and water tunnels are hewn from it. It is the material of this earth that is below us, deep below us and in great abundance. And Saint Peter’s Church includes such rock as integral to its design. Or at least something akin to it. Bedrock would be too dangerous. So it is covered with something just as solid, but leveled and carefully cut so as to allow thousands of New Yorkers to trod on it daily and safely: granite. (Caledonia granite, to be precise.) Granite billions of years in the making. Granite sure to be around for billions of years to come. In the midst of wilderness, this is the bedrock, the base on which everything is built.

When I imagine the building process of this magnificent center formerly called Citigroup Center, I imagine the Atrium being built first. No granite there. The bedrock needed to be covered with shiny floors for shiny shopping. The Tower is built on stilts, so its floor is not on the ground. The Tower’s new entrance is made of Italian marble. Slick Italian marble for a glossy business tower. The Church took the form of granite, the interior hewn from sculptured rock and its floor the same black granite, suggestive of the bedrock that goes deep beneath the surface. The bedrock of creation, the base on which God acts.

This place may not take the form of a traditional Church, but its form is closer to God’s plan for renewal than most. Beneath the surface, beneath our feet and out the great doors. An entire plaza made with granite. Stairs of granite, leading to the street. Solid rock reflective of Manhattan bedrock. The sort of solid rock you have when you dig below the wilderness, dig below the wilderness to the ground God made. Italian marble is a level up. Shiny floors are a level above what God provided. But on this rock all people walk. From this rock we take confidence: every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, the crooked shall be made straight, the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Back to God’s original design. We are ever so close to it. So close that God’s confidence is enshrined in this building with immense boldness.

V. To be a parishioner of this church; to be a minister of this church; to be, like the few of us, who have the humble privilege of serving this church as servants, as pastors, is to claim absolute confidence in God’s work to renew and restore the original creation. Enshrined in this building. And enshrined in you and me. No wonder the Baptismal font is of this same granite. This Font from which flows life-producing waters. This Font in which we find our return to God, to harmony with God, to harmony with each other: perfect unity, perfect peace. To take up the mission and ministry of God in this place, in the midst of the wilderness, is to cry out with confidence as bold and as broad as this: “Prepare the way of the Lord.”

Jared R. Stahler

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT — November 29, 2009 — Evening

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-10; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Saint Luke 21:25-36

In nomine Jesu!

Well, it’s not Christmas yet, though to look around New York City these days you wouldn’t know it. The office buildings have hung their white lights, the color scheme for stores has changed to red & green, the air is appropriately chilly and all the markers we’ve grown accustomed to signaling Christmas’ arrival are around us.

But the church wants to remind us that it’s not Christmas yet.

This has always been a struggle in the churches I’ve served – the air smells of Christmas, and the people are excited, ready to sing their Christmas carols, but the church says, “not yet.” Wait.

Because we have another important season that precedes the Christmas season – we call it “Advent” which means “arrival”. And we, the church, say, “wait” because the season of Advent is predicated on the assumption that there are things that must happen before we’re ready to celebrate Christmas.

Advent is the time of preparation. We prepare the space physically – we hang an Advent wreath with the growing light, week after week, as candles are lit. We prepare as a community, planning the Christ Mass to celebrate the Incarnation, birth of our Lord. And we prepare as a people, reminding ourselves and one other of why it would be that we would need a Lord in the first place. We prepare as Christians so that Christmas has meaning for us, so that it is relevant to our world, so that the impact of this story worth telling and retelling for a couple of thousand years can continue to transform us.

In Advent, we prepare for the coming of our Lord, which happened once and will happen again. The season of Advent is the perfect time to rehearse this practice of preparation, because Christ will return – we don’t know when, but we know it’s happening. So it makes sense to be ready – in that way, the folks on the soapboxes on street corners are exactly right.

I heard a preacher put it this way: it’s as if the church were the host, and Jesus were our guest. You wouldn’t want to have a guest over without getting your house in order, would you? How much more would you want to prepare for your Lord’s arrival?

So. How do we put our houses in order?

The Gospel tells us to stand up! To raise our heads! To pay attention! To take note that our redemption is drawing near! To do something about it!

I would suggest that we raise our heads to pull us out of our routines, to notice God at work around us, to remind us that we, ourselves, have work to do.

Maybe you’re like me, and find yourself guilty of the ancient “crookbacked” phenomenon. Back in the 6^th century, Gregory the Great (who was pope from 590 to 604 AD) talked about crookbacked Christians as folks who were so busy looking down, stuck in their own ruts, that they developed these crooked-backs, unable to see God’s glory around them. And this resonates with me, because when I’m stuck in an unfaithful routine, it becomes difficult to stand up, raise my head, and prepare for my redemption. This probably resonates with Jesus, too, who undoubtedly witnessed many a crookbacked follower. (Why else would he give such clear instruction?)

So we need to stand up, raise our heads, and get ready. Let’s get our houses in order.

As I try to prepare my “house”, I think of all the things I’d want to clear out, clean up and put away: habits that need breaking, choices I continue to make that I know aren’t right, things I need to do but put off out of fear, relationships that need mending that I continue to ignore…the list goes on.

I also think of the things I’d want to bring out, to set before my Lord: my pure devotion and obedience, praise and graceful living – essentially, all the gifts God has already given me – I would want my Lord to see these things first; not because I can earn my salvation – I can’t, no one can. But because I would want to do my part to prepare the way of our Lord.

So Christmas is coming – but not yet. And maybe that’s good news. Maybe this gives us a chance to work on getting our houses in order as a matter of devotion.

Why not do this together? You might be glad to know that the pastors have prepared a devotional resource for you this Advent season. If you’re on this church’s email mailing list, then you should’ve already received the first one. If you aren’t, then please be sure to leave your email address with Craig upstairs at the reception desk, and we’ll be sure to add your name to the distribution. And if you don’t get emails, then there’s a print version available at the desk, too. This is what we do as a church – we share in the discipline, we do the work together, we support one-another as we try to shape our lives around this faith we share.

The Good News is that even if we fail – even if the houses of our spiritual lives are a complete mess – God meets us there. Because no matter what our kitchen looks like, never forget that it’s God who sets the table, makes the meal and sets it before us at the heavenly banquet.

But maybe we could at least do the dishes.

Kaji Rosa Spellman

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT — November 29, 2009 — Morning

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-10; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Saint Luke 21:25-36

In nomine Jesu!

“There will be signs,” says Jesus, “in the sun, the moon and the stars…”

“There will be signs,” says Jesus, “distress among nations…”

“There will be signs,” says Jesus, “and fainting from fear and foreboding…”

“There will be signs.”

By now, most of us know that end time is any time; every time; our time. We know that.

So, “there will be signs,” says Jesus, “in the sun, the moon and the stars;”

Headline: “NASA finds water on the moon.”

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“There will be signs,” says Jesus, “distress among nations:”

Headline: Israel Strikes Gaza Target.

Headline: Iranian War Games Test Nuke Defenses.

“There will be signs,” says Jesus, “fainting from fear and foreboding:”

Headline: Wave of Debt Payment Facing US Government.

Headline: In Mississippi Delta, A Promising Summer Is Washed Away By Fall.

Headline: NYC food emergencies up nearly 21 per cent.

“There will be signs,” says Jesus and we know how to read the signs, especially now in the last decade, the first decade of the new Millennium, the yet-unnamed decade that I have taken to label the “Anxious Oughts.”

“There will be signs,” says Jesus and we see those signs. But here’s the question Jesus poses today: What are you going to believe, the signs or the Gospel?

How do we know that’s Jesus’ question? Because that’s exactly what Jesus tells us when he tells us: “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is near." With all these things happening, with all these signs, “in the sun and the moon and the stars,” “distress among nations,” fainting for fear and foreboding;” with all these headlines, with all this evidence of distress and disease and disaster, why would anyone, even Jesus, tell us to “stand up and raise our heads”? “Duck and Cover,” would make more sense, unless there’s some evidence to the contrary of “the signs.”

What are you going to believe, the signs of the Gospel.

I guess it all depends on what we mean by the word “believe.” For most people, “belief” is a matter of intellectual or emotional assent or, more menacingly, of the absence of intellectual or emotional assent. The vast majority of people think of “belief” that way, as something we assent to despite any evidence to the contrary.

Such a limited definition of belief makes the statements “I believe in God,” “I believe in evolution,” and “I believe in the tooth fairy” functionally identical, that is, to have no effect on every life at all. Such a limited definition of belief enables us to make a distinction — as all too many of us do — between the “real” world and the world of faith.

In the Gospel for today, in fact, in the whole Gospel according to Saint Luke, Jesus makes no such distinction. For Jesus, the’ Church and, at least, for me, “to believe” is not to deny reality — especially the reality of the headlines and the signs — it is rather to shape our response to the signs and headlines around yet another reality: the presence of God who came among us in the person of Jesus Christ, the presence of God who will come again among us in the person of Jesus Christ, and the presence of God who is among us as Word and water, bread and wine which, after all, are the person of Jesus Christ. When Jesus asks, “what are you going to believe, the signs or the Gospel?” he is really asking us to decide how much reality we are going to shape our life around. It’s only when you believe the reality of the presence of God in your life that you can “stand up and raise your head” in the presence of these “signs” in life. Otherwise, “duck and cover” is the only rational response.

In Word and water, bread and wine, God is as really here as there is water on the moon and a 10.2 % unemployment rate, and that should make a difference in the way we deal with those things. Stand up and raise your head for your redemption is near.

In Word and water, bread and wine, God is as really here — and as broken and pain-filled, challenged and challenging — as Parkinson’s disease and cancer, the national debt, the needs of the homeless, my inability to see clearly, and what ever hardship each of you face and that should make a difference in the way we deal with those things. Stand up and raise your head for your redemption is near.

In Word and water, bread and wine, God is as really here— and as broken and pain-filled, challenged and challenging — as injustice, inequity, poverty, hunger, prejudice and hatred, foreboding and fear and that should make a difference in how we deal with these things. Stand up and raise your head for your redemption is near.

We live in a world, in a nation, in a city and, all too often, in a Church where “duck and cover,” “cut and run” have become the primary, if not the only, tactics for dealing with all the brokenness, pain, challenges and death which are always — always — the signs of the times in our world.

Yet here is the rest of our history and our reality, a history and a reality that became indelibly ours at the moment of our baptism: When Jesus Christ came into the world, God became as real in the world — as broken and pain-filled, as challenged and challenging and, on the cross, as dead — as all the signs of all the times in all of history. God came in Christ. God will come in Christ. God is here in Christ and all the world’s brokenness, pain, challenge and death are made whole and well and strong in him. That, with the signs, is the sum of our reality; it makes all the difference in the way we deal with our fractured lives and fractured world. So stand up! Raise your heads! Our redemption is here!

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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