Sunday Sermon 2 Epiphany

            "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” John 1:47

                        Second Sunday of Epiphany 2018

In today’s Gospel we hear an interesting conversation between two young men who will become two disciples of Jesus, Phillip and Nathaniel. Phillip, a newly called disciple of Jesus who hailed from Bethsaida on the coast of the Sea of Galilee, while talking to his friend, Nathanael, added “from Nazareth” to Jesus’ name as a means of identification since the name was a common one, and it located exactly who he was, and where he was from.  Nathaniel’s response certainly shows his personal bias and prejudice against the town from which the longed for Messiah sprang. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” He sort of scoffs, and as we close our eyes, we can easily imagine him with a condescending smirk on his face. He has some strong pre-conceived notions about that tiny village. Why is this local prejudice showing? Well, Nazareth was the decidedly quintessential “backwoods” town, a far flung hamlet of a massive empire whose population might have topped 500 when Jesus was living there. Smallest of the small potato towns in the smallest and most inconsequential part of immensely important Roman Empire, in our modern jargon: a real nothing burger.

And yet, I feel drawn to the plight of that little town because, even though we live in one of the largest cities in the world, our piece of the city, in the words of the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, gets no respect. We are the Nazareth of the Big Apple. There are some folks who don’t even realize we are part of New York City.  Listen to the hordes of tourists who cram onto our beloved ferry to get a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.  I think every travel agent in the rest of the country and overseas tells each person who comes to New York that the ferry is free, and to ride it, and get right back on to return to Manhattan because there is nothing to do in Staten Island.  I have heard tourists tell each other that Staten Island is where the rest of New York City sends their garbage…not so.  Just FYI: the city’s garbage is sent by barge or trucked to a landfill in Pennsylvania (I learned this from my son who works for the Sanitation Department).

I have also heard that the people of Staten Island are very backwards compared to those who live in Manhattan or Brooklyn. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people at Diocesan meetings ask me if I have my passport with me…and then laugh. I usually tell them it takes me less time to get there by mass transit with a metro card than those folks who travel from the mid-Hudson region, and, please note, they never ask them the same question.  (If I sound a bit annoyed, well I am)

I have read in the national media that we who live on this rock, hold old fashioned ideas and are intolerant of others, including immigrants. These folks don’t know what the truth is.  Here on Staten Island we are home to the largest Liberian population outside of Liberia and the largest overseas Sri Lankan community on earth. Take a walk up Victory Boulevard and you will see Caribbean beauty parlors, Latin American bakeries and florists, Sri Lankan restaurants, and Halal supermarkets next to Chinese, Columbian and Italian restaurants.  Immigration comes in waves on our island and many hardworking immigrants are making an impact on the makeup of our island and its commercial enterprises. Statistically the 49th City Council District that encompasses our North Shore, is the most diverse in the whole city.

And we know something else; something we need to broadcast more than we do.  Many faithful Christians live out their faith live here.

 And just as Nazareth, that small, insignificant town filled with hill-billies and small-minded, unimportant people, was the place from which sprang the one who was to be the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world; here in this corner of the world, on the streets and in the schools, in the offices and in the parks, in the restaurants, pubs and the churches of our little island, there are the people of God every day who are living out their faith in both small and glorious ways: bearing witness to the truth at work and at play, expanding their faith in Bible study groups, visiting our neighbors in hospitals, hospices and homes,  engaging in prayer groups, bringing the concerns of the world to the church, to this altar, and hastening the Kingdom that is to come.

Despite the concerns of Nathaniel, we know that everything good came from Nazareth, and from that “good” the “good” continues to grow from here, our small corner of the greater Kingdom, as well.  

Hey NYC Kids: SNOW DAY!

In the closing minutes of the movie "Hope and Glory", a story about the life experiences, for good or ill , during times of unspeakable horror and idyllic moments in the English countryside, of a Londoner schoolboy during the Second World War, we see the unabashed glee of the entire student body who arrive to find their school has been bombed and destroyed by the German blitzkrieg. "Thank you, Adolph!", an elated ten year-old boy joyfully exclaims as he throws his school books into the air. There was something of that macabre joy and irony here in New York City today as the first official "Snow Day" was called on the almost unpresented night before this hellicious storm even hit.
                                                                                                      

The palatable joy that bust forth on my Facebook feed last night around 9pm was fast and furious, and not from the kids.  As a retired New York City educator: teacher, mentor and staff developer, I have many friends and relations who are still involved in that behemoth of a bureaucracy known affectionately as the DOE: The New York Department of Education. Over my many years in the employ of this municipal agency, the calling of a "snow day" has always had major political as well as public safety considerations. It always appeared "dicey" to me once mayoral control of the schools was wrested from local school districts by Mayor Bloomberg in the early 2000's. During that time most decisions came out of "Tweed Courthouse" that hunk of a building that bears the name one of the most corrupt men in our city's history, William "Boss" Tweed, who ran this municipality from his political core, the Tammany Hall Democratic Club. It sits on Chambers Street in one of the most congested parts of Manhattan.                         

One thing locals understand about Manhattan is that it is built on rock, a very specific rock called Manhattan Schist, a gneiss that is the result of volcanic activity and then the movement of a polar icecap that resulted in a very hard and dense bedrock that makes the construction of skyscrapers possible (that, and the invention of the elevator). This bedrock holds the heat that is generated by both the subway system and the steam heat systems that warm our many municipal buildings which surround City Hall and the Tweed where such decisions as school closings are determined. So when decisions are made in Manhattan, where snow melts quickly, the rest of the city suffers and shovels out from under lots of outer-borough snow.  Mayors Dinkins, Koch and Bloomberg were all Manhattan dwellers whose children were all either grown and gone or non-existent, so their decisions were made from an economic point of view....i.e. parents need to get to work; ergo, schools need to be open. Now we actually have a Mayor whose children went to public schools when the family lived in Brooklyn on a street that did not always get plowed on a regular basis.  He understood the dilemma: Do I keep them home, or do I send them out in the storm? Who is going to be here if they stay home? Whom can I call to help out? These questions are easier to navigate the night before as opposed to the morning of. 

But I digress.                              

I recall with fondness those days spent snuggled under my parents' down comforter listening intently on the local radio hoping to hear that my personal school was closed or, for the "big announcement" that ALL the schools in the city: public, private and parochial, were closed. The one thing that knitted all of the schools together was the school bus system, and once that was compromised, the whole system ground to an icy halt. Ah, the sweetness of that news, nothing could compare except that final June day that marked the beginning of summer vacation.  But summer break or the hard won winter break (once referred to as Presidents' Week) are known factors, a "Snow Day" is serendipitous and random...a gift from Mother Nature, so to speak...an unearned respite that causes one to slow down and hunker down and often inspires a day of baking and soup making that will fill your home and your stomachs with the joys of the winter's cuisine we often take for granted.

So, boys and girls, friends and foes,daughters and sons, grandchildren and happy nieces and nephews: Enjoy! Relish this gift of at-home time granted on this snowy and windy winter day...make merry and make muffins and most of all make memories!