South America! Take Me Away!

Having spent seventeen days traveling around the east and southern tip of South America on a 2,500 passenger ship, the world, for me, has become a bit smaller and upside down at the same time. Walking the streets of Buenos Aires and Montevideo the in the days and week before Christmas was surreal: Christmas Trees and ripe red cherries; sunlight and fairy lights; tinsel and tangos; rain, hail, sleet, snow and sunshine all in one day; lots of contrast and comparisons. The least of it is that the seasons are reversed....December 23rd in Buenos Aires was a balmy 83 degrees Fahrenheit making it difficult to get on the plane on the way home hearing about the cooler temperatures awaiting us in NYC.            

And I learned some interesting things about South America, many of which I found astounding, to say the least. Did you know that.....

• Genetically Chileans, Argentinians and residents of Uruguay are a good eighty percent European with the countries of Spain and Italy heading the list, but many other immigrants came form Poland, Germany and areas of Eastern Europe. Each of these countries has a thriving Jewish population, as a matter of fact, two of our local guides were grandchildren of Jewish immigrants who came to the area from Eastern Europe just prior to World War II.
• There are very few descendants of indigenous peoples in these countries of South America. They were systematically decimated by the Spaniards either by diseases or by the sword. 
• Only about ten percent of the population of Argentina is of African descent, even though slavery was an important part of their history. Slaves were often forced to serve as the first defense against invasion, and they perished in higher numbers that the descendants of Europeans. 
• The Spanish actually settled Argentina twice. With the first attempt came men and cattle. Almost half of the men were killed by the local indigenous folk, so they re-grouped and departed quickly leaving the cows and bulls behind. When the Spanish returned some years later, the cows and bulls did what cows and bulls usually do, and since there were no natural predators, reproduced at  an alarming rate and were enjoying the bounty of the grasslands we now call the Pampas. Thus the Argentine beef culture was born.
• Argentinians are not vegetable eaters; beef eaters-yes; green vegetables-not so much. Which is a real shame because the produce that I saw and ate was excellent, great tomatoes and grapes, peppers and cherries. Steak, lettuce and tomatoes seems to be the go-to meal.
• And the steaks???? Absolutely wonderful!
• Local economy is terrible: run away inflation makes it necessary for folks to use the ATM every day and often by 2:00 in the afternoon, the ATM's start to close down because they run out of pesos. Most merchants and restaurant folks prefer hard currency: US dollars and Euros are the way to go. The economy makes it difficult for anyone to save money to buy a home, so most people rent.
• Eva Peron is more than a Broadway musical. She is still revered by the populace having played a major role in obtaining the right to vote for women.
• Argentina has an official religion, Roman Catholicism ; Uruguay does not. It is a decidedly secular state that has legalized marijuana, gay marriage and abortion; Christmas is called "The Family Holiday". Catholics have felt discrimination, and, in recent days, have mounted a campaign to return Christ back into Christmas.  The Argentinians are  struggling with reproductive rights as I write this.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip. At one point we were 400 miles from Antarctica! We saw glaciers and penguins, and cormorants, and whales, and dolphin and lots of tango dancers! I even got to practice my decidedly New York accented Spanish.

                                                                   
                                                                                               

....Diversity in God's Kingdom

   Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ Luke 10:9

So here we are, the day after a very busy political day in the nation, our city and our island. We some things remain the same, and others will be different. That is what elections do; that is what changing times do; that is what a generational shift can do, and these are not bad things. 

In today's Gospel reading Jesus is commissioning his disciples and followers to go out into the world and spread the good news to everyone. He gives them permission to walk into all sorts of different experiences with limited assets and work with the folks there to do ministry and let them know that their God is near to them, whomever they are and wherever they are.

Growing up in New York City was, for me, a time of celebrating its vast diversity. As an outer borough white ethnic kid, I had a unique educational expierence being educated in an inner-city parochial school that was located in what was one of the roughest neighborhoods of the day: Bed-Sty....not the froo-froo gentrified Clinton Hill or Bedford- Stuyvesant of today, but the " roll up your car windows and lock the doors" Bed-Sty where drug deals could be found on every other corner and the local Pizza joint didn't deliver after 9pm.  And my elementary school was located in the beating heart of the hood. Every morning I arose in my lily-white Brooklyn neighborhood , a neighborhood of well-kept single family homes with small lawns and small backyards on tree-lined streets, to hop on a school bus at the local Roman Catholic Church to be shipped passed the deconstructed Ebbits Field, over Eastern Parkway and into the heart of darkness...and it was great!

This was the era of post war America, the Baby Boom years and, as part of that statistical elephant, the local parochial school was over crowded, so several parishes in my part of Brooklyn sent their overflow students to a school on Classon Street where the demographics were changing with a rise of African American families from either the south or the Caribbean.  These newer families were mostly Protestants and were buying up the houses of the Irish' German and Italian Americans who were moving quickly out of town and deeper into the new Long Island suburbs created by builders whose red-lining tactics kept non-white people out of their developments.  This allowed a new wave of people, people of color, to move into the houses left behind.  A significant difference, besides race, was that the majority of the new inhabitants were not sending their kids to parochial schools. This meant the school attached to the local parish was very under-utilized and had many empty seats.  Those seats were filled up with kids like me for whom there was no room at the local parish school....more their loss.

We had all kinds of kids at Nativity, my grammar school. Kids were bused from all over Brooklyn to learn together there: refugee kids from Africa and Hungary, newly arrived transplanted Puerto Rican kids, Afro-Caribbean immigrants from Jamaica and Barbados, mixed race kids like the Chins whose Chinese father married a strikingly beautiful Irish and African American red head and fathered seven children with her. They ran a successful chain of local laundries. We learned together and learned how to work together. We played together and ate together. And most importantly, we worshiped together. We would sit by class in alphabetical order for church services: I sat with Leticia Rodriguez, Maria Sierra and Dorothy Jane Zilkowski....then, as now, I was an end of the alphabetical order line kid. Every Wednesday we had Benediction in Latin after lunch.  On the first Fridays of the month we attended Mass before classed began, and then feasted on hot chocolate and Danish pastries, a gift from a local bakery to the good Sisters of St Joseph. It was probably the one day a month our teachers knew that all of us had breakfast before we got to school. And we reached spiritual milestones together: First Communions and Confirmations were done through the school and not our local parish.  We became a tight-knitted, scrappy, tough and smart group of urban kids for whom working and living in a truly integrated society produced a healthy tolerance and understanding of "otherness", because in one way or another we were a school of "others", for even those of us for whom there was no room in our local schools were often treated poorly by our neighborhood kids who were luck enough to attend the local school. We were tainted by our daily connections with those of other ethnic groups and cultures, but, in reality, we were the lucky ones.

Every day we saw the kingdom of God in action. Everyday we walked with "the other" and knew that they were really more like us than not. Every day we were enriched by new and varied experiences and personal interactions with some wonderfully interesting, smart and funny kids whom we would never have met if we stayed in our comfort zone. It was definitely an unexpected, unrecorded and undocumented social experiment, but it was also a celebration of  radical welcome in God's kingdom, look around, do we need to widen our circle to get more and different folks in our orbit? That is how we grow in mind and spirit.

Let us pray: O God you have bound us together in a common life. Help us, in our struggles, to engage one another without hatred or bitterness, and to work together with mutual forbearance and respect; to bring the Kingdom of God to all who seek it through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Nicely, nicely Bartimaeus.

Mark 10:46-52
Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!"

I love Musical Theater. I love the dopey, silly, random way characters often burst out into song at the least appropriate moment: they sing, they dance, they wax poetic about some very mundane things. I have several favorite musicals: “Hello, Dolly!”, “My Fair Lady”, “Showboat”, “Wildcat”, “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum”, “La Cage aux Folles”, “The Producers”, “Chicago”, “Gigi”, “West Side Story”, “Camelot”, “Annie, Get your Gun”…the list could go on and on.  On a recent trip to Ireland my younger sister and I knocked the socks off the competition in the musical theater quiz during the bus trivia contest. We know our musicals! Our parents collected cast albums from all the shows they saw, and they saw them all. We listened time again and again and again to the songs and overtures of the musicals in Nicelytheir collection as we grew up in Brooklyn.

And today’s Gospel brought one to mind as I read about Bartimaeus earlier this week; he reminds me of the character Nicely-Nicely Johnson in “Guys and Dolls”. Nicely is a compulsive gambler who, while attending a compulsory prayer meeting, relates the story of a dream in which he is saved by the people with him on a boat to heaven.  The other inhabitants of this small craft repeatedly implore Nicely to “…sit down” because he is “…rocking the boat.”

In today’s Gospel the apostles and people around Jesus tried, unsuccessfully, to silence Bartimaeus, the blind man, who , when he heard it was Jesus of Nazareth passing by him began to shout out:,” Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”. He was just practicing what my grandmother often noted: “The squeaky wheel gets the most oil” or “earl” as Grandma Conkling would say. Bartimaeus was one determined guy, and his persistence got him noticed by Jesus, who had the blind beggar brought to him. Jesus inquired of him what he wanted and, God bless him, Bartimaeus was pretty direct,”…let me see again.” And that is just what Jesus did.

Now that was a modus operandi of Jesus’s; he often healed those who were willing to speak up for themselves. Think about his miracles as they are recorded in the Gospels: turning water into wine ( mother’s request); raising of Lazarus (Martha’s rebuke that if Jesus was there her brother would not have dies); the healing of the Roman official’s son ( the father makes the request); healing a leper ( who asked for healing in Matt, Mk and Lk); healing the woman with hemorrhaging( she touches his clothing, gets healed); the raising of Jarius’ daughter( father requested it)…they asked; Jesus provided.

This does not mean that Jesus is the “go-to” sugar daddy, that he will provide whatever one asks from world peace to a new pet puppy. He is not the source for that.

What this suggests is that our faith can overcome obstacles that at times may seem insurmountable, impossible, or insuperable. Our faith needs to mature and lead us through prayer to hope.

One thing that we are all hoping to accomplish is for the renewal and growth of the community of Christians here on our island. In order for this to happen we need to embrace the idea that we, the people of God, are the humanization of the dream of God, the dream that God has for how the kingdom should look, work and continue on Earth.  We need to work toward becoming the dream that God has for us as his beloved people. In doing so, we also need to acknowledge that we are not perfect, never were and never will be. We are imperfect and we are sinners. Bartimaeus acknowledged this and has given us a wonder phrase to use when we attempt to communicate our needs and desires to our Lord and Savior:, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” God’s mercy is wide and broad and deep; it can encompass all of us, just as we are all in God’s dream of what we can be.

Now, how do we proceed in becoming a part of what our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, calls the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement?  I think the first thing we do is inscribe the words of Bartimaeus in our hearts, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us”, and then open ourselves up to the possibilities that the dream of God has waiting for each one of us.



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The armor of God.

Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

Back in the day when I was a freshman at Hunter College, which is located on the upper east side of Manhattan, I was required to take a course called “The History of Art”.  The rather quirky professor who was the curator of the Egyptian collection at the Brooklyn Museum had a penchant for cats, from the common tabby on the street to the mummified felines buried with the royal pharaohs of ancient Egypt, and for the ancient sculptures readily available for his students to view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art located ten blocks north of our urban campus. He would often direct us to view various Egyptian, Greek and Roman artifacts that were scattered throughout the first floor of that august artistic institution.

It was there, one late fall afternoon, that I literally stumbled upon the fantastic collection of European armor housed in the wing opposite all those marble and granite pieces my professor so wanted us to fall in love with. I had made a right turn instead of a left and was wandering around when, BAM…. knights in shining armor mounted on equally shiny armor-clad stuffed steeds. Over the years since my first encounter with this fantabulous collection, I have brought lots of children, including classes, nephews, nieces, cousins and my own three children and granddaughter to see this great collection.  It never fails to engage and entrance them. Often I have to pry them away with promises of ice cream and playground time to get them to leave. But I have to admit, I still love visiting the armor room and usually stop by whenever I am in the Museum. This Medieval type armor is probably what you think of when you hear the word armor. If you go to London, you might visit the Tower of London, if so, go to see the display of this type of armor that belonged to Henry VIII. They have several of his sets since armor really does have to fit you to a “T”.  Henry's girth progressed over the years, and he needed to be refitted for new sets as he grew older and wider. You can see how the young, tall, fit young man grew into the rather large, lethargic monarch that we see portrayed as a stout 6 foot 1 middle-aged man with a 53-inch waist…almost as tall as he was around. And, by the way, armor was both expensive and heavy.  Henry’s set added an additional 97 pounds to his already expanded girth by the end of his life.  That is a lot of extra baggage to be toting around.

But this is not the armor that is referenced in today’s second reading. It is a much older type of armor. Armor has been around for over 3,500 years. Originally armor was made from simpler and lighter materials such as hard cloth and leather that was intentionally hardened, mixed with pieces of cloth, animal fur, and horse hair to create a multi-layered covering that could stop small knives. With the technology of bronze metal work in the 2^nd millennia BC, early civilizations started making protective gear for their armies that was able to withstand blows from larger knives, spears and arrows. The Romans started using armor once they saw how successful it worked for the Egyptians and the Greeks. When the Romans controlled the Palestine of Jesus, they clad their army in three different kinds of armor.  Roman mail armor was made of interwoven bronze rings . Segmented armor was created by connecting metal plates of varying sizes across chest, back, and shoulders; it was connected by leather straps. Finally, they had armor that looked like fish scales worn by centurions.  This is the kind we see in those Biblical movie epics of the 1950-60 like "Ben Hur" and “Quo Vadis”.

In today’s Epistle reading we are instructed to “…put on the whole armor of God…” in order to fend off the forces of evil that openly dwell in this world.

I am sure that you, as well as I, can create a laundry list consisting of our personal and communal “forces of evil”: classism, income inequality, institutional racism and misogyny, unfair labor practices, bullying, lying, cheating, moral turpitude (I always wanted to use that word in something I wrote), cover ups, bribery, hush money, slush funds…the list can go on and on. It just seems that this general list is almost too overwhelming for anyone of us to deal with. We need to arm ourselves for something more manageable. One way to put on this Godly armor is to engage in a daily prayer life. The ideal of course, would be to embrace the monastic daily prayer ritual: Matins, Noonday, Evening Prayer and Compline. One can embrace part or all of this daily discipline.  I prefer Compline myself, but this is not the only thing you can be doing. I have added something suggested to me by Deacon Baker.

Deacon Baker was moved by a Facebook posting by a mutual friend that disclosed that many of the women who were seeking asylum at our southern border and were consequently separated from their children had personal items confiscated including rosary beads.  As many of you know, the rosary is a discipline of spirituality often embraced by our Catholic neighbors, but many Episcopalians find solace and comfort in the repetitive flow of praying in this manner that can lead to a personal meditative state. Deacon Baker has begun to pray the rosary as part of his daily prayer life, I have joined him in this was well.  It is something one can do with or without beads, all you need is your ten fingers. And that image of a woman praying on her fingers is what I focus on when I pray the rosary.

 I have also taken the liberty of creating my own personal "Sorrowful Mysteries" scenarios: deciding to leave one's country; biding farewell to one's family; crossing the desert regions to the border; having one's children removed by force and finally, being alone in a foreign land.

Now, I am not saying this is something we should all be doing, but what I am suggesting is that each of us needs to find a way to incorporate a daily prayer system into our lives to assist us in arming ourselves against the ennui that can settle into our lives and we become more and more immune to the vagaries of our society. So find your daily prayer style, embrace it and begin to put on the armor God has waiting for you.

...Equipping the Saint.

Proper 13; 11^th Sunday After Pentecost

Year B; Track 2

5 August 2018

Ephesians 4:1-16 The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…

In today’s Epistle Reading Paul, bless him, gives a listing of gifts the faithful need in order to equip them for the work of ministry and in the building up of the body of Christ.  Now, that is something, I dare say, all of us in this congregation want to do: build up this branch of the Body of Christ in our small corner of this vast diocese of New York. His a rather precise list: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.  Seems to me to be a list of rather specific skill sets that make for a somewhat professional cadre of folks with specific skills. Now I spent most of my professional career in the classroom with mostly middle school students…no mean feat, I can tell you that.  My colleagues and myself dealt with budding adolescents during a time in their development when their parents, the very people who felt they knew their children the best, would often, during parent-teacher conferences, bewail the fact that some sort of evil being had emerged and taken possession of their former care-free elementary school student and created this unpredictable changing that often was more like an out of control dirt devil then the youngster they nurtured and loved from infancy. We would try to sooth their trouble minds by assuring them that this was the beginning of a time of growth and maturity for their child…this too would pass, and their child needed their care, love and support during this time…. we also reminded them to keep being involved with their school progress, and by the time the child reached about 15 or 16, things would settle down.  We also had a shared philosophy that we had to laugh at least once a day at something, and there was always something to chuckle about when you deal with seventh graders, believe me. We knew our strengths and we worked together like a fist. Teaching was our gift. And it is easy to see how this gift is important in equipping the saints for ministry, but it certainly is not the only one.

I firmly believe that one of the important gifts for ministry is hospitality.

And that is something I believe this parish does very, very well.  I remember that it was at Ascension that I was first introduced to the concept of ice cream at coffee hour, which for me meant ice cream for breakfast! What a concept! A nice bowl of good vanilla ice cream with some walnuts for fiber, blueberries for antioxidants, and granola for crunch…. what’s not to like…and healthy as well! And the cucumber sandwiches!!! I still wax poetic whenever I expierence the wonderfulness of a well-made cucumber sandwich, the very best ones I ever had, were here. Then there is the Octoberfest and Chinese New Year…I am not sure which celebration I like better! They certainly both have their charms and their fans.

But the one really impressive ministry that is done here at Ascension has got to be the work you have done over twenty years ministering to the residents of Lakside Manor. These are truly the people Jesus was talking about when he said, “…feed my sheep.” Many of them have been abandoned by friends and family due to their mental state and questionable behavior.  But every Sunday, rain or shine, a cadre of the faithful from Ascension are there to offer prayers, listening hearts and cake to bring a bit of God’s love into their lives. 

Now, you may not think this is a big deal, but it is.  Your work at Lakeside has inspired a group at Christ Church to start a similar ministry at Staten Island Cares, a similar facility in New Brighton. This is important work, good work, God’s work that is happening because of you, by you and through you. You are the saints equipped in doing the work of ministry and building up the body of Christ.  Thank you for furthering the Kingdom.

Leftovers

Proper 12

28 July 2018
Gospel John 6:1-21

When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets.

“Leftovers” that is what we have here. The official definition is “remnant or an unused portion.” In today’s Gospel reading there is quite a lot to “chew” on, forgive me the bad pun: the high cost of food for the multitude, corralling the young entrepreneur who is looking to sell his five barely loaves a few fish to make some money for himself and probably his family, the miraculous feeding itself, the stormy seas…we can relate to that after the rain, hail, thunder and lightning we expierence this past week, and Jesus walking on the water and calming the turbulent seas….all fodder for the preacher.  But what caught my eye?  What about those leftovers?  What exactly happened to them? What is the symbolism, if any, of these remnants, these unused portions?

In my home growing up in the Bronx with four siblings, my parents, grandmother and a bachelor uncle, who had the good sense to get married and move out as soon as possible, leftovers were a rarity for most meals, but when they occurred, they were used wisely. Having a mother who came of age at the end of the Great Depression and who was a newly married woman during World War II, made her a genius at stretching a family’s food budget. She could take a chicken, roast it for Monday dinner, make her vision of chicken chow mein for Tuesday night, make chicken soup out of the carcass, gizzards and heart and leftover vegetables, and, finally, whip up a chopped liver spread to have with cheese and crackers on Saturday evening while watching “The Lawrence Welk Show” with my father.  To this day, the smell of chopped liver reminds me of “champagne music”.

My favorite kind of leftovers are the remaining portions of the Thanksgiving dinner that can be re-purposed into some old favorites and some new culinary creations.  I have had an interesting turkey stuffing hash, pureed vegetable soup, turkey tetrazzini and turkey/stuffing croquettes.  My all-time favorite, though, is a turkey sandwich on Pepperidge Farm white bread with cranberry sauce and stuffing…. I dream of that sandwich every year as I squirrel away the necessary ingredients during preparation for the meal, hiding them in the refrigerator before the feast is done.

For many years I worked in a Soup Kitchen on Saturday in Stapleton.  One of the weekly concerns was would we have enough to feed everyone? We usually did.  One of our cooks called this “The Soup Kitchen Miracle”.  And we usually had leftovers. We had strict rules about how to handle leftovers. We would always try to give a generous portion (“Give them a plate like the one you would give to your 17 year old nephew”, I would say). The Board of Health prevented us from giving people plates of food to take home….There always was the possibility of spoilage or food poisoning from mishandling. But we had an arrangement with the outreach center of Project Hospitality; they could take the leftovers and serve them to folks at the drop-in center, many of whom had lunch with us…so they got fed twice! Not such a bad deal.

Did you know that here was a television series on HBO that ran for three seasons called, “The Leftovers”? It told the sorry story of the people left behind after 2% of the world’s population is taken up after the “Rapture” referred to as the “Sudden Departure”. It ran for three years and celebrates the emerging cult of the leftover folks called the “Guilty Remnant” …. sounds interesting. I have to admit, I did not watch it, but think the premise is theologically interesting. Maybe it will be on Netflix.

But I digress, I was still wondering what exactly is Jesus to do with the 12 baskets of leftover fish and bread from this feeding? Well, I could think of several things to do with them: some nice fish salad sandwiches the next day, or fish and toast with eggs for breakfast, perhaps make some bread crumbs or stuffing or even a nice bread pudding with the remnants. 

But I sincerely doubt that this was the purpose for noting this overabundance of bread and fish. Perhaps the meaning is a more personal one. Might it symbolize the spiritual overabundance of God’s love and concern for the health and wellbeing of his creatures whom God loves unconditionally? God is providing the extra stuff we need to grow in our spiritual understanding of the all-encompassing and over flowing love of God for us as God provides us with the extra nourishment we need to journey on in our spiritual journey, a journey that will lead us to knowledge and love of God in our lives and the lives of those around us.

Saving Face

July 15, 2018

As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart.

When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.” And he solemnly swore to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.” She went out and said to her mother, “What should I ask for?” She replied, “The head of John the baptizer.” Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her.

Saving face, the practice of affording someone an opportunity to avoid embarrassment, humiliation, or shame, is a subtle sub-text in two recent old and new testament readings. In 2 Samuel we have an image of King David gleefully and ebulliently dancing before the ark of the Covenant as it is carried into the holy city of Jerusalem.  It appears he is scantily attired and his wife, Michal, herself the daughter of an Israelite King, Saul, is mortified that her husband is flaunting his joy in front of all the residents of the city, in particular the other women.  His actions, in her estimation, are unkingly.  Please note, she defied her father in marrying David and pledged her loyalty to him over her father.  She had burnt her bridges and hitched her wagon to David's rising star. And David, for his part, became angry at his wife. He struck out at her because he could, later actually banishing her from his court. She never bore him any children. He held her in contempt for the rest of her life; he moved on to other women.  You might remember King David's obsession with Bathsheba. 

Mikael felt David's actions were causing him and by extension, her to lose face among the common people.  He, lashed out at her, to save face for himself in an action that reminds us of those in authority who want to make sure the underlings know who is boss. I bet all of us here have witnessed someone we have encountered in our work, professional or even church life, who used her/his position in such a way that allows them to avoid personal confrontation, shame or humiliation while demeaning another.  It is not pretty to witness; and it certainly is not the moral thing to do. David went on to become a great leader, ancestor of Our Lord, Jesus, and man of faith who struggled with his humanity at many levels. But his dismissive treatment of his first wife still rankles me. David overacts to the criticism of his wife...I actually think she had a point, but maybe went about expressing it too hastily; David's reaction was swift and done to make everyone aware of who was the power broker in this royal relationship. He might have cut off his nose despite his face.

In today's Gospel we have another King with a different situation of saving face. Herod has John the Baptist in custody.  The King understands that he is not in a position to alienate the people under his jurisdiction who are followers of John.  He just wants John to be on ice, so to speak, because John is making noise about the fact that the King took his brother's wife as his own, in spite of Hebraic law that labels this kind of union as "incest" since his brother, although divorced from said wife, was still alive and kicking. When Herodias' daughter, otherwise known as Salome, pleases the king who was probably "in his cups" during a night of drinking and reveling, he announces to the gathered crowd that he would give the girl anything she wanted as a reward for her entertainment, she consulted with her mother who had her own agenda.  Herodias was tired of John and his pronouncements against her relationship with husband number 2 who was the brother of husband number 1. She saw a way to rid herself of this thorn in her side, so she encouraged her daughter to make a request of the King that he could not refuse because he made an unwise and foolish promise.  When he heard it, I am sure he regretted his words, but like so many others that we read of in the pages of both the Old and New testament, Herod was indeed between the preverbal rock and hard place.  He could not go back on his word...he had made a vow, and he had to go through with it, or he would look the fool in front of the entire royal court. He took the coward's way out and condemned a man to death to make good on a boasting promise. He let his ego get in the way of doing the right thing.

Is there something to learn from the experiences of these two Israelite Kings? There certainly is. Human pride and ego can often get in the way of our relationship with other humans, but more importantly, they can get in between our personal relationship with our God. Our very human desire to appear competent and in charge of our lives can often become a stumbling block to our more important relationship with our Creator. We may seek to save face and appear competent and in charge in front of the people with whom we live and work, but this very human 

tactic of self-defense and preservation can stand between an open and honest relationship with the God who loves us unconditionally and does not care if we make snap judgements and empty promises to others as long as we can be honest and stand before our God with integrity. That is what matters...not saving face, but waling in integrity. However, we can take solace in the fact that we are all in spiritual formation and on our own spiritual journey, and walking humbly with our God is an important piece of the journey.

Sermon on Recieving Distinguised Alumni Award from the General Seminary May 2018

John 14:1-6 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

14 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe^[a] in God, believe also in me. ² In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?^{[b] 3} And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴ And you know the way to the place where I am going.”^{[c] 5} Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” ⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

We all have heard the old joke:

“One day a man dies, who was a devout Christian. Saint Peter meets him at the Pearly Gates and begins to give him a tour of Heaven. As the tour goes on, Saint Peter points out all the different Christians. "There's the Baptists, there's the Lutherans, the Methodists, the Presbyterians", and so forth. As they come to this one group way off to themselves, Saint Peter motions for the man to come closer and whispers. "Now, for this next group, we need to be really quiet. They are the Catholics and they think they're the only ones in Heaven."

Well, for a part of my life I actually thought that was true. I was born into a devout Roman Catholic family in post-World War II New York City.  My father was a veteran of the war who survived with shrapnel in his legs and head causing him to lose 60% of his hearing in his right ear.  He also suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  When he lay wounded in the forest of Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge he vowed that if he survived he would return steadfastly to his faith, and he prayed for survival.  He kept that promise, my Father was at Mass every Sunday and reveled in the smell of incense.  He told me as I complained of the smoke from the incense that caused my child’s eyes to burn, that I needed to get used to it because, “That is how heaven smells”.

My mother was also a pillar of the Church.  She followed its rituals very closely; she had a special devotion to the Virgin Mary.  She had six pregnancies and delivered five healthy children, and after each birth, she would return into the congregation only after undergoing the old tradition of “The Churching of Women”, the ceremonial blessing given to mothers after recovery from childbirth. I remember going with her twice after the birth of my youngest siblings for her to be blessed and then be again welcomed back into the congregation. Mom belonged to the Legion of Mary and the Rosary Society.  We prayed the rosary together as a family many times.

In 1960, after the election of John Kennedy, I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world; I had hit the trifecta: I was Irish-American, I lived in New York City and I was a Roman Catholic. What could be better?

But soon I began to wonder about the fate of those who were not as lucky as I was, who were not Catholic.  What would happen to their eternal souls after they died?  On the same floor that we lived on in a five story walk up apartment building in the Bronx, there were three neighbors that had an impact on my life as a young child.  Marie Deenihan who lived next to us with her husband, became a grandmother figure for us kids.  She was a wonderful woman, but she was a Lutheran. Then there was Mrs. Shapiro, a Russian Jewish woman who made us chicken soup every Friday because my father was her “Shabbos Goy”, he would flick off the lights, turn on the stove and lock the door when he left. And Mrs. Bruns was a Holocaust survivor from Belgium who lived quietly but made great cookies that she shared with us since she had no grandchildren of her own; they all perished in the war. These women were all women of faith, just not my faith.  And my church, at that time, did not hold out much hope for their salvation.  How could this be?

But it was not just religion that saw my hometown divided, during the 50’s and 60’s in New York City, race was a major divider of people.  In 1960 my parents bought a house, and we moved to Brooklyn where my father worked. My parents, good Roman Catholics as they were, sent all five of their children to the local Catholic school.  But in my case, it was not so local.  Three of my siblings went to the local school, but my older sister and I were bussed into Bed-Sty to a Catholic School there whose enrollment was failing due to the change in the fortunes and racial make-up of its neighborhood. Many Brooklyn churches sent the overflow students from their parish to this complex located on Classon Avenue in Bed Sty. Now this was not the gentrified Bed Sty that you may know today with coffee bistros and millennials all over the place; this was the rough and tumble Bed Sty where you had best develop your street creds along with your school diploma, and I loved every minute of it! There were kids from mixed race families, kids from the Caribbean, refugees from Hungry, Cuba and Africa seeking political asylum and freedom.  I learned to turn and jump double dutch, ate plantains, was introduced to the joys of Cuban black bean soup, and learned how to braid hair correctly. And I learned that all of God’s children come in may sizes, shapes and colors and that I was blessed to understand that we collectively were all lucky to be together, and playing and praying together made us closer to what the kingdom of God really looked like.  And it was there that I first heard a call to ministry.

My path to ordination became possible after I was received into the Episcopal Church.  My husband was a good Scandinavian Lutheran, and we wanted to go to church together, so we decided to split the difference and try the Episcopal Church.  And even though it was a hard pill for my parents to swallow, there was no looking back. And here I stand, ordained to the Diaconate 21 years ago in this, my home city and home diocese.

 I understand that there are many places and spaces for all kinds of people of faith to dwell and grow spiritually. We all need these in order to find our way to the Almighty, and it is not “one size fits all” …it has to be elastic, to stretch and bend so we all can find our way. We need to know that my way may not be your way, but we need to find a place that will allow us the resources and tools to do just that. This is one of those places.

I came to this place during my formation as a deacon in the diaconal formation program of the diocese of New York.  We meet in Sherrod Hall several Saturdays a month to do the academic requirements for ordination. Four weeks were devoted to each canonical area, and we often had Seminary faculty members deliver lectures in their area of specialty. Now, I have to be honest here, several members of my cohort, names will not be revealed, were bored to tears with the lecture format, mostly because they had been far removed from their own school days; some of them had a hard time staying awake, but I found these lectures fascinating, I wanted to learn more. A few years after ordination I had a conversation with the then admission director, Toni Daniels, who told me the seminary would be offering a Master’s program that might work for me as a non-traditional evening student.  It was really meant for lay people, but I might be able to make it work for me, if I was willing to be flexible and take the first 12 credits as a non-matriculated student. I decided to do just that. But I am not sure the seminary was ready for me…someone already ordained to the diaconate who had no intention to go on to become a priest. I recall that one of the priest I asked for a recommendation, a double grad of GTS, had me promise that I would not be using this as a back door to the priesthood. I double promised. And so I began my eight-year journey that ended in the conferring of my MA in 2008.

 But it wasn’t all a bed of roses…more like the creeping ivy that covered so many of the buildings on this close. I was unlike both the day students studying for their Master’s in Divinity and the other evening students who were lay leaders in their churches. Professors wondered if I had the “academic chops” to do graduate work…I already had one Master’s degree under my belt.  But I was neither fish nor fowl; I realized that I would have to create my own road to get the most out of this institution.  I would have to find my own dwelling place on this campus, and take from it what I needed to further my own ministry, and in each course I took, I tried to experience it through a diaconal lens. I got great support from the diaconal community. The Association for Episcopal Deacons was always looking for things to put in their quarterly, “Diakonia”, and would publish any articles I submitted to them based on the work I did here. I soon had a reputation as an “expert” in the field of diakonia, I was really just thinking out loud about it. That recognition in the diaconal community led to my serving two terms on their Board and currently sitting on the Board of the Fund for the Diaconate. Those things would not have happened if I did not decide to take a chance and study here designing my own dwelling place, my own spiritual room.

So, the work needs to go on.  General Seminary can be a place, a space where spiritual curiosity and intellectual creativity offer new and interesting dwelling places for all kinds of growth for all kinds of people doing all kinds of ministry to and with the people of God, helping, forming and informing traditional and non-traditional servant leaders, lay and ordained, priests and deacons to knock on the doors of those dwelling places, those rooms where for too long , we have been isolated in our thinking and in our perceptions, and let The Spirit that fills us all, work in each of us to further the Kingdom that we all can inherit.

We are Barabbas

After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, "I find no case against him. But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover. Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?" They shouted in reply, "Not this man, but Barabbas!" Now Barabbas was a bandit.

“Survey says….” How many of us know which television show those two simple words immediately brings to mind?  Family Feud of course. In the classic format of the show two opposing families tough it out trying to identify answers given to a random survey of audience members to such questions as: “What holiday besides Christmas makes the Post Office busy?” (Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day), or Name a US state where cows outnumber people. (Oklahoma, Wyoming, TX, Iowa, Wisconsin, Montana) and “We surveyed 100 men and asked them what kinds of things do women change? (their minds, lipstick, clothes and hair, shoes, nail polish) …of course that one makes me want to ask 100 women what things they think men change. ( I think they change their socks) Americans love to take surveys.  We are hearing now about how some of those silly surveys we see on social media such as “Can you pass the US citizen’s test” or” Which state should you live in?” or “What is your personality type?” might have been used to glean information about our tastes and opinions by some not so nice folks so they could target us for certain news outlets or advertisements among other things.

One of the newest forms of surveying is known as “crowd sourcing” which originally started as a marketing tool. Crowd sourcing is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional sources.” And its use has spread to my own online community. People who are members of the social media site that includes the North Shore of Staten Island has had a variety of local folks seeking opinions on subjects from the mundane to the questionably relevant. “Where should I get my hair cut?”, “Anyone know the best vet in St George?”, “How would you rate your child’s elementary school?”, these are some of the question asked by my neighbors over the past year or so. Sometimes I chime in, other times I do not. Teachers with whom I worked list requests for funds on “Donor’s Choose” to get extra equipment and resources for their students.  I have actually donated to everyone from my old school (IS 27) who asked for funding.  I remember how difficult it was to get needed supplies, not to mention enrichment materials when I was in the classroom and can only think it is now more difficult than ever..  And then of course, there is “Go Fund Me” a platform that allows people in need…or in perceived need, to make a direct pitch to donors for individual causes.

In today’s Gospel reading we are witnesses to Pilate using the Biblical equivalent of the modern “crowd sourcing” when he asked the people which prisoner they wanted released, and then reluctantly acted on it.  He seems to be dumbfounded that the crowd before him preferred the release of Barabbas over the release of Jesus.  For Pilate, a governor from Rome in charge of a third rate piece of the empire; letting the Roman powers that be back home know that he was ready, willing and able to squelch any and all hints of insurrection or rebellion was important. He knew what side his bread was buttered on, and it was definitely not on the side of the Israelites. He needed to keep the peace at all costs, and keep his superiors in Rome happy by keeping any hint of rebellion at bay in a very visible and concrete way by executing those involved in such behavior. And Barabbas fit the bill.

Who was “Barabbas”? From reading the Scriptures we learn several possibilities. We know he was the prisoner mentioned in all four  Gospels who was chosen by the crowd, over Jesus Christ, to be released by Pilate in a pardon before the Passover. In Matthew, Barabbas is called a “notorious prisoner.” In Mark and Luke, he was “in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection” against the occupying Roman forces. John, in today’s Gospel, describes him as a bandit. Yet it appears he was more than that. The name Barabbas appears nowhere else in the New Testament, nor do any of the Gospels give any information about his previous or subsequent life. The name may be a Aramaic combination of nouns meaning “son of the father” (bar abba) or “son of the teacher” (bar rabban), indicating perhaps that his father was a Jewish leader. But there is one thing we do know about Barabbas: His release makes him the definitive person for whom Jesus’ death directly allowed him to live. Jesus really did die for him in a very real and concrete way.  A way, perhaps the rest of humanity would come to realize after the Resurrection, but not on the dark Friday of Golgotha.

I actually think we are more like Barabbas than we would like to admit. And although he was someone who wanted to see his occupied homeland free from oppression, he advocated some violent means to do this; he rallied his own troops to engage in acts against what they perceived as an illegal state. He felt rage and anger at how he and his “tribe” were treated. We may or may not agree with his tactics, but we as humans can understand his feelings of frustration, anger and rage at being oppressed. But one thing for sure we know:  Jesus died in his place.  Jesus died for him. For him with his flaws and anger; for him despite his murderous actions; for him a stranger; for him a sinner like the rest of us.

So, what is the answer to the question “who is Barabbas”: We are Barabbas; the unworthy and unknowing person who Jesus died for.…and Thank God he did.