This file contains the sermons listed below

How often do we wonder, “Where is God? Where is that saving hand which will right all wrongs and protect us from all evil?” And then, in the moment when our greatest anguish comes, we hear a deafening silence from God—a stillness that we so often fear and hate. These are the silences that we feel come too often.

Elijah was alone in his silence. Being persecuted unto death, he fled the city he was visiting and sought solitude in a cave, hoping that those who were putting prophets to death would not follow him into the wilderness. But someone did follow him, and that one was God; and in that hope, Elijah was told to look for God outside of the cave. Calamity ensued, though, as Elijah had to face a great wind, an earthquake, and a fire—all devastations of the land around him and all without God’s appearance. Where was God for Elijah in his vulnerability?

The prophets and disciples after Jesus’ death also faced calamity. The prophets foresaw the coming of a severe famine and the disciples, who wanted to help those affected by the disaster, were put to death instead of upheld for their integrity. This included the James, the brother of John, one of the original twelve disciples, who we commemorate today for his witness to the Truth. Where was God for these believers who were doing right? Where was God for James?

And a few weeks ago, in the midst of Fourth of July celebrations in Philadelphia that go on for most of July, tragedy struck when one least expected it. A group of Turkish Christians, in a cultural exchange program with the United Methodist Church in America, along with a local church who was hosting the exchange, went on a tour of the city on what was called “the Duck Boat”. This amphibious device is a car and boat rolled into one: a car with wheels to travel on land and a boat with a motor to travel in the water. During the water part of the trip, the boat’s engine died. While all the tourists were sitting ducks, a large barge came down the water and ran over the boat. In the end, this accident would claim two young people’s lives, both from Turkey and both under the age of 21. Where was God in a tragedy like this?

Because we’re Christians, we sometimes think that we deserve special favors. When someone close to us dies, we ask God how this could happen. When we’re in financial trouble, we ask God for some aid. When a medical test turns up a deadly diagnoses, we ask God to heal us. And what we’re really telling God is that we want control of the situations we find ourselves in. We want the world to be peaceful and gentle and kind and make sense. It’s what we want; it’s what our minds understand.

But God works in mysterious and often undercover ways. The best example is the one who died on a cross so that we may be saved from eternal death. There may be a time in

our lives that we ask, “Why did Jesus have to die?” but the truth is, if Jesus didn’t die, then we wouldn’t be made righteous by our sinful nature. Someone had to die for us… it doesn’t seem to make sense; but over time, we realize that it’s God’s way and it’s also the way we too must live.

In Elijah’s time, God comes to him in the silence, when all activity of fire and wind and earthquakes are over. It is in the aftereffects that Elijah hears God, who tells him to go back and find the support where there is only persecution. It is also in the midst of calamity, within the city where Elijah’s fellow prophets and prophetesses were killed, that Elijah unites with God to rebuild a shattered faith, which winds up being 7000 people strong.

And it is in the disciples’ time, in the midst of arrests and executions, that the Christian faith grew, not diminished, to encompass thirty-three percent of all people in the world today. Christianity has a way of overcoming calamity, even in the midst of what appears to be silence from God.

In Philadelphia, only days after the Duck Boat accident, memorial services were held for the two young people from Turkey who died. At the site where the boat sunk, a wreath and two doves were released into nature, a sign of hope that this will never happen again and a way to show Christians in Turkey that Christians on the other side of the world truly care for all sisters and brothers united by Christ.

It is in our nature to want to control what happens every moment of the day, but God reminds us that we are not on our own schedules but rather God’s schedule. And in the midst of turbulent times, there is still hope, there is still faith, because the one who has guided us this far has never, and will never, abandon us. Never think that silence means God has abandoned us, because it is often in those silences that we are being guided ever forward. There is hope for a better tomorrow because there is a sufficient today.

Kevin A. O’Hara

Saint Peter’s Church

in the City of New York

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DAY OF SAINT JAMES THE APOSTLE — NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST —
July 25, 2010 — Morning

1 Kings 19:9–18; Psalm 7:1–10; Acts 11:27—12:3a; Saint Mark 10:35–45

In nomine Jesu!

Over the last 10 weeks, each of the news magazines I regularly read — TIME, NEWSWEEK, The Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, the London ECONOMIST, and the Christian Century — have featured often front-page articles describing a very specific, seemingly all-pervasive “dis-ease” affecting people virtually everywhere in the world. It’s described in a variety of ways: as a crisis in leadership, as a decline in confidence, as an issue of self-importance or self-esteem. It’s diagnosed in a variety of ways: as a general feeling or impotence, a rise of anti-authoritarianism, a revolt against any form of elitism — I’ve seen the word “meritocracy” used several times. It is characterized as racist, sexist, ant-rich, anti-poor, and anti-establishment. It is constantly expressed as “us versus them” — we, the powerless versus them who wield all power. It is rampant in the “tea party” movement, evident in the church, prevalent in every kind of economy and corrosive to every expression of the body politic, global, national, or local. The global North versus the global South. Developing versus developed nations. Wall Street versus Main Street. Washington versus the states. The “have mores” versus the “have-nots.” The hierarchy versus the people. It results from abuses of power, on the one hand and distrust of authority on the other. It has always been a problem, but it feel like it is greater and more prevalent and more dangerous now. It is persistent and it will always be an issue wherever two or more people are gathered together. But it has a persistent solution and, more importantly, the power and the means to reach that solution available to all in the Gospel for today.

Jesus describes the problem succinctly:

"You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.”

Just as succinctly, Jesus describes the solution:

“It is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”

And more succinctly yet, Jesus proclaims the means and the power:

“For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

Everything I’m going to say next comes from a sermon on this Gospel I heard 39 years ago. The preacher remains my all-time favorite preacher, John Tietjen, who also happened to be Pastor Damm’s closest friend. I heard it at the first mass on the first day of my first year of seminary when Dr. Tietjen was President of that seminary. I think his description of the way things are and the way things ought to be is right on target. I memorized it on the spot 39 years ago and have shamelessly stolen from it ever since; and I’m going to steal from that sermon again right now.

But before I do, there is one more comment I want to make.

More often than not, we treat these words of Jesus as if they have no place and have no use in the “real world” of politics, economics, and government, even “church” government. When we do that, and we always, almost naturally do that, we make Jesus useless

More seriously, because Jesus ties his death on the cross — “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” — to these words, we make Jesus’ death useless. This is a plea that we not narrowly apply these or any of Jesus’ words to the purely “spiritual” in our lives. What Jesus says and does is more valuable to life than that.

"You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.”

That’s a very accurate description of real life reality; Jesus is precisely describing the way things work, the way James, John and the other ten disciples — as well as we — are convinced things must always work. It is the way of business and industry and every form of government. It describes every hierarchy, autocracy, aristocracy, and meritocracy and is ultimately what every form of “good order” degenerates into in the church, the city and the world. It is a pyramid, with the greatest one alone at the very top with a growing cadre of lessers populating the bottom. Authority flows from the top down. Resources, respect and honor flow from the bottom up. And the goal in life is to climb over all the lessers until you have fewer and fewer peers and are as close as you can get to the top. Virtually every organizational chart in virtually every human organization inevitably looks exactly like that. Most of us think that the only alternative to that is anarchy, no organization at all. That is not the alternative Jesus has in mind.

When Jesus says, “It is not so among you,” he is not suggesting we replace the pyramid with nothing, but rather, that we turn the pyramid upside down. In this pyramid, authority, power, resources, respect and honor all flow from the bottom up; and those at the apex at the bottom serve those at the top; and ambition is re-channeled from competition to climb over others to competition to serve them. This is more than just Jesus’ suggestion; this is Jesus’ way of life, what we now call “the way of the cross.” Our ability to do that, our power successfully to pull off this kind of authority in every expression of human society flows directly from Jesus’ final words on this subject: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." In the upside-down pyramid Jesus describes and more importantly, Jesus lives, dies and is raised to live, Jesus Christ is always at the bottom, holding the rest of us up which is exactly how we experience Jesus as our servant and our nourishment, whom we continually honor and worship in the mass. Can we compete in modeling that? Can we “creatively shape life” — our life in all its expressions — to look like that?

When Jesus addressed James and John and, subsequently the other angry ten and us, he clearly believed that we can do this and when he provided the Eucharist banquet centered in his offering of selfless service to us, he gave us the resources and the power. But I can tell you from personal experience — an experienced we’ve shared now for 13 years — that Jesus’ way is not all that easy, especially with “type A” people like us.

So let us accept this as our challenge — a challenge made all the more critical by our times and by the place in which we are called to live. Publicly nourished by God, in all our diversity and in every expression of our life, let us all compete “not to be served, but to serve” for the sake of the church, the city and the world and in the name of the one who came “to give his life as a ransom for many,” Jesus Christ, our Servant and our Lord.

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

in the City of New York

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EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — July 18, 2010

Genesis 18:1-10a; Psalm 15; Colossians 1:15-28; Saint Luke 10:38-42

In nomine Jesu!

“Philoxenia.” That’s the goal of the Gospel for today; the Gospel we experience in Luke’s narrative about Jesus’ visit to the home of Mary and Martha and the Gospel we experience in the Genesis narrative about Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality to their three visitors.

“Philoxenia.” It’s a Greek word. Throughout the New Testament is it translated as “hospitality,” one of our favorite concepts as in this passage from the Letter to the Hebrews which we’ll hear later this summer.

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels unawares.”

“Philoxenia.” Hospitality. The goal of the Gospel for today.

Mirage-like, three visitors appear to Abraham, who is sitting by his tent flap in the heat of the day. It’s siesta time and what Abraham wants to be doing is taking a nap. Thanks to 3,000 years of both Jewish and Christian interpretation and art, we already know that God, Yahweh, the LORD is one (or all?) of the three visitors — even the Book of Genesis tells us that — but Abraham did not know their identity immediately. Ultimately, the identity of the visitors didn’t matter to Abraham — it doesn’t matter to his descendants even today! Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality was immediate and quickly becomes lavish: First, water to clean their feet; then, water to slake their thirst, bread to satisfy their hunger; finally a rather sumptuous and, on both Abraham and Sarah’s part, sacrificial, feast. Abraham and Sarah go “all out” to be hospitable to these total strangers.

This story is the locus classicus — the foundational narrative — of biblical hospitality. Next to the call of Abram itself, this story sets the scene for the way God will perform the “tikkum olam,” the “repair of the world.” Sarah’s laughter at having “pleasure in old age,” and their son Isaac’s birth are essential to the later stories of the rescue from Egypt, the gift to the Promised Land and the return from Exile that make up the core of the Bible’s story. Promises made; Promises kept; promises received and believed in the context of philoxenia — hospitality — pretty much sum up the essence of biblical practice and faith.

One look at the way we worship, cleansed by water and nourished with a sumptuous meal, ought to make that abundantly clear. Notice too that, in this classic story of Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality, as in the Eucharist, the One who makes and keeps Promises is always the guest.

Which brings us to the story of Mary and Martha and their guest, Jesus. Because I also am “distracted by many tasks” — today we call that “multi-tasking” — I tend to be sympathetic to Martha and, like most of you, find it easy to recognize her sense of hospitality. Mary’s hospitality, her ability to be attentive and open to her visitor, is not so easily recognized but of equal importance. But what most of us don’t recognize in this story is Jesus’ hospitality as well.

This story of Mary and Martha is unique to Luke and several things about it are worth noting. There is an atypical presentation of traditional gender roles: Martha is the one who welcomes Jesus, an indication of ownership as she is the host. This would be unusual, although not unheard-of, in Jewish culture of the time. And Mary is allowed to assume the typically male role of disciple, sitting at Jesus’ feet. Jesus appears comfortable with both roles as appropriate. His hospitality offering a clear challenge to the gender role expectations of their day and of ours as well. In this story, as in every Eucharist, Jesus has a dual role: Honored guest, to be sure and giver of gifts, maker and keeper of promises, as well. In the presence of God, and especially in the presence of Jesus Christ, hospitality is always mutual. The roles of guest and giver are always intermixed.

We all know how to practice hospitality. Here at Saint Peter’s, we take our hospitality-responsibility quite seriously. This is best expressed in the deliberate connection which, from the beginning, we have consistently made between this Table, where all are nourished by Christ the Giver and the Guest, and the other tables at which we eat together and share and serve those who are homeless, those living with HIV/AIDS and the hundreds of others — at least 1000 people each week — who come here to be nourished and whom we welcome with warm embrace. Yet what we practice here, sometimes haltingly but always deliberately, needs to be practiced outside these doors as well. And that brings us back to that New Testament Greek word, “philoxenia.”

“Philoxenia,” means more than hospitality. We know its opposite — it’s part of our regular vocabulary — Xenophobia — “the fear of strangers.” “Philoxenia” — the word we translate as “hospitality” — literally means “love of strangers,” and that’s the life goal, the faith skill, of the Gospel we experience today.

Let’s be frank: On any given day in this country, especially in this city and particularly — and deliberately — at this intersection, we are always surrounded by strangers. Some of them, like some of us, are stranger than others, but I digress. God does not come among us so that we can simply be nice to them. God comes among us so that we would love them in precisely the same way God loves us. What is true at the Eucharistic Table, what we make to be true at our brunch and breakfast and senior center and Momentum AIDS table, we must strive to make true in the rest of the church, the city, and our nation’s life as well as we seek to live every day in the presence of God; in the presence of Jesus Christ. In the presence of God — in the presence of Jesus Christ — there are no strangers, there are only guests. In the presence of God — in the presence of Jesus Christ — there is no “them;” there is only “us.” In the presence of God — in the presence of Jesus Christ — both guest and giver are one.

It’s time for “Philoxenia.” to replace xenophobia. It’s time to entertain angels unawares.

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

in the City of New York

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SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — July 11, 2010 — Evening

Deuteronomy 30:9-14; Psalm 25:1-10; Colossians 1:1-14; Saint Luke 10:25-37

In nomine Jesu!

He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."

— Saint Luke 10:27

It starts out like a really bad joke: Three people were walking down this road—a priest, a religious scholar, and one of mixed races. And then the joke gets worse, as most of us know: the two we expect, the two religious fanatics, turn to walk on the other side of the road, leaving the least likely, and the one probably in the most financial straits, to care for the injured one on the side of the road. This is the crux of the parable about the good Samaritan, leaving us with the question: So, what does it truly mean to love God and one’s neighbor with all of one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength?

People the world over are going to be quick to point out what love is through examples: giving of one’s time to others who are in need, a child saying “I love you” to a parent, bringing flowers home to one who is loved—these are prime examples of loving with all of one’s strength.

Love is our natural reaction to others and God, even before our words and actions get in the way. It is out of this love that determines how we respond to others through word, deed, and action. It is before the emotions get in the way. It is beautiful and pure and unadulterated. And it is the way that God truly responds to us—through love.

But then comes our separation from God—when we allow our love to be blocked from going out to everyone and to God because of our hatred or prejudice; sin gets in the way. Sin blocks the way of responding to this love in a just way, like in labeling certain groups of people. Because of our experience in life, we label people as, for instance, terrorists or as promiscuous. Labeling – one facet of sin — has broken up friendships and ultimately brought on war. Labeling has ruined reputations and destroyed whole groups of people. . After all, we are labeled by our professions, race, culture, economic status, just like the priest, Levite, and Samaritan were labeled in the story—all three also responded against what their label meant though.

One of the clearest examples of this in today’s world are the countless thousands of immigrants who flock to the United States for a chance for refuge and solace, hoping for a possibility to make a little money to support their families, and for the ability to have their children get an education, albeit in a foreign language unknown to the parents. These immigrants are often labeled lazy parasites who evade taxation and suck up welfare benefits at our expense. Truth be told, most of the immigrants who come to the United States hold at least two or three jobs at or below minimum wage, hardly getting a chance to see their children grow, working seventy hours plus a week, because the money they make is just enough for food on the table for two meals a day. The label “immigrant” does not always mean “lazy”, “parasitic,” or “illegal,”

Another example is the labeling of the Islamic community. After 9/11, it has become easy, far too easy actually, to call all Muslims as terrorists, stating that they promote a faith of violence, discounting the Crusades that were started by the Christian believers or the recent wars in the Middle East (a true modern-day Crusade) by Western nations, notably the United States. Today, Muslims who want to build a mosque in a community, such as Staten Island, have to overcome prejudice that is too degrading, through remarks and unfair assumptions. In one example, a leader of the Muslim community stated quite honestly, “They are too ignorant to tell the difference between a Muslim and a terrorist.” And that’s not supposed to be taken as an insult, but we do have a lack of knowledge when it comes to telling who is a terrorist and who is a faithful believer in the Muslim faith, a faith that promotes peace and tolerance.

How many times do we walk the streets of New York and see somebody in need? And how many times do we find our feet meandering to the far side of the sidewalk, avoiding getting close to the one in need? Are we no better than the Levite and the priest who wanted nothing to do with the man who is suffering?

Each of us are called to be that Samaritan walking down the road, who, because he was moved with pity, responded effectively to the call at that moment. He took the person, gave him medical attention, took him to safety, and provided for his every need. It is this pity, or rather compassion, that is given to us to respond to a world in need. Compassion, defined as “to be moved with pity”, leads to our action to care for those who are less fortunate.

Love with our minds, hearts, and souls are so much more than just words, and our actions, our strength, only confirms what’s in our minds, hearts, and souls. If we were sinless, we would understand this concept so much better and we would love with our whole being so much easier. God is the only one who has demonstrated this pure love, and nothing we could or can do will destroy that love. It wasn’t a love that was contingent on the crucifixion of Jesus, but because Jesus died, we are shown the levels of this love, a love that starts with our compassion or pity—our gut feeling. It isn’t a love that requires us to be perfect but that shows us that our knowledge of our sinful nature is good enough to prove that we will never know but continually experience the true love God has for us.

And what better way to experience that love than through the breaking of bread and offering of wine at the table? In the night in which Jesus was betrayed, in the profoundest manner, he offered his life to that of his disciples, first by becoming a servant and bathing their feet and then by offering his life into the hands of the world. His heart, soul, and mind all held the love that God has and continues to display and Jesus continued to embody that love through the days of torture that were yet to come—never retracting from carrying out his mission to show that love through his strength.

Love is our natural ability—a gift from God that resembles God’s interest in us. It is not only shown through actions, but more importantly in how we think and feel and live out our days. It is how God interacts with each of us—unadulterated, pure, and true love.

Kevin O’Hara

Saint Peter’s Church

in the City of New York

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SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — July 11, 2010 — Morning

Deuteronomy 30:9-14; Psalm 25:1-10; Colossians 1:1-14; Saint Luke 10:25-37

In nomine Jesu!

What about me? What about them?

That’s the way I’d translate the lawyer’s two questions: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And, “…who is my neighbor?”

What about me? What about them?

If we add one additional question, which we won’t discuss today — “why do bad things happen to innocent people? — these pretty much sum up virtually all moral discourse to date in the 21^st Century.

Today, “what about me?” is an overarching theme, the cantus firmus of 21^st Century life. Choose a topic. Immigration? Health reform? War? Choose a venue: Casual conversation? Informed debate? Ask any of the burning questions of our day — any of the burning questions — and I guarantee, all matters will ultimately be boiled down to “how does this affect me?” Will I be more or less safe? More or less taxed? More or less inconvenienced? More or less valued? More or less served? More or less “special”?

Entire religious systems have been developed around this question. Recently, the “prosperity gospel” has emerged, centered on the material things God “wants” for its adherents. Amorphous “spirituality” is all about the individual, all about “me” and not much about “you.” All forms of religious fundamentalism are “all about me:” Against evolution because we don’t want our ancestors apes. Literalistic about laws and rules so that we know how “I” can be saved. The list can go on and on in fundamentalist circles of every conceivable faith.

In tough economic times like these, “what about me” has become the determining question at the center of all questions of public policy and, as a result, gridlock has occurred at virtually every level of government.

Over the past several months I’ve had the dubious privilege of being a part of an interfaith clergy group who have met, quite regularly with major players on Wall Street, some of whom, not so long ago, unsuccessfully appeared in televised Congressional hearings. I can report from first hand experience that “what about me?” is the only question these folks are publicly raising.

Sisters and brothers, as long as every question on every subject in every arena is always answered with the question “what about me?” no question can ever be answered, no problem can ever be solved and no conflict can ever be resolved.

When that unidentified lawyer first asked Jesus “what must I do to inherit eternal life,” his was not a religious question but an existential one. If his were a religious question, Jesus could have responded with a religious answer and simply pointed the lawyer to the entire book of Deuteronomy, a book with which he was eminently familiar!

But, no, Jesus responds to this spokesperson of “it’s all about me” not by citing the rule book but by remembering the prior activity of the God “who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of slavery, out of exile.” Trust God, Jesus says, who has already acted for you! What must you do to “Inherit eternal life?” Nothing, Jesus says, because God has done everything. Eternal life is not an inheritance to win, it is God’s gift to be received and accepted. The first thing Jesus tells the lawyer — and us — is that it’s not about me, it’s about God who has, in promises made and promises kept, done it all; so stop focusing on yourself! That’s not simply an answer to a question of salvation; that’s the answer the question of life.

If there’s anything we “justified by grace alone” Lutherans — who can’t enter a Sanctuary without experiencing the waters of baptism and can’t offer worship without receiving God’s gift of the Holy Spirit in the body and blood of Christ — ought to get it’s that! Jesus is on his way to his cross when this lawyer stops him to ask his questions and on the cross he gave the one definitive answer: Eternal life is not about you, it’s about me. In Jesus’ empty tomb, God made that absolutely clear. Get over yourself, God proclaims in the crucified and risen Jesus. Get over yourself and feast on me!

“What about them?” The parable of the “good Samaritan” is the best known of Jesus’ parables. Unfortunately, it’s been thoroughly domesticated. Today, the Samaritan is presented as a respectable model for moral behavior — there are even secular laws named for him. Jesus used the image of a Samaritan as offensive model of radically inclusive faith in order to demolish every intra-human barrier. By choosing a Samaritan as the hero of his story, Jesus makes an inescapable point: there is no them; there is only us. And, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, even God is no longer “them” — holy Other — but rather us — ever one of us — in Jesus Christ.

Out there, on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, or on the FDR Drive, or in the subway, or “on the street where you live;” for whatever the reason — selfless faith, foolish doubt or “Lutheran guilt” we all strive to be like the Good Samaritan; to do our reverent best to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” Out there, we strive to be good Samaritans.

In here, it’s a different matter. In here, there is but one Good Samaritan who himself, once stripped, beaten and dead, now lives to give himself to us who are very much the same.

What about me? What about them? These continue to be the overarching questions. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. That is God’s overarching response.

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

in the City of New York

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SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — July 4, 2010

Isaiah 66: 10-14; Psalm 66:1-9; Galatians 6:1-16; Saint Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20

In nomine Jesu!

There is a major disconnect between the seventy who return rejoicing, and us. Their demons submitted to them, ours won’t. At least that’s the way it seems. The last few years have pretty much put to bed our doubts about demonic reality and demons. These days, we see them and their effect all around us — mucking up the environment, the economy, our politics and what once we called our “civil discourse;” messing with our health, our relationships and almost every aspect of our daily lives; showing up in a hideous quadruple murder touching one of those we love; evident in courtrooms and hospices and in the dysfunctional behavior of so many. We are unsettled. In the Church, the city and the world — there is dis-ease, frustration, gridlock and the sense that things are going in the wrong direction. Virtually everyone I listen to is trying to get their lives and themselves under control and express little to no hope for the future. It’s the national mood, reflecting individual dis-ease. The seventy returned with joy, because the demons submitted to them. On the Fourth of July 2010, there’s a dearth of joy among us and about us because our demons seem impregnable. And there’s worse news yet. If our joy remains dependent on our demons submitting to us, on our world making sense to us or on our being in control, then we’ll never know joyfulness. Maybe if our current sense of helplessness last a little longer, it will teach us that lesson.

But if it can’t, Jesus does. The seventy returned with joy from their successful mission. Jesus affirms their success, celebrates their accomplishments and participates in their joy with them. But he doesn’t make success and control the end-all and be-all of human existence, because Jesus knows that these will not satisfy or even last. Instead, Jesus proclaims the Gospel, the Good News they can depend on in times of accomplishment and success — when the demons submit to them — and the Good News they can depend upon in times of failure, disappointment and frustration when the demons don’t. In times like ours, as in moments like theirs, we need this Good News too:

So here it is: “Do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."

True joy, lasting joy, transcending joy, useful joy, Jesus says, is not rooted in what we do, but in what God does. True joy, Jesus says, is found in what God has done for us by becoming one of us, by dying and being raised for us, by sending the Holy Spirit to live in us to energize our doings, and by writing our names — indelibly — “in heaven.”

We Americans — who have made always our highest value to be what we do as opposed to what is done for us — have trouble with the Gospel. The so-called “protestant work ethic,” works and has served us personally and our country well. We believe in success. We believe we should — and always can — earn our own way. Even when we need them, we are appalled when the benefits of disability or unemployment or even retirement are called “entitlements;” we prefer to think we earned them! One underlying reason for our current national and individual mood is that we can’t seem to accomplish anything and we don’t want to depend on anyone.

With that way of thinking, living and being dominating our lives, it’s hard to rejoice in times like these. When life is evaluated on the basis of “you are what you do,” any form of not doing or un-doing is devastatingly joyless. It is frustrating. It leaves us hopeless. It feels like death. Fireworks and summer distractions mask, but do not cure this deathward drifting disease.

Resurrection does! God does! Today Jesus reminds us that God acts always, always, always for us; always and indelibly on our side! "I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.” Our value, our worth, the meaning of our lives is not dependent on what we accomplish, or don’t accomplish, or can’t or won’t accomplish. Our value, worth and the meaning of our lives is solely determined by — and dependent on — the cross-marked love of God.

As for those un-submitting demons who at this moment, are, in fact, having their day, the only effective way to deal with them is through joyous faith, not frustrating fear, which rightly recognizes their penultimate power. And then, for no other reason but “the joy that is set before us” and with no other power that Christ’s death and resurrection, bring in that yet more glorious day.

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

in the City of New York

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FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — June 27, 2010 — Evening

1 Kings 19:15-16; 19-21; Psalm 16; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Saint Luke 9:51-62

In nomine Jesu!

Elijah passed by him and threw his mantle over him… Then he set out and followed Elijah, and became his servant.

1 Kings 19:19b;21b

It’s soccer season, so let’s play a little ball. You’re a player on the field, in the offense, meaning you have a position very close to the goal. You see the ball. It’s controlled by one of your fellow teammates, who is dribbling it down the field. For a brief second, you look to your left. One of your teammates is being heavily guarded by the opposing team. To your right, you see an empty space. Crouching only yards away from you is the goalie. You know you’re in the goalie’s line of sight, but more importantly, the goalie has a close eye on the ball. You’re wide open, only seconds left in the game. This could be it—the goal that breaks the tie on the scoreboard. You see the passing kick, with the ball flying in your direction. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for your whole life, the chance to make the ending shot. The audience gets quiet. Time seems to trickle by in slow motion. The ball is very close to you now. And…

How would you receive the ball? Would you be prepared, ready for the quick sink into the goal? Or would you tense up, completely missing the ball and relying on overtime to settle who the true victor of this match is. Or might you totally ignore that the ball is coming to you, taking all the responsibility of everything that ball means to you, the team, the cup, and the rest of the world off your shoulders. These problems are what we face when the ball comes in our turf. What resembles this ball for us? It is God’s call for us to follow.

Like the Samaritans in Jesus’ day, we often ignore God’s call completely, not even hearing Jesus. Consider this example. In 2004, after the tsunami devastated several villages on the southeast coast of Asia, missionaries from several Christian organizations within the United States flew to the ravaged area. While many of these missionaries were present to rebuild the lost community, one missionary brought together the people every day in one particular village, asking them to find hope and to believe in Jesus as their Lord and personal savior, repent of their sin, and to live a more godly life. Any time someone would agree to this promise, the missionary made a big deal to etch a tally mark into the nearby tree truck to show the rest of the community how Christianity is growing in the area. But while the missionary was focused on building the number of believers, homes were not being built. The goal was only for saved souls, not saved lives. Sometimes its easier for us to ignore what is really being asked of us because what is being asked seems to be too difficult or monumentus to carry out.

Other times we get over-excited. Since we’re the ones who are open, we must be the best ones to take the ball, not realizing that there are other options on the field. In the Gospel, someone approaches Jesus on the road and says, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And then Jesus says the strangest thing: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Following Jesus is costly and it may even be lonely. But it’s never a matter of personal decision outside of a community. Following Jesus means becoming part of the disciples’ community; it means following wherever God has called you to go.

Sometimes we think we’re ready for the ball to be passed to us but only on our own timetable. Ever said, “It’s just not the right time?” or “I need to get more in order to start this project” or even “I’m scared?” The one who calls us through, knows that we want to operate on our time schedules, and that God calls us to act in a different time altogether: it is the time of now—that when one receives a call, it is time to act on that very same call, in whatever capacity is possible. So, we don’t have to hear that the one who followed Jesus say in reply to the call, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home” for the right time is God’s time.

There are other instances of how we often respond to God’s call today. There’s the call that gets delayed because we place on conditions. “If I get this, I’ll do that.” And there’s the call that we follow with all of our might—the one that God allows us to be fully who we are made to be. It is this call, this embracing of the call, that allows us to live out the fully Christian message of being a servant for Christ.

Most would see living out the call in the fullest sense as the correct play for the game, but it is also the hardest to achieve. Many times we don’t feel ready or maybe we feel that the pressure’s just too much or even we feel that we just aren’t good enough. But here’s the secret: On God’s time, we have the advantage. We have everything we ever needed. And we have team mates aiding us—one of which is God. God is on our team, playing on the field with us, passing us the ball, allowing us to do our little victory dance when the game is won—what an awesome God we serve.

And so the call is before us all, even if we can’t hear it through our ears or we don’t think it’s the right time or we feel alone in the call. The amazing thing to remember is that God in the form of Christ remains on our team and, because Jesus died on the cross for us—for all of us — not just those who can envision the final goal; the call remains always at our feet.

Kevin A. O’Hara

Saint Peter’s Church

in the City of New York

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FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — June 27, 2010 — Morning

1 Kings 19:15-16; 19-21; Psalm 16; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Saint Luke 9:51-62

In nomine Jesu!

It’s seldom easy to preach on a text from Saint Paul. It’s even more difficult, I think, to listen to a sermon on a text from Saint Paul. Especially in the summer. But given all that we are doing today and given all the we have come from, it would be irresponsible if we did not spend some time thinking together about these words from Paul’s letter to the Galatians appointed for, of all days, this day.

You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.

—Galatians 5:1

Freedom. Self-indulgence. There’s our dilemma. There’s the banner some of us wave, almost defiantly. There’s the petard some of us, especially us “progressives” in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America — particularly since last August — are regularly hoisted upon. What some of us call “freedom,” the life-product of our baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, others of us call “self-indulgence,” the by-product of our disobedience to the word of God. Some of us find ourselves on one side; some on the opposite and some of us find ourselves torn between the obedience we learned as children (I know some of us rebelled — and still rebel — but our past still is with us) and our experience of faithful freedom, “publicly nourished by God,” especially in this place.

You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.

There is our dilemma in all its complexity. Yet, particularly in the context of gender and sexuality, It is seldom expressed as complexity but rather as dichotomy: obedience versus freedom; discipleship versus license; morality versus immorality, faithfulness versus sin. Either we’re on one side of that “versus;” or else on the other. For some, the “versus” is so divisive and distinctive that they will even expel their loved ones on the other; they will even divide the church.

In the Gospel today, James and John — whom Jesus, not particularly affectionately nicknames “sons of thunder” — make precisely those clear distinctions, between faithful Jews and apostate Samaritans, between acceptable hospitably and intolerant in-hospitality, and, on the basis of that distinction, demand “fire from heaven” to destroy those on the other side. Jesus is not amused, though many today think he should be/

It is difficult, but not impossible, to find such clear distinctions mentioned approvingly anywhere in the Bible. In my experience, both in studying the Bible and living my life, nothing is ever that simple. Not in the church. Not in the world. Not in my loved ones. Not even in me. Neither faith nor life is ever that simple. Luther called this a paradox and put it this way. A baptized child of God is “a perfectly free lord of all; subject to none” and “a perfectly dutiful servant of all; subject to all.”

I know you’ve heard this — at least from me — a hundred times, but before we get on that float or disdain that float, listen to this once again.

When Jesus Christ died on the cross and God raised Christ from the dead, and when we were baptized, immersed into Christ’s dying and rising, our old relationship to God was radically altered. God became for us what we call God in our most common prayer “Our Father;” and we became God’s beloved children. We are free from the need to earn a favored position with God. No matter what we do, nothing can separate us from our favored place as children of God. Nothing we do, not even when we die. Death and our primal need to obtain God’s favor are behind us forever. That’s what Paul means when he writes, “For freedom Christ has set you free.” In Christ, we are “perfectly free, subject to none.” And that freedom enables us to stop thinking mostly of ourselves and allows us, with no expectation of reward, punishment or return, to live and act for others. For others are no longer in competition with us for reward, return or punishment, but are beloved, with us, of God. That’s what Paul means when he invites us, “through love [to] become slaves to one another.”

How does that work? That’s the paradox, the complexity. I have no clear way of explaining this except by an analogy, which like all analogies is less than perfect. I’m going to tell you a story. A true story. A story whose content still affects our daily lives in the church, the city and the world. A story that always makes me weep. It is the story of one of the things we experienced here, on this block for those three terrible days, September 11 – 14, 2001.

You know what happened. Unimaginable evil. Wanton destruction. Thousands of innocents killed. In those hijacked planes at their World Trade Center and Pentagon targets, and in that western Pennsylvania field.

It was what happed here though, as thousands attempted to respond to all that death and destruction, that illustrates the relationship between the freedom that comes to us from immersion into death and the duty to others that follows.

You see, here at this intersection for those three days, every day, all day, hundreds of people surrounded this building, shuffled three-to-four abreast, around this building — Third to 54^th, Lexington to 53^rd — trying to donate blood in the three-bed blood center on the Lower Level of the CitiGroup Tower: Thousands of people, all day, every day, here to donate blood for the survivors in a center that only had three beds. (Remember? In those first days, we were still planning “rescue.”)

Impossible! Too many would-be donors, too few beds and technicians. Over and over, we went out and told them that. But still they came and would not leave. They didn’t feel coerced or bound to offer themselves. Death set them free from self-concern and that freedom compelled them to act for others, however futile that action might be. Nothing could dissuade them. They had no concern for themselves. They were completely unafraid. “Freedom, “Janis Joplin once sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” And that kind of freedom, publicly expressed in self-less service, always makes me weep.

Everything we do as a church this day is an exercise of that kind of freedom. We gather to be “publicly nourished by God.” We go out in visible witness to the church, the city and the world. When we do that, it always makes me weep. As you do these things, I ask you to weep with me. It is then you will show the difference between freedom and self-indulgence. And your tears will be tears of joy.

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

in the City of New York

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THE FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — June 20, 2010 – Evening

Galatians 3:21b-29

In nomine Jesu!

Every aspect of Saint Paul’s thought. His entire theological corpus from Galatians to Romans. Whether he is being verbose or concise. Every aspect of Saint Paul’s thought has this singular, inescapable assumption. Actually, it is a conviction: humanity is under the power of Sin. That conviction is not some formulation Saint Paul invented. No, he believes scripture itself declares that we are under the power of Sin. “Imprisoned under the power of Sin,” he writes. The starting point for every aspect of Saint Paul’s thought is Scripture’s declaration that humanity is under the power of Sin.

I get a kick out of some of these luminary television evangelists, some of these hot-shot best-seller book-writing so-called pastors who ramp themselves up to alert the people under their grasp they are Sinners — as though such a plight were some astonishing discovery. That we are under the power of Sin is painstakingly obvious: injustices loom, the human family is divided and at war, humanity is turned inward on itself, denying every day love of neighbor. As I said, I get a kick of out some preachers because they work so hard to make a big show about humanity being under the power of Sin.

My jest turns to dismay, if not disgust, when these preachers move beyond description into proscription. You know the drill. They begin with this great big revelation that we are Sinners. Then they turn Scripture into some rough, impervious jailer. Use Scripture as a strict bludgeon, controlling weapon, a powerful force to keep humanity on the straight and narrow; straight and narrow “or else.” That “or else” gets used over and over and over again against people and institutions, children and adults both in the form of controlling social values and propagation of so-called social norms, and in the practice of limiting human rights to those people who conform to these social values and norms. I am exceedingly aggravated that our State, our Country and the world is in increasing bondage to this distorted sense of the Christian tradition.

Saint Paul could be no clearer: “For if a law had been given that could make alive, then righteousness would indeed come through the law.” Friends, Scripture is not our “jailer.” Scripture simply declares the actual situation: humanity is under the power of Sin. No doubt that before faith came, we were imprisoned under the Law. But faith has come, Christ has come and live and died among us and for us to make us children of God. That is your life, life granted by God. Saint Paul holds that the Law cannot give us such life. The Law cannot make us right with God and one another. The Law cannot do what comes only by grace through faith on account of Christ. Certainly the Law may be helpful, may protect and give limits, but it does not grant life. Rightly seen, the Law tells us we are Sinners and drives us to cast ourselves not on the Law, but on the life offered in Christ Jesus. The one into whom we are baptized, clothed. The one who makes us one. The one who gives us God’s promise of life now and forever.

Christians have long said this life in Christ includes the gift of the Holy Spirit. The gift of the Holy Spirit which helps, in fact actuates our ability to love our neighbor, speak well of those we love and those we struggle to live. The gift of the Holy Spirit which helps, in fact actuates our praise of God who gives us life without any merit of our own. All we do that is good and right, holy and just in our lives we do by the Holy Spirit. Captive to the Law or free in Christ. Under the Law or one in Christ. Friends, we are children of God through faith. It’s about time we live what we are.

I’m reminded of the two things we always praise in children. We praise children when they share their toys, give a helping hand to some other child, or offer a warm embrace to others in need. We also praise children when they stand up to the bullies or fend for the children who are harassed by other children. So-called “main-line Christians” have some of the most effective and most far reaching social ministries of all who take sharing and helping and embracing seriously. We say “yes” to plenty of people to whom the world says “no.” We say yes really well. Sometime we need to say, “no.” That’s not something “main-line Christians” are good at. We don’t say “no” to those who bully or harass. We tend to be too silent, too passive, too tolerant of intolerance. My prayer for us so-called “main-line Christians,” we who are children of God, is that the Holy Spirit will inspire us to speak the truth to our sisters and brother who call themselves Christian but have made Scripture into sword, reduced Scripture to a set of proof texts, or established false limits by misusing Scripture’s holy purposes. Speak the truth to our sisters and brothers so that they might be freed by the truth to live in Christ’s perfect peace and joy.

All we do that is good and right, holy and just in our lives we do by the Holy Spirit. Would that the Holy Spirit give us such courage to proclaim what Paul proclaims, “that there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female,” there is no longer us or them, or any condemned. For we are all one in Christ Jesus. And in claiming and proclaiming we are all one in Christ Jesus, be life and hope to all the world.

Jared R. Stahler

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — June 20, 2010 — Morning

Isaiah 65:1–9, Psalm 22:19–28, Galatians 3:23–29, Luke 8:26–39

In nomine Jesu!

Does anyone else join me in having a bit of a sense of jealousy at the part of the Gospel in which the man sat down and was “in his right mind”? After all that drama with demons and swine and insanity the man got dressed, sat down, and was IN HIS RIGHT MIND.

I hear that part of the Gospel, and I’m jealous. Because I will admit to you that I do not always – perhaps even not often – feel like I am in my right mind. And I don’t imagine that I’m alone in this feeling.

How could we feel like we’re in our right minds when the day is never done? With iPhones and Crackberries following us around from the bedside to meetings to the gym to the kneeler to just within reach of the shower – the day is never done. This sense that we can never do enough: symptom.

How could we feel like we’re in our right minds with the incessant drone of the 24-hour so-called “news” cycle replete with pundits and adversarial coverage and inane chatter we need to keep up with to talk to our friends and believe that we have a least some of a sense of what’s going on, while, in fact, we never do. And we might not even know what’s really news right in front of us – I don’t mean the local news, necessarily, but the news of the people who even matter to us, our spouses, our extended families, our close friends we can’t quite find enough time to reach in a meaningful way it turns out that so much news is no news and we feel disconnected. Symptom.

How is it that we could feel like we’re in our right minds, what with the constant chafe against what this wonderful (German!) theologian named Jurgen Moltmann calls American “official optimism” which expects so much, but offers not quite enough to pull off. Consistently evaluating whether or not we’re achieving the “American dream” we expect a whole lot of ourselves, our culture expects perhaps even more of us, and while some of us hold hope that we’ll get there, others never really thought that the dream ever applied to us, either. (I mean, I’m still not sure that I’m not supposed to be some hybrid of Donna Reed and Barack Obama. But how does that work?) Holding the expectations against the real and lived experience, we feel the rub, the chafe – regardless of whether or not we’re even conscious of it – while so many of us live with the hopeful guilt and disappointment of the dreams dreamt on our behalf. The constant sense that someone’s falling short they could never do in the first place: symptom.

And how could we possibly feel like we’re in our right minds when, at the times that we’re truly honest with ourselves, we realize that when we pray for peace, we’re not really sure what that even means, because, looking at the world stage, at least, none of us has ever seen it in our lifetimes. With peace as a concept, an idea, rather than an existential truth, we cannot help but feel lost. And it is that wandering, that lack of what we know we need more than anything else, I believe, that makes us constant wanderers, lost. Perhaps the saddest symptom of all.

Add to all this the depression and the anxiety so many of us live and struggle with every day, and it’s not hard to wonder if, in fact, we really are in our right minds. And when we sortof “diagnose” ourselves that way, we might approach the story of the Gerasene Demoniac a little differently.

For a long time I’ve struggled with this text. Let’s just say it: this is a bizarre story, and I’ll admit that I bracketed it somewhere in the stories that I’m not meant to relate to, at least not personally. (Like, say, the Annunciation – Mary and the Holy Spirit have a history you and I will never have...) So the story of the Gerasene demoniac seems like one of those stories – I just don’t expect Jesus to send my demons into a herd of suicidal swine. Instead, this feels like a story for us to hear and say a puzzled “oh” and then move on. Except that this time around, I saw something I hadn’t seen before.

After the dramatic events of the day, after the demons and the pigs and the cliff had met, after everything that makes this story so memorable – and so disturbing – after Jesus controlled, and saved, after all this – the man who had been known only by his demons was free and saved and he sat down, and he was in his right mind.

We hear in the Scriptures stories of Jesus’ healing touch, his ability to make life better for those who sought him and we can develop an image of Jesus as healer – it’s one of the images even the secular world embraces and can understand. Scripturally, what I think becomes harder to imagine is life after the dramatic changes.

To put it another way: yes, Jesus saves! But what comes next?

It’s a constant question in the gospels. After the healing, after the resurrection, after God’s gifts are made known to us so dramatically and so perfectly, then what’s next?

Good people of God, we must remember that after the high drama of death and resurrection, Jesus’ first words are of peace.

Truth is, each of us will continue to live with symptoms. We will not escape the forces that draw us from clarity and satisfaction in the Lord, not in this lifetime, anyway. But our God is a God of resurrection – of new life. There is a seed of resurrection in each and every healing story – of them, and of us, being brought to new life. A new life that will be lived in the old places, with many of the same influences that will lead us to need to know resurrection – accomplished once and for all in Christ Jesus – but made anew, again and again, through the work of the Holy Spirit.

And this is how we live in Christ: refreshed and renewed in the midst of and after all of the drama, so that, at the last, we might sit at Christ’s feet and finally, and forever, be in our right minds and know Christ’s peace.

Kaji Rosa Spellman

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — June 13, 2010 — Evening

Saint Luke 7:36-50

In nomine Jesu!

Eating. We all love eating. Eating out. Ordering in. All sorts of food. Some foods familiar to us. Some new to us. We especially love going to a friend’s house for a meal. Because we know that meals are more than food. Meals are opportunities to gather with others. Talk over food. Discuss new ideas over a glass of wine. Establish new social relationships. Tend to long-cherished friendships. When we eat, when we eat with others, we build social relationships and cultural values. When we eat, when we eat with others, we give expression to social relationships and cultural values. Social relationships and cultural values that can uphold the status quo. Entertaining as usual. Groups as usual. Usual has rules. You know some of these usual rules: The man sits at the head of the table. Children remain silent throughout the meal. In days gone by, lunch counters for white people only. Meals are powerful. At meals we build and express and keep the social and cultural status quo.

Or break it. Meals can be a place to break the status quo. Meals can be a place of radical hospitality. Hospitality that shuts down the reign of status quo and replaces it with the reign of God. A reign of God made manifest in Christ Jesus every time he sits at table and offers hospitality to all people.

This evening we hear this story, Christ Jesus’ story, our story A story, a promise that breaks the status quo. And renews the face of the earth.

SEND FORTH YOUR SPIRIT LORD AND RENEW THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him,

and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table.

A Pharisee asks Jesus to eat with him. Jesus agrees, enters the Pharisee’s house and takes his place at the table. Pharisee is another word for status quo. His is a status quo house and a status quo table. He invites Jesus to a meal because he wants to impress on Jesus the importance of status quo. This Pharisee is a protector of morality, a keeper of purity, a defender of holiness. He sees all the social and cultural codes of the book of Leviticus as strict guidelines to be followed and enforced. And he wants Jesus to think and preach and teach and act the same way, too. He is impressed by Jesus’ power. And wants Jesus on his side, the side of status quo.

You know Jesus is up to something. In agreeing to eat with a status quo Pharisee. In taking his place at the table. In reclining at table. Settling in for a meal, a long conversation. You know Jesus is up to something. His conviction cannot and will not be altered. He will usher in the reign of God. This Pharisee’s table with change. This Pharisee’s house will change. At this Pharisee’s table and beginning with his house, Jesus breaks the status quo. And renews the face of the earth.

SEND FORTH YOUR SPIRIT LORD AND RENEW THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

And a woman in the city, who was a sinner,

having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee's house,

brought an alabaster jar of ointment.

She stood behind him at his feet, weeping,

and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair.

Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment.

This unnamed woman knew Jesus would usher in God’s reign. Yes, for all the world. The whole face of the earth renewed. But also her face. Her world. Her life. Under the reign of status quo, she is not permitted to eat at this Pharisee’s table. This Pharisee considered her morally repugnant. Unclean. Impure. Whatever the reason, she is called sinner. Status quo precludes her from this house, from this table, from this meal.

Yet, Christ Jesus is at this Pharisee’s table and in his house. He will turn upside-down and inside-out the Pharisee’s conservative traditions. Not in some distant future. But now. He will see to her inclusion. Not in some half-hearted way. But fully and surely. Just as fully and surely as God is in her midst. Christ Jesus will embrace her.

Knowing all this, she embraces him. With alabaster jar. Scented ointment in hand. She embraces him. Behind him.

Not at the table. But behind him, kneeling, weeping at his feet. Weeping, because she is precluded from this table. Weeping, because she knows what Jesus will do. Jesus will embrace her, honor her, and secure her place at his table. A place, the world — status quo — refuses to grant her. Overwhelmed with this bitter-sweat reality. Poignant.

Heart-wrenching. She weeps. And weeps. Tears streaming down her cheeks onto his feet. Inextricably linked: her tears, his feet. Sensually linked: her tears, his feet.

As though tears were not enough, she dries his feet with her hair. Kisses them. Kisses them as a sign of incredible gratitude. Overwhelming joy. That this Christ Jesus would embrace her. Embrace this so-called sinner status quo will not embrace. Pardon what status quo holds should not be pardoned. Forgive whatever wrong status quo holds should not be forgiven. And perhaps in a way knowing what his embrace will ultimately cost him. She anoints his feet. As though he were already dead. Dead because Christ Jesus has crossed the line. Broken the boundary between clean and unclean, pure and impure, holy and morally repugnant. His actions will create suspicion amongst the leaders, leaders like this Pharisee. His preaching. His teaching. And the uprising of people who will follow this reign of God taking hold in the world. Will bring sentence of crucifixion. He embraces her. And he embraces death. Death on her behalf. Death on her behalf and on behalf of everyone like her. Death that breaks the status quo. And renews the face of the earth.

SEND FORTH YOUR SPIRIT LORD AND RENEW THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself,

"If this man were a prophet,

he would have known who and what kind of woman

this is who is touching him

— that she is a sinner."

Jesus spoke up and said to him,

"Simon, I have something to say to you."

"Teacher," he replied, "speak."

A certain creditor had two debtors;

one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.

When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them.

Now which of them will love him more?"

Simon answered,

"I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt."

And Jesus said to him, "You have judged rightly."

Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon,

"Do you see this woman?

I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet,

but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.

You gave me no kiss,

but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet.

You did not anoint my head with oil,

but she has anointed my feet with ointment.

Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven;

hence she has shown great love.

But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little."

Then he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven."

Of course Jesus knows this woman is a sinner. No matter what sin she has committed — something done or something left undone — Jesus forgives her and receives her as his own. Receives her as a sign of his work to usher in the reign of God.

This extraordinary new way of life that sees all people through Christ Jesus’ own death. So that we who may have to face death, face life instead, on account of Christ Jesus. So that we and all who might face exclusion, see in Christ Jesus’ own exclusion our own inclusion and embrace. No limitation. No caveat. No merit of our own. No work. Absolute, unrestrained embrace. When Christ Jesus sets out to stamp out the power status quo, he is this serious, this intent, this all-encompassing.

Many debts or just a few. Many sins or just few.

This woman must have had sins aplenty, that she would risk her own life to enter this Pharisee’s house to be in the presence of this Jesus who ushers in the reign of God. That she brought alabaster jar. Wiped Jesus’ feet with her tears. And dried them with her hair. Her sins must have been legion. Christ Jesus forgave them all.

Simon the Pharisee did none of this. Failed. No water for his feet, a common courtesy of the time. No kiss of peace for welcome. Or perfume for his head. Simon the Pharisee did none of this. Neither out of obligation or thanks. For he was so entangled in status quo he could not see his own error, his own sin.

Friends, hear these words that shatter status quo: Your sins are forgiven. Take your place at table. Take your place in this house. Take your place in the reign of God. And rejoice in this: there is nothing you must do to earn that place. It is a gift. A free gift. A free gift that urges us to do nothing other than give God thanks. Unceasing praise of the one who receives a sinner like me. Joy and delight in the presence of God. Even as we anoint and weep, dry and kiss the feet of our savior Jesus Christ. Even today. Even today as we all offer Christ’s own embrace of other’s. Christ’s embrace which breaks the status quo. And renews the face of the earth.

SEND FORTH YOUR SPIRIT LORD AND RENEW THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves,

"Who is this who even forgives sins?"

And he said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

Some see sinners to be condemned. Those who were at table with him. The ones included at the table. The ones who benefit from the status quo. And would rather keep it that way. They see sinners to be condemned. There are plenty of people like that. In our communities. In our churches. In fact, the keeping of the status quo is what you hear in many communities, in most churches.

Not here. Here you’ll hear faithfulness to the Gospel. Christ’s Gospel, which ushers in the reign of God. Here we see and embrace sinners, all of us, who on account of Christ have place at this table. And this is critical: here we receive Christ’s gift as our own gift, only to offer that very same gift to offer others. Teacher, priest and pastoral theologian, Henri Nouwen, most famously put God’s practice of gift-giving this way: “that virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our fears and open our home to the stranger with the understanding that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler.” Or a sinner. Or an outsider. Or someone at the margin. Or someone like you and me. Here we receive Christ’s gift as our own. And offer that gift freely for others. That virtue, that credible and incredible embrace, that breaks the status quo. And renews the face of the earth.

SEND FORTH YOUR SPIRIT LORD AND RENEW THE FACE OF THE EARTH

Friends, tonight you heard this story, Christ Jesus’ story, our story. A story, a promise that breaks the status quo. And renews the face of the earth. One table, one house, one face; the whole face of the earth.

When we eat, when we eat with others, we build social relationships and cultural values. When we eat, when we eat with others, we give expression to social relationships and cultural values. Every time we gather in this place, we gather with the One who re-builds and re-shapes social relationship and cultural values. Every time we gather in this place, we gather with the One who ushers in the reign of God.

Hear this invitation: join us regularly at this place, gathered in prayer around this table and sharing its fruits. To celebrate and to give thanks to God For God’s incredible gift to you and to me. But most especially, to share this incredible gift with women and men like this women, with people like us, with all people. Confident that Christ Jesus breaks the status quo. And renews the face of the earth.

Jared R. Stahler

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — June 13, 2010 — Morning

2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15; Psalm 32;

Galatians 2:15-21; Saint Luke 7:36—8:3

In nomine Jesu!

Our liturgy today is populated with my favorite people. You know who they are: people who take risks. Every person named today — Nathan and David, Paul the Apostle, Simon the Pharisee, the un-named foot-washing woman and, of course, Jesus is a risk-taker. And in the kind of world we live in, where risk aversion, risk assessment, risk avoidance and, my favorite, risk management are the watchwords, risk takers are counter-cultural people and counter-cultural people have always been my favorite people. They swim against the tide. More often than not, they change the direction the tide by the way they do their swimming.

Now, not all of the risk-takers into today’s liturgy are exemplary; several of them take risks with somebody else’s lives and for the wrong reason. Take King David, for example. For most of the Hebrews scriptures and a significant portion of the New Testament, David is regarded as an exemplary figure, but not in today’s reading. Because of his consuming self-interest, David not only risks Uriah’s life — he doesn’t just risk it, he actually has Uriah killed — and he also risks Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba’s, life; given what happens, she could be stoned to death for adultery. By the time this story ends, David has even risked Bathsheba and his child’s life. Are there any more chilling words than the words with which our first reading ended: that the child Uriah’s wife bore David became very ill? Actually, there are more chilling words, in the next chapter when the child dies. So exemplary King David is not such an exemplary risk-taker, although unlike the risk-assessing, risk-averse, risk-avoiding, risk managers we’ve seen at Congressional hearings lately, David is at least exemplary enough to take the consequences for his indiscretions and not place the blame on others.

In the Gospel, Simon the Pharisee is a risk-taker too. He takes the risk of hospitality — and you know how I feel (how we feel) about hospitality. Simon invites a still-relatively unknown rabbi named Jesus to a meal in his home, but it’s only after Jesus’ encounter with that tearful, unnamed foot-washing woman that Simon’s wrong reasoning becomes apparent; he was just trying to get in on the ground floor with a young rabbi who might be going somewhere it the future. Simon’s risky hospitality was not about Jesus, it was all about Simon, all about me. Risk-taker? Maybe, but not exactly anxious to swim against, much less change, the tide. Personally, I kind of like the guy — he probably cooks a mean brunch — but I don’t think I want to emulate his behavior.

A couple of today’s risk-takers though take risks because of faith, not self-interest.

Nathan the prophet is a magnificent example. Nathan is a prophet and, while he probably had a following, he didn’t have much in the way of security. Yet Nathan goes to David, who has a palace, and an army and is also, by the way, “the LORD’s chosen,” to point out David’s sin with that climatic “You are the man!” You’ve got to believe there’s more to life than the obvious to do something that dangerous! There’s not a hint of self-interest there!

Paul’s the same kind of faithful risk-taker. He puts his livelihood, reputation and life on the line in order to make a bold, inclusive claim: We call it “justification by grace through faith”

and treat it like a doctrine to be argued or a denominational banner to be waived. Paul calls it a way of life for everyone and put his life on the line to proclaim it.

But my favorite risk-taker in today’s liturgy — aside from Jesus — is the unnamed, tearful, foot washing woman whose self-emptying hospitality asks for nothing in return from anybody. She doesn’t ask for Simon’s or Jesus’ acceptance. She expects no return for her considerable investment in costly ointment. She doesn’t demand, nor does she seem to expect, forgiveness. According to Luke the Evangelist, she does this act of love and worship simply for the sake of doing it. She does this act of love as if she already knows, before she does it, that her sins are forgiven. And by her act she gives Jesus a chance, and Jesus, in turn, gives Simon and Simon’s house guests a chance, to swim against and change the direction of the prevailing social, economic and religious tide. That’s makes her my favorite risk-taker.

Our liturgy today is populated by another group of my favorite people; you; us. And because we’re gathered together here to worship God we, just like Simon the hospitable Pharisee, invite Jesus to be present, in the midst of us, at a meal. And, as it was and is and always will be, Jesus is delighted to be present, not just as Guest, but as Gift and Giver divine. Present, right here and right now, with us, in the midst of a risk-averse, risk-avoiding, risk-assessing, risk-managing world, a world — a world that doesn’t need a preacher or a prophet to inform us — whose tide is moving in the wrong direction.

Our liturgy today is populated with all my favorite people, but that doesn’t matter one whit. What does matter is that we — you and I — along with Nathan, David, Simon, Paul and that wonderful, tearful, foot washing, unnamed woman — we are Jesus’ favorite people. And Jesus comes among us to publicly nourish us to creatively shape life in the city. How do we do that? By faithful, fearless, self-less risk-taking.

If all these other people — Uriah’s wife, Nathan and David, Paul the Apostle, Simon the Pharisee, the unnamed woman and, most importantly, Jesus — had not showed up in our liturgy today, I’d be more than happy to tell you exactly what risks to manage and exactly what risks to take. But they did show up and, gathered with us around Jesus, they give us three clear examples of faithful behaviors risked in our risk-avoiding, risk-assessing, risk-managing world.

1. Follow the example of that unnamed, tearful, foot washing woman and risk yourself for others for the sheer joy of doing it. Now that’s risky behavior.

2. Follow that same woman’s example, live and love as if you already know you’re sins are forgiven, as if you know that the only death you have to fear already lies, baptismally drowned, behind you.

3. The most difficult: Follow the example of Nathan and speak truth to power. In a world filled with risk-avoiders, it’s not self-righteous to take a risk and say, “You are the (well, fill in the gender yourself)!”

Our liturgy today is filled with Jesus’ favorite people. And now, finally, it's summer. You know what we could do? Trust the Lord! Swim against the tide. I’ll meet you at the water. Right after we eat.

Amandus J. Derr

Senior Pastor

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — June 6, 2010 — Evening

1 Kings 17:17-24; Saint Luke 7:11-17

In nomine Jesu!

It’s no wonder we’re all so exhausted. Even when we’re not taking inventory, you can be sure that our bodies are. Listing out the demands on us: demands for time, demands for money. Demands for commitments. Demands for attention. Demands for work. Demands for people. Demands for thoughts. In our increasingly segmented lives, we have many demands on us, and in more and more directions so nothing seems to come together.

And it’s no wonder that we’re exhausted.

It might come as a surprise that God has thoughts on this. Exhaustion carries with it so much subjective baggage. “I should be able to handle it.” “Everyone else has demands, too.” “If I could just x, or y, or z, then I could pull it all together.” Perhaps, given our cultural demands coupled with our cultural shame, we don’t understand that our segmented lives and our difficult-to-manage demands have a spiritual component, as well, and that God may have something to say about this.

And scripture does have something to say about it.

As Christians, we talk about resurrection. Resurrection is the core, it is the very core of our faith. That God would resurrect one so that all could be resurrected, too. It’s the message of Easter; it’s the celebration our faith affirms with every Alleluia.

But have you ever noticed how the broader culture talks very little about resurrection? Noticed how it hasn’t been as easy, even, for say Madison Avenue or Hallmark to co-opt the message of Easter into something commercial and exploitable, because it’s a bit more esoteric? It’s not THAT easy to understand, it seems so much more abstract and far off – after all, most of us aren’t that interested in thinking about our deaths and resurrections, at least not every day – and so, chances are, resurrection sits as a distant concept until we’re forced to face death – the death of a loved one, or our own mortality.

What’s so sad about this is that it turns the concept of resurrection into something macabre and not something that is beautiful and joyous and part of God’s work in our lives every single day.

And so we spend days and hours and minutes in moments of joy, but often with an overall feeling of exhaustion – that feeling we want to push away and would if only we were a bit stronger – not realizing the ways in which the very core of our faith speaks directly to our exhaustion and weariness.

Just listen to today’s texts. Both give us the most perfect examples of people of faith who raised people from the dead. Elijah saw the widow’s son, who “had no breath in him,” prayed for him, and brought him back to life.

Jesus saw the woman with her son who, too, had no breath, and said, “young man, I say to you, rise!” and brought him back to life.

These are stories of resurrection, stories in which God restored life when the breath had left them. And we could read them just as quaint events disconnected from our own lives. We could read them as historic, situated in the past, having nothing to do with us. But that would be a mistake.

Because how many times have you felt that “the breath had left” you? Breathless, exhausted, weary, broken, hurt, how many times have you felt like you’ve been socked in the gut, deep in need, gasping for aid?

We celebrate the Holy Spirit in Pentecost, God’s eternal gift to God’s people, the Spirit, the Wind, the Breath of life, always with us, always in us, breath by breath, the Holy Spirit becomes ours from our first day to our last, and then some. Pentecost is, by far, the longest season of the year, and for good reason, too – maybe it takes that many weeks to remind us, again and again, to the ways God offers us the Holy Spirit – the breath of life – again and again, moment by moment, in times of death and resurrection that happen throughout our lives.

Because that is what resurrection is: not just raising up the dead, but giving new life! Through the Holy Spirit, God raises the dead, and raises us, too. Raises us from our sorrows, breathes new life into us even past our last breath, holds us fast in every moment, brings newness to the same old story, gives us the next burst despite our exhaustion.

God’s in the exhaustion, folks. And God resurrects our dry bones, giving us new life. Resurrection is a lifetime event, my people. Resurrection happens as we, even as we have no breath in us, take the next breath.

And that is worth an amen and a Hallelujah.

Kaji R. Spellman

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — June 6, 2010 — Morning

1 Kings 17:17-24; Psalm 30; Galatians 1:11-24; Saint Luke 7:11-17

In nomine Jesu!

Death is a powerful force. A young boy, a grown man. Death does not discriminate. Death takes the lives of both. Illness overwhelms and there is no breath left in either boy or man. This boy who would have become a man dies. This man who was once a boy dies. And mothers are left to grieve. Widowed mothers are left to wonder not how they might live, but left to wonder how they themselves might die. Because they will die. For each of these widows, death is implied, but no less sure than for their sons. In fact their deaths are imminent. You see, their sons were their means of life. In these societies, sons care for widows at the loss of a husband. Property transfers to the son’s name. A father’s business becomes a son’s business. A father’s life becomes a son’s life. A son’s death becomes a widowed mother’s death. After her son’s death: where will she live? what will she eat? whose rights will benefit her? With their sons’ deaths, these widows are doomed to live on public assistance, the alms of a few generous, liberal hearts.

Death of a son. Death of a widowed mother. Death of one leads to the sure and certain death of another. Mother and son share death together. Share death.

We all share death, share death in its varied forms. Our beloved is gone from us and a bit of us dies, too. Shared finances, shared beds, shared chores, shared sorrows, shared joys — all but memories, gone. A cherished friend moves to another country and shared conversation becomes infrequent, if not nearly impossible to sustain with any regularity. A co-worker leaves the company. Gone is that shared creative companion and her trusted perspective. Son or daughter goes off to war. Not only are we worried for their safety, but what of those shared tag football games, or family outings, or weekend symphony concerts? Are these things suspended for only a time, or will son or daughter leave and never return? In far too many parts of our globe, LGBTQ children suffer death — physical, emotional, communal death — when they come out. So, too, do many parents and siblings of LGBTQ children. They share society’s discrimination and wonder when society will share theirs. Many churches have faced death or are close to death. Thriving for decades on the influx of immigrants that looked liked them, spoke the same language, had similar cultural sensibilities. Perhaps these new immigrants came from the same town in Germany or Norway, Ireland or Italy, England or Greece. Better, these immigrants came bearing the same religious identity, namely Christian. And best of all, these immigrants came bearing the same denominational nametag: Roman Catholic, Reformed, Anglican, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and the favorite of some in this community — Lutheran. So much is shared.

Except when it is not.

Truth is we are living in a time when so much is not shared. Look around most New York City communities: new apartment buildings galore, religious institutions crumbling at their feet.

These widows and their sons proclaim to us something about death. Death of a son. Death of a widowed mother. Death of one leads to the sure and certain death of another. Mother and son share death together.

I think it is critical for loved ones to share deaths. That is why at burials we find the brown dirt beneath the grass-colored plastic carpet, accompany bodies to the crematorium, chant our faith, sprinkle with water and incense to mark Christ’s mark on our dead and our ever-growing cloud of witnesses. I think it is critical for us to begin to emphasize human dignity in the work force as opposed to seeing people solely or principally for their profit margins. I think it is critical for us to see and hear and know the deaths of our fallen in war. Just as critical as it is for our national conscious to share in knowledge of the extent of our war wounded. We’ve been praying for Sean, whose journey from Iraq to Germany to Walter Reed Hospital would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. He likely would have died on the battlefield, his father tells us, along with the hundreds of other people who share beds nearby his in our nation’s VA hospitals. I think it is critical for society to begin to share the pain of the LGBTQ community. Legislating. Shunning. Biblicizing. Think of the transformation possible if we shared each other’s pain. I think it is critical for the church to begin to share its narrative with newcomers. The default in too many parishes is if not German, English but certainly not Spanish.

Our programs. Our method of governing. Our way of handling liturgies, or liturgy books, or This Week at Saint Peter’s. We refuse to share, except when the sharing is done our way. You know the way, the way we did it for 10, 15, 25, 33 or 50 years. What if together we worked to put some of “our ways” behind us so that we can embrace with a wider group the “our ways” in front of us?

I imagine it is easy for some to dismiss refusal to share as the classic response of a four year old to his newborn sister. Except, refusal to share is sinking our relationships, our families, our society, the church, our world.

It is critical for us to share deaths in their varied forms. And in sharing death, share life as well.

Death of son.

Death of widowed mother.

Death of one leads to the sure and certain death of another.

Life of son.

Life of widowed mother.

Life of one leads to the sure and certain life of another.

He gave him to his mother. Her child — ever so vital to her own life — he gave her child back to her. Saturated by weeping. Sobbing. Perhaps wailing. Sharing death. He gave him to his mother. This very child whose death would bring certain death to this widow — this land-less, money-less, power-less, hope-less widow. He gave him, once dead now alive, to his mother. Alive. So that they might share life together.

In many ways, this transformation from death to life, this dead one becoming alive reminds me of a Saint Peter’s narrative. Four decades ago the people of Saint Peter’s Church celebrated the end of ministry in the former building at the intersection of 54^th Street and Lexington Avenue. Shut the doors. Carried some church furnishings. And in a New Orleans-like funeral procession, complete with jazz band and incense, marked the completion of a church building’s life journey, and the beginning of new life for a communion of diverse people and communities. Several years later, God gave Saint Peter’s Church back to an imaginative people. Alive and transformed for new life. To give new life itself to the City of New York. What was dying and dead, became alive and life-giving.

God continuously blesses us with this very same opportunity. Perhaps not with an entire building, but with parts of it. Certainly with the systems we create to run it. The opportunities and possibilities inherent in this pattern of death transformed to new life are manifold. The question is, will we embrace it. Will we have widow’s faith to face death head on. Wondering where we might live, how we might eat, what rights might benefit us. Will we have widow’s faith, allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to receive that very thing which was once dead, and brought about death, transformed into life to bring about life.

By now you may have heard from the pastors and other leaders of this congregation that this summer we have a few big projects we must complete. All these projects will require focus and a great deal of dedication by the entire staff and some of the leadership. We are asking everyone else to observe a time of Sabbath, a prolonged summer Sabbath for rest and renewal.

I am aware that asking most New Yorkers, and especially you and all the people of Saint Peter’s Church to observe a time of rest and renewal is impossible, so perhaps you can do this, think on this throughout these summer weeks: Think about those things that might need to come to an end. Think about those things we might together need to let go. Old disagreements. Tired ways. Dreary methods. Think about what deaths we might share. What ends we might celebrate together. So that God can give ourselves back to us. Revived and renewed. Alive and at work in new and exciting ways for the sake of the church, the city and the world. Share death. So as to share life.

God gives us images of what this new, shared life might look like. A tree of life with leaves for the healing of the nations, we heard throughout Easter. Not a tree searching for water, but a tree given plenty of fresh, clean water. Not one leaf, but many. Many different leaves all alive together on different branches, but sharing one trunk. A tree of life. And many languages, we heard at Pentecost. Many people. Each hearing and understanding in their own language. And singing, cooking, dancing, thinking, being their own. Being their own as many people so as to share gifts from many cultures. The possibilities are endless. Because life of one leads to sure and certain life of another. Saint Paul put it this way in his letter to the various communities in Rome: For we are convinced that if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Jared R. Stahler

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY — May 30, 2010 — Evening

Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; Saint John 16:12-15

In nomine Jesu!

People have reflected on God throughout the generations. Christians have named God as a trinity, a Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A claim such as this is called doctrine. One thing is certain about doctrines, doctrines raise questions, many questions on which theologians ponder. Answer questions with the majority and you’re called orthodox. Answer questions with the minority and you’re called unorthodox. Could be branded a heretic.

While many people have sought to answer the questions raised by the doctrine of the Holy Trinity —

and some people believe they have the answers — truth is many questions remain. All the questions have at their foundation, this question: Are we with God?

Are we with God in our lives, our daily lives; in work and play; in family life and personal life and community life? Are we with God when things are going our way; when we are successful; when we feel good about ourselves and our relationships; when we receive the gifts of laughter, happiness, glee? Are we with God when we are distraught, discomforted or distressed; in times of trouble and trial and confusion and unrest; when money is tight, relationships tense and life is hard? The question set before us this evening, a foundational question of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, is, in all actuality, the question we face day in and day out our whole lives through: are we with God?

A growing guild of preachers answer the question this way: They claims that we know we are with God when life is going well, in those blissful moments when blessings are many and great, and when we are in lockstep harmony with the world around us. Lockstep like house and car, spouse — non-gay, of course — and 2.5 children; income stream above the national median; United States citizen. The list goes on almost unchecked. This growing guild of preachers has picked up on and feeds the sentiment to believe in that fairytale land of paradise on earth; immediate, personal gratification at every moment; and a life in which life’s commission is to be plenty without plenty of commitment. It’s a twisted version of the psalmist’s observation that “my cup runs over” meant to lead us to believe that the only way to God’s favor is to pursue — either by receiving as a result of good living, or praying just hard enough; or perhaps giving to the preacher large amounts of very green cash — wealth and fame, some artificial homogenous view of humanity, an exclusive club of select few. It’s a consumer’s paradise. No wonder the churches served by this growing guild of preachers are growing, are controlling and have gobs of money. Some call this sort of thing Christianity. Christian life. Found in the Christian section of the bookstore. Christian music. Christian morals. Christian politics. Perhaps even a Christian nation.

It is easy — all to easy to believe that we are with God and God is with us when we “have.” Have all sorts of things. Have it our way. Have it right.

The scriptures point to a dramatically different perspective. The scriptures point to the truth that God doesn’t operate with such an unbalanced scale; that God is with us no matter what. The scriptures tell us God is certainly with us in times of bliss, and that God is most certainly with us in times of trial; so much with us, that we can boast in our sufferings. The impulse of a growing majority is to count suffering and hardship and differentness as a liability. The scriptures claim all of life, even adversity, as Gospel truths; Gospel truths suitable for boasting. Because suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Not some hope that may or may not follow through, a hope that may or may not bear fruit. But a hope that does not disappoint, a sure and certain hope that, in the words of Dame Julian of Norwich, holds all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Shall be well because the answer to our question: is God with us? Is always, “yes.”

God said “yes” to you when God claimed you as God’s own. And God will continue to say “yes” to you until the day you die — through the day you die because even in death God says “yes” to you, because even in death we are God’s. Nothing, not even death, can separate us from this sure and certain hope.

Here’s what this Christian preacher proclaims about the Christian faith, actually it is what Saint Paul proclaims: faith tells us we are at peace with God. And being at peace with God, means we have peace in our heart and homes, peace in our city, peace among nations and peace in Christ’s church. Though it may not look like it, God’s peace is among us and with us now: in everything God made and called good; in everyone God made and called good. Peace — God’s peace — is in and with and under all things God made and called good.

Some of you may think me naïve or perhaps too optimistic. I tell you I’m not any of those things. I instead have my heart and eyes and mind fixed on God’s ongoing work in this world; God’s ongoing work in and with and through you and me; God’s ongoing work of being love and showing forth love to all the world. My heart and my eyes and my mind are fixed on God. Fixed on God because the Holy Spirit provides that focus. When we might want to look elsewhere, the Holy Spirit brings us back to God’s promise. When we might want to believe ourselves stricken or abandoned by God, the Holy Spirit brings us back to God’s promise. When others might want to say of us that we are accursed or to be despised, the Holy Spirit showers us with God’s promise. God’s promise to always be with us.

God’s promise to be with us is a promise made ours through Christ Jesus, who endured endurance itself for us; who endured all sorrow and all pain and all peril so that the crosses of our lives would never be our demise, but instead point clearly and fully, certainly undeservedly, toward God.

That’s the real Christian message, friends. That’s the truth proclaimed by the scriptures and by that original guild of preachers in whose footsteps we follow.

Christ is our hope. And because Christ is our hope there is nothing we have to fear, nothing of which we have to be ashamed, nothing we have to hide or suppress. God’s glory is seen in taking sinners like you and me, claiming and loving us with the very same love shared between God the Father and God the Son; the very same, ever enriching love shared by the Spirit, the one that is and makes all things Holy. Are you and I, are we with God? The answer is always “yes.”

It has taken me a little while to come to say what I am about to say. I am incredibly hesitant to say, let alone preach, that as Christians we ought do anything for God, because God does everything for us. But I’ve come to recognize that we live in a society that always wants something to do. Always wants to be on “the go.” Always looks for some way to fill time, even when we really shouldn’t fill time but instead should keep Sabbath with ourselves, our families and with God.

In part, I wonder if the growing churches of the growing guild of preachers I talked about grow because they keep people busy, tell us we have to do something to get right with God. If you need something to do — knowing that God has and always will continue to say “yes” to you, will always be with you — here’s what I suggest you do. Actually it is what God suggests you do: give thanks. Give thanks to God for what God has done for you and with you. Give thanks and give praise to God.

And never stop.

Give unceasing praise. And live that praise day in and day out. And watch as your life of praise — in joy and in sorrow, in plenty and in want, at all points of time — claims and insists on this truth: God is and will always be with and for you. Always with and for you, because being with and for you gives glory to God, the one, holy and undivided trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Jared R. Stahler

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE HOLY TRINITY / FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — May 30, 2010 at 11:00 a.m.

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; Saint John 16:12-15

Franz Schubert, Mirjams Siegesgesang, D. 942 Cantata for soprano, choir, and piano

In nomine Jesu!

The problem, dear faithful people, is God and suffering; all human suffering “of every time and every place;” our suffering, the kind of suffering some of us are experiencing right now; the kind of suffering caused by everything from natural disasters — Haiti comes to mind; or human concupiscence — the gulf coast comes to mind; or human selfishness — Darfur, Rwanda and the Shoa come to mind; or environmental disorder — influenza, asthma and cancer come to mind. Suffering, sisters and brothers, is part of the human experience. Joy is too, but joy is not a problem. The problem is suffering and how we experience God in our suffering. We want our God — our higher power — to do something about suffering. And if God does not; if God ignores suffering or allows suffering or, worse, causes suffering, then one of C.S. Lewis’ more cynical observations is spot on: God is a “cosmic sadist.”

The whole point of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is to respond to the problem of human experience, human suffering. But for many of us, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is an unsatisfying answer; mostly because it affirms absolutely contradictory things about God.

And we don’t like living with contradictions.

We seek an awesome, majestic, glorious and timeless God — and in the Trinity we affirm that, yet we experience a God who lives as weak and poor in human time as one of us. And that’s a contradiction.

We seek a powerful, peerless God — and in the Trinity we affirm that; yet we experience a God who is weak and emptied coming near us. And that’s a contradiction.

We seek a God of unequalled splendor — and in the Trinity we affirm that; yet we experience a God despised and rejected by others like us. And that’s a contradiction.

We seek a God of unsurpassed wisdom — and in the Trinity we affirm that; yet we experience a God who chooses to look foolish, crucified, dead and buried. And that is a contradiction.

We seek a God active, vital and endlessly living — and in the Trinity we affirm that; yet we experience a God who dies for those called “friend.” And that’s a contradiction.

We seek a God who is “holy other,” mysteriously infusing us, inspiring us, enlightening us — and in the Trinity we affirm that; yet we experience that God infusing, inspiring and enlightening through the commonalities of water, bread and wine; through the banalities of each other’s thoughts and words and touch. And that’s a contradiction.

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not confusing, its contradictory; but its contradictory for a reason, because the God we experience in Jesus Christ seems contradictory to the God we seek.

Here is the mystery, the greatest affirmation: the God whom we worship as Trinity does not wait for us to seek God, define God or understand God. The God whom we worship as Trinity comes to us. The God who is Holy Trinity does not wait for us to come up, but always comes down to us. We seek to kneel and serve God; yet we find our God kneeling and serving us. That is the joy and mystery of the Holy Trinity and those who trust it find its story and our song in every time and place.

Here is one of those stories:

A long time ago, a suffering, enslaved people cried out to God for deliverance and God answered them, sent them Moses the deliverer; and with a mighty hand and by a pillar of light, God led them out of slavery and into freedom and right to the brink of a watery death, the Red Sea before them and the chariots and soldiers of Pharaoh pursuing them. Caught between freedom and fear, they were terrified. With the rush of a mighty wind, God parted the sea and they passed through the waters to the safety of the other side. God fed them with bread from heaven and slaked their thirst with water from a rock. That is their story yet, in the images of deliverance — pillar of light, mighty wind, slavery to freedom, life from death at the waters, bread from heaven and water from the rock — and because of our experience of God in the person of Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit, it is our story too. And this is our — and their song — a song of praise, a dance and shout of victory, a story and an anthem meant to give us hope.

Amandus J. Derr

Senior Pastor

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE HOLY TRINITY / FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — May 30, 2010 at 8:45 a.m.

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; Saint John 16:12-15

In nomine Jesu!

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God…and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God… not only that, but we boast in our sufferings…

In the first four chapters of his letter to the Romans, Paul the Apostle moves us to that great affirmation, the core of our Christian faith and the heart of Lutheran theology. It’s also a major problem. Made right with God and having hope? That’s fine. “Boasting in suffering?” Now that’s another matter. Surely, Paul is not saying that God causes suffering for those made right by God through Christ. Such a God would be reprehensible to any thinking believer. Would God justify us only to then inflict suffering on us for the sake of God’s greater glory? That would leave us with the untenable view of God portrayed by C.S. Lewis’s disturbing metaphor of the divine as “cosmic sadist.”

No, Paul’s assertion moves us in another direction. Rather than cast blame upon God for human suffering, Paul assumes suffering is part of the human condition and especially part of the experience of those who follow the crucified and risen Savior. Suffering comes to us all; indeed, it comes in full measure to the faithful when they stand up and are counted “for righteousness’ sake.” But since we are now made right with God through Christ and joined to Christ by our baptism into his suffering, dying and rising, we can even give thanks (“boast”) in suffering when it does occur — not because Christ will magically remove us from pain, but because, in Christ, suffering finds meaning.

Paul pushes those who share in the life of Christ to the astounding and life-giving affirmation that even suffering yields fruitfulness: hope that will not disappoint. “Suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character, and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint us.” This is what the great William Sloan Coffin begins to affirm at the end of his sermon entitled “Alex’s Death,” preached just a few days after his 24 year old son was killed in car accident. Dismissing any belief that God would have caused such a loss or the pain that flows from it, Coffin affirms, “Even when pain is deep…God is good.” God does not stand outside our suffering, but through Christ has permanently entered into it and so redeems life’s costliest losses.

The mysterious hope that flows out of suffering is true, not only on a personal level, but on a social level as well. While many go through pain and suffering to arrive at a deep gratitude for life, some see their suffering as part of a larger redemption. After numerous threats on his life, after being attacked by mobs, and police with dogs; after being stabbed by a stranger, after enduring personal depression, and setbacks in the struggle for civil rights, Martin Luther King, Jr. made this astonishing claim: “I have lived these last few years with the conviction than unearned suffering is redemptive.” His testimony to endurance, character and hope that flows from the suffering of a Christian is not for King alone but for the entire human race on whose behalf he gives bold witness. Such suffering elevates entire groups of people to seek loving and just relationships, not just for themselves, but for the whole human society, moving us closer to “the design of God’s great love,” for which we daily pray.

One thing is sure: suffering and death will visit all of us. For those who follow the crucified and risen Savior and choose to take their stand in the grace of Christ, suffering may come as the price of faithfulness. On Holy Trinity Sunday, we can affirm with Paul that such suffering is borne by Christ, who gives us peace with God, a God who pours love “into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, three persons – One God, all conspire to bring hope out of suffering for those who believe. Finally this God, in Christ, and through the power of the same Holy Spirit will “lead all to justification and life.”

Amandus J. Derr

Senior Pastor

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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MASS OF THE RESURRECTION / RICHARD CHARLES PANKOW, PASTOR
SATURDAY AFTER PENTECOST — May 29, 2010 at 3:00 p.m.

I Corinthians 15:12-26; Psalm 146; Revelation 7: 9-17; Saint John 11:21-27

In nomine Jesu!

I first met Richard Pankow in the late 1970’s when we were both members of the worship committee of Lutherans Cooperating in Metropolitan New York. (Yes, there was once a time when Lutherans actually cooperated in metro New York.) I was a newly-minted Seminex graduate in my mid-twenties and was sure I knew everything about liturgy. Richard was in his mid-forties, had just finished his doctoral thesis, and was sure he had forgotten more about liturgy than I would ever know. Ours was a contentious relationship back then. At the committee’s initial meeting, I touted my friendship with the administrative assistant to the director of the Lutheran Book of Worship project, fellow Seminex graduate Robert Rimbo. Richard, of course, one-upped me; his friend was the director of the project, Eugene Brand. I’d heard of Dr. Brand but, because I had spent five long years in the Missouri Synod Midwest, my response was something like, “when it comes to liturgy, can anything (or anyone) good come from the ALC. I have repented.

At any rate, by the mid-80’s and with the emergence of the ELCA, Richard and I lost touch until he retired and — much to my surprise, although I was forewarned — Richard began attending mass here. In January 2000, he announced that he was joining Saint Peter’s Church and made an appointment to meet with me. Because it would make this sermon unprintable, I can’t tell you what Richard called me that day as he walked into my office, but I can tell you how he described himself as he scanned that office for where to sit. “Amandus, I don’t know if you can accommodate me. After all, I am the second largest Lutheran body in America.” And then he sat down in my desk chair.

Good. You’re laughing. Richard wanted you to laugh today. In fact, his initial instructions for this liturgy — and all nine revisions of them which followed — each included this phrase, “There is to be no sentimentality of any kind…” on this day.

For Richard, that was more than a matter of taste. Laughter was very much a part of his life and faith, theology and practice. And, while over these past nine months, we’ve all shed a lot of tears together with Richard, if you think about it and with the exception of his last week, most of those tears accompanied laughter, his and ours, about the absurdities of life and ministry — and death.

Richard laughed at death. He did not welcome it — he loved life and living much to much for that — but he did laughed at it, death and its power. Regularly. Insistently. His lauighter was based on firm, theological principle, earthy Martin Luther-like principle, powerfully proclaimed and learned and felt through one of those magnificent Bach cantatas Richard loved so well; a portion of which we will all hear —and some of us will sing — later in this mass. For Richard, lover of life, death was “ein Spott,” a joke, a mockery, a powerless, impotent absurdity. He laughed at it and, when he wasn’t laughing, Richard expressed that theology best. “If I live, I live,“ he recently told our beloved Jared, “and if I die, I live.” Deeply rooted in his baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and confident in his future, that simple, faithful declaration shaped Richard’s life, every one of his relationships, his ministry, his dying and his death. Even in death, Richard couldn’t resist making that point.

When we saw his body last Monday prepared, according to his instructions, for committal to ashes, we got his point, eloquently and elegantly made, pure Richard Pankow. He was dressed in a simple white alb — a baptismal garment — a powerful expression of the faith we affirmed at the font at the beginning of this mass “If we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with Christ in a resurrection like his.” The only possible response to a faith like that is a joyous “Alleluia!”

Writing to his favorite congregation, Saint Paul gave these parting instructions to the Christian community at Philippi: “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

In our experience, I think these words fairly accurately describe Richard’s approach to life. Excellent. Pure. Commendable. Pleasing. These certainly describe his expectations for those who plan and do liturgy. If you were one of his vicars or one of the many “younger clergy,” whom he mentored and loved, aren’t those the very things he expected — dare I say, demanded — of you?

Remember going with Richard to one of his favorite restaurants or, better, joining him for a meal he and Francisco prepared in their own home: Excellent. Pure. Commendable. Pleasing. Isn’t that what you experienced at his table?

How about those of you who were his parishioners or who were fortunate enough to receive his pastoral care? Excellent. Pure. Commendable. Pleasing. Aren’t these the very ways you would describe the care he gave to you.

When Richard talked about his family, about growing up in Buffalo, particularly about his sisters whom he often said “raised” him; whenever Richard talked about his nieces and nephews and grandnieces and grandnephews; especially whenever Richard talked about the members of his family who followed him (or so it seems) into the ordained ministry of the Lutheran Church, excellent, pure, commendable and pleasing were often the words and always the sentiment that flowed through his lips.

Excellent. Pure. Commendable. Pleasing. That’s the way most of you, and especially you, Gary, cared for him in these last days and catered to him. And he certainly knew that and was grateful for that.

Excellent. Pure. Commendable. Pleasing. That, dear Francisco is exactly what Richard thought and said and felt about you; and about the bond you two shared over these many faithful and love-filled years.

And one more thing: Richard spent what to some might seem an inordinate amount of his last few weeks months doing everything he could do to make sure that excellent, pure, commendable and pleasing be the way the describe the rest of your life, Francisco, too.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, the Rev. Dr. Richard Charles Pankow was a gift of God in Christ in the Church. And he gave the church, the Lutheran Church, a particular gift that must not go unmentioned on this day or unremembered in the days ahead. He didn’t invent it, he didn’t perfect it, but he pushed it and gloried — and as any of his pastors can tell you — insisted on its regular use. Richard led the way to the restoration of the rite of healing — anointing with oil and the laying on of hands with prayer — in the liturgy of the Lutheran communion of churches. And from that insistence flowed his most tangible, material contribution to New York’s Lutheran scene, the 240 bed Augustana Lutheran Home for the Aged across from Lutheran Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York, where “whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence” has a particular meaning for those at the end of this life.

All of this, all of this — this baptismal identity that laughs at death and these passions for all that is excellent, pure, commendable, pleasing and true — all of this was embodied for Richard, trusted by Richard and lived in Richard in his Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. Excellent. Pure. Commendable. Pleasing. Richard knew that that was what , by dying and rising, Jesus Christ had made him. And Richard responded.

There was no better time to see his response, to see all of this come together, and to join that response, than at the Eucharist, especially when he presided, but just as powerfully when he sat in his wheelchair in the assembly or lay, expectant and quiet, in his bed. And whether he wanted it, like it or not, there is always sentimentality of every kind here.

That, sisters and brothers, is where we are going. “And so with all the choirs of angels, with the church on earth and the hosts of heaven,” with Richard and all the saints of every time and every place, that is exactly what we are going to do, now and forever. Amen

Amandus J. Derr

Saint Peter’s Church

In the City of New York

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THE DAY OF PENTECOST — May 23, 2010 — Evening

Genesis 11:1–9; Psalm 104:24–34, 35b; Acts 2:1–21; Saint John 14:8–27

In nomine Jesu!

It is almost impossible to miss today’s liturgical emphasis. Unless, of course, you do.

The word Pentecost may be unfamiliar, strange or confusing and the stories filled with plenty of other names and words that ring oddly on our ears — just about as oddly and foreign as the many languages heard on that first Pentecost day — but the Holy Spirit has her moment of entry. In song and dance. Banners of fire. A rush of sound. Skillful reading, proclaiming.

The Holy Spirit is here. But think of all the things the Holy Spirit has to break through in order to enter in. I’m not talking about wooden walls or glass windows. I’m not talking about granite edifices or steel towers. To imagine the Holy Spirit entering physical spaces either like Santa Clause climbing down the chimney, or some sci-fi ghost-like creature with amorphous qualities would be to mischaracterize, minimize what the Holy Spirit is; mischaracterize, minimize what the Holy Spirit does.

When our lives are dry — bone dry — the Holy Spirit gives us new life. The Holy Spirit motivates us to live for other people, a new life of care for neighbor, love of neighbor — the neighbors we love naturally and those neighbors we call enemies and struggle to love. The Holy Spirit set us about eternal life in God, as God’s beloved — beloved people God will never abandon, of whom God will never let go in life and in death. The Holy Spirit is the foundation of grace received and grace offered. The Holy Spirit is our wisdom and our understanding when we cannot ourselves be wise or understand. The Holy Spirit is our discerning and our strength. The Holy Spirit inspires our understanding of the one who never abandons us, the Lord to whom we are loyal with all honor and praise. The Holy Spirit gives us joy in the presence of God.

The Holy Spirit is here. The Holy Spirit is doing something, doing plenty. The Holy Spirit is almost impossible to miss. Unless, of course, you do. Not because of some physical or conceptual barrier, but because of all the things the Holy Spirit has to break through in order to enter in.

Of course the Holy Spirit will break through and enter in. But the Holy Spirit has to break through and enter in, nonetheless. Break through the obstructions we put in the way of the Holy Spirit. Obstructions we put in the way of people in whom the Holy Spirit is at work. Obstructions rooted not in the things we call good in our lives, but obstructions rooted in too much of those good things. All God has made is good, but there is a point in which we might, by our use or misuse, get hold of too much good. And too much obstructs.

Our environment is resilient, but too much pollution overwhelms the system and destroys it. Oil gushing forth from the base of seas and oceans will devastate ecosystems. Essential ecosystems. Holy ecosystems.

Facebook, twitter and text messaging keep us close to friends and family — keep us informed of our world, in touch with our world — but too much connection, too much of the time or at the wrong times, invades conversations happening in a physical place, invades conversations happening with a person in sacred personal time, in holy personal time. The result is desecration of sacred time, holy time with partner or children, parents or friends. Allows us to live in too many places at once, while actually living in none at all.

These everyday good things in our lives are good in balance. But too much brings unwanted chaos, undesirable disconnection; brings unrest. You know what I’m talking about. Too much loneliness. Too much merriment. Too much work. Too much time online or in front of television. Too much money. We’ve all lived that unrest. We’ve all experienced that disconnect. We’ve all suffered that chaos.

Friends, we are on a rapid course toward annihilating humanity. And the culprit is not the popular scapegoat. Gay marriage doesn’t threaten marriage or family, but desecrating sacred time with our beloved will be the cause of separation and coldness. The economy doesn’t threaten our well-being, but greed will drive our country, our world to financial meltdown. The digital age doesn’t threaten information gathering and sharing, but constant bombardment will turn our lives and relationships into commodities. The impulse to work will not cause our demise, but valuing ourselves on our work or our wealth will cause us to lose our self-worth.

When I talk about the obstructions the Holy Spirit has to break through in order to enter in, I am talking about these things, these good things of which sometimes we have too much. It is true, we can indeed have too much of a good thing.

And here’s God’s promise when we have too much of a good thing, too much of a good thing that creates obstructions: the Holy Spirit breaks through those obstructions. Will enter in. Does enter in. And sets us on another way.

The Holy Spirit puts our lives and our loves in balance, sets us on the path of joy in God’s presence and the presence of our beloved; the Holy Spirit gives us those things needed to participate in God’s good creation in good ways.

Participate.

That’s a useful word.

Useful in all its forms:

Participating.

Participatingly.

Part