Finding Ourselves in a Challenging Story

Finding Ourselves in a Challenging Story

A Sermon by the Rev. Peter De Franco July 11, 2021

Mark 6:14-29

14King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some were saying, “John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.” 15But others said, “It is Elijah.” And others said, “It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” 16But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” 17For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her. 18For John had been telling Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” 19And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, 20for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him. 21But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. 22When 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.” 23And he solemnly swore to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.” 24She went out and said to her mother, “What should I ask for?” She replied, “The head of John the baptizer.” 25Immediately 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.” 26The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. 27Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, 28brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. 29When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.

Every episode from the bible comes with an invitation to find ourselves in the story. Sometimes we can easily identify with persons whom we admire: the young hero David who battles Goliath or the faithful women who stand with the dying Jesus.   Some clever biblical commentator calls this pattern Disney princess theology, when we find the princess and identify with her.  All of us can see ourselves as the nurturing Martha caring for the hungry Jesus but none of us with the angry King Herod. For all of us, today’s Gospel story of the martyrdom of John the Baptist challenges us if we engage in a Disney Princess theology for most of the characters in this story resemble not Cinderella but Cruella D’Ville.  Though some of us might secretly admire Cruella, if only for her outstanding wardrobe, we are given a deeper call. So let’s take a look at the cast of characters in today’s Gospel story and see where God leads your heart.

John emerges as the hero of the story, a hero very difficult to imitate. Most of us would be very uncomfortable wearing that camel skin tunic, not because it was not lined with silk but because speaking a prophetic word makes most of us uncomfortable. The thought of talking about our faith leaves most of us mute and speaking a challenging word is totally impossible.

Next come the villains:  Herod, Herodias and her daughter, and the guests at the birthday party. From the get go, Herod identifies himself as John’s executioner. Herod was captivated by John’s preaching even as he was challenged by John. John the Baptist challenged Herod for marrying Herodias, the wife of Herod’s brother Philip. Herod arrests and imprisons John but shields him from Herodias who wants to silence John by executing him. Herod is somebody who hears the word from John but the seed of God’s word cannot grow in his heart, a heart overgrown by cares of what others think about him.  

Herodias introduces greater complexity to the story. As a woman in a male dominated society, she works around the edges to discover her power and find ways to exercise it. Deprived of overt power, she finds her moment, collaborates with her daughter and dupes Herod who buckles under the threat of peer pressure to kill John. Herodias and her daughter represent the resistance to the Word of God when it challenges our behavior.

We should not forget the persons attending Herod’s birthday party, the silent witnesses who could have tipped the power balance and shifted Herod’s predicament toward a graceful shift away from his oath. These men and women know that they control the pressure Herod feels about his misspoken oath.These people with power determine if they will invite him to reconsider his pledge or demand that he follows it.  Their silence shows their complicity in John’s death.  

In accessing guilt for John’s death, we can see Herodias’ anger finds an occasion to manipulate Herod whose course of action is not challenged by the leaders who witness his ill fated oath. So where are you in the story?

Most of us would dare not imagine ourselves as John the Baptist, especially with the brutal ending of this gospel. Yet most of us would not want to imagine ourselves as the villains Herod, Herodias, her daughter or the silent guests. What if we find a bit of ourselves in all of the characters?

Like John the Baptist, all of us are called to speak the Word of God, when convenient and inconvenient. Perhaps we find ourselves caught in the conflict over what to do with the Word of God which we hear. Perhaps more of us are like Herod, willing to listen to the Word of God, but, when the time of conflict comes, we buckle under the pressure we feel from others. Perhaps we find ourselves like Herodias, feeling powerless in our society and looking for ways to regain that power, at whatever cost.

As we continue with our worship, try to discover the different characters from this story in your heart. As we continue, try to restore in your heart the conflict embroiling those characters. God calls you to be John the Baptist, to enter into a prophetic ministry through this story, a ministry with its challenges, a ministry with its difficulties, a ministry with its ability to change you. Yes, we are afraid of that call, and the Herod and Herodias within us may inhibit our courage. God not only calls you. God strengthens you to follow the call. Let John the Baptist come alive through you.

Trouble in Nazareth City

Trouble in Nazareth City

A Sermon by the Rev. Peter De Franco on the 2nd Sunday After Pentecost

As Christmas time approaches, all of us go to our basement, attic or garage and beautify our homes with treasured ornaments and decorations. Most of up unpack a Nativity set with at least the Holy Family and a few animals, perhaps a shepherd and three magi. In every set, that Joseph, Mary and Jesus come across as the ideal family. Joseph shows himself the solicitous guardian, Mary the loving mother and Jesus that precocious Baby who, having just been born, raises his hand in blessing on us faithful onlookers.

Have you ever wondered about that precocious child? If any of you have raised a child prodigy you know the challenge faced by Joseph and Mary. The Holy Family could have sung a song from The Music Man which captures their feeling: Ya Got Trouble.

Trouble, oh we got trouble

Right here in Nazareth City!

With a capital "T"

That rhymes with "C"

And that stands for Christ

We've surely got trouble!

Right here in Nazareth City

Right here!

It all began with that talented twelve year old Jesus slipping away from his parents to search out the teachers in the Jerusalem temple. He spent three days on his own while his parents pulled out their hair in a frantic search across Jerusalem. When they finally discover their little brat, Mary gives voice to her desperation and you can just imagine her tone as she says: “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” Perhaps her original words were more colorful.

Mary must have known she was headed for trouble with this son. All of us who are mothers, all of us who are inclined to worry about our children, which means all of us, can take comfort in knowing that Mary felt the same way about her son. When he starts his ministry, Mary along with Jesus’ other sisters and brothers, get wind of his preaching, exorcisms and healings. What happened at his baptism by John which so changed their Jesus? Or did they know all along that something was brewing in Jesus’ heart and soul and the Baptism just pushed him over the edge. Can’t you just hear Mary singing:

Trouble, oh we got trouble

Right here in Nazareth City!

The Gospel describes what we would call an intervention: When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” Little does the family know how bad the trouble is. Not only does Jesus’ family find his behavior unacceptable. The head honchos from Jerusalem get wind of his words and deeds and send a delegation to Galilee to see the trouble he is causing.

Pay careful attention to what is happening since we are seeing the battle lines drawn early on, battle lines which will describe the entire Gospel according to Mark. Jesus presents us with a baffling image, a disturbing image, a home invasion, to describe his ministry: no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered. We hear of houses which are really prisons for persons being trafficked, for abducted children, for criminal enterprise. We imagine police breaking into these houses to rescue people. That is the home invasion Jesus is describing.

Jesus is talking about the house of the religious leaders of his day, leaders who compromised God’s reign of liberation for the people with compromise with the imperial Roman forces. Jesus is also talking about the house of family relationships which would compromise bold proclamation of the good news.

Our Gospel invites us to join Jesus in his battle against the strong man. He alerts us to the dangers imposed by religious leaders and family concerns.

We are celebrating Pride Month, a celebration some religious organizations would consider sinful since it disrupts the pattern of some religious teaching and some patterns of family life. Jesus has entered into that house and bound the strong man of religious bigotry and a narrow pattern of family life. Yes we have trouble, trouble in Nazareth City.

Wherever Jesus goes, he causes trouble. Trouble to those who would repress the marginalized, exclude some from full inclusion, sustain systems of oppression. Jesus brings trouble, the good trouble John Lewis talked about. It’s the good trouble which gave women an equal place in society. It’s the good trouble which shifted our understanding of family to include diverse orientations and gender identities. It’s the good trouble which upends racial divisions and inequalities and ushers in true equality and freedom.

Jesus, bringer of good trouble, trouble our lives when we find ourselves working against God’s reign of freedom and equality.

Jesus, bringer of good trouble, steady our hearts to await your promised reign of peace and justice.

Jesus, bringer of good trouble, strengthen our souls to join you in the struggle, for with you we can bind the strong man.

Pentecost is for Episcopalians

Pentecost belongs to the Baptists. That’s how many Episcopalians feel. If you want to feel the Spirit sway the church like the Spirit filled the disciples, you should drive down St. Georges Avenue, make a right when you come to Popeye’s Chicken and then decide if you will stop at White Rock Baptist or Morning Star Church. 

For many people, the Holy Spirit manifests herself in lively worship, in exuberant praise, in soul stirring preaching. All these signs of the Spirit’s presence are cultural ways of experiencing the Holy Spirit. When Jesus promised to send us the Holy Spirit, he gave that gift to the entire church, not only to the more enthusiastic churches. 

Pentecost also belongs to Episcopalians. As members of the Body of Christ, we too receive the Holy Spirit.  Perhaps we live in a church culture where our emotions are more subtle, our worship more traditional, our preaching more colloquial. Our religious lives so intertwine with our daily lives that we forgo the spectacular Holy Spirit in favor of the subtle Holy Spirit.

Of course we are pulled by that heart warming presence of the Spirit. We feel her presence in song and in prayer. We sense her presence in fellowship and work together. We experience her presence when we receive the Holy Eucharist. We Episcopalians engage the Holy Spirit at a deeper level of the heart, the place where the Spirit works to transform us into agents of Jesus in the world. This deeper, more subtle work of the Spirit, involves that challenging action of the Spirit of which we heard Jesus speak in the Gospel.

Jesus said the Spirit will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.  The Spirit comes to us after Jesus goes from us so that Jesus and his mission might continue through the work of the Spirit. Jesus came as the herald of God’s new reign.

In God’s kingdom, all have a place at the table, all find themselves loved and respected, all find themselves called to bring that message to the world.

But we live in a world where some are excluded, where some are not loved and respected, where some are prohibited from the church. Since we live in this world, the thinking of the world infiltrates our hearts and souls with plans and schemes which are not in line with God’s vision of the world. The Spirit stirs an awareness in our hearts of the places where we have compromised God’s reign with the values of the world. Sometimes we think we have done the right thing when we have really have pushed for our values and not God’s values.

Those hidden places in our hearts where prejudice and racism lurk are illumined by the light of the Spirit. She transforms our ignorance with compassion. Those hidden places in our hearts where gender superiority lurks are illumined by the Spirit. She transforms our desire for dominance with equality. Those hidden places in our hearts where fear holds us back from doing something new and creative. She transforms our fear with the power of love.

The Spirit comes to us with the power of God’s feminine energy. She upsets the apple cart, invites new ways of thinking and acting, new patterns of relating and empowering. Perhaps we might all begin to open our hearts to discern how ready we are for this new energy of the Spirit, an energy which is more than a feel good swaying to the music but a life altering invitation to a new heart and a new spirit.

Welcome or not, the Spirit will be knocking at the door of your heart, knocking and inviting you, inviting you to dare to do something new and daring, inviting you to change the tired ways of the world, inviting  you to take a chance of Jesus.

Come and See -- An Easter Sermon

Come and See.

When the first disciples followed Jesus, Jesus asked them:  What are you looking for? Jesus answered:  Come and see. Throughout the Gospel we heard this Easter morning, we met people who came but did not see. They cannot see because they are in the dark.

When Mary Magdalene leaves her home on that first Easter morning, it was not only dark because the sun had not risen. Mary’s vision is darkened because of her grief. The Gospel tells us Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. Mary comes to the tomb and sees that the stone has been removed with the eyes of her body. But she does not see with the eyes of faith. Her eyes see the empty tomb but her faith does not understand that Jesus has been raised from the dead. She is still looking for a dead Jesus whose body she supposes was stolen by grave robbers.

On the cross, Jesus has been glorified, has been lifted up, and through the cross has returned to the Father. Now that Jesus has been glorified, how will he be present to his disciples?

Mary continues to look for Jesus in a dead body. We see the depth of her love for Jesus in her deep lament. Let’s face it, if we were to look into an empty tomb and see two angels where the dead body had been, we might have understood something has been transformed.  Even when Mary turns from the angels and sees Jesus, she does not recognize him.  He speaks to her but she mistakes him for a gardener. The turning point of the story happens when Jesus calls her by her name:  “Mary.”  She then turns, the Gospel tells us, and we know she has turned to face Jesus, but now she turns in her heart so that now she truly sees. She sees Jesus and calls to him:  Teacher.

Something more is happening here and we know that something more since the tomb is in a garden. We all know from Sunday School that the first creation happens in a garden. God places the first humans in a garden. So we are invited to connect that first garden of creation with this new garden of the new creation.

Perhaps more importantly, the other place we hear of a garden in the Hebrew scripture occurs in the Song of Songs. The bride’s words could easily be spoke by Mary to Jesus: “I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not.” (Song of Songs 3:1) Jesus could also say the words of the bridegroom:  “I come to my garden, my sister, my bride.” (Song of Songs 5:1)

Jesus, in speaking Mary’s name, reminds us what we also heard from this Gospel, that Jesus is the shepherd who “calls his sheep by name” (Jn. 10:3) for he knows his own and his own know him. (see Jn. 10 14) 

We are like Mary in so many ways. We are suffering a deep loss with Covid 19. Some of us have lost friends and family members. All of us have had our lives disrupted and regular patterns overturned. We lament the ways we were accustomed to interact with one another. We lament the loss of our accustomed religious lives. We lament the sustained fast from the Sacrament of our Lord’s Body and Blood.

In the midst of our sorrow, can we look and see that the Risen Christ is coming to us? The Risen Christ already dwells with us. Jesus tells us:  “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” (Jn. 14: 23) If you want to discover the Risen Christ, look in your heart and there you will discover Christ speaking your name. Calling you by your name to turn and see Christ.

There, in the garden of your heart, you will find yourself made a new creation. You will discover Jesus coming to you as the one whom the Book of Common Prayer calls the Lover of our souls.

Your desire for Christ comes from Christ, your desire is the stirring of the Holy Spirit within you, and your desire meets Christ’s desire for you in a wonderful union of souls. That union is made real when you will receive Christ in Holy Communion, when the grace of that communion nourishes a deep union of hearts, when you hear your name called.

Your encounter with the Risen Christ does not end in a feel good time with Jesus. Jesus has work for you to do. You noticed that after that moment of encounter, Jesus sends Mary Magdalene to tell the other disciples that he is risen. You too are commissioned to go out and tell others, in the words of Mary Magdalen, “I have seen the Lord.” (Jn 20:17)

Our Easter is more than chocolate bunnies and jelly beans. Our Easter involves unexpected meetings with the Risen Christ. Our Easter sends you out as heralds of that encounter with the Risen Christ.

Taste the one who loves you, who speaks your name, and then share that news with a world which like you, hungers for a God who loves us deeper than any pain, deeper than any virus, deeper than any loss. You who have come and seen, now see and go. And  run, run like some love filled child, run and let everyone know, Christ is alive, Christ is alive in you, and Christ is making you and all this creation new.

Alleluia.

Piercing the Heart of Jesus -- A Good Friday Sermon

Think of the Son of God, how He Died on the tree our souls to save, Think of the nails that pierced Him through, Think of Him, too, in lowly grave. 

These words, of a traditional Gaelic hymn, invite us to go to our hearts, to think with our hearts of that heart breaking moment when God was crucified on a cross, when God assumed the lowest of human conditions, that of a slave, and then became what Romans did only to those less than human, a crucified God, a God who became less than a human to show us how far God’s love would go for us.  

Think of the spear the soldier bore, Think how it tore His holy side, Think of the bitter gall for drink, Think of it, think for us He died. 

After all was over and done, after the depth of humiliation and degradation, after Jesus, who surrendered all human dignity to restore our original holy dignity, after Jesus lowered his head and surrendered his spirit, his dead body is subject to a final indignity. His side is opened, his heart is pierced and from that sacred fountain flow blood and water. In the other Gospels, the veil of the temple is torn at the moment of Jesus’ death as a sign that the barrier between God and humans is opened. In the Gospel according to John Jesus is the new temple and that new temple is opened to you and to me by the opening of his side.  

Think upon Christ Who gave His blood Poured in a flood our souls to win, Think of the mingled tide that gushed Forth at the thrust to wash our sin. 

Each of us comes us with small and lame excuses why we cannot love God more. Each of us lives with the walls we build around our hearts to wall our hearts from that unimagined and unprecedented love which God has for us. To each of our hearts, God shows his open and pierced heart, a heart made vulnerable to sin and offense, yet ever open. 

Think of repentance timely made, Think like a shade our time flits, too Think upon death with poisoned dart Piercing the heart and body through. 

Our time is short before we can open our hearts, before we can allow the love of a crucified God to pierce our hardened hearts with an affection we could never imagine, ever contemplate. Such is the love which beacons you today.

Praying Psalm 22 with Jesus -- A Palm Sunday Sermon

Holy Week brings to us a profound mystery: the Passover of our Lord Jesus from death to life.  That mystery comes to us not only as a remembrance of Jesus last week with his disciples but also as an invitation to enter into that mystery of our Lord’s Passover from death to life. Our liturgy on this Palm Sunday opens that invitation to us as we heard first Jesus journey into the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and then Jesus’ journey up the hill of Calvary to his death on the cross.

Mark’s account of the crucifixion presents a very stark picture of Jesus’ death and records only one sentence spoken by Jesus from the cross:  My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Those words seem, at first glance, to reflect a deep sense of abandonment by God, of God’s distance from Jesus and Jesus who suffers the inner anguish of solitude compounded by his physical torture. Jesus takes those words from the first line of Psalm 22. I invite us as a community to pray this psalm during Holy Week, to meditate on its changes in tone and mood. More importantly the liturgy invites us to enter through this psalm into Jesus’ very relationship with God. Through this psalm we can be transformed into the Christ, Crucified and Risen, who prays this psalm. 

When Jesus prays this psalm, when we pray this psalm, the opening words speak of the depth of his intimacy with God. Jesus prays, and he invites us to pray, MY God.  Not once, does he pray, but twice. His heart cries out:  My God, My God since he speaks from his proven faith, from his deep trust, from his profound love. 

But then the prayer takes a turn:  why have you forsaken me? The prayer reveals a broken heart, a heart feeling forsaken, but a heart that knows its foundation is God and God alone. The psalms dares to complain to God, goads God with challenges, laments the absence of God when God is most needed.

For some of us, this psalm crosses a line. Who are we to challenge God with such boldness?  How dare we express ourselves so freely, without proper restraint, showing the depth of our feeling?

Jesus, in praying the psalm, invites us to this audacity of faith. Jesus shows us the path of relating to God with that intimacy which questions God’s absences, challenges God’s distance, upbraids God’s reticence to help us, especially in our deepest need.  We see that depth of faith when the psalm prays:  Yet you are the Holy One, enthroned upon the praises of Israel. We, with Jesus, with the Psalmist, express our deep faith in the ancient God who has proven, time and again, to be trustworthy. Jesus shows us this path of faith for us to claim it as our own.

We all have gone through a most horrific year. During the year, some of us have experience personal tragedies and loss. Somewhere along the way, we have learned that we should silently accept these situations and never complain. Somewhere along the way, we believe that if we tell God that we are upset with things that we are rebelling against God’s will. What if we could approach God with that deep faith which gives us permission to freely express our anger about situations, to share with God our disappointments in life, to complain about the losses we suffer and the pain we endure.

Jesus in Gethsemane questioned if there might be a way for him other than the cross. When he was nailed to the cross, when he felt his life slipping away, when evil seemed to have won the day, God seemed absent from Jesus and Jesus said as much. What if we can learn from Jesus to lament our losses, to complain about our circumstances, to cry about our anguish? What if we can do all these things from a deep faith, a faith that knows God is with us, even when we do not feel God’s presence.

Jesus on the cross shows us a way, a difficult way, a deep way, a way which is both true to our hearts and true to God. Ask God for this deeper faith, a faith which is so sure of your relationship, your friendship with God that you dare to question God, to express your anger to God, to lament your deepest losses with God. May we enter into this Holy Week with this memory of Jesus’ last words, with the hope of moving to yet a deeper faith in God’s mystery, with the love of touching a God strong enough to live with us through our deepest pains. 

The Discovery of Our True Self — A Sermon on the 2nd Sunday in Lent

Mark 8:31-38

31 Then Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” 34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

 Not many of us may have noticed the February 19th obituary of Sr. Dianna Ortiz, a Roman Catholic sister in the Ursuline Order who died from cancer at age 62 in Washington, D.C.  Not many of us know her compelling story. In 1987, she left the United States of America for Guatemala to join other sisters who were teaching Mayan children.  In the 1980’s Guatemala endured the horrors of a military government which tortured and killed countless citizens, a government which received the support of the Regan administration and the CIA.  Many religious persons were caught up in that horror.

On November 2m 1989, she was abducted by the state police, confined in the police academy and for 30 hours endured torture and gang rape.  When doctors treated her for her physical and emotional trauma, they certified that not only was she was burned with cigarettes over 100 times but that she was pregnant from the rapes. She aborted the pregnancy. 

Out of that intense trauma, Sr. Dianna confronted the American administration for their complicity in her torture and rape, was awarded $5 million dollars in damages and went on to become an advocate for victims of torture and rape as a tactic of war.  Sr. Dianna stands with countless Christians who imitate the example of Jesus in confronting unjust systems of oppression and injustice.

All too often, when we hear Jesus talking about the cross and his own death, our thinking moves toward images of Jesus as a lamb sacrificed on the cross. Sacrificed to appease the anger of a God who is upset with our sin. Sacrificed to make amends for the injustice of sin against a God whose holiness is unbalanced by our sin. Sacrificed to quell the fury of an indignant parent God who seeks retribution for sin in the death of his son.

Such sacrificial thinking, presented throughout the centuries of Christian thought and hymns, distorts the original context of Jesus’ death. Jesus was not the innocent victim of the anger of God.

Jesus paid the cost of confronting the system of oppression carried out against the poor and marginalized of his day, a system organized by the religious and secular leaders who felt threatened by Jesus embrace of the poor and sick. Jesus knew full well that God was standing on the side of the poor of his day, the poor who bore the burden of the oppressive taxes demanded by both the religious and secular powers. Jesus knew full well that God was standing on the side of the poor of his day, the poor who endured the emotional trauma of Roman overlords who victimized women and children, who were healed of that trauma by Jesus healing touch. God knows that when Jesus stands with the poor, Jesus will pay for that stand with his life. Jesus is offering the way of non-violence as the alternative to the Roman system of violence. More deeply, Jesus is telling us that we are created to live a non-violent life style, that God created us for to live in loving community.

At the heart of today’s Gospel lies this very difficult and challenging word from Jesus:  “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Mk 8 :34-35

We live in a culture dominated by violence. Our video games glorify violence. With the exception of the Hallmark channel, much of our entertainment involves violence and abuse. Patterns of emotional confrontation and degradation become the way we relate to each other.

When Jesus invites us to follow him, he also invites us to forsake the patterns of violence and destruction we have picked up from our society. All of us have identified with the patterns of our culture, patterns of abuse and violence, and it takes time to shift those patterns. Such shifts seem like dying. Such shifts also bring life. Resurrection overturns death and Jesus assures us those who lose their life (their life based on a false identity of the oppressor) will save it.

Sr. Dianna moved through her trauma, she confronted her abusers in an international court, she challenged her country to disclose information on the CIA’s involvement with her torture, she then went on to tell her story, to advocate for those who are similarly tortured and raped. She discovered, through the pain and suffering inflicted by the system of violence, an alternate way, a way to undermine that system, a way to peace and reconciliation. She discovered, deeper than her pain, her true self as a advocate for the poor and tortured. 

Each of us are challenged to discover the roots of that violence in our souls. Lent challenges us to discover the places in our hearts where we have taken on the false self offer by our society and compromised our true self, the self created for love and compassion.  Jesus invites us this Lent to that painful crucifixion of that false self, that self which hurts others, that self which degrades others, that self which inflicts emotional violence on others.

On the other side of that crucifixion comes our resurrection, the birth of our true self, the self created to love others, support others, lift up others. In the depth of our heart, God ever gives birth to our true self, loves us and sustains us. Every birth involves pain and God, the midwife of our hearts, is at work in you moving you from the pain of labor into the joy of your best self.  

Ash Wednesday -- Living Simpler Lives

Simple Lives — An Ash Wednesday Sermon By the Rev. Peter De Franco

February 17, 2021

Every Ash Wednesday, I get this terribly feeling of guilt. It’s not because of some terrible sin but because of the Gospel reading.  We hear the deacon proclaim the Gospel where Jesus tells us:  Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them. We then go on to smear our foreheads with ashes in the sign of a cross for everybody to see. I can just imagine Jesus hitting his forehead in total disbelief as we, his so called disciples, ignore his very words and put our religiosity on display.  So I am totally relieved that this year we are not doing ashes, we are really listening to Jesus and doing what he advises us. Perhaps next year, we will again hang out at the train stations and create Christians on display. But this year we are Christians in hiding.

This year we can get on the Jesus program and do the three things he commands us to do:  Pray, Fast, Give. Pray, Fast, Give. I hope you have a place in your homes where you can go to read the bible, to sit and think, to spend some time with God in prayer. My place is on the sofa in the living room, with a prayer book, a bible, and next to an icon of Christ.  There might be an occasional cat.  Did I mention Alexa?  She is very useful for keeping track of meditation time. She can also provide music. So what is your place, your hidden place, your meeting place?

Pray, Fast, Give. Most of us can afford to fast. It’s more than just losing some weight. Fasting involves putting our bodies where our prayer is. Fasting involves denying food to our bodies that the hunger pangs we feel remind us of the hunger God feels for us. The Hunger God feels for us. Perhaps that hunger God feels for us resonates in our hearts and we respond to God with a desire for God, a desire deeper than food, a desire deeper than things, a desire deeper than self.

Pray, Fast, Give. Our Christian lives are meant to connect us with others, with others in the community of faith, with others who are different than us, others whom we might avoid, others who might embarrass us, others who might make us feel angry. During this Lent, we as a community will try to simplify our lives, pare our lives down to essentials, and with the money we save we will give it to the poor. We shall give that money to the YWCA Domestic Violence Victim’s program. These women, men and children, victims of physical and emotional abuse, should remind us Jesus, a victim of physical and emotional torture. 

Lent comes to us as a time to simplify our lives, to remove some of the clutter, to pare away the excess, to get to the essentials.

Lent comes to us as an invitation from God, to make a deeper connection with God, to get to know God’s Word, to get to feel the passion of God’s love for us. At the end of these 40 days, we shall set before our hearts a love which endured the utmost humiliation, the utmost anguish, the utmost solitude, all to show us how deeply we are loved. Pray, Fast, Give. You will discover a God hastening to you, desiring you, loving you. If only you dare to open your heart.

Celebrating Absalom Jones -- 1st African American Priest in the Episcopal Church

Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Absalom Jones – The First African American Priest in the Episcopal Church

A Sermon by the Rev. Peter De Franco

February 7, 2021

The Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist

 St. Thomas African Episcopal Church opened its doors on July 17, 1794 as the first African American Church of Philadelphia.

For a long time, the African American community of Philadelphia wanted to establish their own religious and civil center where they could exercise their leadership and autonomy. We all know that African American Churches focus power, both religious and political, in our country today. St. Thomas Church set the stage for that dignity and self-generated power claimed by those early leaders.

An 1829 print of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas shows wealthy black families entering the building in their Sunday best.  While most of the people are adult couples, one little girl and one little boy are shown with their parents. As I looked at those two children, I began to wonder what those children must have felt entering into that sacred space.

I would like to imagine the print showed the church when Fr. Absalom Jones was serving as their priest. Perhaps it was September 26, 1802, just eight years after the church opened its doors, just five days after Absalom Jones was ordained a priest.

Can we imagine how that little black girl and little black boy remembered the day?

How proud they must have felt, dressed in they finest Sunday clothing, walking down the street with their fathers and mothers, attending Sunday worship on the first day their pastor was a priest. They would have remembered the stories his parents told him about the church. Perhaps the little girl’s father and mother were present at St. George’s Methodist Church back in 1787 when white ushers demanded that black members of the church be restricted to the new balcony of the building and then only in the rear of the balcony so as not to sit with white members.

Did the little boy’s parents help Absalom Jones raise money for the new African Church of Philadelphia where they were now going to pray?

Perhaps her parents owned a store and many people from the black community would come to their store buying food items, fabric for their clothing, candies for their children. Her parents would support other black businesses. The black carpenters built their new house. The black bakers baked fresh breads and cakes. The black fish dealers offered the best catch of the day.

This little black boy would go to school with the little black girl who was coming to church.  Their parents would help them every night with their homework. The boy’s father might tell him of the days when he was a very young boy, when he was a slave, and went to the night school for black persons, the same school where his father met their priest, Fr. Absalom Jones. The girl’s mother might tell her about Mary Jones, the wife of Fr. Absalom, who worked long hours with her husband so they could buy the big house they owned and later Fr. Absalom’s freedom. 

They were discovering the rich heritage forged by their parents, created by their priest, strengthened by the black community in which they lived and to which they would contribute.

They would begin to understand the challenges they would face in a city with a predominantly white population. Their elders would teach them the ways to navigate through those challenges.

Perhaps their parents told them about the first day the African Church was opened, how the Rev. Samuel Magaw, the white rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, spoke in a condescending way about the heritage of the black congregation living in the darkness of their former slave habits. Only a few weeks later, Absalom Jones would preach a sermon correcting the paternalism and arrogance of Rev. Magaw. Rev. Absalom Jones would also preach about darkness, but it was the darkness was not their African homeland but the evil of slavery and the lack of freedom in the United States of America. Rev. Absalom Jones was speaking to his black congregation as a black man, reflecting on the bible through a black lens, and filtering out the prejudice which white preachers brought.

The primary purpose in founding St. Thomas African Episcopal Church was to create a church and social network where African Americans could find themselves in a position of power and share that power with the other members of their community. They were creating the beginnings of a society of equals in a world where white persons denied that equality to black persons. African American leaders identified the prejudice and paternalism of the white community and offered alternate ways of seeing themselves and the ways they could engage the white community.

I wonder what we can learn from looking at Fr. Absalom Jones from the perspective of that little black girl and boy?  Perhaps we can see the importance for children of discovering their Black heritage, to work in a network created by African Americans where they could claim their power and create systems of support for power within the community.

Our society has taken steps to dismantle racism but we have a long way to go.  Our Anti Racism Task Force is inviting us to discover ways we can connect with other communities in Linden, building alliances to combat the racism which exists in our community. We know that we have a good deal of work to do.

That work not only builds up God’s Beloved Community. Like the Black community of Philadelphia which gave a gift of power and dignity to that unknown little girl and little boy in the print of St. Thomas Church, we create a gift to pass on to our children. A home to nurture their hearts in God’s inclusive love. 

Jonah -- The Reluctant Prophet

Jonah 3

3 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” 3 So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8 Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

Some of you may be fans of Dave Chappelle, one of America’s greatest satiric comedians.  His humor cuts to the quick of the truth about America and many of the issues of our society. Someone has remarked that satire first makes you laugh and then makes you think. We expect to find satire and a comic view of the world on television, in the movies and on stage. We hardly expect to find it in the bible. So when it shows up, our expectation, or lack of it, blinds us to the satirical humor.

The Book of Jonah ranks as one of the most satirical books of the bible. The unknown author of the book uses words to paint a caricature of a reluctant and prejudiced prophet. After today’s worship, you might want to take out your bible and read the three short pages of the Book of Jonah.

You will discover that today’s reading begins with Jonah’s second call.  The crux of the story lies in the first call. God calls Jonah to leave the northern kingdom of Israel and go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, the archenemy of Israel. Everyone assumes  that when God calls, the prophet will obey God. Not Jonah. When God tells Jonah to head north east and preach repentance,  Jonah heads west and books passage in a boat.

God follows Jonah and the comic side of the story happens when God stirs up a storm.  The pagan sailors soon discover that Jonah is the cause of the storm, so Jonah offers that they throw him into the sea. For this reluctant prophet, even death in the sea is preferable to preaching repentance to Ninevah.

The story continues its comic satire. God sends great fish which swallows Jonah and carries him back to shore. In a bad cast of fish indigestion, Jonah is vomited out of the belly of the great fish and lands on the shore.

Today’s reading begins with Jonah, drenched in fish sputum, hearing God call for the second time.  Reluctantly, Jonah heads toward Ninevah with his sermon. Nineveh and the Assyrians were notorious for their violence and cruelty. Their meanness took deep root in their hearts. Who would imagine these terrorists of the ancient world turning from their wickedness. So Jonah starts his mission and his preaching.

In Hebrew, Jonah’s sermon consists of five words:  Forty days and Nineveh will be destroyed. Jonah starts his three day journey across the city with his five word sermon when the people hear the message and believe God.  The king heightens the comic response to the prophet. When he hears the prophet’s message he calls for a fast. The king decrees:  “Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence which is in his heart.” (Jonah 3: 8) Not only people are to fast from food and change their silk robes for scratchy sackcloth underwear. All the cattle and herds are to fast and put on sackcloth. Can’t you just see it? On the rolling hills of Nineveh, those hills populated by herds of cattle, you see endless numbers of cows, bulls and calves, all bellowing for food, all wearing sackcloth diapers. God sees their change of heart and God reverses course: “God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.” (Jonah 3: 10 RSV)

The story of Jonah comes to us as a satirical tale, a piece worthy of Dave Chappelle. The story was told in Israel at a time when they saw themselves as the only ones for whom God cared, as the only ones who were worthy of receiving God’s abounding and steadfast love.  The story is told to us today to shine a light on our own hearts.

The story of Jonah compares the heart of the prophet against the heart of God. God’s heart proves itself wide and expansive and the prophet’s heart small and unforgiving.

Each of is a Jonah and each of us has experienced the violence of an Assyria. Perhaps we have not endured physical violence at the hands of another. None of us are strangers to people who treat us poorly, who hurt us emotionally, harm us spiritually. 

The story of Jonah asks us how we deal with our anger toward others who harm us.

In the story, Jonah nurses anger toward God for God’s change of heart. God challenges Jonah with the question:  “Is it right for you to be angry?” (Jonah 4: 4) God sees all people as God’s children, people capable of change, capable of turning around. Our anger locks people into the moment of the offense, into the time when they hurt us. Such anger can be directed toward individuals or against groups of people. God invites us to look at our hearts.

Do we allow anger to fester into resentment, hostility and an unforgiving heart? I heard it said that "Living with resentment is like taking poison and expecting the other guy to get sick."

Today’s touch of biblical satire invites us to smile at the prophet Jonah and perhaps to laugh at ourselves. A deep hope opens up for us if we are bold enough to accept the God of Jonah, the God for whom nobody is too bad, too mean, too hopeless.  This God goes with us into places of our heart as dark as the caverns of a fish’s belly for us to turn from our resentments and make the discovery that saved Jonah:  We surrender our own anger to the degree we surrender our heart’s to God’s forgiving love.

The Survivor Tree — A Story of Faith

Luke 17:5-10

5The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. 7“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? 8Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”

Tragedy has the uncanny ability to rattle our faith. The greater the tragedy the deeper the disruption. When the World Trade Centers crashed to the ground, many of us wondered if our faith could survive the crash.

Michael Arad was in New York City on September 11. As he felt the loss in the city, he imagined two holes in the shape of the buildings’ outline, opening up in the Hudson River and the river pouring into those vacant spaces. Michael Arad is an architect and that image translated itself into the design he submitted to the September 11 Memorial Committee, the design that won the competition. The design is more that cobblestones, steel and flowing water. Living trees spot the plaza and stand, in the middle of the absence, as a sign of the persistence of hope when faith fails.

Perhaps of all the trees on the Plaza, the Survivor Tree has the most complex story. In October of 2001, a Callery Pear tree was discovered amid the rubble of the World Trade Center. When the buildings came crashing down, the rubble cut off the branches and the crown of the tree. The tree’s roots were broken. The bark on the tree was burned. When, on an October day, the tree was discovered, in spite of the trauma it suffered, it began to put our new leaves. Quite a surprising thing for a tree to do in October when it usually drops its leaves. The energy of life was surging through the tree, giving it new life. The tree was uprooted, taken to the Arthur Ross Nursery in Van Courtlandt Park in the Bronx. It was only eight feet tall when it made it back to the nursery.

So many people invested their hope in that tree. They supported it, nurtured its injured root system, and they fed it and mulched it that winter of 2001. When spring arrived, buds appeared on the tree and then flowers. In 2010, the Survivor Tree was transplanted to the plaza of the September 11 Memorial. Every spring, the survivor tree puts out its fragrant white flowers, the only flowering tree amid the forest of Swamp White Oaks on the plaza.

We heard today the story of another unplanted tree. Jesus tells us today:  If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. (Lk. 17:6) Most of us hear these words and shake our heads since we know that we could not work that magic which would uproot trees. So we doubt our faith and we question ourselves. But those are unnecessary worries we lay on our hearts.

Jesus never intended us to believe that if we had that faith mustard seed faith that we could command trees to dance their way into the sea. It is only a figure of speech.

Let’s remember that the apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith not out of the blue but in the context of his previous challenge. If you would open the Gospel according to Luke to the beginning of Chapter 17, you would read Jesus’ admonition that we should forgive not seven times but seventy times seven times. Jesus continues in today’s passage to advise the apostles that they are also called to be servants in the community. In the context of those two challenges of living the Christian life, we hear the apostles give voice to our own plea:  Lord, increase our faith. So how should we hear Jesus’ seemingly impossible reply about moving trees into the sea if we had even a bit of faith?

Let’s look into our hearts because that faith is already there. Perhaps we do not recognize that faith because we call it by different names. We experience that mustard seed faith as the strength which leads us through the painful experiences of our lives. We experience mustard seed faith as the hope that we can discover meaning when the rug gets pulled out from under us. We experience mustard seed faith as that pull of our hearts to go deeper into the Christian life, to give up time on whatever we do and to put in time for prayer, for reading the bible, for practicing that part of Christian living which presents the greatest challenge for me today. Our faith pulls us like a magnet and faith draws us deeper into a relationship with God, an ever-developing friendship with Christ and an unanticipated sharing in love of the Holy Spirit. We feel that faith well up in us and it moves through our lives with all the give and take of any of our relationships.

Once we begin that relationship with God, once we agree to be in a relationship with Jesus, God has a way of luring us deeper and leading us to new levels of our relationship which means new levels of faith. The great mystery of our faith consists in our ability to survive attacks on it. Just as the Survivor Tree endured the attack of September 11 and found new life surging through it, so too our faith gets us through the deepest problems we face.

When our life feels like the burned bark of the Survivor Tree, a deep energy of life, an enduring persistence, surges through us.

What do we fall back on when the going gets rough? What gets us through in the face of the seemingly impossible? What is that energy which pushes out new leaves from a tree that should have died?

Faith is that hope that shines as a light when we feel surrounded by deepest darkness. For our faith opens up for us that mystery of God as a living relationship with a living person. God draws us ever deeper into that mystery.

Let us dare to pray with the apostles:  “Increase our faith!”Let us dare to believe that the Spirit already planted that faith deep in our hearts. No matter how damaged your faith, how small your hope, how timid your love, wait on God when it seems lost. Then anticipate that new leaves of faith will blossom.